Read Captain Future 21 - The Return of Captain Future (January 1950) for Free Online

uncanny oneness, was open to him.
    Not all the way.
    Much of it was incomprehensible to any human. It was a tremendously older, stronger mind, so much so that Curt felt a sort of shrinking awe in its presence. It was not an evil mind. Only — different.
    Some of its memories he now shared.
    The swift free flights along the shores of the dark nebulae, the plunges into ebony vastness beyond the ken of man. The home-place, the cloudy worlds of mist and cold fire, striding dim and majestic across the universe, dank strangers even in their own cosmos.
    The delights of thought, the unfettered strength, the ability to cross the intergalactic spaces naked and alone, learning a chill and vaulting glory from that kinship with the stars.
    Above all, the pride and power that carried that race to dominance over all that lived in a hundred far-flung continents of alien suns.
    Only glimpses, these. But enough to make Curt’s human heart almost stop in wonder.
    And now he saw his own memories, coming back to him through the mind of the Linid, as it searched and searched him for the truth.
    The dead and empty worlds, the cities without light or sound, the deserted stars. The Hall of Ninety Suns, forgotten shrine of vanished glory, with its inscriptions that spoke solemnly of a war and a species that had ended long ago. Record of death, of defeat, Epitaph of pre-human empire.
    The Linid saw, and read.
     
    CURT felt the awfulness of that reading. The pride, the assurance of power, shaken more and more by every scrap of knowledge gleaned from the mind of this small human creature it held so in contempt. The cruel, inexorable coming of realization — the agonized shifting of truth from a concept held through numberless ages to one sprung new-born out of this last hour. The Linids rule and are great. Not that, now. The Linids are gone, and even their name is not remembered.
    Curt felt the moment when the creature ceased to hope. I am the last. My race is dead, and I am the last!
    The terrible, urgent grip on Curt’s mind fell away. The crushing alien presence sagged within his flesh, borne down by the weight of truth. It was as though the creature had died.
    Curt knew the loneliness of utter desolation.
    It seemed an endless period before the Linid stirred again. Slowly, very slowly, like one touched already by the hand of death, the creature withdrew its substance from the body and mind of the man.
    It left him, floating free, and now its dusky veils were like funerary cloaks folded sadly around its heart.
    With a last flash of ancient pride, the Linid spoke, the words coming strong from the mechanical throat of the interpreter.
    “Time, not man, overcame us!”
    Curt’s limbs were weak. Oddly, now, he no longer felt fear or hatred for the Linid.
    There was only a strange pity.
    “The battle is over,” said the toneless voice. It had now a curious illusion of distance, of withdrawal. “It is over and done. And I am the last of all my race.”
    The dark veils quivered and swirled, shrouding the creature’s core. It seemed to look about it, not at Curt, not at Joan and Ezra and the Futuremen, but at something far beyond. Captain Future sensed that they, with all the human race, had utterly ceased to be important to it.
    “I will go back to the birthplace of my people, back to the dark nebula that gave us life. It is fitting that the last of us should there find death.”
    The cowled shape glided past them, it moved with the somber sureness of fate, unswerving, unhurried, out at the chamber.
    Curt and the others watched it go. It crossed the great central room of the laboratory and passed out of sight, into the passage that led upward to the surface of the Moon.
    They listened, but they heard no sound of doors.
    Joan, who was held now in Grag’s arms, still white-faced and dazed, suddenly pointed upward.
    “Look,” she whispered. “Up there, against the stars —”
    They looked, out through the glassite ceiling-dome. And Curt saw it,