Captain Future 22 - Children of the Sun (May 1950) Read Online Free

high as a tall man, braced in frames of platinum.
    The coils pulsed and glowed with misty light — one set giving forth a gleam of purest gold, the other a darker hue of bluish green. Opposite the arch through which they had entered was a third niche, much smaller, having within it a complicated bank of instruments that might have been a control panel.
    “Birthplace of the Children of the Sun,” said Otho softly. “Look, Curt — there above the niches.”
    Again Captain Future read aloud, the warning messages cut deep in the ageless stone. Above the apparatus of the golden coils it said, “Let him beware who steps beyond this portal. For death is the price of eternal life!”
    Above the one of somber hue, the inscription read. “Death is a double doorway. On which side of it is the true life?”
    Simon Wright had approached the niche that held the strange glow of sunlight and was hovering over the edge of the fallen soil there. “Curtis,” he said, “I think we have found what we sought.”
    Newton joined him. He bent and picked something up, shaking it free from the dirt that half buried it. Mutely he nodded and showed the thing to Otho. It was a coverall of tough synthetic cloth, much stained and worn. On the label inside the collar was woven the name, Philip Carlin.
    “He was here then, Otho.”
    “But what happened to him? Why would he strip — wait!”
    The android’s sharp eyes had perceived a mound in the soil, vaguely manlike in shape. Together he and Newton uncovered it and then looked at each other in vast relief.
    “It’s only his knapsack and bedroll,” said Newton thankfully.
    “And his boots.” Otho shook his head. “I don’t get it at all. There’s no sign of blood on his clothes —”
    Newton was looking now at the yellow-gold crystal coils, the suggestive dais-like space between them. The thing was close to him, almost close enough to touch.
    “He stripped here,” said Newton slowly. “He left his clothing and his kit behind and —” His eyes lifted to the inscription and he added very softly, “Phil Carlin went through the portal, whatever it is and wherever it leads.”
    “I agree with your assumptions, Curtis,” said Simon Wright. “I suggest that you search Carlin’s effects for any data he may have left relative to this apparatus and its uses. It is obvious that he spent months in study and such a record seems inevitable.”
    Simon’s lens-eyes turned toward the small niche with the cryptic bank of controls.
    “See, there are many close-packed inscriptions on those walls, presumably instructions for the operation of these machines. He would surely have written down his translations for reference.”
    Captain Future was already going through Carlin’s pack. “Here it is!” he said and held up a thick notebook. “Hold your light closer, Otho.”
    He thumbed rapidly through the pages until he found what he was hoping and praying for — a section headed, in Carlin’s meticulous script, Translation of Formulae, Control Niche.
    “Long, complicated and heavily annotated by Carlin,” he said. “It will take us the rest of the night to puzzle this out, but it’s a godsend all the same.”
    He sat down in the dirt, the book open on his knees. Simon hovered close over his shoulder. The two were already absorbed in those all-important pages.
    “Otho,” said Newton, “will you go up and give Grag a hand in? The natives won’t dare to follow us in here on forbidden ground.”
     
    AND that was the last thing he said that night, except to exchange a few terse remarks with Simon on the intricacies of some formulae or equation.
    Grag and Otho waited. They did not speak. From beyond the high windows came a distant sound of voices that was like a bitter dirge.
    Curt Newton read on and on in Carlin’s record. And as he read the terrible suspicion that had been born in his mind took form and shape and crystallized at last into a truth as horrifying as it was