_Soil_
Hawk Carse awoke with a slight feeling of nausea, and the smell of the
drug faint in his nostrils. He found he was lying on the floor of a
large, square cell whose walls and ceiling were of some burnished brown
metal and which was bare of any kind of furnishing. In one wall was a
tightly closed door, also of metal and studded by the knob of a lock.
Barred slits, high in opposite walls, gave ventilation; a single tube
set in the ceiling provided illumination.
He was not bound. He sat up and regarded the outflung figure of Friday,
lying to one side. "Something in his look seemed to reach the giant
negro, for, as he watched, the man's eyelids flickered, and a sigh
escaped his full lips. He stared up at Carse, recognition, followed by
gladness, flooding his eyes. The Hawk smiled also. There were close
bonds between these two.
"Lord, I'm sure thankful to be with you, suh!" said the negro with
relief. His eyes rolled as he took in the cabinlike cell. "Hmff--nice
homey little place," he remarked. "Where do you reckon we are, suh?"
"I think we're at last at that place we have searched so long for--Ku
Sui's headquarters, his own spaceship."
It will be remembered by those who have read their history that the
Eurasian's actual base of operations was for a long time the greatest of
the mysteries that enveloped him. Half a dozen times had the Hawk and
his comrade in arms, Eliot Leithgow, hunted for it with all their
separate skill of adventurer and scientist, and, although they had twice
found the man himself, always they had failed to find his actual
retreat.
For those who are unacquainted with the histories of that raw period a
hundred years ago, it will be impossible to understand the spell of fear
which accompanied mention of Dr. Ku throughout the universe--a fear
engendered chiefly by the man's unpredictable comings and goings, thanks
to his secret hiding place. Those who were as close to him as henchmen
could be--which was not very close--only added to the general mystery of
the whereabouts of the base by their sincerely offered but utterly
contradictory notions and data. One thing all agreed on: the outlaw's
lair was a place most frightening.
Therefore it can be understood why, on hearing the Hawk's opinion,
Friday's face fell somewhat.
"Guess that means we're finished, suh," he opined moodily.
* * * * *
Carse had walked to the lone door and found, as he of course expected,
that it was tightly locked. He responded crisply:
"It's not like you to talk that way, Eclipse. We're far from that. We
have succeeded in the first step--if, as I suspect, this cell is part of
Dr. Ku's real headquarters--and surely before he decides to eliminate us
we will be able to learn something of the nature of his space-ship;
perhaps how it can be attacked and conquered."
Conversation always cheered the naturally social Friday; he seldom had
the opportunity for it with his usually curt master. He objected:
"But what good'll that do us, suh, if we take what we've learned to
where it won't help anybody, least of all us? An' what chance we got
against Ku Sui now, when we're prisoners? Why, he's a magician; it ain't
natural, what he does. Lands in our ship plop right out of empty space!
Puts us out with a wave of his handkerchief!" With final misery in his
voice he added: "We're sunk, suh. This time we surely are."
Carse smiled at his emotional friend. "All you need is a good fight,
Eclipse. It's thinking that disintegrates your morale; you should never
try to think. Why--there was an anesthetic on that handkerchief! Simple
enough; I might have expected it. As for his getting into our ship, he
entered from behind, through the after port-lock, while we were looking
for his ship on the visi-screen. I don't understand yet why we could not
see his craft. It's too much to suppose he could make it invisible.
Paint, perhaps, or camouflage. He might have a way of preventing, from a
distance, the registering of his ship on our screen. Oh, he's dangerous,
clever, deep--but somewhere, there'll be a loophole. Somewhere. There
always is." His tone changed, and he snapped: "Now be quiet. I want to
think."
* * * * *
His face stiffened into a cold, calm mask, but behind his gray eyes lay
anything but calmness. Ku Sui's easy assumption that the information as
to Eliot Leithgow's whereabouts would be forthcoming from his lips,
puzzled him, brought real anxiety. Torture would probably not be able to
force his tongue to betray his friend, but there were perhaps other
means. Of these he had a vague and ominous apprehension. Dr. Ku was
preeminently a specialist in the human brain; he had implied his will to
have that information. Suppose he should use something it was impossible
to fight against?
And he alone, Hawk Carse, brought the responsibility. He had asked
Leithgow where he would be, and he remembered well the place agreed
upon. He dared not lose the battle of wits he knew was coming!...
His eyes shot to the door. It was opening. In a moment Ku Sui stood
revealed there, and behind him, in the corridor, were three other
figures, their yellow coolie faces strangely dumb and lifeless above the
tasteful gray smocks which extended a little below their belted waists.
Each bore embroidered on his chest the planetary insignia of Ku Sui in
yellow, and each was armed with two ray-guns.
"I must ask forgiveness, my friend, for these retainers who accompany
me," the Eurasian began suavely. "Please don't let them disturb you,
however; they are more robots than men, obeying only my words. A little
adjustment of the brain, you understand. I have brought them only for
your protection; for you would find it would result most unpleasantly to
make a break for freedom."
"Of course, _you're_ not the one who wants protection!" sneered Friday,
with devastating sarcasm. "Or else you'd 'a' brought a whole army!"
But the negro paled a little when the Oriental's green tiger eyes caught
him full. It was with a physical shock--such was the power of the
man--that he received the soft-spoken reply:
"Yours is a most subtle and entertaining wit, black one; I am overcome
with the honor and pleasure of having you for my guest. But perhaps--may
I suggest?--that you save your humor for a more suitable occasion. I
would like to make the last few hours of your visit as pleasant as
possible."
* * * * *
He turned to Hawk Carse. "I have thought that an inspection of this, my
home in space, would intrigue you more than anything else my poor
hospitality affords. May I do you the honor, my friend?"
"You are too good to me," the Hawk replied frostily. "I will duplicate
your kindness some day."
The Eurasian bowed. "After you," he said, and waited until Friday and
the Hawk passed first through the door. Close after them came the three
automatons of yellow men.
The passageway was square, plain and bare, and spaced at intervals by
other closed doors. "Storerooms in this wing," the Eurasian explained as
they progressed. He stopped in front of one of the doors and pressed a
button beside it. It slid noiselessly open, revealing, not another room,
but a short metal spider ladder. Up this they climbed, one of the guards
going first in the half darkness; then a trap-door above opened to douse
them with warm ruddy light. They stepped out.
And the scene that met them took them completely off guard. Friday
gasped, and Carse so far lost his habitual poise as to stare in wonder.
Soil! And a great glassy dome!
* * * * *
Not a space-ship, this realm of Ku Sui. Soil--soil with a whole
settlement built upon it! Hard, grayish soil, and on it several
buildings of the familiar burnished metal. And overhead, cupping the
entire outlay, arched a great hemisphere of what resembled glass, ribbed
with silvery supporting beams and struts: an enormous bowl, turned down,
and on its other side the glorious vista of space.
Straight above hung the red-belted disk of Jupiter, with the pale globes
of Satellites II and III wheeling close, _and all of them were of the
same relative size they had appeared when last seen from the Scorpion!_
Dr. Ku smiled unctuously at the puzzlement that showed on the faces of
his captives.
"Have you noticed," he asked, "that you are still in the neighborhood of
the spot in space where we had our rendezvous? But this isn't another of
Jupiter's satellites. Ah, no. This is my own world--my own personally
controlled little world!"
"Snakes of the Santo!" Friday gasped, the whites of his eyes showing all
around. "Then we must be on an asteroid!"
They were. From the far side of the dome ahead of them the asteroid
stretched back hard and sharp in Jupiter's ruddy light against the
backdrop of black space. It was a craggy, uneven body, seemingly about
twenty miles in length, pinched in the middle and thus shaped roughly
like a peanut shell. One end had been leveled off to accommodate the
dome with its cradled buildings; outside the dome all was untouched. The
landscape was a gargantuan jumble of coarse, hard, sharp rocks which had
crystallized into a maze of hollows, crevices, long crazy splits and
jagged out-thrusting lumps of boulders. Without an atmosphere, with but
the feeblest of gravities and utterly without any form of life--save for
that within the dome built upon it--it was simply a typical small
asteroid, of which race only the largest are globe-shaped.
"Once," the Eurasian went on softly as they took all this in, "this
world of mine circled with its thousands of fellows between Mars and
Jupiter. I picked it from the rest because of certain mineral qualities,
and had this air-containing dome constructed on it, and these buildings
inside the dome. Then, with batteries of gravity-plates inserted
precisely in the asteroid's center of gravity, I nullified the gravital
pull of Mars and Jupiter, wrenched it from its age-old orbit and swung
it free into space. An achievement that would command the respect even
of Eliot Leithgow, I think. So now you see, Carse; now you know. _This_
is my secret base, _this_ my hidden laboratory. I take it always with
me, and I travel where I will."
The Hawk nodded coldly his acceptance of the astounding fact; he was too
busy to make comment. He was observing the buildings, the nature of
them, the exits from the dome, how they could best be reached.
* * * * *
They stood on the roof of the largest and central building, a low metal
structure with four wings, crossing at right angles to make the figure
of a great plus mark. The hub was probably Dr. Ku's chief laboratory,
Carse conjectured. On each side stood other buildings, low, long, like
barracks, with figures of coolies moving in and out. Workshops, living
quarters, power-rooms, he supposed: power-rooms certainly, for a soft
hum filled the air.
There were two great port-locks at ground level in the dome, one on each
side, each sizable enough to admit the largest space-ship and each
flanked by a smaller, man-sized lock. To reach them....
"And over there," Dr. Ku's voice broke in, "you see your borrowed ship,
the _Scorpion_. But please don't let it tempt you to cut short your
visit with me, my friend. It would avail you nothing even if you reached
her, for it requires a secret combination to open the port-locks, and my
servants' brains have been so altered that they are physically incapable
of divulging it to you. And of course I have offensive rays and other
devices hidden about--just in case. All rather hopeless, isn't it? But
surely interesting.
"Let us go: I have more. Below, in my main laboratory in the center of
this building, there's something far more interesting, and it concerns
you, Carse, and me, and also Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow." He let
the words sink in. "Will you follow me?"
And so they went below again, down the spider ladder into the corridor.
There was nothing else to do: the guards, ever watchful, pressed close
behind. But a tattoo of alarm was beating in Hawk Carse's brain. Eliot
Leithgow again--the hint of something ominous to be aimed at him, Carse,
for the extraction of information he alone possessed: the whereabouts of
his elderly friend the Master Scientist.