_The Coming of Leithgow_
Hawk Carse awoke to the touch of a hand on his brow. He came very slowly
to full consciousness. His pain was great.
His whole body was sore: every joint, every muscle in it ached; his
brain was feverish, pumping turmoil. When he at length opened his eyes
he found Friday's face bent close down, tender anxiety written large
over it.
"You all right, suh? How do you feel now?"
A harsh sound came from the Hawk's throat. He pressed a hand to his
throbbing temple and tried to collect his senses. Sitting up helped; he
glanced around. They were back in the same cell, and they were alone.
Then, shortly, he asked:
"Did I tell him?"
"About Mr. M. S., suh?"
"Of course, I can't quite remember--a bit blurred----"
"I guess you did, suh," Friday answered mournfully. "I didn't hear you,
but Ku Sui said you told him where Master Leithgow is. But dog-gone--you
couldn't help it!"
Carse forgot his pain as his brain straightened these words out into
their overwhelming consequence, and something of its old familiar mold,
hard and graven, emotionless, came back to his face. His eyes were bleak
as he murmured:
"I couldn't help it--no. I really don't think it was possible. But I
could have refused to get into the machine. I thought I could resist it.
I took that risk, and failed." He stopped short. His body twitched with
uncontrolled emotion, and in decency the negro turned his back on his
master's anguish. A broken whisper reached him: "I have betrayed
Leithgow."
* * * * *
For a short while neither man moved, or made any sound. Friday was a
little afraid; he guessed what must be going on in Carse's mind, and had
no idea what to expect. But the Hawk's next move was quite disciplined;
he was himself again.
He got up and stretched his body, to limber its muscles. "How long have
we been here?" he asked.
"Don't know suh; I was unconscious when they brought me here myself. But
I guess not less'n six or eight hours."
"Unconscious?" asked the Hawk, surprised. "You fought, and they knocked
you out?"
The big negro looked sheepish and scratched his woolly head.
"Well, no suh," he explained. "I was aimin' to butt in some, but they
wouldn't let me."
"Then how did you get unconscious?"
Friday fidgeted. He was acutely embarrassed. "Don't know, suh, Dog-gone,
I just can't figure it, unless I fainted."
"Oh." The Hawk smiled. "Fainted. Well so did I, I guess. I suppose," he
went on seriously, "you couldn't tell whether the asteroid moved or not.
I mean toward Satellite III."
Friday scratched his head again.
"I guess I can't, suh," he replied. "I haven't felt any movement."
"The door is locked?"
"Oh, yes, suh. Tight."
"Very well. Now please be silent. I want to think."
He went over and leaned against the far wall of the cell. His right hand
rose to the bangs of flaxen hair and with a slow regular movement began
to smooth them. Lost in thought he stood there, thinking through the
situation in which he found himself.
He had expected, of course, to subject himself to great risk in keeping
the rendezvous with Dr. Ku Sui, but he had never thought he would be
endangering Eliot Leithgow also. It was torture to know he had put the
gentle old scientist into the Eurasian's web.
That was it: if he could not somehow shear through that web, he must
destroy Leithgow himself, and follow on after. The scientist would
prefer it so. For whatever Dr. Ku's exact reason for wanting the Master
Scientist was, it was an ugly one: that it was worse than quick death,
he knew full well.
Shear through the web. How? Where was the weak strand in Ku Sui's
cunningly laid plot? The Hawk visualized all he could of the asteroid's
mechanical details, and surveyed them painstakingly. Two great
port-locks flanked by little ones; secret opening combinations--not much
hope in that avenue. Judd's ship, resting above: could he reach it, and
raise it and douse the buildings with its rays? No; Dr. Ku had spoken of
defense rays--they would certainly be far more powerful than the
_Scorpion's_. Then, somewhere there were the mighty gravity-plates
batteries which motivated the asteroid and held it controlled in space.
The dynamos. Two men, working swiftly, might wreak an unholy amount of
damage in little time; in the resulting confusion anything might happen.
If!
* * * * *
Into the depths of his concentration came the odor of tsin-tsin flowers,
followed by the familiar, silkie voice of his arch-enemy.
"I see you are deep in thought, my friend. I trust it indicates your
complete recovery."
Dr. Ku Sui stood smiling in the doorway, his same bodyguard of three
armed men behind him. His sardonic words brought no reply. He went on:
"I hope so. I have arranged, thanks to your kindness, a meeting with an
old, dear friend of yours. An illustrious friend: he already honors my
establishment with his presence. I have come to ask you to join us."
The Hawk's gray eyes turned frigid: a lesser man would have blanched at
the threat implied in his answer.
"God help you, Ku Sui."
The Eurasian turned it aside. "Always," he said, "God helps those who
help themselves. But come with me, if you'll be so kind. We are expected
in the laboratory."
This exchange passed quickly. Friday was still grasping at its
underlying meanings as they again filed down the short straight outside
corridor. It brought a perverse satisfaction to see the coolie guards
bearing their ray-guns unsheathed and ready. Ku Sui's general attitude
did not fool him. He knew that the man's suave mockery and flowery
courtesy were camouflage for a very real fear of the quick wits and
brilliant, pointed action of his famous master, the Hawk.
Carse walked steadily enough, but every step he took beat in his mind
like the accents of a dirge. For he had betrayed into the hands of the
Eurasian his most loved and loyal friend. Betrayed him! Despicably
egotistical he had been in submitting to the chair, in not making one
last wild break for freedom at that time. He had thought he could beat
Ku Sui at his own game. Ku Sui, of all men!
* * * * *
Unseen hands opened from the other side the metal laboratory door, they
passed through and the close-fitting halves closed behind them. Ku Sui
went to the main switchboard and Carse glanced rapidly around. Leithgow
was not there. The wire-ball device was gone, but otherwise the details
of the room were unchanged, even to the four white-clad assistants whose
fine heads had eyes so lifeless and faces so expressionless. Emphasized,
now, somehow, was the tall screen that hid something on one side of the
room, and an intuition told the Hawk that what lay behind the screen was
in some way connected with their fate.
He waited stolidly for what he knew was coming.
"Now," Dr. Ku murmured. He smiled at his two prisoners and pressed one
of the switchboard's array of buttons. A door opposite them swung open.
"Believe me, this is a pleasure," he said.
Flanked by two impressive slant-eyed guards, a frail figure in a rubber
apron stood revealed.
Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow blinked as he looked about the
laboratory. Helpless, pitifully alone he looked, with his small,
slightly stooped body, his tragedy-aged, deeply-lined face. The blue
veins showed under the transparent skin of his forehead; his light-blue
eyes, set deep under snow-white eyebrows, darted from side to side,
dazed by the light and perhaps still confused by the events which had
snatched him so suddenly from his accustomed round and struck him with
such numbing force. His years and frailty were obviously fitted rather
to some seat of science in a university on Earth than the raw conditions
of the frontiers of space.
Hawk Carse found words, but could not control his voice.
"This is the first time I've ever been sorry to see you, M. S.," he said
simply.