Captain Future 09 - Quest Beyond the Stars (Winter 1942) (4 page)

NERVOUS tension gripped Curt, such as he had never felt before. It was not alone the numbing majesty of the great stars and glooms about him which caused his feeling. It was his knowledge that they were fast approaching the mysterious place of their search, the so-called Birthplace of Matter that was the very core of the whole universe.

What would it be like, that unknown wellspring of creation in which new matter for the universe was somehow ceaselessly built up from radiation? What was the secret of that miraculous natural creation? And could they hope to snatch the innermost riddle of the cosmos? For many hours, they flew through apparently empty space toward the vast black cosmic cloud. The cosmic ray compass pointed always toward it. It bulked here amid the thronging suns and nebulae like a great, brooding presence of awesome ebon majesty, extending for at least twenty billion miles across space in front of them. Surprisingly, the friction-alarms began sounding again. A rapid check of instruments disclosed to Curt and the Brain that, as they flew onward, space was becoming ever thicker with streaming cosmic dust.

“It’s what we might have expected, lad,” the Brain rasped thoughtfully.

“We knew that matter is born in the Birthplace as tiny particles of cosmic dust, which are carried out in streams to all parts of the galaxy by light-pressure. As we near the Birthplace, the streams of outflowing dust will become ever denser and stronger.”

Captain Future nodded agreement.

“It means that we’re very near the Birthplace, comparatively speaking. It may be on the other side of that black cloud.”

He was forced to throttle down their velocity further, to avoid heating the hull. The cosmic cloud now blotted out half the starry universe ahead.

“Time we started detouring around the cloud,” Captain Future remarked, veering the flying ship onto a new course.

“Why don’t we just go through it?” Grag inquired.

“Listen to Grag, the genius, talking!” jeered Otho. “A dark cloud like that might have anything in it from a dark-star to a meteor swarm, you bucket-head. It’d be suicide to go blundering in there.”

As the
Comet
crawled around the edge of the gigantic area of blackness, it was tossed by increasingly stronger dust-streams. The vast black mass to their right was an even more awe-inspiring spectacle than the gaseous nebula. Its darkness was impenetrable. Scattered along its borders were a few bright suns, whose rays luridly illuminated the coiling fringes of dust and an occasional dark star, a burned-out ember of the universe.

“It’s strange,” came the uneasy voice of the Brain, “but according to my observation, these dust-streams seem to come from the cloud itself.”

“There’s something a lot stranger than that,” Curt Newton rapped. “We’re halfway around the cloud, but the cosmic ray compass still points right toward the center of the cloud itself.”

HE HAD been watching the quivering needle, closely, and had felt an increasing astonishment as it crept steadily to one side of its card. It was Otho who blurted out the suspicion that had come to all of them. “Is it possible that the Birthplace of Matter is somewhere
inside that cosmic cloud?”

“It couldn’t be!” Grag declared. “Or could it? Jumping moon-demons, I don’t know what to think!”

“It’s logical,” muttered the Brain. “That unprecedentedly huge black cloud is composed of cosmic dust. If the Birthplace is somewhere inside it, that would account for the existence of the dust — it is born in the Birthplace itself and streams out from it, but great masses of it remain clustered around the Birthplace.”

“Just as though they were hiding the core of creation from the rest of the universe,” Otho murmured awedly.

“We don’t know yet that the Birthplace
is
inside the cloud,” Curt Newton reminded them. “Let’s keep on until we reach the other side.”

But in his own mind, little doubt remained. As he guided the flying
Comet
around the cloud, the cosmic ray needle continued to veer further to the right, so that it still pointed back into the cloud. There was no doubt whatever in Curt’s mind when they had finally reached the other side of the vast black mass. The cosmic ray needle pointed back in the direction from which they had originally come.

“So the Birthplace is in there, all right,” muttered Simon Wright, his lens-eyes surveying the enormous, swirling wall of blackness. “This complicates things, lad.”

“I’ll say it does!” Otho remarked gloomily. “How in the name of all the space-devils are we going to find anything in that universe of dust?”

Captain Future did not share their gloom. Pleasant and good-humored when all went well, he acquired a steely quality when confronted with opposition. To the red-haired Planeteer, the challenge of either natural or human forces was an invitation to battle that he accepted almost gaily.

“The Birthplace is in there,” he shrugged. “All we have to do is go in and find it. It’s simple.”

“Sure, it’ll be easy,” said Grag loudly. “However, I just remembered that I’ve got a date over on the other side of the galaxy, so I guess I’ll have to be leaving the party —”

Otho turned on him with withering scorn.

“Trying to back out, huh? I always knew you hadn’t any backbone inside that iron carcass.”

The android swung toward Captain Future.

“Don’t let Grag run out on you, chief. I’d stay with you myself, only I just recalled that I left my favorite proton-pistol on the Moon, so I’ll have to go back for it.”

CURT NEWTON grinned understandingly at the two. He knew very well that neither of them had a trace of apprehension over the dangerous adventure ahead. But they were pretending to be shaking with fear. Simon Wright moved restlessly. The Brain had little appreciation of humor in his austere mentality.

“If you two idiots are through pretending, we can go on,” he rasped caustically.

“Let ‘em have a good laugh, Simon,” Curt rejoined. “They may have little e
nough
left of this life to enjoy.”

“Ouch, that sounds too near the truth,” said Otho ruefully. “Okay, chief — let’s make the plunge.”

Captain Future scanned the edges of the cloud. He perceived one point where a deep bay ran into the vast mass of dust, and he steered the
Comet
toward that.

AS THE ship crawled through billions of miles toward the cosmic blackness, it was rocked ever more violently by the almost invisible dust-streams flowing out of the cloud. The pitching and tossing of the craft became so pronounced that they were forced to strap themselves into the space-chairs.

“It’ll be worse the further in we get, I suppose,” Curt thought. “It’s as though nature itself were trying to keep us away from the Birthplace.”

That uncanny thought deepened as the dust-streams became more violent with each million miles. By the time they were proceeding up the empty bay of space that indented the cloud, it required all the power of the vibration-drive to hold the
Comet
steady. They passed not far from a large dark star that floated on the edge of the cloud, accompanied by two small planets. They finally reached the very edge of the area of blackness.

“We’ll try the fluoroscopic searchlights but I doubt if they’ll do much good in dust this dense,” Curt called to the others. “Otho, take the cover off the cosmic ray compass, so that we can check it by touch.”

Otho removed the glassite face of the instrument. It was difficult work, for the ship was now lurching drunkenly.

“Goodbye, universe!” exclaimed Grag. “Here’s where poor old Grag gets blacked out for good.”

Next moment, the flying ship had plunged into the dust of the cloud. At once, they were surrounded by an impenetrable blackness. Curt hastily switched on the fluoroscopic searchlights, whose beams were designed to penetrate fog or dust. But the beams made only a thin red glow for a few hundred yards ahead. Even they could not penetrate far through the choking area of swirling particles.

The Futuremen could barely make each other out in the control-room. The currents of streaming dust hurled the
Comet
about like a chip in a maelstrom as Curt fought to keep it on its course. They seemed to have penetrated the bellowing, violent, primal forces of the cosmos. The hull and struts of the ship creaked, boomed, shuddered and screeched beneath the impact of currents. A strut snapped with a crash back in the cabin.

“This is worse than bucking a blizzard over Pluto!” called Otho over the uproar. “If it’s this bad near the Birthplace, what’ll it be like when we actually find it?”

“It’ll be like catching a Jovian moonwolf — but if you find one, it tears you to bits,” Grag boomed.

Captain Future paid them little attention for he was definitely worried by the pounding the
Comet
was taking. The ship was the staunchest, strongest craft in the Solar System — but even it could not challenge with impunity the blind fury of interstellar forces.

The stubbornness of purpose that was Curt’s dominant trait rose to meet the intensified challenge. He held the ship grimly on its course, bringing it back each time it was hurled spinning away by the roaring dust-streams. The throbbing vibration-drive continued to push it forward, but it was like breasting the tide of a super-Niagara to force a way against these appalling currents.

HE SOUGHT to find an easier path between the more violent dust-currents, but each time was sucked back into the raging stronger tides. The cosmic ray compass needle was shuddering spasmodically, for its mechanism was bearing the full terrific impact of the cosmic radiation whose unimaginable source they were fighting to approach.

Crack-crash!
A scream of tortured metal told of a slight warping of the
Comet’s
stern hull plates. An instant later, the controls went dead under Captain Future’s hands, and the ship was batted helplessly this way and that like a powerless derelict.

“What’s the matter?” Grag yelled, clinging to his space-chair as the ship rolled and spun madly in the current’s grip.

“The drive ring around the hull must have snapped!” Curt cried. “The vibration drive’s useless. Now the currents
have
got us.”

“Could we put on our space-suits and go out and repair it?” Otho called.

“Not a chance. The currents would tear you off the hull in a minute!” Curt shouted back. “I’ll try to use the rocket-drive. It won’t buck these currents, but it may get us out of this devil’s storm to where we can repair the drive-ring.”

The roar of the rocket-tubes sounded thin and ineffectual when he threw them on. Their comparatively low power was puny against the raging dust-currents, but they helped to keep the ship from being tossed about too violently as the currents carried it outward.

Captain Future allowed the millrace tides of dust to sweep them out of the cloud. Further attempts to penetrate to the Birthplace were useless until the vibration drive ring was repaired. They were swept finally out of the vast black cloud into the clear vault of space again. Neighboring star-clusters and nebulae blazed brightly to their eyes after their sojourn in the roaring darkness.

“Never saw a sun look so good to me as those do!” Grag vowed fervently. “Where’ll we go to repair the ship, chief?”

“All those suns are too far for us to reach with the rocket-drive,” Curt estimated. He pointed toward the dark star they had passed on their inward journey. “We’d better land there — it’s the nearest world!”

The violence of the currents was less now that they were outside the cloud. Curt was able to steer toward the cinder-like dark star by means of the throbbing rockets. Limping on, the
Comet
approached the burned-out sun. A quick telescopic inspection showed that its two small planets were ice-sheathed.

“We’ll need terbium for repairs and it’ll be hard to get on those icy little worlds,” Curt decided. “We’d better land on the dead sun itself and see if we can find any there.”

Somber, black, desolate in death, loomed the burned-out star as they approached for a landing. In the starlight stretched cindery plains that rose to low hills of ashen drabness. There was a thin atmosphere of gaseous elements that remained after the solidification of the cooling star.

Curt brought the
Comet
to a landing on one of the desolate plains. He exhaled a long breath as he turned off the rockets. It was the first landing they had made since leaving the Moon in their own System, far across the universe.

“The air is breathable,” reported the Brain, from his check of the atmosphere tester, “but has a high percentage of inert gases.”

They emerged from the ship and tramped cindery ashes underfoot as they moved aft to view the damage.

As Captain Future had guessed, the terbium drive-ring had been snapped when the hull was warped by impact of currents. Half of the ring was now missing.

“We can soon repair the drive ring,” he declared, eyeing the damage, “if we find terbium on this dark star. But terbium is an unlikely element on a dead sun like this —”

He had turned to wave across the starlit, deathly plain as he spoke, but suddenly stiffened, his voice dying away. Unbelievingly, Curt stared. From Otho came a gasp.

“Gods of space, what are
they?”

Across the dim, ashen plain, a group of incredible figures advanced toward them.