_The Color-Storm_
The corridor was stopped by a heavy metal door. As the small party
approached, it swung inward in two halves, and a figure clad in a white
surgeon's smock emerged. He was a white man, tall, with highly
intelligent face but eyes strangely dull and lifeless, like those of the
coolie-guards. His gaze rested on Ku Sui, and the Eurasian asked him:
"Is it ready?"
"Yes, lord,"--tonelessly.
"Through here, then, my friends." The door opened and closed behind them
as they stepped inside. "This is my main laboratory. And there, friend
Carse, is the object which is to concern us."
With one glance the adventurer took in the laboratory. It was a great
room, a perfect circle in shape, with doors opening into the four wings
of the building. The walls were lined with strange, complicated
machines, whose purpose he could not even guess at; in one place there
was a table strewn with tangled shapes of wire, rows of odd-bulging
tubes and other apparatus; and conspicuous by one door was an ordinary
operating table, with light dome overhead. A tall wide screen placed a
few feet out from the wall hid something bulky from view. Carse noted
all these things; then his gaze went back to the object in the middle of
the floor which Ku Sui had indicated.
It was, primarily, a chair, within a suspended framework of steely bars,
themselves the foundation for a network of fine-drawn colored wires.
Shimmering, like the gossamer threads of a spider's spinning, they wove
upward, around and over the chair, so that he who sat there would be
completely surrounded by the gleaming mesh.
Within the whole hung a plain square boxlike device, attached to the
chair and so placed that it would be directly in front of the eyes of
anyone sitting there. Ropes were reeved through pulleys in the ceiling,
for raising the wire-ball device to permit entrance. And standing ready
around it, were four men in surgeons' smocks--white men with intelligent
faces and dull, lifeless eyes.
* * * * *
The Hawk knew the answer to the question he curtly asked. "Its purpose,
Dr. Ku?"
"That," came the suave reply, "it will be your pleasure to discover for
yourself. I can promise you some novel sensations. Nothing harmful,
though, however much they may tire you. Now!" He gave a sign; one of his
assistants touched a switch. The wire ball rose, leaving the central
seat free for entrance. "All is ready. May I ask you to enter?"
Hawk Carse faced his old foe. There was stillness in the laboratory then
as his bleak gray eyes met and held for long seconds Ku Sui's enigmatic
green-black ones.
"If I don't?"
For answer the Eurasian gestured apologetically to his guards.
"I see," Carse whispered. There was nothing to be done. Three coolies,
each with ray-guns at the ready; four white assistants.... No hope. No
chance for anything. He looked at the negro. "Don't move, Friday," he
warned him. "They'll only shoot; it can do no good. Eight to two are big
odds when the two are unarmed."
He turned and faced the Eurasian, holding him with his eyes. "Ku Sui,"
he said, clipping the words, "you have said that this would not
permanently harm me, and, although I know you for the most deadly,
vicious egomaniac in the solar system, I am believing you. I do not know
you for a liar.... I will enter."
The faint smile on the Oriental's face did not alter one bit at this.
Carse stepped to the metal seat and sat down.
* * * * *
The web of shimmering wires descended, cupping him completely. Through
them he saw Ku Sui go to a switchboard adjoining and study the
indicators, finally placing one hand on a black-knobbed switch and with
the other drawing from some recess a little cone, trailing a wire, like
a microphone. A breathless silence hung over the laboratory. The
white-clad figures stood like statues, dumb, unfeeling, emotionless. The
watching negro trembled, his mouth half open, his brow already bedewed
with perspiration. But the only sign of strain or tension that showed in
the slender flaxen-haired man sitting in the wire ball in the center of
the laboratory, came when he licked his dry lips.
Then Dr. Ku Sui pulled the switch down, and there surged out a
low-throated murmur of power. And immediately the ball of wire came to
life. The fine, crisscrossing wires disappeared, and in their stead was
color, every color in the spectrum. Like waves rhythmically rising and
falling, the tinted brilliances dissolved back and forth through each
other; and the reflected light, caroming off the surfaces of the
instruments and tables and walls, so filled the laboratory that the
group of men surrounding the fire-ball were like resplendent figures out
of another universe.
Ku Sui pressed a button, and the side of the boxlike device nearest Hawk
Carse's eyes assumed transparency and started to glow. Beautiful colors
began to float over its face, colors never still but constantly weaving
and clouding into an infinity of combinations and designs. Eyes staring
wide, as if unable to close them to the brilliant kaleidoscopic
procession, the adventurer looked on.
* * * * *
Friday knew that his master at that moment was impotent to move, even to
shut his eyes, and, with a wild notion that he was being electrocuted,
he made a rash rush to destroy the device and free him. He learned
discretion when two ray-streaks pronged before him and forced him back;
and thereafter he was given the undivided attention of two guards.
From the outside, through the ball of color, Carse was a ghostlike
figure. Rigid and quivering, he sat in the chair and watched the
color-maelstrom. His face was contorted; his cheek muscles stood out
weltlike in his sweat-glistening skin; his eyes, which he could not
close, throbbed with agony. But yet he was conscious; yet he still could
will.
He defended his secret as best he could. Obviously this machine was
being used to force from his mind the knowledge of Eliot Leithgow's
whereabouts, and therefore he attempted to seal his mind. He fastened it
on something definite--on Iapetus, satellite of Saturn, and his ranch
there--and barred every other thought from his head. Mechanically he
repeated to himself: "Iapetus, Iapetus--my ranch on Iapetus--Iapetus,
Iapetus." Hundreds of times.... Hours.... Days....
The blinding waves of color rioted about him, submerged him, fatigued
him. He had a strong impulse to sleep, but he resisted it.
Days seemed to pass.... Years.... Eons. All this.... Continued without
change.... To the end of the world....
Dimly he knew that the color-storm was working on him; sensed danger
when a great drowsiness stole over him; but he fought it off, his brain
beating out hundreds of times more: "Iapetus, Iapetus--I have a ranch
there--Iapetus, Iapetus...."
Then came excruciating pain!
* * * * *
An electric shock suddenly speared him. His nerves seemed to curl up,
and for a second his mind was thoroughly disorganized before it again
took up the drone about Iapetus. Recovery ... dullness ... a kind of
peace--and again the shock leaped through him. It was followed by a
question from afar off:
"_Where is Eliot Leithgow?_"
Somehow the question meant a great deal and should not be answered....
Again the stab of agony. Again the voice:
"_Where is Eliot Leithgow?_"
Again the shock, and again the voice. Alternating, over and over. He
could brace himself against the shock, but the voice could in no way be
avoided. It was everywhere about him, over, around, under him; he began
to see it. Desperately he forced his brain on the path it must not
leave. He had forgotten years ago why, but knew there must be some good
reason.
"Iapetus, Iapetus--I have a ranch there--Iapetus, Iapetus--_Where is
Eliot Leithgow?_--Iapetus, Iapetus--I have a ranch there--_Where is
Eliot Leithgow_--I have a ranch there--a ranch there--Iapetus, a
ranch--_Where is Eliot Leithgow?_--_Where is Eliot Leithgow?_--_Where is
Eliot Leithgow?_" ...
After two hours and ten minutes the Hawk crumpled.
He was quite delirious at the time. The combined effect of the pain, the
physical and nervous exhaustion of the shocks and light, the endlessly
repeated question, his own close concentration on his Iapetus
ranch--these were too much for any human body to stand against. He lost
his grip on his mind, lost the fine control that had never been lost
before, the control about which he was so vain. And the lump of flesh
that was Hawk Carse gave the information that was tearing wildly at its
prison.
A stammering voice came from the heart of the color-sphere:
"Port o' Porno, Satellite III--Port o' Porno, Satellite III--Port o'
Porno Sat----"
Dr. Ku Sui interrupted him; leaned forward.
"The house is number----?"
"574--574--574----"
"Ah!" breathed the Eurasian. "Port o' Porno! So near!"
Ku Sui returned the switch and pressed one of the buttons. The pool of
colors faded; the laboratory returned to comparative dimness. The
machine in its center seemed but a great web of wire.
Slumped in the seat within it was a slender figure, his flaxen head
bowed over on his chest, his eyes closed, and sweat still trickling down
his unconscious brow.
And lying on the floor was another unconscious figure.
Friday had fainted.