Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future 26 - Earthmen No More

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EARTHMEN NO MORE

A Captain Future Novelet

By Edmond HAMILTON

When the Futuremen revived John Carey from his deep freeze,

he wanted to go home--but where in space was home ?

CHAPTER I

The Awakening

TILL and cold in its lightless vault of

bone, the brain stirred feebly. Slowly,

slowly, it began to wake and remember--

timeless memories, flowing across it in a

dark inchoate tide from nowhere into

nothingness.

He was alone in space. Quite alone,

floating, turning, drifting. He had no

destination and he was in no hurry. He had

lost the Sun and the planets. There were

not even any stars.

He did not worry. The dead do not

insist on stars. He had forgotten how he

came to die and he was glad.

After a long while, far distant in the

infinite night, he saw a tiny gleam. He

regarded it without curiosity or fear and

then he realized that some inexorable

current had caught him and was sweeping

him toward the light, hurling him at it in a

swift relentless rush. He knew that he did

not want to go to it--but there was no

escape.

The little point of light leaped and

spread into a sun, a nova, a shattering

glare. Terror overcame him. He clawed at

the comforting darkness as it fled past but

he could not hold onto it and it seemed to

him that he could hear the small thin

shrieking of his body against the void as it

was sucked into the devouring brilliance.

There was a face between him and the

light, huge and awesome. He cried out but

no sound came and then it was gone, the

light, the face, even himself, swallowed up

in the quiet night.

Memories--the aloneness, the

remembering, the timeless drift. A sound

like the rustle of far-off surf that boomed

louder and louder and became a voice

speaking out of the heavens, saying,

"Wake up, John Carey! Wake up!"

And he thought he answered, "But I am

dead."

How had he come to die?

EMORIES, groping, uncertain,

coming faster, clearer, clothed in

vivid color. A girl's face, a girl's red mouth

saying, "Don't go. Don't go if you love me.

You'll never come back."

Men and a ship--a little ship, a frail and

tiny craft, it seemed, for the long way it

was going and the high dreams it had.

Hard-faced iron-handed men, braver than

angels and more hungry than they were

brave, hungry for new worlds and the

unknown things that lay beyond the

mountains of the Moon, beyond the still

canals of Mars, beyond the glittering

deadly Belt.

He remembered now the men and the

ship, how they had gambled their lives

against glory and lost. "We shot the

Asteroids," he muttered, in the silence of

his mind. "Jupiter was there ahead of us, a

big golden apple almost in our hands. I

remember how the moons looked,

swarming like bees around it. I

remember..."

The meteor--the tearing agony of

metal, the last glimpse of horror in the ship

before the air-burst took him with it into

space, through the riven pilot-dome. The

brief, bitter knowledge that this was death.

"Dead," he said again. "I'm dead."

The strange voice answered, "If you

want to you can live again."

He thought about that. He thought about

it for a long time in the darkness. To live

again--the light and the warmth, the

hunger and pain and hope, the wanting, the

being able to want. He thought and he was

not sure and then at last he whispered,

"How? Tell me how!"

"Open your eyes and come back, back

where the light is. You were here before,

don't you remember? Open your eyes, John

Carey!"

He did or thought he did and there was

nothing but mist, heavy darkling clouds of

it. Far, far away he saw the gleam of light

beyond him and he tried to grope toward it

but the mists were very thick.

"I can't," he moaned. "I'm lost."

Lost forever, in darkness and cold.

"Come back!" cried the voice strongly.

"Come back and live!"

He heard the sound of a hand striking

smartly against flesh. After a while he felt

it. That little sharp pain somehow managed

to bridge a colossal gulf and make him

aware that he had a body.

His brain oriented itself with a dizzying

lunge. The mists tore away. He woke.

It was a full awakening. The exploding

nova resolved itself into a light-tube,

glowing against a low ceiling of metal.

The countenance that had loomed so

hugely above him became the face of a

man. A lean face, deeply bronzed with the

unmistakable burn of space, topped with

red hair and set with two level grey eyes

that looked straight into Carey's and made

him feel somehow safe and unafraid.

"Lie still," said the red-haired man. "Get

your breath. There's no hurry." He turned

aside and his hands, very strong but

delicate of touch, busied themselves with a

vial and a gleaming needle.

Carey lay still. For the moment he had

not the strength to do anything else. The

room was small. It was fitted as a

1aboratory, incredibly compact, and many

of the objects that his wandering gaze

passed over were strange to him.

One of these objects was a small

cubical case of semi-translucent metal,

resting on a table. The surface nearest

Carey was fitted with twin lenses and a

disc, so that it bore an unsettling

resemblance to a face. Carey thought

vaguely that it must be some sort of a

communicator.

Suddenly he said, "I'm in a ship."

The red-haired man smiled. "How can

you tell? We're in free fall."

"I can tell." Carey tried to struggle up.

"But there are no ships beyond the Belt!

How..." Then he began to tremble

violently. "Listen," he said to the stranger.

"Listen, I was killed, trying to reach

Jupiter. A meteor hit us and I was blown

clear, out into space with no armor. I'm

dead. I'm a dead man. I..."

"Steady on," said the red-haired man.

"Easy." He set the needle into a place

already swabbed on Carey's naked arm.

Carey flinched. He sobbed a little and then

the trembling quieted.

"I was dead," he whispered, again.

"No," said the red-haired stranger. "Not

really dead. What we call the space-death

isn't true death but cold shock--an

instantaneous stoppage of all life

processes. There's no time for deterioration

or cellular damage, no possibility of decay.

The organism stops short. It can, by certain

means, be started going again."

He looked thoughtfully down at Carey

and added, "Many lives are restored that

way, lives that would have been considered

ended in your time."

Carey said numbly, "Then you found

me, floating in space, in frozen sleep? You

-revived me?"

"Yes. Space law requires that any ship-

wreckage encountered on radar must be

investigated. That's how we found you."

The stranger smiled. "Welcome back to

life, Carey. My name is Curt Newton."

It was only then that it penetrated

Carey's stunned mind, the phrase that had

been used so casually a moment before.

"You said, 'In my time'," he repeated.

"How long..." He stopped. His mouth was

dry. He tried again, forcing out the words

that did not wish to be spoken. "How long

was I asleep out there?"

The man who called himself Curt

Newton hesitated, then asked, "What year

was it when you met disaster, Carey?"

"It was nineteen ninety-one. It was June,

nineteen ninety-one, when we left Earth."

Newton reached for a calendar pad, held

it up. He did not speak and there was pity

in his eyes.

Carey saw the date on it, and at first it

was too incredible to touch him. "Oh, no,"

he said. "Not all that time, all those

generations. No, it's not true."

"It is."

"But it can't be ..." His voice trailed off.

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Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future 26 - Earthmen No More

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