Edmond Hamilton - Children of the Sun

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CHILDREN OF THE SUN

A Captain Future Novelet By Edmond HAMILTON

Curt Newton, in quest of a friend lost inside Vulcan, faces the most insidious dangers

he has ever known in his entire galactic career !

CHAPTER I

Quest of the Futuremen

THE ship was small and dark and

unobtrusive, speeding across the Solar

System. It had a worn battered look, its

plates roughened by strange radiation,

dented by tiny meteors, tarnished by alien

atmospheres.

It had been far, this ship. In its time it

had voyaged to the farthest shores of

infinity, carrying its little crew of four on

an odyssey unmatched in human annals. It

had borne them to perils far around the

universe—and back again.

But not even the man who sat at its

controls could dream that now, here inside

the familiar System, it was bearing him

toward the most strange and soul-shaking

experience of all. . .

Curt Newton was oppressed, not by

premonitions but by a self-accusing regret.

The deep worry that he felt showed in the

tautness of his face, in the set of his lean

body. His red head was bent forward, his

gray eyes anxiously searching the

sunbeaten reaches of space ahead.

The little ship was inside the orbit of

Mercury. The whole sky ahead was

dominated by the monster bulk of the Sun.

It glared like a universe of flame, crowned

by the awful radiance of its corona,

reaching out blind mighty tentacles of fire.

Newton scanned the region near the

great orb’s limb. The impatience that had

spurred him across half the System grew to

an intolerable tension.

He said almost angrily, “Why couldn't

Carlin let well enough alone ? Why did he

have to go to Vulcan ?”

“For the same reason,” answered a

precise metallic voice from behind his

shoulder, “that you went out to

Andromeda. He is driven by the need to

learn.”

“He wouldn't have gone if I hadn't told

him all about Vulcan. It's my fault,

Simon.”

Curt Newton looked at his companion.

He saw nothing strange in the small square

case hovering on its traction beams—the

incredibly intricate serum-case that housed

the living brain of him who had been

Simon Wright, a man. That artificial voice

had taught him his first words, the lens-like

artificial eyes that watched him now had

watched his first stumbling attempts to

walk, the microphonic ears had heard his

infant wails.

“Simon—do you think Carlin is dead ?”

“Speculation is quite useless, Curtis.

We can only try to find him.”

“We've got to find him,” Newton said,

with somber determination. “He helped us

when we needed help. And he was our

friend.”

Friend. He had had so few close human

friends, this man whom the System called

Captain Future. Always he had stood in the

shadow of a loneliness that was the

inescapable heritage of his strange

childhood.

Orphaned almost at birth he had grown

to manhood on the lonely Moon, knowing

no living creature but the three unhuman

Futuremen. They had been his playmates,

his teachers, his inseparable companions.

Inevitably by that upbringing he was

forever set apart from his own kind.

Few people had ever penetrated that

barrier of reserve. Philip Carlin had been

one of them. And now Carlin was gone

into mystery.

“If I had been here,” Newton brooded,

“I'd never have let him go.”

A BRILLIANT scientist Carlin had set

out to study the mysteries of that strange

world inside Vulcan which the Futuremen

had discovered. He had hired a work-ship

with heavy anti-heat equipment to take him

to Vulcan, arranging for it to come back

there for him in six months.

But when the ship returned it had found

no trace of Carlin in the ruined city that

had been his base of operations. It had,

after a futile search, come back with the

news of his disappearance.

All this had happened before the return

of the Futuremen from their epoch-making

voyage to Andromeda. And now Curt

Newton was driving sunward, toward

Vulcan, to solve the mystery of Carlin's

fate.

Abruptly, from beyond the bulkhead

door of the bridge-room, two voices, one

deep and booming, the other lighter and

touched with an odd sibilance, were raised

in an outburst of argument.

Newton turned sharply. “Stop that

wrangling ! You'd better get those anti-

heaters going or we'll all fry.”

The door slid open and the remaining

members of the unique quartet came in.

One of them, at first glance, appeared

wholly human—with a lithe lean figure

and finely-cut features. And yet in his

pointed white face and bright ironic eyes

there lurked a disturbing strangeness.

A man but no kin to the sons of Adam.

An android, the perfect creation of

scientific craft and wisdom—humanity

carried to its highest power, and yet not

human. He carried his difference with an

air but Curt Newton was aware that Otho

was burdened with a loneliness far more

keen than any he could know himself.

The android said quietly, “Take it easy,

Curt. The unit’s already functioning.”

He glanced through the window at the

glaring vista of space and shivered. “I get

edgy myself, playing around the Sun this

close.”

Newton nodded. Otho was right. It was

one thing to come and go between the

planets, even between the stars. It was a

wholly different thing to dare approach the

Sun.

The orbit of Mercury was a boundary, a

limit. Any ship that went inside it was

challenging the awful power of the great

solar orb. Only ships equipped with the

anti-heat apparatus dared enter that zone of

terrible force—and then only at great peril.

Only the fourth of the Futuremen

seemed unworried. He crossed to the

window, his towering metal bulk looming

over them all. The same scientific genius

that had created the android had shaped

also this manlike metal giant, endowing

him with intelligence equal to the human

and with a strength far beyond anything

human.

Grag’s photoelectric eyes gazed steadily

from his strange metal face, into the wild

shaking glare. “I don't know what you’re

jumpy about,” he said. “The Sun doesn’t

bother me a bit.” He flexed his great

gleaming arms. “It feels good.”

“Stop showing off,” said Otho sourly.

“You'll burn out your circuits and we've

better things to do than trying to cram your

carcass out through the disposal lock.”

The android turned to Captain Future.

“You haven't raised Vulcan yet ?”

Newton shook his head. “Not yet.”

Presently a faint aura of hazy force

surrounded the little ship as it sped on—the

anti-heater unit building up full power.

The terrible heat of the Sun could reach

through space only as radiant vibrations.

The aura generated by the anti-heaters

acted as a shield to refract and deflect most

of that radiant heat.

Newton touched a button. Still another

filter-screen, this one the heaviest of all,

slid across the window. Yet even through

all the screens the Sun poured dazzling

radiance.

The temperature inside the ship was

steadily rising. The anti-heaters could not

deflect all the Sun's radiant heat. Only a

fraction got through but that was enough to

make the bridge-room an oven.

An awed silence came upon the

Futuremen as they looked at the mighty

star that filled almost all the firmament

ahead. They had been this close to the Sun

before but no previous experience could

lessen the impact of it.

You never saw the Sun until you got

this close, Newton thought. Ordinary

planet-dwellers thought of it as a

beneficent golden thing in the sky, giving

them heat and light and life. But here you

saw the Sun as it really was, a throbbing

seething core of cosmic force, utterly

indifferent to the bits of ash that were its

planets and to the motes that lived upon

those ashes.

They could, at this distance, clearly see

gigantic cyclones of flame raging across

the surface of the mighty orb. Into those

vortices of fire all Earth could have been

dropped and from around them exploded

burning geysers that could have shrivelled

worlds.

Sweat was running down Curt Newton's

face now and he gasped a little for each

breath. “Temperature, Otho ?” he asked

without turning his head.

“Only fifty degrees under the safety

limit and the anti-heaters running full

load,” said the android. “If we've

miscalculated course—”

“We haven't,” said Captain Future.

“There's Vulcan ahead.”

The planetoid, the strange lonely little

solar satellite, had come into view as a

dark dot closely pendant to the skyfilling

Sun.

Newton drove the Comet forward

unrelentingly now. Every moment this

close to the Sun there was peril. Let the

anti-heaters stop one minute and metal

would soften and fuse, flesh would blacken

and die.

Otho suddenly raised his hand to point,

crying out, “Look ! Sun-children !”

They had heard of the legendary “Sun-

children” from the Vulcanian natives, had

once glimpsed one far off. But these two

were nearer. Newton, straining his eyes

against the solar glare, could barely see the

things—two whirling little wisps of flame,

moving fast through the blinding radiance

of the corona.

Then the two will-o-wisps of fire had

disappeared in the vast glare. The eye

searched for them in vain.

“I still think,” Simon was saying, “that

they're just wisps of flaming hydrogen that

are flung off the Sun and then fall back

again.”

“But the Vulcanians told of them

coming down into Vulcan,” Otho object-

ed. “How could bits of flaming gas do that

?”

CURT NEWTON hardly listened. He

was already whipping the ship in around

Vulcan in a tight spiral few spacemen

would have risked. Its brake rockets

thundering, it scudded low around the

surface of the little world.

The whole surface was semi-molten

rock. The heat of the planetoid’s

stupendous neighbor kept its outer skin

half-melted. Lava sweltered in great pools,

infernal lagoons framed by smoking rock

hills. Fire burst up from the rocks, as

though called forth by the nearby Sun.

Grag first saw what they were looking

for—a gaping round pit in the sunward

side of the planetoid. Presently Captain

Future had the Comet hovering on keel-jets

above the yawning shaft. He eased on the

power-pedal and the little ship dropped

straight down into the pit.

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1CHILDRENOFTHESUNACaptainFutureNoveletByEdmondHAMILTONCurtNewton,inquestofafriendlostinsideVulcan,facesthemostinsidiousdangershehaseverknowninhisentiregalacticcareer!CHAPTERIQuestoftheFuturemenTHEshipwassmallanddarkandunobtrusive,speedingacrosstheSolarSystem.Ithadawornbatteredlook,itsplatesroughened...

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Edmond Hamilton - Children of the Sun

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