Captain Future: Return And Farewell by Edmond Hamilton

Book Details

Captain Future: Return And Farewell – three Science Fiction novelettes from the Captain Future saga. The Return of Captain Future begins the second incarnation of Curtis Newton, Grag the robot, Otho the android, and Simon Wright, the disembodied brain in the pages of Startling Stories. The saga ends with Earthmen No More and Birthplace of Creation, also from Startling Stories.

The Return of Captain Future (1950) – The Man of Tomorrow clashes in fierce combat with mankind’s deadliest enemy – the Linid!
Chapter I – In the Moon-laboratory
Chapter II – Futuremen’s Return
Chapter III – Alien Enemy
Chapter IV – Last Weapon

Earthmen No More (1951) – 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
Chapter II – Return from Space
Chapter III – Men of Earth
Chapter IV – Earthmen No More

Birthplace of Creation (1951) – In their final adventure the Futuremen are called on to save the Universe itself from a madman’s destructive whim!
Chapter I – Citadel of the Futuremen
Chapter II – Cosmic Secret
Chapter III – The Birthplace
Chapter IV – Power of the Watchers

Well Done And Farewell – From the Editor of Startling Stories, May, 1951

Edmond Moore Hamilton (1904–1977) was a child prodigy that entered college at the age of 14, though he left at 17. His first published science fiction story was “The Monster God of Mamurth“, in the August 1926 issue of Weird Tales.

Hamilton wrote prolifically for all of the pulp science fiction magazines during the late 20s and early 30s and is considered a co-creator of the “space opera” sub-genre of science fiction. His story “The Island of Unreason” won the first Jules Verne Prize (a precursor to the Hugo Awards) as the best Science Fiction story of the year in 1933.

Captain Future: Return And Farewell has 13 illustrations.

Read more about Captain Future and the Futuremen.

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Excerpt: The Return of Captain Future

Chapter I

In the Moon-laboratory

THERE were four of them, and only one of them was a man. One had been a man once, but only his brain and mind still lived. One looked like a man, but was born of no woman. And one was mighty, and metal, and only rudely manlike.

There were four of them – the man, the brain, the android and the robot. And that strange quartet of inseparable comrades blazed a trail that the System will never forget. They rocked worlds, in their time. They pioneered the ways to the stars. And then they went beyond the stars, they went out into the outer darkness -and never returned.”

The teleview commentator’s voice was full of hard, bright drama that went no deeper than his lips. To him, it was just another story, to be exploited and forgotten as soon as it was told.

To Joan Randall, sitting alone in an office of Planet Patrol Base in New York, the words he spoke had the icy finality of a Requiem.

With a gesture of denial, her hand moved to switch off the televiewer. Yet she paused a moment, as though yearning to hear again the name that was coming.

“They did not return. They have never returned. Did Curtis Newton and his three strange comrades, somewhere out there in the infinite, meet foes or forces too formidable even for them? Did they, out there, find a tomb in endless space where——”

“No!” the girl cried, and snapped the switch.

Silence. But the echoes fled across her heart, asking, Did they? Did they? And her heart could not answer.

She rose and walked restlessly to the long windows that opened on a tiny balcony. Presently she went outside and stood there, looking up into the dark night sky, not seeing it, seeing only the blacker eternity of space and a ship that drifted there forever, lightless and silent as the void itself.

HER fingers closed hard around the metal railing. She said again, to the whole universe, No!” The universe did not answer. There was no answer anywhere, and as she watched the silent Moon arose and mocked her.

The sound of her office door brought her to herself again. She turned and then called out “Ezra!”

The man who had just come in said, “Hello, Joan.” He flung himself into a chair and watched her with bleak eyes, as she came toward him. He was a stocky man, worn hard and lean and gray with years of service. He was Marshal Ezra Gurney of the Planet Patrol, and he was a tired, beaten man.

“I talked to them, Joan” he said. “I took it right up to the top brass. I even cussed the President.”

“What did they say?”

He told her, brutally, because the words hurt him. “They said Curt Newton and the Futuremen are dead. They were nice about it. They understood how I felt. But they can’t run the Government on sentiment. The vote has been taken, and they won’t change it. They’re going to take over the Moon-laboratory.”

His voice was curiously flat. He would not meet Joan’s eyes.

“I’ve done all I can, Joan. They won’t listen.”

The girl said, “I thought they might wait, just a little longer.”

“They’ve already waited. Two years is the legal limit for men lost in space. And it’s been three.”

“But not Curt!” she flared. “He’s not like other men. And Grag, and Otho, and Simon Wright—”

She bent over the old marshal, forcing him to look at her. “You do believe that, Ezra? You do believe they’ll come back?”

Gurney’s massive shoulders sagged. He seemed suddenly shrunken, looking all his age, again avoiding her gaze.”

“They went too far, Joan,” he muttered. “They tried to burst barriers no one could get through, in that attempt to reach Andromeda galaxy. We ought never to have let ’em go.”

“I tried to stop them!” cried the girl. “But you know yourself how little chance I had!”

Little chance, indeed! Captain Future and Simon Wright, the Brain, had been too eager to solve the secret of humanity’s galactic past.

They had, for years, been penetrating deeper and deeper into that past, had uncovered the story of the Old Empire, the great human civilization that had ruled the stars a million years ago. They had even learned dimly of the pre-human races before that, the legendary Linids and the others.

Curt Newton and the Brain had been afire to learn the rest of the story. They had discovered that the first humans of the Old Empire had come from Andromeda galaxy. It had been inevitable that they would try to go there, to track down that cosmic secret of human origins.

“But no danger they might meet, even out there, could be great enough to overwhelm the Futuremen!” Joan cried.

The old marshal spoke heavily. “The Futuremen were only mortal, Joan.”

He looked up at her now, and his face was gray and sick.

“We might as well face it. We might as well quit feeding ourselves false hopes. If they were coming back, they’d have come by now.”

The girl stared at him, stricken. The old space veteran looked at her, and the pity in his eyes was hard to bear.

“You think so too, Joan. You know you do.”

“The life seemed to go out of her face. “Yes,” she whispered dully. She turned and pressed her throbbing forehead against the cold window.

“Yes, I do. The System has lost him. And I’ve lost him.”

She felt his rough paw on her shoulder. “You never had him, Joan. No one ever did – not a man like Curt Newton, who was raised by a brain and a robot and an android, who never quite belonged to us others.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But I couldn’t help thinking that someday—”

Excerpt From: Edmond Hamilton. “Captain Future: Return & Farewell.”