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.

This shaft was the one way inside the

hollow solar satellite. At the planetoid's

birth gases trapped within it had caused it

to form as a hollow shell. Those gases,

finally bursting out as pressure increased,

had torn open this way to the outer surface.

The ship sank steadily down the shaft.

Light was around them for this side of

Vulcan was toward the Sun now and a

great beam entered.

Then, finally, the shaft debouched into a

vast space vaguely lighted by that beam--

the interior of the hollow world.

"Whew, I'm glad to be in here out of

that solar radiance," breathed Otho. "Now

where ?"

Newton asked, "The ruins near Yellow

Lake, wasn't it ?"

"Yes," answered the Brain's metallic

voice. "It was where the ship left Carlin

and where it was to pick him up."

The Futuremen had been here inside

Vulcan once before. Yet they felt again

the wonder of this strangest world in the

System as the Comet flew low over its

inner surface.

Beneath their flying ship stretched a

weird landscape of fern jungles. It ex-

tended into a shrouding haze ahead, the

horizon fading away in an upward curve.

Over their heads now was the hazy "sky"

of the planetoid's central hollow, cut across

by the tremendous, glittering sword of the

giant beam of sunlight that gave light to

this world.

As their ship slanted down over the fern

jungle toward their destination a feeling of

gray futility came upon Curt Newton.

Months had passed since Philip Carlin had

disappeared here. Could the scientist have

survived alone so long in his wild world ?

A city wrecked by time lay beneath

them, almost swallowed by the giant ferns.

Only scattered crumbling stones of

massive dimensions had survived the

ravages of unthinkable ages. It was like

the flotsam of a lost ship, floating up out of

the past.

The Comet came to rest upon cracked

paving surrounded by towering shattered

monoliths. The Futuremen went out into

the steamy air.

"It was here that Carlin was to meet the

ship when it came," said Captain Future.

"And he wasn't here." He spoke in a

lowered voice. The brooding silence of this

memorial of lost greatness laid a cold spell

upon them all.

These broken mighty stones were all

that remained of a city of the Old Empire,

that mighty galactic civilization mankind

had attained to long ago. On worlds of

every star its cities and monuments had

risen, then had passed--had passed so

completely that men had had no memory

of it until the Futuremen probed back into

cosmic history.

Long ago the mighty ships of the star-

conquering Empire had come to colonize

even hollow Vulcan. Men and women with

the powers of a brilliant science and with

proud legends of victorious cosmic

conquest had lived and loved and died

here. But the Empire had fallen and its

cities had died and the descendants of its

people here were barbarians now.

"The first thing," Newton was saying,

"is to get in touch with the Vulcanians and

find out what they know about Carlin."

Grag stood, his metal head swivelling as

he stared around the ruins. "No sign of

them here. But those primitives always are

shy."

"We'll look around first for some trace

of Carlin here then," Newton decided.

The quartet started through the ruins--

the man and the mighty clanking robot, the

lithe android and the gliding Brain.

Newton felt more strongly the

oppressive somberness of this place of

vanished glory, as he looked up at the

inscriptions in the old language that were

carved deep into the great stones. He could

read that ancient writing and as he read

those proud legends of triumphs long

sunken into oblivion he felt the crushing

sadness of that greatest of galactic

tragedies, the fall of the Old Empire.

Simon's sharp, metallic voice roused

him from his preoccupation. "Curtis ! Look

here !"

Captain Future instantly strode to where

the Brain hovered beside one of the

towering monoliths.

"Did you find some trace, Simon ?"

"Look at that inscription ! It's in the old

language--but it's newly carved !"

Newton's eyes widened. It was true. On

that monolith, a few feet above the ground,

was a chiseled legend in the language that

had not been used for ages. Yet the

characters were raw, new, only faintly

weathered.

"It was carved less than a year ago !" he

said. His pulses suddenly hammered.

"Simon, Carlin knew the old language !

He had me teach it to him, remember !"

"You mean--Carlin carved this one ?"

Otho exclaimed.

"Read it !"cried Grag.

Curt Newton read aloud, "To the

Futuremen, if they ever come--I have

discovered an incredible secret, the

strangest form of life ever dreamed. The

implications of that secret are so

tremendous that I am going to investigate

them first hand. If I do not return be

warned that the old citadel beyond the

Belt holds the key of a staggering power."

CHAPTER II

Citadel of Mystery

AS the echoes of Curt Newton's voice

died away the four looked at each other in

troubled wonder. The rank ferns drooped

unstirring in the weird half-light over the

broken arches and falling colonnades.

Somewhere in the jungle a beast screamed

harshly with a sound like laughter.

Otho finally broke the silence. "What

could Carlin have found ?"

"Something big," Captain Future said

slowly. "So big that he was afraid of

anyone else finding it. That's why he wrote

this in the language of the Old Empire that

no one but Simon and I could read."

Simon said practically, "The Belt is

what the natives call the strip burned out

by the Beam, isn't it ? Well--we can soon

find out."

"Shall we take the ship ?"

Newton shook his head. "Too tricky

navigating in here. The Belt isn't far

away."

Grag flexed mighty metal limbs. "What

are we waiting for ?"

Presently the quartet was moving

through the jungle of giant ferns. All about

them was silence in the heavy gathering

twilight. The bright sword of the Beam

was fading, angling away as the opening in

the crust was rotated away from the Sun.

Newton knew the direction of the Belt,

that seared blackened strip in which the

terrible heat of the Sun's single shaft

permitted nothing to live. He steered their

course to head around the end of the Belt.

Again a beast-scream came from far

away. There seemed no other sound in the

fern jungle. But presently the Brain spoke

softly. "We are being followed," he said.

Curt Newton nodded. Simon's micro-

phonic ears, far more acute than any

human auditory system, had picked up

faint rustlings of movement among the

ferns. Now that he was listening for it

Newton could hear the stealthy padding of

many naked feet, moving with infinite

caution.

"I don't understand it," he murmured.

"These Vulcanian natives were friendly

before. This furtiveness--"

"Shall we stop and have it out with

them ?" Otho demanded.

"No, let's go on. We have to find that

citadel before dark. But keep alert--a

thrown spear can be just as final as a

blaster."

"Not to me it can't," rumbled Grag.

"Curt didn't mean you--he meant us

humans," gibed Otho.

"Listen, plastic-puss," Grag began

wrathfully. "I'm twice as human as you

and--"

"That's enough," Newton rapped. "You

can carry on that old argument some other

time."

They went on and the unseen escort

went with them. Soon they encountered the

end of the Belt.

Black calcined soil, smoking rocks, a

wave of dull heat from the ground itself

attested to the awful heat of the Sun whose

single great ray once each day traveled

across this strip of Vulcan's interior.

They made Captain Future feel again

the terrible power of the gigantic solar orb

so close by that could reach in through a

single loophole and wreak this flaming

devastation where it touched.

They crossed the end of that blackened

strip, Curt and Otho hastening over the hot

rocks, Grag plodding stolidly, Simon

gliding ahead.

Before them the fern jungle rose into

olive-colored hills, growing dark as the

dusk deepened. Almost at once Newton

noticed something on the slope of the

nearest hill. It was a raw lumpy scar where

a landslide had recently occurred.

"Simon, look at that landslide ! Notice

anything ?"

The Brain hovered, his lens-eyes

surveying the dusky hillside. "Yes, the

outline. Definitely unnatural."

Otho and Grag were staring now, too.

"I don't see anything unnatural about it,"

boomed the metal giant.

"It covers a building that stood on that

hillside," Newton informed him. "Look at

the symmetry of it, even masked by soil--

the central cupola, the two wings."

Otho's bright eyes flashed. "The citadel

Carlin mentioned ?"

"Perhaps. Let's have a look."

They moved on. In a brief time they

were climbing the slope to that great lumpy

scar of new soil.

Newton looked back down at the

jungle. No one had followed them out of it

onto the bare slope. The giant ferns

stretched far away and he could catch the

tawny gleam of Yellow Lake in the distant

dusk.

THROUGH the twilight jungle, the Belt

stretched like a stygian river of deepest

black. He could see no building or ruin of

any kind on his side of the ebon strip.

"This must be the citadel Carlin meant,"

he said. "Apparently a landslide has

covered it since he was here. We'll have to

dig a way in."

They found flat stones in the loose soil

of the slide. Using them as hand-spades

Newton and the android and robot began

pushing aside the ocher soil above the

cupola of the buried building.

Something flashed and hissed in the

dusk. Curt Newton whirled. A long

quivering spear stuck in the slope some

distance below them.

"I thought the Vulcanians were still with

us !" Otho muttered.

Newton said quietly, "Just stand still.

Let me talk to them."

He faced down the slope toward the fern

jungle. He called out in the language he

had learned on his first visit to this lost

world--a debased form of the once-

beautiful language of the Old Empire, sunk

now into barbarism like the men who

spoke it.

"Show us your faces, my brothers ! We

come as friends and our hands are empty

of death !"

There was utter silence. In the distance

the fading shaft of sunlight lay like a

tarnished sword across the dusk. The dense

jungle below was untouched by wind or

motion of any kind. Even the beasts were

stilled by that strong human voice,

speaking out across the desolation.

Newton did not speak again. He waited.

He seemed to have endless patience, and

complete assurance. After a time, half

furtively and yet with a curious and

touching pride, a man came out of the

jungle and looked up at them.

He was clad in garments of white

leather and his skin was white and the

falling mane of his hair was white and his

eyes were pale as mist. His only weapons

were a knife and a spear.

In his carriage, in the fine modeling of

his head, Newton could still see lingering

traces of the heritage that had given the

men of the Old Empire supremacy over

two galaxies. And it seemed sad that this

man should look up at him with the shy

feral untrusting eyes of a wild thing.

Simon Wright said quietly, "Do you not

know him, Curtis ?"

"Of course." In the Vulcanian dialect

Newton said, "Is the memory of Kah so

short that he does not know his brothers ?"

They had had dealings with Kah before.

He was lord over a third of the tribes of

Vulcan and had proved a man of his word,

aiding the Futuremen in many ways. But

now the suspicious catlike eyes studied

them, utterly without warmth or welcome.

"Kah remembers," said the man softly.

"The name of the great one is Grag--and

you are the flame-haired one who leads."

Behind him, by twos and threes, his men

gathered silently at the foot of the slope.

They were all the same tall snow-haired

stock, wearing the white leather, bearing

the sharp spears. They watched, and

Newton saw that their eyes dwelt in

wonder upon the towering Grag. He

remembered that they had been much

impressed by Grag before.

Kah said abruptly, "We have been

friends and brothers, and therefore I have

stayed my hand. This place is sacred and

forbidden. Leave it while you still live."

Newton answered steadily, "We cannot

leave. We seek a friend who came here and

was lost."

The Vulcanian chieftain voiced a long,

harsh Ah-h ! and every man with him lifted

his spear and shook it.

"He entered the forbidden place," said

Kah, "and he is gone."

"Gone ? You mean he's dead ?"

Kah's hands shaped an age-old ritual

gesture. Newton saw that they trembled.

The Vulcanian turned and pointed to the

fading Beam, which was to him a symbol

of godhead.

"He has gone there," Kah whispered,

"along the path of light. He has followed

the Bright Ones, who do not return."

"I do not understand you, Kah !" said

Newton sharply. "Is the body of my friend

in this buried place ? What happened ?

Speak more clearly."

"No, I have talked too much of

forbidden things." Kah raised up his spear.

"Go now ! Go--for I have no wish to slay

"You cannot slay, Kah, for your spears

will not fly this far. And the great one

called Grag will be as a wall against your

coming."

Rapidly, under his breath, Newton

spoke to the robot. "Keep them back, Grag

!, They can't harm you, and it'll leave us

free to dig."

CLANKING ponderously down the

slope, a terrifying gigantic form in the

dusk, Grag advanced on the Vulcanians.

And Newton cried aloud to Kah, "We will

not leave this place until we have found

our friend !"

Kah flung his spear. It fell short by no

more than two paces but Newton did not

stir. The Vulcanian drew back slowly

before the oncoming Grag, who spread out

his mighty arms and roared and made the

ground tremble under his feet.

"The big ham !" whispered Otho. "He's

enjoying it."

There was a wavering among the ranks

of the natives. A ragged flight of spears

pelted up the slope and some of the

obsidian points splintered with a sharp

ringing sound on Grag's metallic body.

Grag laughed a booming laugh. He picked

up a slab of stone and broke it in his hands

and flung the pieces at them.

"That does it," said Otho disgustedly.

"I'm going to be sick."

Kah screamed suddenly, "The curse will

fall on you as it fell on the other who

entered there ! You too will go out along

the Beam, lost forever from the sight of

men !"

He turned then and vanished into the

jungle.

"I have been studying this landslide,"

said Simon Wright irrelevantly. "I believe

that it was artificially caused by the natives

to seal this place after Carlin entered it."

"Very likely," Captain Future answered.

He stood for a moment in deep though. "I

wonder what Kah meant by the 'Bright

Ones who do not return' ?"

"Probably an euphemism for the dead,"

said Otho pessimistically. "We'll know

better when we've found a way inside."

They turned to and began to dig again.

The citadel stood on a sort of promontory,

partly blocked now by the slide, so that the

natives could only come at them up the

slope, and Grag effectively barred the way.

Now and again a spear whistled harmlessly

into the dirt but there was no attack.

The last glowing thread of the Beam

narrowed into nothingness and was gone.

Utter darkness descended on the hidden

world of Vulcan. Newton and Otho

worked on by the light of belt-lamps.

They struck the solid stone of the

building, and the work went faster. After a

few minutes Otho cried, "There's an

opening here !"

They discarded their improvised spades.

The loose dirt flew under their hands and

presently they had uncovered the upper

arches of a triple window. From there the

way was easy.

Curt Newton was the first one inside. A

great quantity of dirt had poured in through

the open arches but most of this upper

level was clear. Otho slid agilely after him,

and then the Brain.

The lamps showed them a circular

gallery, high up in the central cupola.

Below was a round and empty shaft.

Newton leaned out over the low carved

railing. Far down in the pit he could see a

soft and curdled luminescence, like

spectral sunlight veiled in mist. The source

was hidden from him by the overhang of

other galleries lower down.

The silence of age-long death was in the

place and the mingled smell of centuries

and of the raw new soil. Newton led the

way around the gallery, his footsteps

ringing hollow against the vault of stone.

He found a narrow stairway, going

down.

They descended, passing the other

galleries, and came at last into a small

chamber. It had had a door to the outside,

a massive, age-tarnished metal door that

had buckled somewhat with pressure and

had let dirt sift through the cracks.

Opposite the door was a low, square

opening in the stone wall. Above it was an

inscription. Holding his lamp high, Curt

Newton read slowly, "Here is the

birthplace of the Children of the Sun."

CHAPTER III

Dread Metamorphosis

WONDERINGLY they went through

into the central chamber of the citadel.

Dirt had spilled down from above,

covering a good part of the floor. Newton

realized that only the upper gallery, serving

as a stop for the soil to dam itself against,

had saved the interior of the citadel from

being heavily inundated.

He scrambled up onto that heap of rock

and soil, and then stood still, gazing in

puzzled wonder. He saw now the sources

of that dim, eerie light. Set in deep niches

on opposite faces of the curving wall were

two seeming identical sets of apparatus,

like nothing he had ever seen before.

The bases were of some dark metal,

untouched by the passage of time. They

were wide and low, separated so that their

centers formed a dais. Each base bore two

soaring coils of what seemed to be crystal

tubing, as 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 yel-

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

rneticulous 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

inescapable.

There was more in that record than mere

scientific data. There were history and

hope and terror and a great dream and a

conclusion so staggering that the mind

reeled before it--a conclusion that brought

in itself a dreadful punishment.

Or was it, after all, a punishment ?

Curt Newton flung the book from him.

He leaped up and found that he was

trembling in every limb, his body bathed in

sweat. "It's ghastly, Simon !" he cried.

"Why would they have let such an

experiment go forward ?"

Simon's lens-like eyes regarded him

calmly. "No knowledge can be wrong in

itself--only in its application. And the men

of the Old Empire did forbid the use of this

apparatus when they learned its effect.

Carlin quotes here the inscription he found

in the ruined city that so states. Also he

mentions that he himself broke the seals on

the great door."

"The fool," whispered Newton. "The

crazy fool !" He glanced at the twin sets of

glowing coils and then upward at the

dome.

"He changed and went out along the

Beam. And the natives, horrified by what

he had done, caused the landslide to seal

this place."

"But Carlin did not come back," said the

Brain.

"No," said Newton, broodingly. "No, he

didn't. Perhaps for some reason he

couldn't."

The android's bright eyes were watching

him. "What was it that Carlin changed into,

Curt ?"

Curt Newton turned and said slowly,

"It's an almost unbelievable story. Yet

Carlin notes every source, here and in the

ruined city."

He paused as though trying to shape

what he had learned into simpler terms.

"In the days of the Old Empire the

Vulcanian scientists had a predominant

interest in the Sun. In fact it appears that

Vulcan was first settled as an outpost for

the study of solar physics. And

somewhere, in the course of those

centuries-long researches into the life of

the Sun, one man discovered a method of

converting the ordinary matter of the

human body into something resembling

solar energy--a cohesive pattern of living

force able to come and go at will into the

very heart of the Sun.

"This was not destruction, you

understand--merely conversion of a

matter-pattern into an analogous

functioning energy-pattern. By reversing

the field the changed matter could be

returned to its original form. And, since the

mental and sensory centers remained

functioning in the altered pattern, thought

and perception remained intact though

different.

"Never before had there been such a

possibility of uncovering the inmost secrets

of solar life--and the study of suns was

vital to a transgalactic civilization. The

scientists entered the conversion field and

became--Children of the Sun."

Otho caught his breath with a sharp

hissing sound.

"So that's the meaning of the

inscription--and the legend ! Do you mean

that those little wisps of flames we saw

were once men ?"

Newton did not answer, looking away at

the tall golden coils that seemed to pulse

with the Sun's own light. But the Brain

spoke dryly.

"Curtis did not tell you quite all. The

lure of the strange life in the Sun proved

too much for many of the men who were

changed. They did not come back. And

therefore the use of the converters was

forbidden and this laboratory was sealed--

until Carlin came and opened it again."

"And now he's out there," said Captain

Future as though to himself. "Carlin

changed and went out there, and then

couldn't get back." He swung around

suddenly to face them. His tanned face was

set. "And I'm going after him," he said.

"I'm going to bring him back."

OTHO cried out, "No ! Curt, you're mad

! You can't do such a thing !"

"Carlin did."

"Yes, and maybe he's dead or worse !"

The android caught Newton's arm. He

pleaded, "Even if you went after him how

could you find him ? And if you did

suppose you found that you couldn't get

back either ? These machines are ancient

and might fail."

"For once," said Grag emphatically,

"Otho is right. Every word of it !"

"And I must agree with both of them,"

said Simon Wright. "Curtis, this course of

action is both madness and folly."

Newton's gray eyes had grown cold with

a remoteness that made Otho step back

away from him. His face was now flint-

like in its stubborn resolution. "Carlin was

our friend," he said quietly. "He stood by

us when we needed him. I have to go after

him."

"Very well, Curtis," Simon answered.

"But you are not going for friendship nor

to save Philip Carlin. You are going

because you yourself want to."

NEWTON turned a sharp and startled

glance upon the Brain.

"And remember," Simon added, "if you

do not return none of us can go after you."

The stone vault was silent then. High

above through the triple windows a gleam

of light came dancing in, cruel and bright

as a golden spear. Vulcan had turned her

face sunward and the Beam was come

again.

Newton said softly, "I'll come back. I

promise you. Now come here and study

these controls."

In somber surrender Simon Wright said,

"Your eagerness for the unknown was

bound to bring disaster some time. I think

this may be the time."

But he came to the controls. These were

simple and the careful translation of the

inscriptions made their operation quite

clear. They found that Carlin had adjusted

them with great delicacy.

He had meant to return. Yet he had not

returned. Why not ? Newton could not

believe that a landslide of soil could be

barrier to a shape of living energy that

could penetrate the depths of the Sun.

Why then had Carlin not come back ?

What was there out in the blazing

thundering fury of that Sun-world that held

and trapped those who went there ?

Captain Future remembered the

inscriptions above the niches and the

somber words of Simon Wright and

shuddered, somewhere deep within him.

Almost in that moment he wavered. But

over his head the light of the Beam burned

and brightened and he could not have

stopped then, even if he had so wished.

"You understand now ?" he asked his

comrades. "The machines draw their

power from the magnetic field of Vulcan

itself, which is tremendous--cutting as it

does across the magnetic field of the Sun.

So there is a never-failing power source.

The controls are properly set. Your job will

be to see that they aren't touched."

Grag and Otho nodded silently. Simon

Wright said nothing. He was watching Curt

with a bitter concentration.

Newton walked toward the converter.

He stood where Carlin had stood and

stripped himself naked. Then he paused,

looking at the tall coils of crystal that were

full of golden fire. The corded muscles of

his body quivered and his eyes were

strange. He stepped up onto the dais

between the coils.

A blaze of golden light enveloped him.

He could see the others through it as

through a burning veil, Otho's pointed face

full of fear and sadness and a kind of rage,

huge Grag looking almost pathetically

puzzled and worried in the way he leaned

forward with outstretched arms, Simon

hovering and watching broodingly.

Then the light curdled and thickened

and they were gone. Newton felt the awful

subtle strength that sprang from the

glowing coils, the intricate force-fields that

centered their focus in his flesh. He wanted

to scream.

He had no voice. There was a

moment--an eternity--of vertigo, of

panic, of a dreadful change and

dissolution.

And then he was free.

Blurred and strangely he could perceive

the interior of the citadel, the three silent

Futuremen watching, above the bright

insistent shaft of light that drew him like a

calling voice. He wished to rise toward it

and he did, soaring upward with a

marvelous swiftness that was a thing of joy

and wonder even in that first confusion of

the change.

He heard a name cried out and knew it

for his own. He did not answer. He could

not. Sight and hearing he still had though

in a different way. He seemed now to

absorb impressions through his whole

being rather than through the limited

organs of the human body.

And he was no longer human. He was a

flame, a core of brilliant force, infinitely

strong, infinitely free. Free ! Free of all the

clumsy shackles of the flesh, light and

swift--eternal !

He flew upward toward the triple arch

that meant delivery from the confining

stone. Into the light he flashed and upward.

Neither space nor time had any meaning

for him now. With the strange perceptive

sense that he still thought of as sight he

looked toward the Beam, stabbing its

searing length along the blackened land.

He rushed toward it, a small bright star

against the tented gloom of Vulcan's inner

sky.

As a swimmer plunges into a long-

sought stream the Sun-Child that had been

Curt Newton plunged into the path of the

Beam. The blinding glare, the deadly heat

had no terrors for him now. The alien

pattern of his new being seemed to gather

strength from them, to take in the surging

energy and grow upon it.

Far away he saw the gap in the planet's

surface that let in the mighty Beam. He

willed himself toward it, consumed with a

strange hunger to be quit of the planetary

walls that hid the universe.

He was part of all that now, the vastness

of elemental creation. Child of the Sun,

brother to the stars--he wanted to be free

in open space, to look upon the naked

glory to which he himself was kin.

Out along the Beam he sped, eager,

joyous, and faintly as an echo out of some

forgotten past he remembered the words of

Kah. "He has followed the Bright Ones

who do not return !"

CHAPTER IV

The Bright Ones

THE firmament was filled with fire. All

else was blotted out, forgotten--the farther

stars, the little worlds of men. There was

nothing else anywhere but the raging

storming beauty of the Sun.

The little wisp of flame that had been a

man hung motionless in space, absorbing

through every sentient atom of his being

the overmastering wonder. He had come

up out of shadowed Vulcan into the full

destroying light, the unmasked splendor of

the burning star that was lord of all the

planets.

He had risen toward it, rapidly at first,

then more and more slowly as his new and

untried perceptions brought home to him

the magnitude of the scene. Awe overcame

him and he remained poised in mid-flight,

struggling with sensations not given to any

creature of corporeal form.

He could feel the pressure of light. It

came in a headlong rush from out of the

boiling cauldron of atomic dissolution,

reaching away to unguessed limits of

space, and he that had been Curt Newton

felt its strength pushing against him.

Particles of raw energy struck the

tenuous fires of his new body, with a

myriad of bright and tingling shocks. They

pleased him and he fed upon them. And he

found that he could hear the Sun. It was

not hearing as he had known it. There was

no medium here to carry sound waves. It

was a more subtle thing, an inner pulsation

of his own new being.

Yet he heard--the vast solemn savage

roar of the never-ending tumult of

destruction and rebirth, the hissing scream

of world-high tongues of flame, the deep

booming thunder of solar continents and

seas of fire, shaped eternally out of the

maelstrom and eternally sundered, only to

be shaped again in different form.

He watched the wheeling of the Sun

upon its axis. With a perception that sensed

intensely every color of the spectrum he

saw the heaving mountains, the seas and

plains and storming clouds of fire, as

spectral shapes of amethyst and crimson,

emerald and gold, barred and streaked with

every conceivable shading from palest

violet to deepest angry red.

Gradually, lost in the wonder of his new

life, his sense of awe abated. He began to

feel a sort of power as though the last of

his human fetters had fallen away, leaving

him completely free. The void was his, the

Sun was his. He was beyond harm or fear

or death. He was alive and eternal as the

stars.

He shot inward toward the Sun and the

shimmering veils of the corona wrapped

him in a mist of glory.

He was in no hurry. Time had ceased for

him. The delicate diamond fires of these

upper mists were inexpressibly beautiful.

He played among them, a fleck of living

golden flame, darting and wheeling like

some fabled bird. He saw how the veils of

the corona were whipped and shaken as

though by great winds, now curling upon

themselves in dense amethystine folds,

now torn wide to show the sullen

chromosphere below.

He dropped down through one of those

sudden chasms, countless miles, with the

speed of a shaft of light, and plunged into

the red obscurity of the chromosphere.

It seemed to him that here was

concentrated all the anger of the Sun.

Torrents of raging scarlet gases swept by,

twisted here and there into blood-red

whirlpools the size of a continent, their

edges whipped to a burning froth where

they chafed against other currents, meeting

sometimes head-on in a spout of savage

flame as dark as cinnabar.

Elemental rage, the fury of life--the

new-born Child of the Sun scudded along

on the crimson tides, whirling, dancing,

tossing high on the crests, probing the

darkest ruby of the whirlpools. Below him

still, a vague rolling sphere of fire, lay the

photosphere.

He dropped down lower still, and

looked upon the surface of the Sun.

Upheaval, chaos, beauty unimaginable,

strangeness beyond belief. An immensity

of golden flame, denser than those outer

layers, writhing, surging, lifting up huge

molten ranges that clawed at the crimson

sky and then slid down in titanic cataclysm

to be lost in a weltering plain of fire.

Cresting waves that could have

swallowed worlds raced and ravaged

across the face of the Sun, crashing down

in wild thundering avalanches, spouting,

spuming, unutterably brilliant, majestic

beyond any sight given to human eyes.

He watched, and felt the pattern of his

new being tremble. His humanity was still

too recent for him to look upon that

unthinkable Sun-world without awe and

fear.

Two great waves, thousand of miles in

height, reared up and rushed together

across a hollow trough wider than all of

Earth. They met and out of that sundering

collision was born a prominence that burst

upward in a pouring river of flame.

CURT NEWTON felt himself caught in

that titanic current. He fought it, finding

that he could stand against it, finding a

glory in his own new strength. A kind of

ecstasy shot through him. He let himself go

and the current took him and whirled him

up, swift almost as light, past the

chromosphere, past the corona, sheer into

empty space. He rode it out, wild with

exhilaration.

He emerged from the prominence,

swooping in a great circle, catching a

fleeting glimpse of distant worlds spangled

with light, and a memory came to him of

his mission here and why he had left his

human form to make this pilgrimage into

the Sun.

More soberly now he plunged again

through the pale mists and the crimson

tides and hovered over the photosphere,

seeking others of his kind.

Across unthinkable distances he

searched and found no one. A terrible

loneliness came upon him. He entered an

area of storm where the great vortices of

the sun-spots whirled and thundered in a

maelstrom of electronic currents.

He fled from them, deafened, shaken,

and found himself crying out desperately,

"Carlin ! Carlin ! Where are you ?"

Crying not with tongue or voice but

with the power of his mind. And when he

understood that he could speak that way he

called again and again, darting this way

and that across the burning oceans, heading

the vast funnels of the solar storms.

"Carlin ! Carlin !"

And someone answered. He heard the

voice quite clearly in his mind or the part

of his new being that was sensitive to the

reception of thought.

"Who calls, little brother ?"

Golden bright against the crimson

chromosphere above, he saw winging

toward him another of the Children of the

Sun.

He went to meet the stranger. Wheeling

and dancing like two incredible butterflies

of flame they hovered above a burning

river that ran across the face of the Sun.

And they talked.

"Are you--were you Philip Carlin ?"

"Philip Carlin ? No. In human I was

Thardis, chief physicist to Fer Roga, Lord

of Vulcan. That was long ago."

Silence, except for the booming

thunders of the Sun.

"Tell me, little brother. You are new

here ?"

"Yes."

"Do they still come then, the Bright

Ones ? Is the portal open still ?"

"It has been lost and forgotten for many

ages. And then he found it, who was my

friend--and he came through. Do you

know him, Thardis ? Do you know of

Philip Carlin ?"

"No. My studies keep me much alone.

Do you know, little brother, that I have

almost attained the boundaries of pure

thought ? The greatest minds of the Empire

said that was impossible. But I shall do it

Two flecks of living fire, whirling,

tossing on the solar winds above the

flaming river. And Thardis said, "What of

the Empire ? What of Vulcan ? Was the

portal forbidden and did our scientists

forget ?"

"It was forbidden," Newton answered.

"And then. . ." He told Thardis slowly how

the Old Empire had crashed and died, how

its far-flung peoples had sunk into

barbarism, how only yesterday as time

goes in the universe they had climbed back

part way up the ladder of knowledge.

He told Thardis many things and most

of them were bitter and sad. But even as he

told them he knew that to the other they

were less than dreams. He had gone too far

away into some strange distance of his

own.

"So it is all gone," mused Thardis. "The

star-worlds, the captains, the many-throned

kings. It is the law. You will learn it here,

little brother. You will watch the cycle--

birth and death and eternity--repeated

forever in the heart of the Sun."

His tenuous body rippled, poised for

flight. "Farewell, little brother. Perhaps we

shall meet again."

"Wait ! Wait !" cried Newton. "You do

not understand. I can't remain here. I must

find my friend and then go back with him."

"Go back ?" repeated Thardis. "Ah, you

are new ! Once, I remember, I started to go

back."

His thought was silent for a long while

and then it came again with a kind of sad

amusement. "The little Sun Child, who is

so very new ! Come then, I shall help you

find your friend."

He led off across the tortured moving

mountains of the Sun, across the lashing

burning seas. Newton followed and as

Thardis went he called and presently from

out of the veils and clouds of fire came two

others who joined them.

Thardis asked, "Do you know of one

called Carlin ? He is new."

One did not but the other answered, "I

know him. He bas gone deep into the inner

fires to study the Sun's life."

"I will take you to him," Thardis said to

Newton. "Come."

He dropped swiftly downward into the

raging wilderness of flame. And Newton

was afraid to follow.

Then he was ashamed. If Carlin had

gone that way he could go. He plunged

down after the fleeting Thardis.

THE crested waves of holocaust reached

up and received them and buried them in

depths of smoky gold, shot through with

gouts and shafts of blazing color. They

entered a region of denser matter and to

Newton it was like swimming under

troubled waters, sensible of the pressure

and the awful turmoil, blending his own

substance with the medium that held him.

He clung close to Thardis. Gradually as

they sank deeper and deeper beneath the

surface the golden depths grew quieter, the

flashing colors softer. Buried currents ran

fiercely like rivers under the sea. Thardis

entered one of these, breasting the mighty

flowing force as a man walks against the

wind, finding exhilaration in the battle.

Newton joined him, and felt his own

strength surge in joyous pleasure.

The gold began to fade, gathering the

diamond shards of color into itself,

lightening, paling. Newton became aware

of a glow ahead, more terrible than all the

fires he had yet seen--a supernal

whiteness so searing in its intensity that

even his new senses found it hard to bear.

The patterned energy of his flame-like

body was shaken by waves of awful force.

He had been afraid before. Now he was

beyond fear. He crept after Thardis like a

child creeping to the feet of Creation. He

would have stopped but Thardis led him on

into the inmost solar furnace, into the

living heart of the Sun.

And he who had been Philip Carlin was

there, wrapped in a silent awe, watching

the mystic terrible forges beating out the

unthinkable energies of the death and

renascence of matter.

Newton had no thought for Carlin now.

The awful voices of creation were

hammering against his senses, dazing

them, numbing them. He shuddered

beneath that godlike fury of sound. The

stripped and fleeing atoms burst through

him, filling him with an exalted pain. He

too watched, lost utterly in a cosmic awe of

his own.

Atomic change exploded ceaselessly

here, thundering, throbbing--hydrogen

flashing through all the shifting

transformations of the carbon-nitrogen

cycle to final helium, the residual energy

bursting blindly outward in raving power.

Newton began to be aware of his own

danger. He knew that if he stayed too long

he would never go again. He was a

scientist and this was the ultimate core of

learning. He would remain, drunk and

fascinated with the lure of knowledge, with

the incredible life that could exist in this

crucible of energy. He would remain

forever, with the other Children of the Sun.

Temptation whispered, "Why go back ?

Why not remain, a clean, eternal flame,

free to learn, free to live ?"

He remembered the three who waited

for him in the citadel and the promise he

had made. And he forced himself with a

bitter effort to speak. "Carlin ! Philip

Carlin !"

The other Sun Child stirred, and asked,

"Who calls ?"

And when he heard his rapt mind woke

to emotion. "Curt Newton ? You here ? I

had almost forgotten."

Strange meeting of two friends no

longer human, in the thundering solar fires

! Newton forced himself to think only of

his purpose. "I've come after you, Carlin !

I followed you to bring you back !"

The other's response was a fierce,

instinctive recoil. "No ! I will not go back

And Carlin's thought raced eagerly.

"Look--look about you ! How could I

leave ? A million years from now, two

million, when I have learned all I can. . .

No, Curt. No scientist could leave this !"

Newton felt the fatal force of that

argument. He too felt the irresistible

attraction of the undying life that had

trapped men here for a million years.

He felt it--too strongly ! He knew

desperately that he must succumb to it

unless he left quickly. The knowledge

nerved him to clutch at the one persuasion

that might still sway Carlin.

"But if you stay here all the knowledge

you have gathered here will be lost forever

! The secrets of the Sun, the key to the

mysteries of the universe prisoned here

with you, never to be known !"

He had been right. It was the one

argument that could move this man whose

life bad been spent in the gathering and

interchange of knowledge. He felt the

doubt, the turmoil, in Carlin's shaken mind.

The unwillingness and yet the strong tug of

lifetime habits of mind.

The thunders of the Sun's heart roared

about them as Newton poised waiting.

And at last, reluctantly, Carlin said "Yes.

Yes, I must take back what I have learned.

And yet. . ."

He burst out, bitter, passionate, "And

yet to leave all this !"

"You must, Carlin !"

Another pause. And then, "If I must go

let us go at once, Curt !"

Newton became aware then that Thardis

still hovered beside them. And Thardis told

them, "Come, I will guide you."

They three went winging upward from

the depths of the Sun--swiftly up through

the golden many-tinted photosphere, past

the angry crimson tides above, high, high,

through the whipping veils of the corona

into empty space.

DAZED, his shaken senses reeling,

Newton perceived across the gulf the tiny

semi-molten ball of Vulcan. He fixed upon

it, knowing that if he faltered now he was

lost.

Thardis said, "Go quickly, little

brothers. I know. I too once started back."

"Come !" cried Newton desperately.

He plunged out across the gulf, swift as

a shooting star, and by the very force of his

mind he dragged the wavering Carlin with

him.

Too much had happened, too much to

bear. Newton's mind was clouded, torn

between exaltation and pain of loss, dazed

with sights and sounds beyond human

power to endure. It was as in a dream that

they rushed toward Vulcan.

Down the Beam into the hollow world

they flashed and he perceived only vaguely

the jungle and hills and the citadel. They

passed together through the triple arch and

sank down into the dimness where the

Futuremen waited.

Carlin went first into the space between

the somber coils. Newton saw him enter

the force-field, a tenuous thing of flame,

and step forth from it a man--a dazed and

reeling man. Otho caught him as he fell.

Curt Newton followed him, into the

blue-green light. And all consciousness left

him.

He found himself standing upright with

Grag's great arm around him. It was as

though his body was encased in lead now,

his senses muffled, the very life in him

dimmed.

Otho was shouting at him. Grag's voice

boomed in his ear. "Curt, you got back !

And you brought him--"

Simon Wright's metallic cry cut across

their excited babble. "Carlin !"

Newton swung around. Philip Carlin

had recovered consciousness. He stood,

swaying, in the center of the chamber. He

was not looking at them. He was looking

down at his own body, slowly raising his

own arms and staring at them.

And in his face was such white misery

as Newton had seen on no man's face

before.

"I can't," whispered Carlin, his voice

rusty, croaking. "I can't be like this again,

prisoned in leaden flesh. No !" With the

word he moved with clumsy reeling

swiftness toward the tall golden-shining

coils of the other converter.

Newton sprang shakily to intercept him

but his own legs buckled and he went to

his knee.

"Carlin, wait !"

The scientist turned a face transfigured

by agony of resolve. "You weren't there as

long as I, Curt. You don't know why I have

to go back to that other life, that real life.

"But you'll understand at least. You'll

remember and maybe you too some day--

He hurled himself forward onto the dais

and was lost in a flare of yellow light.

A small bright star flashed upward

toward the triple arch--a living star, swift

and free and joyous, seeking the Beam, the

pathway to the Sun.

And below, on the dark floor of the

citadel, Curt Newton bent his head and hid

his face between his hands.

* * * * *

The Comet rose on blasting keel-jets,

gathered speed and roared out above the

blackened Belt toward the gap in Vulcan's

crust. Curt Newton sat at the controls. He

who had ridden the Beam before, free and

unfettered, now maneuvered the man-made

ship along that pathway. His face was

harsh with strain and in his eyes was

something strange and haunted.

The three who were with him in the

bridge-room kept silent as by tacit

agreement while the little ship sped swiftly

through the opening into the naked glare of

the Sun.

Newton's eyes were dazzled but he

could not turn them away from that mighty

orb of flame.

And he remembered.

Would he always remember how he had

looked upon the Sun unveiled and seen the

beating of its heart ? Would he always feel

the tearing pang he felt now, remembering

the freedom and the strength ? Would he

some day return alone to that buried citadel

that held the secret of life and death ?

In fierce denial he pressed down the

firing-keys. The Comet leaped forward and

behind it Vulcan dwindled and was lost, a

tiny mote swallowed in the eternal fires of

the Sun.