_In the Visi-Screen_
There were those among the few claiming to have any insight into the
real Hawk Carse who declared that a month went out of his life for every
minute he spent in the cell then. The story, of course, came trickling
out through various unreliable sources; we who delve in the lore of the
great adventurer have to thank for our authorities Sewell, the great
historian of that generation--who personally traveled several million
miles to get what meager facts the Hawk would divulge concerning his
life and career--equally with Friday, who shared this particular
adventure with him. Friday's emotional eyes no doubt colored his memory
of the scenes he passed through, and it is likely that the facts lost
nothing in the simple dramatic way he would relate them.
But certainly the black was as fearful of his master during that period
in the cell as he was of what he saw acted out on the screen.
We can picture him telling of the ordeal, his big eyes rolling and his
deep rich voice trembling with the memories stamped forever in his
brain; and picture too the men who, at one time or another, listened to
him, fascinated, their mouths agape and a tickling down the length of
their spines. It was probably only Friday's genius as a narrator which
later caused some of his listeners to swear that new lines were grooved
in Carse's face and a few flaxen hairs silvered by the minutes he spent
watching Eliot Leithgow strapped down on that operating table, close to
the beautiful surgeon fingers of Dr. Ku Sui.
But whether or not that period of torture really pierced through his
iron emotional guard and set its mark on him permanently by aging him,
it is impossible to say. However, there were deep things in Hawk Carse,
and the deepest among them were the ties binding him to his friends;
there was also that certain cold vanity; and considering these it is
probable that he came very close indeed to the brink of some frightening
emotional abyss, before which he had few shreds of mind and
body-discipline left....
* * * * *
He reentered the cell like a ghost; he stood very still, his hands
slowly clenching and unclenching behind his back, and his pale face
inclined low, so that the chin rested on his chest. So he stood for some
minutes, Friday not daring to disturb him, until the single door that
gave entrance clicked in its lock and opened again. At this he raised
his head. Five men came in, all coolies, three of whom had ray-guns
which they kept scrupulously on the white man and black while the other
two rigged up an apparatus well up on one of the cell walls. They
remained wholly unaffected the several times their dull eyes met those
of the Hawk. Perhaps, being mechanicalized humans, practically robots,
they got no reaction from the icy gray eyes in his strained white face.
The device they attached was some two square feet of faintly gleaming
screen, rimmed by metal and with little behind it other than two small
enclosed tubes, a cuplike projector with wires looping several terminals
on its exterior, and a length of black, rubberized cable, which last was
passed through one of the five-inch ventilating slits high in the wall.
Carse regarded it with his hard stare until the door clicked behind the
coolies and they were once more alone. Then his head returned to its
bowed position, and Friday approached the apparatus and began to examine
it with the curiosity of the born mechanic he was.
"Let it be, Friday," the Hawk ordered tonelessly.
A dozen minutes passed in silence.
The silence was outward: there was no quiet in the adventurer's head. He
could not stop the sharp remorseless voice which kept sounding in his
brain. Its pitiless words flailed him unceasingly with their stinging
taunts. "You--you whom they call the Hawk," it would say; "you, the
infallible one--you, so recklessly, egotistically confident--you have
brought this to pass! Not only have you allowed yourself to be trapped,
but Eliot Leithgow! He is out there now; and soon his brain will be
condemned forever to that which you have seen! The brain that trusted
you! And you have brought this to pass! Yours the blame, the
never-failing Hawk! All yours--yours--yours!"
A voice reached him from far away. A soft negro voice which said,
timidly:
"They're beginning, suh. Captain Carse? On the screen, suh; they're
beginning."
That was worse. The real ordeal was approaching. True, he might have
thrown himself on the coolie-guards who had just left--but his death
would not have helped old M. S.
Friday spoke again, and this time his words leaped roaring into Carse's
ears. He raised his head and looked.
The tubes behind the screen were crackling, and the screen itself had
come to life. He was looking at the laboratory. But the place was
changed.
* * * * *
What had before been a wide circular room, with complicated machines and
unnamed scientific apparatus following only its walls, so as to leave
the center of its floor empty and free from obstructions, was now a
place of deep shadow pierced by a broad cone of blinding white light
which shafted down from some source overhead and threw into brilliant
emphasis only the center of the room.
The light struck straight down upon an operating table. At its head
stood a squat metal cylinder sprouting a long flexible tube which ended
in a cone--no doubt the anesthetizing apparatus. A stepped-back tier of
white metal drawers flanked one side of the table, upon its various
upper surfaces an array of gleaming surgeon's tools. In neat squads they
lay there: long thin knives with straight and curved cutting edges;
handled wires, curved into hooks and eccentric corkscrew shapes;
scalpels of different sizes; forceps, clasps, retractors, odd metal
claws, circular saw-blades and a variety of other unclassified
instruments. Sterilizers were convenient to one side, a thin wraith of
steam drifting up from them into the source of the light.
Four men worked within the brilliant shaft of illumination--four
white-clad figures, hands gloved and faces swathed in surgeons' masks.
Only their lifeless eyes were visible, concentrated on their tasks of
preparation. Steam rose in increased mists as one figure lifted back the
lid of a sterilizer and dropped in some gleaming instruments. The cloud
swirled around his masked face and body with devilish infernolike
effect.
All this in deadest silence. From the darkness came another figure, tall
and commanding, a shape whose black silk garments struck a new note in
the dazzling whiteness of the scene. He was pulling on operating gloves.
His slanted eyes showed keen and watchful through the eyeholes of the
mask he already wore, as he surveyed the preparations. Ominous Ku Sui
looked, among his white-clad assistants.
The Eurasian seemed to give an order, and a white figure turned and
glanced off into the surrounding darkness, raising one hand. A door
showed in faint outline as it opened. Through the door two shadows
moved, wheeling something long and flat between them.
They came into the light, two coolies, and wheeled their conveyance
alongside the operating table. Then they turned into the darkness and
were gone.
"Oh!" gasped Friday. "They've shaved off his head!"
* * * * *
The frail form of Eliot Leithgow, clad to the neck in loose white
garments, showed clearly as he was lifted to the operating table. As
Friday said, his hair was all gone--shaved off close--stunning
verification of what was to happen. Awfully alone and helpless he
looked, yet his face was calm and he lay there composed, watching his
soulless inquisitors with keen blue eyes. But his expression altered
when Dr. Ku appeared over him and felt and prodded his naked head.
"I can't stand this!"
It was a whisper of agony in the silence of the cell where the two men
stood watching, a cry from the fiber of the Hawk's innermost self. The
path he left across the frontiers of space was primarily a lonely one;
but Friday and Eliot Leithgow and two or three others were friends and
very precious to him, and they received all the emotion in his tough,
hard soul. Especially Leithgow--old, alone, dishonored on Earth, frail
and nearing the end of the long years--he needed protection. He had
trusted Carse.
Trusted him! And now this!
Ku Sui's fingers were prodding Leithgow's head like that of any dumb
animal chosen as subject for experimentation. Prodding.... Feeling....
"I can't stand it!" the Hawk whispered again.
The mask on his face, that famous self-imposed mask that hid all
emotion, had broken. Lines were there, deep with agony; tiny drops of
sweat stood out all over. He saw Ku Sui pick up something and adjust it
to his grip while looking down at the man who lay, now strapped on the
table. He saw him nod curtly to an assistant; saw the anesthetic
cylinder wheeled up a little closer, and the dials on it set to
quivering....
His hands came up and covered his eyes. But only for a moment. He would
not be able to keep his sight away. That was the exquisite torture the
Eurasian had counted on: he well knew as he had arranged it that the
adventurer would not be able to hold his eyes from the screen. Carse had
to look!
He took away his hands and raised his eyes.
The screen was blank!
* * * * *
Friday looked up with a grin from where he was kneeling before the knob
on the door of the cell. Carse saw that the knob was of metal, centered
in an inset square of some dull fibrous composition.
"This door has an electric lock, suh," the negro explained rapidly. "And
things worked by electricity can often be short-circuited!"
Quickly and silently he had disconnected from the television projector
the wire which led back through the ventilating slit in the wall, and
now was holding its end with one hand while with the other he twisted
out the screw which held in the knob. "Anyway, won't hurt to try," he
said, removing the screw and laying it on the floor. In another second
the knob lay beside it, and he was squinting into the hole where it had
fitted.
"Be quick!" Carse whispered.
Friday did not answer. He was guessing at the location of the mechanism
within, and trying to summon up all the knowledge he had of such things.
After a moment he bent one of the live ends of the wire he was holding
into a gentle curve and felt his way down within the lock with it,
carefully keeping the other end clear of all contacts.
Seconds went by as his fingers delicately worked--seconds that told
terribly on Hawk Carse. For the screen was blank and lifeless, and there
was no way of knowing how far the work in the laboratory had meanwhile
progressed. In his mind remained each detail of the scene as he had
viewed it last: the strapped-down figure, the approaching anesthetic
cylinder, the knives lying in readiness.... How was he to know if one of
those instruments were not already tinged with scarlet?
"Oh, be quick!" he cried again.
"If I can touch a live part of the lock's circuit," grunted Friday,
absorbed, "there ought--to--be--trouble."
* * * * *
Suddenly currents clashed with a sputtering hiss, and a shower of sparks
shot out of the knob-hole and were instantly gone. Short-circuited! It
remained to be seen whether it had destroyed the mechanism of the lock.
Friday dropped the hot, burned-through wire he was holding and reached
for the knob, but the Hawk had leaped into life and was ahead of him.
In a moment the knob was in the door and its holding screw part-way in.
Gently the Hawk tried the knob. It turned!
But they did not leave the cell--then. Ku Sui's voice was echoing
through the room, more than a trace of irritation in its tone:
"Hawk Carse, you are beginning to annoy me--you and your too-clever
black satellite."
Carse's eyes flashed to the ceiling. A small disklike object, almost
unnoticeable, lay flat against it in one place.
"Yes," continued Ku Sui, "I can talk to you, hear you and see you. I
believe you have succeeded in destroying the lock. So open it and glance
into the corridor--and escape, if you still want to. I rather wish you'd
try, for I'm extremely busy and must not be disturbed again."
Graven-faced, without comment Carse turned the knob and opened the door
an inch. He peeped through, Friday doing so also over his head--peeped
right into the muzzles of four ray-guns, held by an equal number of
coolie-guards waiting there.
"So that's it," Friday said, dejectedly. "He saw me workin' on the lock
an' sent those guards here at once. Or else had them there all the
time."
* * * * *
The Hawk closed the door and considered what to do. Ku Sui's voice
returned.
"Yes," it sounded metallically, "I've an assistant posted here who's
watching every move you make. Don't, therefore, hope to surprise me by
anything you may do.
"Now I am going to resume work. Reconnect the screen: I've had the
burned-out fuse replaced. If you won't, I'll have it done for you--and
have you so bound that you'll be forced to look at it.
"Don't tamper with any of my hearing and seeing mechanisms again,
please. If you do, I will be forced to have you destroyed within five
minutes.
"But--if you'd like to leave your cell, you have my full permission. You
should find it easy, now that the lock is broken."
The voice said no more. Carse ordered Friday harshly:
"Reconnect the screen."
The negro hastened to obey. His master's gray eyes again fastened on the
screen. Fiercely, for a moment, he smoothed his bangs.
The laboratory flashed into clear outline again. There was the shaft of
white light; the operating table, full under it; the anesthetic
cylinder, the banks of instruments, the sterilizers with their wisps of
steam curling ceaselessly up. There were the efficient white-clad
assistant-surgeons, their dull eyes showing through the holes in their
masks. And there was the black figure of Ku Sui, an ironic smile on his
lips, and before him the resigned and helpless form of Eliot Leithgow.
The Eurasian gestured. An assistant found the pulse in Leithgow's wrist,
and another bent over him in such fashion that the prisoners could not
see what he was doing. Ku Sui too bent over, something in his hands. The
prelude to living death had begun....
* * * * *
At that moment Hawk Carse was a different man, recovered from the
weakness that had made him cry out at his friend's imminent destruction
a short time before. The old characteristic fierceness and recklessness
had come back to him; he had decided on action--on probable death. "I've
been too cautious!" he exclaimed violently in his thoughts.
"Friday!" he whispered sharply to the negro, going close.
"Yes, suh?"
"Four men outside--a sudden charge through that door when I nod. We'll
die, too, by God! Willing?"
Friday was held by the man's iron will to succeed or die. Without
hesitation he whispered back:
"Yes, suh!"
Their whispers had been low. Dr. Ku Sui had not been warned, for the
screen still showed him bending over his victim.
"You'll open the door; you're nearest. I'll go through first," the Hawk
murmured, and smiled at the loyalty behind the promptness of his man's
grin of understanding.
Then both smiles faded. The muscles of the negro's huge body bunched in
readiness for the signal as tensely he watched the flaxen-haired head
close to him.
Suddenly it nodded.
The door swung wide and white man and black went charging out.
And immediately there burst in their ears the furious clanging of a
general alarm bell, sounding throughout the whole building!