_Trapped in the Laboratory_
In his carefully welded plot-chain, Ku Sui left one weak link, though he
was not aware of it at the time. For it would not appear save by the
testing of it, and he had not expected it to be tested. Carse acted
recklessly; perhaps, if cold reason be applied to his move, senselessly.
Dr. Ku had not thought he would dare make the break he did. But the
adventurer did dare, and the loophole, the weak link, was exposed.
The Eurasian had a paranoic's vanity, and with it a lust accumulated
over years to exact the most terrible vengeance he could from the
adventurer who had frustrated his schemes time and time again. His
arrangement for subtly forcing Carse to watch the operation was part of
his vengeance; but he planned more. He wanted his old foe, broken by the
living death of Eliot Leithgow, to die slowly later; wanted to crumple
that will of steel utterly; wanted to watch and pleasantly mock him
during the slow death agonies he had contrived for him. Therefore--and
here lay the weak link--Dr. Ku left orders for Carse to be kept alive.
If he had not instructed his coolie-guards to wound, and not kill, in
case of a break for freedom, Carse and Friday could never possibly have
gained the corridor alive. The four waiting ray-guns would have burned
out their lives within three seconds. But, as it was, the barrage of
shots from the ray-guns was directed at their legs, with the intention
of bringing them down--and their legs were moving very rapidly. And so,
reckoning up the caliber of the two comrades, their wild fighting start,
their fatalistic resolve to get as many as possible of the enemy before
they died, the result of that first hectic scramble in the corridor was
more or less inevitable.
* * * * *
With a savage war-whoop that rose, ear-shattering, above the clanging of
the alarm bell, Friday flung his two hundred and twenty pounds of brawn
and muscle after Carse into the thick of the guards, taking no more
notice of the spitting streaks of orange light that laced past his legs
than if they had been squirts from a water-pistol. The guards had been
bunched well together, but they scattered like ten-pins when Carse,
followed by the living thunderbolt of fighting negro, crashed into them.
In that first charge three of them were knocked flat, their guns either
dropping or twisting loose from their hands.
Immediately recovering, the Hawk darted at the fourth with the speed of
a striking cobra; his wiry hands closed around the yellow throat: and
two seconds later that coolie was no longer connected with the
proceedings, a whacking head-thump being his passport into
insensibility. Again Friday's exultant war-whoop bellowed out over the
scene.
Carse pushed to his feet, his deadly fighting smile on his face, a
ray-gun in his hand. He stooped and picked up another.
"Get to the Master!" roared Friday, an ebon god of war between two
futilely attacking bodies. "I'm--followin'!"
In those red seconds, ultimate success was still too impossible a thing
to even hope for. But they would at least try, then die like the men
they were.
Hawk Carse sped on down the corridor, a deadly, smoothly-functioning
fighting machine. And after him a few seconds later came leaping the
negro, a whooping giant with a ray-gun in each hand and the light of
battle flashing in his eyes. As his personal contribution to the fight
he was leaving in the rear three sprawled bodies, two knocked cold and
the third with a broken neck.
Their triumph had so far been a matter of but sixty seconds. The jangle
of the alarm bell continued ominously. It summoned resistance,
well-trained resistance; the defenses of the asteroid awoke to action.
Doors spacing the corridor behind now began to open, releasing dozens of
Orientals. Nor had these men heard Ku Sui's orders. They would shoot to
kill!
* * * * *
Three peering faces suddenly were in Hawk Carse's line of vision ahead:
three ray-guns were settling on him. His famous left hand, the gun-hand
that was known and dreaded throughout space, moved with the eye-blinding
speed that was necessary; his trigger finger bent only three times, but
each of the pencil-thin streaks of orange that spat forth brought down a
man, and he had struck without slackening his stride for an instant.
Twice more his ray-gun spoke, and then the goal, the entrance to the
central laboratory, was just ahead. Carse glanced back.
"Yes, suh!" a fierce voice yelled out to him. "Coming!"
Friday was bringing up the rear as fast as he could. He came sideways in
a zigzag course ducking and whirling constantly, and in between firing
promptly at any portions of enemy anatomies that dared project into the
line of the corridor. The Hawk covered the last few yards of his
retreat, and then they were together at the laboratory.
"The knob!" Carse ordered, spraying the corridor in general warning.
Friday tried it, but the door was locked. He hurled himself against it,
but it did not budge.
How to get through? On the other side of the door was Leithgow, and
probably Ku Sui; on this side they were trapped in a blind end. They
could never make it back down that gauntlet and live, and anything like
concerted action on the part of the yellows would do for them where they
were.
That concerted action came at once. Seventy feet behind, a heavy
shot-projector was pushed out on its little rollers from one of the
doors. A hand reached out and whirled it so that its muzzle bore
straight down the corridor at them. Carse shot at the hand, but the
target was too small even for his fine eye, and he missed; Friday
silenced an emboldened orange spot of light that was spitting streaks at
them.
Hopeless! It looked like the end. Hawk Carse's face was in its old,
emotionless mold as he waited, his gun sharp on the spot where the hand
must reappear if they would fire the deadly projector. He had to get
that hand--and any others that took its place. An almost impossible
shot. He couldn't rush it and get it too. Not in time.
A moment passed. The hand flashed out; Carse shot and again missed. Then
a narrow cone was along the corridor, a blinding orange streak.
Instantly, with a rasp of thunder, it was gone, and the air was
stifling.
The Hawk was untouched; Friday, too, he saw. The bolt had been taken by
the door--and one of the door's two halves was ajar!
* * * * *
At once Hawk Carse acted. "Inside!" he yelled, then was through, the
negro right behind. Carse's eyes swept the laboratory. It was a place of
shadows, the sole light being a faint gleam from a tiny bulb-tipped
surgical tool which glimmered weirdly from the bank of instruments
waiting by the operating table. Carse saw no one.
"Hold the door!" he ordered. "I don't think it'll lock!"
Friday obeyed. He found the inner bolt melted and the lock inoperative;
and, placing his forearms on either side of the middle crack of the
door, he stood bracing it.
A furious pounding shook the door. A heavy pressure bent it inward.
"Quick!" the big black gasped. "Somethin' to wedge it!"
"A minute, Friday," the Hawk answered. "Hold it!"
He was already dragging a metal table there; and, upended under the
knob, making an angle with the floor, it held stoutly closed the door,
now thumping and quivering with blows given it from outside. The panting
negro fell back from the door exhausted, but rose to help his master at
the need for placing additional barricades.
That finished, the Hawk wheeled, and at once, pantherlike, ray-guns at
the ready, stalked the room. There was no sign of the enemy. He
approached the operating table.
A great relief flooded his grim face as he sighted Eliot Leithgow lying
there, apparently untouched and still conscious. The elderly scientist
was strapped down tight, but he was smiling.
"I knew you'd come, Carse, if you could," he said simply.
There was no time for visiting. "Where's Ku Sui?" the adventurer asked.
"Gone," Leithgow answered. "I heard a door open and close--which one I
couldn't see. He went as soon as that bell began to ring. The
assistants, too."
Through the shouts and batterings at the barricaded door came a new
sound--from another direction. Like a streak the Hawk was at one of the
three other doors, throwing its inside hand bolt; and by the time he had
shot over the second, Friday had taken the cue and secured the remaining
one.
The negro let out a vast breath. "Umph!" he said. "I'll tell the
universe that was close!"
* * * * *
Hawk Carse said nothing. With eyes ever-watchful for sign of a trick or
a trap in the apparently deserted laboratory, he quickly unbuckled the
bands that held Leithgow to the operating table. Friday lifted the
scientist to the floor, where he stretched weakly.
The adventurer smiled faintly, then his eyes went cold and serious.
Crisply he said:
"We came, yes--but now I think we're trapped. There'll be men outside
each of these four doors. The bolts may hold them a while, but
eventually they'll get through. We must look for further weapons. If
only there were better light! Friday," he ordered, "look for a switch.
_Ah!_"
With a thud and a booming reverberation a systematic battering had begun
on the metal door through which they had entered. It quivered visibly
and rang as the powerful blows from the other side bludgeoned into it,
and evenly spaced, shrewdly delivered at the vital middle point.
_Whrang, whrang_--even strokes, ringing throughout the barred
laboratory--_whrang ... whrang_....
And then a similar piece settled into clanging routine on another door;
then on the remaining two. The bolts holding them jumped with each
deafening thud. Friday scowled, forgot to search farther for the switch,
took a few short, indecisive steps, and then stood still again, looking
questioningly at his master. The Hawk stood silent also, smoothing the
bangs of flaxen hair above one temple, his face knit in concentration.
He had been afraid they would use the great projector on the door, and
had been somewhat cheered by the reflection that they dared not, for
fear of destroying the contents of the laboratory, especially the
irreplaceable brains. But this was worse; Ku Sui was without question
directing their efforts now. And that being the case, he could expect to
see one door after another battered down--and then a concerted,
four-point rush which would end everything....
* * * * *
Eliot Leithgow said the extraordinary thing that pointed a way out. "May
I suggest," he said mildly, "that we try to get Dr. Ku Sui's brains to
help us?"
"What do you mean?"
The older man smiled, a little sadly. "Those brains--they once were
friends of mine. It's possible they'll answer our questions. It won't
hurt to try. We'll ask them how it might be possible to get out."
Hawk Carse cried: "Eliot, you've got it! There is a chance!"
But the negro shivered. The brains stood for magic, for ghosts--for
awful, unknown things he wanted nothing to do with.
Carse shoved back the screen concealing the infamous device.
"We know where this switch is, at least. If only the current's not been
turned off!"
"Probably not," the Master Scientist said, out of his own technical
thought-train.
Friday hung back, loath to be concerned. He looked askance at the thing,
his open mouth a small round circle.
The Hawk was at the switch, but his hand hesitated. In spite of the
emergency at the doors, in spite of his innate promptness of action, he
hesitated. This thing he was about to do--this awful human mechanism
before him--they were so weird and unnatural....
Then he heard a faint click inside the laboratory--in a place where no
one should be. Instinctively he whirled and crouched--and an orange ray
streaked over his head with its wicked spit of death. At once his own
ray-gun was up and answering to the spot where the other bolt had
started, and then he was flat on the floor and ceiling toward the wall
opposite.
* * * * *
A high wide panel in the wall had slid open, with only the faint noise
Carse had heard to mark its movement. For just a few seconds it stayed
open. The Hawk covered the last few feet in a desperate rush, but he
reached it too late. It clicked shut in his face, and there was no hold
for his hands when he tried to force it back.
Only a voice showed that someone was on the other side. In familiar,
suave tones it said:
"Carse, I still will take you and Leithgow--alive. It would of course be
idle to ask you to surrender, but that's not necessary, for you're
trapped and can't possibly last another five minutes. I intrude only to
warn you away from my synchronized brains. I will destroy without
compunction anyone who meddles with them."
Dr. Ku's voice dropped away; the last words seemed to have come from
below. Apparently he was descending by a stairway or hidden elevator.
"Without compunction!" Leithgow echoed with a bitter smile.
Carse ordered Friday curtly to watch the panel, then returned to
Leithgow.
"Eliot," he said, "we've got to be quick."
And with his words the delicate, overstrained filament in the tiny
instrument bulb gave out, and the laboratory was plunged into ultimate
blackness....