_To the Laboratory_
When the Negro returned, panting, with Ban Wilson, it was to discover
Carse in the control room of the asteroid. He was studying the
multifarious devices and instruments: and they, seeing his face so set
in concentration, did not disturb him, but went over to where Dr. Ku
Sui sat in a chair, and posted themselves behind it.
The apparatus in the control room resembled that of any modern
space-ship of its time, except that there were extra pieces of
unguessed function. Directly in front of Carse was the directional
space-stick above its complicated mechanism: above his eyes was the
wide six-part visi-screen, which in space would record the whole
"sphere" of the heavens: while to his right was the chief control
board, a smooth black surface studded with squads of vari-colored
buttons and lights, These were the essentials, familiar to any ship
navigator; but they were here awesome, for they controlled not the one
or two hundred feet of an ordinary craft, but twenty miles of this
space-ship of rock.
"Yes ... yes...." Carse murmured presently out of his study, then
turned and for the first time appeared to notice Friday and Ban. He
gave orders.
"Eclipse, you see the radio over there? Get Master Leithgow on it for
me--protected beam. Ban, you bind Dr. Ku Sui in that chair, please."
Wilson was surprised.
"Bind him? Isn't he going to run this thing?"
"No."
"_You're_ going to, Carse?"
"Yes. I don't quite trust Dr. Ku. The asteroid's controlled on the
same principles as a space-ship: I'll manage. Please hurry, Ban."
"Cap'n., suh! Already got the Master Scientist!" called Friday from
the radio panel. The Hawk strode swiftly to it and clamped the
individual receivers over his ears.
"M. S.?" he asked into the microphone. "You're there?"
"Yes. Carse? What's happened?"
"All's well, but I'm in a tremendous hurry: I've only got time, now,
to tell you we're on the asteroid with Dr. Ku prisoner, and that I'm
undertaking to transplant the coordinated brains into living human
bodies.... What? Yes transplant them! Please, M. S.--not now:
questions later. I'm calling primarily to learn whether you have any
V-27 on hand?"
Eliot Leithgow, in his distant laboratory, paused before replying.
When his voice sounded in the receivers again, it was excited.
"I think I see, Carse! Good! Yes, I have a little--"
"We'll need a lot," the Hawk cut in tersely. "Will you instruct your
assistants to begin preparing as much as they can in the next hour? Yes.
And your laboratory--clear it for the operations, and improvise five
operating tables. Powerful lights, too, M. S. Yes--_yes_--right--all
accessories. Have someone stand by your radio; I'll radio further
details while we're on our way."
"Right, Carse. All understood."
The Hawk remembered something else. "Oh, yes, Eliot--is everything
safe in your vicinity?"
"There's a small band of isuanacs foraging around somewhere in the
neighborhood, but otherwise nothing. They're harmless--"
"But possibly observant," finished Carse. "All right--I'll clear them
away before descending to the lab. Until later, Eliot."
* * * * *
Carse switched off the microphone and turned to catch Friday's shocked
expression. Carse looked inquiringly at his dark satellite.
"What's wrong?"
"Lordy, suh," the Negro whispered, "Dr. Ku could hear all you said!
He'll know where Master Leithgow's laboratory is!"
The Hawk smiled briefly. "No matter, Eclipse. I'm quite sure the
information will avail him nothing. For this ride to the laboratory
will be his last ride but one." He turned. "We're starting at once.
Ban, you've bound him well?"
"If he can get out of those knots," grinned Wilson, "I'll kiss him on
the mouth!"
The Eurasian's nostrils distended. "Then," he said. "I most certainly
will not try. But Captain Carse, may I have a cigarro before we start
on this journey?"
Carse had gone over so the space-stick and his eyes were on the
visi-screen, but he now turned them to his old foe for a moment. "Not
just now, Dr. Ku," he said levelly. "For it might be that all but two
puffs of it would be wasted. Yes--later--if we survive these next few
minutes."
The remark did nothing to ease the tension of their leaving. Ban
Wilson could not restrain a question.
"Carse, are you going to risk atmospheric friction all the way to the
laboratory?"
"No. Haven't time for that. Up and down--up into space, then down to
the lab--high acceleration and deceleration."
He grasped the space-stick, then in neutral, holding the asteroid
motionless in the valley. He glanced at the visi-screen again, checked
over the main controls and tightened his hand on the stick.
"Ready everyone," he said, and gently moved the stick up and forward.
* * * * *
There was, to the men in the control room, little consciousness of
power unleashed: only the visi-screen and the bank of positional
instruments told what had happened with that first, delicate movement
of the space-stick. It was an experiment, a feeler. The indicators of
the positionals quivered a little and altered, and in the visi-screen
the hills of the valley, that a moment before had been quite close and
large, had diminished to purple-green mounds below.
Then the accelerating sensations began. Carse had the "feel" of the
asteroidal ship and his controlling hand grew bolder. The steady
pressure on the space-stick increased, it went up farther and farther,
and the whole mighty mass of the asteroid streaked out at a tangent
through the atmosphere of Satellite III toward the gulf beyond.
With dangerous acceleration the gigantic body rose, and from outside
there grew a moaning which was quickly a shrieking--a terrible,
maddened sound as of a Titan dying in agony--the sound of the cloven
atmosphere. Twenty miles of rock were hurled out by the firm hand on
the space-stick, and that hand only increased its driving pressure
when the screaming of the air died away in the depthless silence of
outer space.
In one special visi-screen lay mirrored the craggy back-stretch of the
asteroid, half of it clear-cut and hard in Jupiter's flood of light,
the other half lost in the encompassing blackness of space. Over this
shadowed portion a faint, unearthly glow clung close, the result of
the terrific friction of the ascent. In miniature, in the regular
screens, was Satellite III, but a distorted miniature, for its
half-face appeared concave in shape, and dusted with the haze of its
atmosphere.
* * * * *
The Hawk was visibly relieved. He turned to the silent Ku Sui.
"I must congratulate you, Dr. Ku," he said, "on the operation of the
asteroid. It's as smooth as any ship. And now, your cigarro. Ban, have
you one?"
Wilson produced a small metal case from which he extracted one of the
long black cylinders.
"You will have to put it in my lips, please," murmured Dr. Ku. "Thank
you. And a light? Again thanks. Ah...." He drew in the smoke, exhaled
a fine stream of it from his delicately carved nostrils. "Good." Then
he looked up pleasantly at the Hawk.
"And my congratulations to you, Captain. Not only on your expert
maneuvering of my asteroid, but on everything: your resourcefulness,
your decision, your caution. I have long admired these qualities in
you, and the events of to-day, though for me perhaps unfortunate,
increase my admiration. My own weak resistance, my attempt to
frustrate your plans in connection with the brains--how miserable in
comparison! It would seem, Captain, that you cannot fail, and that you
will indeed succeed in giving the brains new life, so swiftly do you
move. Yes, my congratulations!"
He drew at the cigarro, and the smoke wreathed gently around his
ascetic saffron face. A faint, queer glint was visible under the long
lashes that half-veiled his eyes as he continued:
"But I have a question, Captain. A mere nothing, but still--"
"Yes, Dr. Ku?"
"The living bodies into which you propose to transplant the
brains--where are they?"
Hawk Carse's face was stern and his voice frigid as he answered:
"Fortunately, those bodies are right here on the asteroid."
"Here on the asteroid, Captain? I don't understand. What bodies are
here?"
"The bodies of your four white assistants, whom I have safely
confined, and one of your robot-coolies, also confined. I did not
intend to use these five, but, because you put a premium on time by
your attempted destruction of the brains, it cannot be helped."
* * * * *
Dr. Ku Sui's impassive demeanor did not change. He did not seem in the
least surprised. He puffed quietly at the cigarro and nodded.
"Of course, of course. You have five bodies right here on the
asteroid. Yes."
"At least," continued Carse levelly, "I do not regret having to use
the bodies of your men. They are no longer human: they are not men:
they are in effect but machines of your making, Dr. Ku."
"Quite. Quite."
"I suppose you find it an unpleasant thought, to have to be the means
of re-making them into whole, normal human beings?"
"On the contrary," breathed the Eurasian, "you inspire a very pleasant
thought in my brain, Captain Carse--though I must confess it is not
exactly the thought you mention." A smile, veiled by the smoke of the
cigarro, appeared on his lips.
The Hawk looked at him closely: the words had a hidden meaning, and it
was clear he was not intended to miss the implied threat. But what was
Ku Sui's thought? Back in his mind an anxiety grew, indefinite, vague
and devilish.
And that vague anxiety was still with him when, fifty-seven minutes
later, the asteroid returned from its inverted U-flight, slowed in its
hurtling drop from space and hovered directly over the secret, hidden
laboratory of Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow.