Captain Future 27 - Birthplace of Creation (May 1951) Read Online Free

coming,” Curt said uncomfortingly. “We’ll hit the main cloud soon.”
    “The cloud?”
    “The great cloud of cosmic dust that surrounds the Birthplace. That dust is born from the Birthplace — and flows out in mighty tides through our whole universe.”
    “To be born into new worlds?”
    “Yes. Weizsacker fathomed that part of the cycle, long ago in the nineteen forties when he formulated his theory of the gathering of the cosmic dust into new planets.”
    Before them now rose a wall of Suns, glaring like cyclopean furnaces as the Comet seemingly crawled toward them. Almost it seemed that they could hear the clang and thunder of cosmic forges as their tiny craft approached and went between the flaming giants.
    White and wild flared a far-flung nebula to the left beyond that rampart of stars. But ahead there gloomed farther still the black cloud that now seemed eating up the universe with jaws of darkness as they steadily approached it.
    “No sign of any other ship outside the cloud,” Otho reported coolly. “Our detectors won’t range inside it, of course.”
    “They had too big a start,” Curt said broodingly. “Too many days. Garrand and the other must already have been on the world of the Watchers for some time.”
    “Unless the whirls wrecked them,” Otho suggested.
    “Wishful thinking,” Curt said. “We ran the whirls and so could they.”
    Simon said, “Curtis, you will not go into the shrine of the Watchers again?”
    Curt Newton did not look at him. “I’ll have to if that’s where Garrand is.”
    “You don’t have to, Curtis. We three could go.”
     
    NOW, Curt looked at Simon, his tanned face set and unreadable. “You don’t trust me with the power of the Watchers?”
    “You know what that power almost did to you before. It is for you to say.”
    Curt looked ahead and said doggedly, “I am not afraid and I will go in there after him.”
    Ezra Gurney, puzzled by the tension between them, asked, “Who are the Watchers?”
    “They have been dead for ages,” Curt said slowly. “But long ago they penetrated the Birthplace and conquered its secret and set up instruments to wield its powers. It’s why we have come. Garrand must not use those instruments.”
    “Nobody must use them,” said Simon.
    Curt said nothing to that.
    Gurney, looking ahead, saw the black cloud widening out across the starry universe like a great tide of doom, steadily blotting out the stars. A fitting cosmic shroud for the greatest of cosmic secrets, he thought. Its fringes engulfed bright stars that shone wanly through the dimness like dying eyes.
    “This dust,” said Simon, “is newborn matter, spawned by the Birthplace and pumped outward by pressure of radiation to flow out to the whole universe.”
    “And the — the secret itself — is inside?”
    “Yes.”
    There was no moment when the Comet plunged suddenly within the cloud. Rather the dust thickened steadily until all about the flying ship was a deepening haze, deepest and darkest ahead but drawing more and more veils behind them so that the stars back there shone like smothered witch-fires.
    The ship began to tremble as it encountered flowing spatial currents of denser dust. Struts and girders protested with slight creakings and then more loudly. They strapped into the recoil-chairs at Curt’s orders.
    “Here it comes,” said Grag in loud complaint. “I remember last time almost every bone in my body was broken.”
    Otho laughed. He started a caustic retort but had no time to voice it.
    To Gurney the Comet seemed suddenly to have crashed. The tell-tales on the panel went crazy and the recoil-chairs screamed in outrage as the ship was batted through the haze by unseen giant hands.
    There was nothing they could do but hang on. There was nothing even for Curt to do. The automatic pilot and stabilizers had to do it all now or they were finished.
    The mechanisms functioned staunchly. Again and again they snatched the buffeted little ship out of