T
he central structure of the group of buildings was shaped like a great plus-mark, each of its four wings of identical square construction, with long smooth metal sides and top, and with a door at the end giving entrance to a corridor that ran straight through to the chief central laboratory of Dr. Ku Sui.
Carse skimmed swiftly, two feet off the glittering metallic soil, towards the end of the nearest wing, where he gently landed. He tried the door giving entrance. It was open. He cautiously floated through into complete darkness.
The Hawk was prepared for that. He drew a hand-flash from the belt of his suit, and, standing motionless, his raygun ready in his left hand, he probed the darkness with a long white beam. Spaced evenly along the sides of the corridor were many identical doors, and at the end a larger, heavier door which gave entrance to the central laboratory. He found no life or anything that moved at all, so, methodically, he set about inspecting the side rooms.
The doors were all unlocked, and he moved down the line without alarm, like a mechanical giant preceded by a sweeping, nervous flow of light. Such he might from the outside have appeared to be, but the man within himself was more like a cat scenting for danger, all muscles and senses delicately tuned to alertness. Door by door, a cautious and thorough inspection; but he found nothing of danger. All the rooms of that wing were used merely for stores and equipment, and they were quite silent and deserted. When he came at last to its end, Carse knew that the wing was safe.
He paused a minute before the laboratory door. He had expected to find it locked, and that he would have to seek other means of entrance; but it was not. By pushing softly against it, it easily gave inward on silent well-oiled hinges. He entered.
C
arse found himself in a place of memories, and they were sharp and painful in his brain as he stood there. Here so much had happened: here death, and even more than death, had been, and was, so near!
The high-walled circular room was dimly lit by daylight tubes from above. The damage he, Carse, had wrought when besieged in it, a week before, had all been repaired. The place was deserted—it seemed even desolate—but in Carse's moment of memory it was peopled. There had been the tall, graceful shape in black silk; there the operating table and the frail old man bound on it; there the four other men, white men and gowned in the smocks of surgeons, but whose faces were lifeless and expressionless. Dr. Ku Sui and his four assistant surgeons and his intended victim, Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow....
They were all gone from the room now, but there was in it one thing of life that had been there before. It lay behind the inlaid screen which, standing on roller-legs, lay along the wall at one place. The Hawk did not look behind the screen. He could see under it, to know that no one lurked there. He knew what it was meant to conceal. There his promise lay.
But his promise could not be fulfilled immediately. There were four wings to the building, four doors leading into the laboratory, and he had inspected but one.
An open door to his right revealed a corridor similar to the one he had reconnoitered. He repeated down it his methodical search and found no one. Then he returned to the laboratory.
Surely there were men somewhere! Surely someone was behind one of the two closed doors remaining! Gun and flashlight still at the ready, Carse listened a moment at the nearest one.
Silence. He grasped the knob, turned it and quickly threw the door open. A rapid glance revealed no one. Wary and alert, he passed through, and discovered that in this wing were the personal living quarters of Dr. Ku Sui.
The quarters were divided into five rooms: living room, bedroom, library, dining room and kitchen, and the huge metal figure passed through all five, the cold gray eyes taking in every detail of the comfortable but not luxurious furnishings. There was a great interest to him, but it would have to wait.
He reentered the laboratory and went to the remaining door. Bending his head he again listened. A sound—a faint whisper? He fancied he heard something.
Ready for whatever it was, Carse pulled the door wide. And before him he saw the control room of the asteroid, and the men for whom he had been hunting.
T
hey were white men. Carse recognized them immediately as the four assistants of Dr. Ku Sui. Once, they had been eminent on Earth, respected doctors of medicine and brain surgery, leaders in their profession: now they were like the mechanicalized coolies. For their brains, too, the Eurasian had altered, divested of all humanity and individuality, so as to utilize unhampered their skill with medicine and scalpel.
They were clad in soft yellow robes and seated at ease at one end of a room crowded with a bewildering profusion of gauges, machines, instruments, screens, wheels, levers, and other nameless controlling devices. They did not show surprise at the huge clumsy figure that stood suddenly before them, a raygun in one hand. Like the coolies, their clean-cut features did not change under emotion. All they did was rise silently, as one, gazing at the adventurer out of blank eyes, saying nothing, and making no other move.
Carse tried simple measures in dealing with them. His voice gentle yet firm, he said:
"You must not try to obstruct me. You have seen me before under unfortunate conditions, yet I want you to know that I am really your friend. I mean you no harm; but you must realize that I have a gun, and believe that I will not hesitate to use it if you resist me. So please do not. I only want you to come with me. Will you?"
They were simple words, and what he asked was simple, but would the meaning reach these violated brains? Or would there instead be the desperate reaction of the coolies, who had tried to kill him? Carse waited with genuine anxiety. It would be hard to shoot them, and he knew he could not shoot to kill.
A moment of indecision—and then with relief he saw all four, with apparent willingness, move forward towards him. He directed them through the laboratory and, without sign of resistance, herded them down the corridor he had first searched to the outside.
T
he light of Jupiter, flooding undiminished through the dome, dazzled him at first. When he could see clearly, he distinguished the great form that was Friday standing motionless by the small port-lock, and, an equal distance away, moving around one of the out-buildings, another similar figure. He spoke by radio.
"Find any, Ban?"
Cheerful words came humming back.
"Only one coolie, Carse. Had no trouble after I disarmed him. He's now locked inside a room in this building. Safe place for prisoners."
"Good," said Carse. "You can see I've got four men—white men. I believe they're unarmed and quite harmless, but I want you to take them, search them and put them away in that room too."
"Coming!"
The distant form rose lightly, skimmed low over the open area between, and grew into the grinning, freckle-faced Ban Wilson. He bounced down awkwardly, almost losing his balance, then surveyed, wonderingly, the four assistants of Ku Sui.
"By Betelgeuse!" he muttered, "—like robots! Horrible!"
"Yes," said the Hawk shortly. "You had no trouble, eh?"
Ban grinned again. "Nothing to mention. This has been soft, hasn't it?"
"Don't be too optimistic, Ban. All right—when you've put these men in the room, please relieve Friday. Send him to me in the laboratory—he knows where it is—and stand watch yourself. If Ku Sui appears—"
"I'll let you know on the instant!"
Hawk Carse nodded and turned back into the corridor from which he had just come. Now he would fulfil his promise. With no possibility of a surprise attack from anyone within the dome, and Ban Wilson posted against the return of Ku Sui, he could attend unhampered to the vow which had brought him there.
H
e returned to the central laboratory. Quickly be rolled back the high screen lying across one part of the curved wall and stood looking at what was behind it. The monstrousness of that dead-and-alive mechanism overwhelmed his thoughts again.
Before him stood a case, transparent, hard and crystal-like, as long as a man's body and half as deep, standing level on short metal legs. What it contained was the most jealously guarded, the most precious of all Dr. Ku Sui's works, the very consummation of his mighty genius, his treasure-house of wisdom as profound as man then could know. And more: it held the consummation of all that was so coldly unhuman in the Eurasian. For there, in that case, he had bound to his will the brains of five of Earth's greatest scientists, and kept them alive, with their whole matured store of knowledge subservient to his need, although their bodies were long since dead and decayed.
For some time the adventurer stood lost in a mood of thoughts and emotions rare to him—until he was startled back into reality by a heavy, clumping noise coming down the corridor through which he had entered. His gun-hand flickered to readiness, but it was only Friday, coming as he had been ordered. Carse greeted the Negro with a nod, and said briefly:
"There's a panel in this room—over there somewhere—you remember—the place through which Ku Sui escaped when we were here before. It's an unknown quantity, so I want you to stand watch by it. Open your face-plate wide, and warn me at the slightest sound or sight of possible danger."
The Negro nodded and moved as silently as was possible in his space-suit to obey. And Carse turned again to the thing to which he had made a promise.
T
he icy-glittering case was full of a colorless liquid in which were grouped at the bottom, several delicate, colored instruments, all interconnected by a maze of countless spidery silver wires. Sheathes of other wires ran up from the lower devices to the case's main content—five grayish, convoluted mounds that lay in shallow pans—five brutally naked things that were the brains of scientists once honored and eminent on Earth.
Their bodies has long since been cast aside as useless to the ends of Ku Sui, but the priceless brains had been condemned to live on in an unlit, unseeing deathless existence: machines serving the man who had trapped them into life in death. Alive—and with stray memories, which Ku Sui could not banish entirely, of Earth, of love, of the work and the respect that had once been theirs. Alive—with an unnatural and horrible life, without sensation, without hope. Alive—and made to aid with their knowledge the man who had brought them into slavery unspeakable....
Hawk Carse's eyes were frigid gray mists in a graven, expressionless face as he turned to the left of the case and pulled over one of the well-remembered knife switches. A low hum came; a ghost of rosy color diffused through the liquid in the case. The color grew until the whole was glowing jewel-like in the dim-lit laboratory, and the narrow tubes leading into the undersides of the brains were plainly visible. Something within the tubes pulsed at the rate of heart-beats. The stuff of life.
When the color ceased to increase, Carse pulled the second switch, and moved close to the grille inset in a small panel above the case.
Slowly, gently he said into the grille:
"Master Scientist Cram, Professors Estapp and Geinst, Doctors Swanson and Norman—I wish to talk to you. I am Captain Carse, friend of Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow. Some days ago you aided us in our escape from here, and in return I made you a promise. Do you remember?"
There was a pause, a silence so tense it was painful. And then functioned the miracle of Ku Sui's devising. There came from the grille a thin, metallic voice from the living dead.
"I remember you, Captain Carse, and your promise."
A
voice from living brain cells, through inorganic lungs and throat and tongue! A voice from five brains, speaking, for some obscure reason which even Ku Sui could not explain, in the first person, and setting to mechanical words the living, pulsing thoughts that sped back and forth inside the case and were coordinated into unity by the master brain, which had once been in the body of Master Scientist Cram. A voice out of nothingness; a voice from what seemed so clearly to be the dead. To Hawk Carse, man of action, it was unearthly; it was a miracle the fact of which he could not question, but which he could not hope to understand. And well might it have been unearthly to anyone. Even to-day.
Still thrilling to the wonder of it, he went on:
"I have returned here to the asteroid with friends. Primarily I came to keep my promise to you, but I intend to do more. Dr. Ku Sui is not here now, and will not be for at least fifteen minutes; but when he does return, I am going to capture him. I am going to take him alive."
He was silent for a moment.
"Perhaps you do not know," he continued levelly, "but the people of Earth hold Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow responsible for your disappearance. He is therefore a fugitive, and there is a price on his head. It is my purpose to restore Eliot Leithgow to his old place by returning Dr. Ku to Earth to answer for the crimes he has effected on you.
"I am now ready to fulfil my promise to you. I expect no interruption this time. I regret exceedingly my inability to destroy you when I was here before, but I simply could not in the little time I had. I still do not know how best to go about it. Perhaps you will tell me. I will wait...."
An afterthought came to him. He added into the grille:
"There is no hurry. Your extraordinary position—your thoughts—I understand...."
Then there was a long silence. For once the Hawk was not impatient; in fact there was in him the feeling that the pause was only decent and fitting. For before him were the brains of five great scientists, who as captive remnants of men had asked him to end their cold and lonely bondage. Limbless, his was to be the hand of their self-immolation. The present silent, slow-passing minutes were to be their last of consciousness....
And then at last spoke the voice:
"Captain Carse, I do not wish you to destroy me. I wish you to give me new life. I wish you to transplant me within the bodies of five living men."
T
he words, so unexpected, took Hawk Carse by perhaps the greatest surprise he had ever known. For a time he was completely astounded; he could hardly credit his ears. It required a full minute for him to summon even the most halting reply.
"But—but could that be done?" He strove to collect himself, to consider logically this course that he had never dreamed would be requested. "Who could do it? I know of no man."
"Dr. Ku Sui could transplant me."
"Ku Sui? He could, but he wouldn't. He would destroy you, rather."
Almost immediately the artificial voice responded:
"You have said, Captain Carse, that you will soon have Ku Sui captive. Will you not attempt to force him to do as I desire?"
Carse considered the suggestion, but it did not seem remotely possible. Ku Sui could not be prevented from having endless opportunities for destroying the brains while enjoying the manual freedom necessary to perform the operations of re-embodying them.
"I do not see how," he began—and then he cut off his words abruptly.
Something had come into his mind, a memory of something Eliot Leithgow had told him once, long before. Slowly the details came back in full, and at their remembrance his right hand rose to the odd bangs of flaxen hair concealing his forehead and began to smooth them, and a ghost of a smile appeared on his thin lips.
"Perhaps," he murmured. "I think ... perhaps...."
He said decisively into the grille:
"Yes! I think it's quite possible that I can force Ku Sui to transplant you into living bodies! I think—Ithink—I cannot be sure—that it can be done. At least I will make a very good attempt."
The toneless, mechanical voice uttered:
"Captain Carse, you bring me hope. My thoughts are many, and they are grateful."
But the Hawk had made a promise, and had to be formally freed of the duty it entailed.
"You release me, then," he asked, "from my original promise to destroy you?"
"I release you, Captain Carse. And again I thank you."
The adventurer returned the switches motivating the case, and the faint smile returned to his lips at the thought that had come to him.
But the smile vanished suddenly at the quick, excited words that came crackling into his helmet receiver.
"Carse? Carse? Do you hear me?"
He threw over his microphone control.
"Yes, Ban? What is it?"
"Come as fast as you can. Just caught sight of three distant figures flying straight towards here. It's Ku Sui, returning!"
A
few minutes later the trap was in readiness.
It had been swiftly planned and executed, and it promised well. Both the inner and outer doors of the smaller port-lock lay ajar. Hawk Carse was gone from view. The only figure visible there was that which lay sprawled face-downward on the ground close to the inner door of the port-lock.
The figure seemed to have been stricken down in sudden death. It was clad in the trim yellow smock of a coolie of Ku Sui. It was limp, its arms and legs spreadeagled, and it lay there as mute evidence that the dome of the asteroid had been attacked.
To one entering from outside, the figure was that of a dead coolie. The coolie that had worn those clothes was dead; his clothes now covered the wiry length of freckle-faced Ban Wilson.
Ban played the game well. His face lay in the ground, pointed away from the lock, so he could not see what was going to happen behind him: but before the Hawk had directed him to take off his suit and don the yellow smock, he had glimpsed, rising swiftly over the southernmost barrier of hills that edged the valley, three black dots coming fast toward the asteroid in straight, disciplined flight, and he knew that the leader of the three was Dr. Ku Sui.
As he lay limp on the ground, playing his important part as the decoy of the trap, he knew that his life depended on the action and the skill and the timing of Hawk Carse. But he did not worry about that. He had implicit faith in the Hawk, and trusted his life to his judgment without a tremor.
Still, it was hard for Ban to throttle down his excessively nervous nature and maintain the dead man pose for the long silent minutes that crawled by before there came any sound from behind. The Jupiter-light, flooding down on him from the glittering blue sky above, was hot and growing hotter, and of course he began to itch. Had he had the freedom of his limbs, he would not have itched, he knew; it happened only when he had to keep absolutely still; he cursed the phenomenon to himself. Minute after minute, and no sound to tell him what was happening behind, or how close the three approaching figures had come, or whether Carse was at all visible or not—and the mounting, maddening itch right in the middle of his back!
A
t last Ban's mental cursings stopped. His straining ears had caught a sound.
It was quickly repeated, and again and again—the heavy, grating noise of metal on metal. The boots of space-suits on the metal floor of the port-lock. They had arrived!
Ku Sui would be there, close behind him; probably gazing at his outflung figure; probably puzzled, and suspicious, and quickly looking around for the enemies that had apparently killed one of his coolies. With a raygun in hand—and guns in the hands of the two others with him—glancing warily around over the guard-chamber close to the port-lock, and the main buildings beyond, and the whole area inside the dome, and seeing no one.
And then—approaching!
Ban could tell it by the silence, then the harsh crunch of the great boots against the powdered, metallic upper crust of ground. But he lay without an eyelash's flickering, a dead coolie, limp, crumpled. He heard the crunch of boots come right up to him and then pause; and the feeling that came to his stomach told him unmistakably that a man was looking down on him....
Now—while Ku Sui's attention was on him—now was the time! Now! Otherwise the Eurasian would turn him over and see that he was white!
It seemed to Ban centuries later that he heard the welcome voice of the Hawk bark out:
"You are covered, Dr. Ku! And your men. I advise you not to move. Tell your men to drop their guns—sh!"
The sound of the voice from the guard-chamber was replaced by two spits of a raygun. Unable to restrain himself, Ban rolled over and looked up.
He saw, first, the figure of the Hawk. Carse had stepped out from where he had been concealed, in the guard-chamber, and was holding the gun that had just spoken. Standing upright, close to the inner door of the port-lock, were two suit-clad coolies. Ban saw that they had turned to fire at Carse, and that now they were dead. Dead on their feet in the stiff, heavy stuff of their suits.
Dr. Ku Sui was standing motionless above him, and through the open face-plate of the Eurasian's helmet Ban could see him gazing at Hawk Carse with a strange, faint smile on his beautifully chiselled, ascetic face.
The Hawk came towards them, the raygun steady on his old foe; but while he was still yards away, and before he could do anything to prevent it, the Eurasian spoke a few unintelligible words into the microphone of his helmet-radio. Carse continued forward and stopped when a few feet away. Dr. Ku bowed as well as he could in his stiff suit and said courteously, in English:
"So I am trapped. My congratulations, Captain Carse! It was very neatly done."
T
he two puffed-out, metal-gleaming figures faced each other for a moment without speaking. And in the silence, Ban Wilson, watchful, with a raygun he had drawn from his belt, fancied he couldfeelthe long, bitter, bloody feud between the two, adventurer and scientist, there met again....
Carse spoke first, his voice steel-cold.
"You take it lightly, Dr. Ku. Do not rely too much on those words you spoke in Chinese. I could not understand them—but such things as I do not know about your asteroid I have already guarded against; and I think we can forestall whatever you have set in action.... You will please take off your space-suit."
"Willingly, my friend!"
"Watch close, Ban," said the Hawk.
Dr. Ku Sui unbuckled the heavy clasps of his suit, unscrewed the cumbersome helmet, and in a moment stepped free. At the suit slid to the ground, there stood revealed his tall, slim-waisted form, clad in the customary silk. He wore a high-collared green silk blouse, tailored to the lines of his body, full trousers of the same material, and pointed red slippers and red sash, which set the green off tastefully. A lithe, silky figure; and above the silk the high forehead, the saffron, delicately carved face, the fine black hair. Half-veiled by their long lashes, his exotic eyes rested like a cat's on his old enemy.
The Hawk moved close to him, and swiftly patted one hand over his body. From inside one of the blouse's sleeves he drew a pencil-thin blade of steel from its hidden sheath. He found no other weapon. Stepping back, he quickly divested himself of his suit also.
"And now, Captain?" the Eurasian murmured softly.
"Now, Dr. Ku," answered Carse, once again a slender, wiry figure in soft blue shirt and blue denim trousers, "we are going to have a little talk. In your living room, I think.
"Ban," he continued. "I don't believe there's anyone else who can even see the asteroid, but we have to be careful. Will you stay on guard here by the port-lock? Good. Close its doors, and yell or come to me if anything should occur."
He turned to the waiting Eurasian again.
"You may go first, Dr. Ku. Into the laboratory, and then to the living room of your quarters."
T
hey found Friday on guard where he had been stationed in the laboratory. The big Negro, on recognizing the Eurasian, grinned from ear to ear and gave him what he considered a witty greeting.
"Well, well!" he said with gusto, "—come right in. Dr. Ku Sui! Make yourself at home, suh! Sure glad to have you come visitin' us!" He laughed gleefully.
But his words were wasted on Dr. Ku. His eyes at once fastened on the case of coordinated brains, standing at one side. Carse noticed this.
"No. Dr. Ku," he said. "I have not touched the brains. Not yet. But that's what we're going to talk about." He motioned to one of the four doors connecting the central laboratory with the building's wings. "Into your living room please, and be seated there. And no sudden moves, of course: I have a certain skill with a raygun. Friday, keep doubly alert now. Better take off your suit. I will call for you in a few minutes."
Ku Sui walked on silent feet into the first division of his personal quarters, the softly-lit living room. A lush velvet carpet made the floor soft; ancient Chinese tapestries hid the pastelled metal of the walls; books were everywhere. It was a quiet and restful room, with no visible reminder of the asteroid and its controlling mechanics.
Dr. Ku sank into a deep armchair, linked his fingers before him and looked up inquiringly.
"We were going to talk about the brains?" he asked.
C
arse had closed the door behind him, and now remained standing. He met the masked green eyes squarely.
"Yes." He was silent for a little, then, quietly and coldly he went to the point.
"You'll be interested to hear that I have talked with the brains and been relieved of my premise to destroy them. They requested something else. Now I have committed myself to attempt their restoration into living bodies."
"So?" murmured the Eurasian. "So. Yes, Captain, that is very interesting."
"Very." The Hawk spoke without trace of emotion. "And some courtroom on Earth will find more than interesting the testimony of your re-embodied brains."
Dr. Ku Sui smiled in answer. "Oh, no doubt. But, my friend—this transplantation—you accept its possibility so casually! Won't it prove rather difficult for you, who have never even pretended to be a scientist?"
"Not difficult. Impossible."
"And Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow—I have unbounded respect for his genius, but brain surgery is a specialty and I really think that this task would be outside even his capabilities. I am sure he himself would admit it."
"You are right, Dr. Ku: he has admitted it. We both realize there is only one person in the universe who could achieve it—you. So you will have to perform the operations."
"Well!" said Dr. Ku Sui. The smooth, fine skin of his brow wrinkled slightly as he gazed up at the intent man facing him. "Is this just stupidity on your part, Captain? Or do you attempt a joke at which in courtesy I should smile?"
The Hawk answered levelly: "I was never farther from joking in my life."
W
ith a delicate shrug of his silken shoulders, Ku Sui averted his eyes. As if bored, he glanced around the room. Slowly he unclasped his hands.
"I am a very fast shot, Dr. Ku," whispered Carse. "You must not make a single move without my permission."
At that the Eurasian laughed aloud, a liquid laugh that showed his even teeth between the finely cut lips.
"But I am so completely in your power, Captain Carse!" He held on to the last syllable, a low, sustained hiss—and then he snapped it off.
"S-s-stah!" His mood had changed: the smile vanished from a face suddenly thin and cruel; the green eyes unmasked, to show in their depths the tiger.
"What insane talk! You say such things to me! Don't you know that to coordinate those brains I worked for years with a devotion, a concentration, a genius you can never hope even to comprehend? Don't you realize they're the most precious possession of the greatest surgeon and the greatest mind in the universe? Don't you understand that I've fashioned a miracle? Realize these things, then, and marvel at yourself—you who, with your gun and your egotism, think you can make me undo their wonderful coordination!"
The tiger returned behind the veil, its power and fury again leashed, and Dr. Ku Sui relaxed his green eyes once more masked and enigmatic. Hawk Carse asked simply:
"Couldyou transplant the brains?"
"You insist on continuing this farce?" murmured the Eurasian. "I would not be rude, but really you try my patience!"
"Couldyou transplant the brains?"
Dr. Ku Sui looked at the colorless face with its eyes of ice. With a trace of irritation, he said:
"Of course! What I have once transplanted, I can transplant again. But I will not do it—and my will no one, and no force, can alter. Perhaps it is clear now? In no way can you touch my will. I am sorry that I so grossly insulted you, Carse, for there are certain things about you that in a small way I respect. But here you are helpless."
"Not entirely," said the Hawk.
K
u Sui leaned forward a trifle. In that moment, perhaps, he first felt real concern, for Carse's quiet voice was so confident, so assured. He attempted to sound him out.
"A gun?" he asked. "Torture? Threats? These against my will? Absurd! Consider, my friend—even if I seemed to consent to the operations, could I not easily destroy the brains while ostensibly working on them?"
"Of course," said Carse, with a faint smile. "And threats and torture would be absurd. Against your will, Dr. Ku, a more powerful weapon will have to be used."
The Eurasian's eyes were brilliant with intuition.
"Ah—I see," he murmured. "Eliot Leithgow!"
"Yes, Dr. Ku!"
The two gazed at each other, Carse still with the faint smile, the other with the face of a statue. Presently the adventurer went on:
"Unfortunately for you, Eliot Leithgow can provide a method of compulsion neither you nor any other man could ever resist. Not guns, torture, threats—no. A subtler weapon, worthy of your fine will."
As he spoke, Carse saw the Eurasian's green eyes narrow, and in the pause that followed he knew that the swift, trained mind behind those eyes was working. What would it evolve? What move? And those Chinese words, uttered out by the port-lock—what would they result in, and when? Dr. Ku Sui was concerned now, the Hawk knew, seriously concerned, and inevitably, would take serious steps. What was growing in his resourceful brain? He would have to ward off any trouble when it came, for he could not know now. He said curtly:
"But enough of that. Now, I have a trifling favor to ask of you—something concerning the laboratory. Will you please return to it."
A strange light glimmered for an instant in Dr. Ku Sui's eyes—a mocking of the slender man before him. Only for an instant; then it was gone. Gracefully he raised his tall figure.
"The laboratory? Of course, my friend. And as for the favor—almost anything."
F
riday greeted them with another wide grin, and would again have bludgeoned the Eurasian with his wit had not the Hawk motioned him to silence. Looking at Dr. Ku, he said:
"I have Friday posted here because of the secret panel somewhere in this wall. You escaped through it before—do you remember?"
"Of course I remember. And if I'd had merely a fraction of your luck then, my present situation would be quite different."
"Perhaps," said the Hawk. "This panel is now the unknown quantity so far as I'm concerned, and I don't like unknown quantities; so I am asking you to show me where it is and how it works. That's my favor. Of course you can refuse to reveal it, but that will not delay me very long. The method of compulsion I mentioned...."
Dr. Ku-Sui appeared to reflect a moment, but his decision was not tardy in coming. He smiled.
"You terrify me, Captain, with your ominous hints about compulsion. I suppose I'd better be reasonable and show it to you. Really, though, your concern over the panel is rather wasted, inasmuch as it conceals nothing more than a small escape passage leading out of this building. Nothing important at all."
But his words, Carse somehow felt, were a screen; something else lay beneath them. He watched the tall figure with its always present odor of tsin-tsin blossoms move forward in a few indecisive steps, then back again, considering. The smile and the easy words were a camouflage, surely—but for what?
"Nothing important at all." Dr. Ku Sui repeated pleasantly. "Come. I will show you. Friday—if I may so address you—over on that switchboard you will find a small lever-control. It is the one with a Chinese character above it. Will you be so kind as to throw it?"
The Negro glanced inquiringly at his master. Grimly Carse nodded.
An enigmatic light glimmered in the Eurasian's green eyes as they watched the Negro go to the switchboard and put thumb and forefinger on the control.
"Only a small escape passage," he said deprecatingly as the Hawk crouched, gun ready, his eyes on the suspected place in the wall.
Friday threw the switch.
Immediately there sounded a short, sharp explosion. And acrid smoke billowed out from under the case of coordinated brains!
C
arse sprang to Ku Sui, gripped one arm and cried harshly:
"What have you done?"
"Not I, Captain—your obedient servant, the Black. Please, your fingers—" He removed them from his arm; and then, smiling, he said:
"I am afraid that all your assurance, your threats, are now but so much wasted breath."
"You mean—?"
"Surely, Captain," said Ku Sui, "you must have known I would provide for such an emergency, as this. I chose not to risk your darkly-hinted method of compulsion, and so had Friday remove the need for it. The Chinese character above the switch stands for 'Death.'"
Frigidly the Hawk asked: "You've destroyed the brains?"
"I have destroyed the brains." The Eurasian's voice was deep with a strange, unusual tone. "No matter: it was time. I am far, far ahead of that work, great though it was; it has destroyed itself with its inherent, irremediable fault. Yes, far ahead. Next time...." He appeared to lapse into profound and melancholy reflections; seemed to forget entirely the two men by him.
But the Hawk acted.
"We'll see," he said curtly. "Friday, watch the Doctor closely; this trick may be only the first." An intent, grim figure, he strode to the case of coordinated brains, pulled over the first of its two controlling switches, and stood silent while slowly the pulsings of light grew through the inner liquid and very slowly irradiated the five gray, naked mounds that were human brains. The light came to full, and Carse threw over the second switch. He said into the grille:
"I am Captain Carse. I wish to know if you are aware of what has just happened. Do you hear me, and did you feel anything a minute ago?"
S
ilence. Friday, close to the Eurasian and watchful, hung breathless, hoping that words might come from the grille in answer. But the silken figure he watched was there only in body; Dr. Ku's mind was in a far space of his own.
Cold, unhuman words spoke out.
"Yes, Captain Carse, I hear you. I felt the vibrations of the explosion that occurred a minute ago."
"Hah!" grunted Friday, immediately relieved. "All bluff, suh! No damage to 'em at all!"
Carse asked quickly into the grille:
"You felt the explosion, but do you know what it meant?—what it did?"
Again a pause; and again the toneless voice:
"A vital part of the machinery through which I live his been destroyed. I have left only some three hours of life."
The Hawk returned to Ku Sui. "Is that true?" he snapped.
"Yes, Captain." The words made a whisper, gentle and melancholy, coming from afar. A man was turning back from the scanning of the long years of one phase of his life. "Three hours is all that is left to them.... But there was a fault inherent in such coordinated brains; it is just as well that they are going.... Ah, Carse. I am so far ahead of you ... but I tell you it is a painful thing to destroy so wonderful a work of my hands...."
Silence filled the laboratory. It was broken by the awful voice of the living dead.
"I release you from your second promise, Captain Carse. No doubt what happened was beyond your control.... I will soon be dead. Although there is still nourishment in my liquid, I grow weaker already. I am dying...."
Harshly, the Hawk asked a final question into the grille:
"Within what time will you retain the vitality necessary to undergo the initial steps of the transplanting operations? Do you know?"
Dr. Ku raised his head at this, though he seemed only mildly interested in what the reply would be.
"I think for two of the remaining three hours."
"All right!" said Hawk Carse decisively. He threw off the case's switches. "Dr. Ku," he said, "you've only succeeded in accelerating things. Now for speed! Friday, we're taking this asteroid to Eliot Leithgow's laboratory. Go see that the port-lock doors are closed tight, then you and Wilson hurry back here! Fast! Run!"
W
hen the Negro returned, panting, with Ban Wilson, it was to discover Carse in the control room of the asteroid. He was studying the multifarious devices and instruments: and they, seeing his face so set in concentration, did not disturb him, but went over to where Dr. Ku Sui sat in a chair, and posted themselves behind it.
The apparatus in the control room resembled that of any modern space-ship of its time, except that there were extra pieces of unguessed function. Directly in front of Carse was the directional space-stick above its complicated mechanism: above his eyes was the wide six-part visi-screen, which in space would record the whole "sphere" of the heavens: while to his right was the chief control board, a smooth black surface studded with squads of vari-colored buttons and lights, These were the essentials, familiar to any ship navigator; but they were here awesome, for they controlled not the one or two hundred feet of an ordinary craft, but twenty miles of this space-ship of rock.
"Yes ... yes...." Carse murmured presently out of his study, then turned and for the first time appeared to notice Friday and Ban. He gave orders.
"Eclipse, you see the radio over there? Get Master Leithgow on it for me—protected beam. Ban, you bind Dr. Ku Sui in that chair, please."
Wilson was surprised.
"Bind him? Isn't he going to run this thing?"
"No."
"You'regoing to, Carse?"
"Yes. I don't quite trust Dr. Ku. The asteroid's controlled on the same principles as a space-ship: I'll manage. Please hurry, Ban."
"Cap'n., suh! Already got the Master Scientist!" called Friday from the radio panel. The Hawk strode swiftly to it and clamped the individual receivers over his ears.
"M. S.?" he asked into the microphone. "You're there?"
"Yes. Carse? What's happened?"
"All's well, but I'm in a tremendous hurry: I've only got time, now, to tell you we're on the asteroid with Dr. Ku prisoner, and that I'm undertaking to transplant the coordinated brains into living human bodies.... What? Yes transplant them! Please, M. S.—not now: questions later. I'm calling primarily to learn whether you have any V-27 on hand?"
Eliot Leithgow, in his distant laboratory, paused before replying. When his voice sounded in the receivers again, it was excited.
"I think I see, Carse! Good! Yes, I have a little—"
"We'll need a lot," the Hawk cut in tersely. "Will you instruct your assistants to begin preparing as much as they can in the next hour? Yes. And your laboratory—clear it for the operations, and improvise five operating tables. Powerful lights, too, M. S. Yes—yes—right—all accessories. Have someone stand by your radio; I'll radio further details while we're on our way."
"Right, Carse. All understood."
The Hawk remembered something else. "Oh, yes, Eliot—is everything safe in your vicinity?"
"There's a small band of isuanacs foraging around somewhere in the neighborhood, but otherwise nothing. They're harmless—"
"But possibly observant," finished Carse. "All right—I'll clear them away before descending to the lab. Until later, Eliot."