_White's Brain--Yellow's Head_
To Friday it was a bad mistake to reveal the location of the
laboratory to Dr. Ku Sui. From him above all men had that location up
to now been kept. Just a few days before, Hawk Carse had risked his
life to preserve the secret. And yet now, deliberately, he was showing
it to the Eurasian!
Nervously, Friday watched him, and he saw that his eyes were alive
with interest as they scanned the visi-screen. It was too much for the
Negro.
"Captain Carse," he whispered, coming close to the adventurer, "look,
suh--he's seein' it all! Shouldn't I blindfold him?"
Carse shook his head, but turned to Dr. Ku, where he sat bound in the
chair scrutinizing the visi-screen.
"Yes, Doctor," he said, "there it is--what you have searched for so
long--the refuge and the laboratory of Eliot Leithgow."
"There, Captain?" murmured the Eurasian. "I see nothing!"
And true, the visi-screen showed nothing but a hill, a lake, a swamp,
and the distant, surrounding jungle.
That spot on Satellite III had been most carefully chosen by the
Master Scientist and Carse as best suiting their needs. It lay at
least a thousand miles--a thousand miles of ugly, primeval
jungle--from the nearest unfriendly isuan ranch, and was diametrically
opposite Port o' Porno. Thus it allowed Leithgow and Carse to come and
go with but faint chance of being observed, and the steady watch kept
through the laboratory's telescopic instruments lessened even that.
And even if their movements to and from the laboratory had been
observed, a spy could have discovered little, so ingeniously was the
camouflage contrived to use to best advantage the natural features of
the landscape.
At this spot on Satellite III there was a small lake, long rather than
wide. At its shallow end, the lake lost itself in marshy, thick-grown
swamps; at its deep end it washed against the slopes of a low, rounded
hill. Topping the hill was a rude ranch-house, which to the casual eye
would appear the unimportant habitation of some poor jungle-squatter,
with beds of various vegetables and fruits growing around it, and
guarded against the jungle's animals by what looked like a makeshift
fence. The ground inside the fence had been cleared save for a few
thick, dead stumps of oxi trees, gnarled and weather-beaten, which
made the whole outlay look crude and desolate.
So desolate, so poor, so humble, as not to deserve a second glance
from the lowest of scavenger or pirate ships. So misleading!
* * * * *
Carse had brought the invisible asteroid to a halt perhaps a half mile
above the hill. The minutes were slipping by, bringing the two-hour
deadline ever closer, but he did not skimp his customary caution on
approaching the laboratory. From the control room, he swept the
electelscope over the surrounding terrain, and soon sighted the band
of isuanacs Eliot Leithgow had mentioned.
Through the 'scope's magnifying mirrors they seemed but yards away,
though they were wandering knee-deep in the marshes at the far end of
the lake. All their repulsive details stood out clearly.
More beasts than men, were such isuanacs (pronounced ee-swan-acs), so
called from the drug that had betrayed them step by step to a pit in
which there was no intelligence, no light, no hope--nothing but their
mind-shattering craving. In many and unpredictable ways did the drug
ravish their bodies. They were outcasts from the port of outcasts,
driven out of Porno into the wilderness, where they tracked out their
miry ways searching ever for the isuan weed until some animal ended
their enslavement, or the drug itself finally killed them in
convulsions. They were the legion of the damned.
This band of half a dozen was typical, grubbing through the slime of
the swamp, snarling at each other, now and again fighting over a leaf,
then squatting down in the mud where they were, to chew on it, their
torture of mind and body momentarily forgotten. Rags, mud-caked and
foul, partly covered their emaciated bodies: their hair was matted,
their eyes blood-shot....
Carse noted their position and looked up at Friday.
"Get the Master Scientist for me, please," he requested. The radio
connection took only seconds: and then he said into the microphone:
"Eliot? We're directly above you, as you probably have seen. All
well?"
"Yes, Carse. The laboratory's in readiness. But those
isuanacs--they're still outside."
"I've seen them, and I'm going to drive them away. Then I'll be down
to you. Have the upper entrance ready."
* * * * *
The Hawk turned back to the controls. Taking the space-stick out of
neutral, he moved it very slightly down and to one side. Ban and
Friday, not understanding his intention, watched the visi-screen.
The whole mass of rock that was the asteroid changed position at a
gentle speed. The band of isuanacs came nearer and nearer, and then
were to the right. Completely oblivious of the great bulk hovering
above them, they continued their grubbing through the swamp; and then
the asteroid was over the jungle beyond them, and lowering its craggy
under-side.
The under-side brushed the crown of the jungle. The trees bent,
crackled and broke, as if swept by a vicious but silent hurricane.
Only a moment of contact; but in that moment a square mile of
interwoven trees and vines was swept low--and to the isuanacs the
effect, as was intended, was terrifying.
They stared at the phenomenon. There had been no sound, no whip of
wind, nothing--yet all those trees had bent and crashed splintering to
the ground. Their slavering lips open, the isuan weed forgotten, they
stared: and then howling and shrieking they broke and went splashing
off panic-stricken through the marsh.
In five minutes the band had disappeared into the jungle in the
opposite direction and the district was cleared; and by that time
Hawk Carse was again in his space-suit, out of the control room and
busy at the mechanism of one of the great ship-sized port-locks in the
dome, having left behind him both Ban and Friday to guard Dr. Ku.
He mastered the controls of the port-lock quickly, and swung inner and
outer doors open. He glided through, and then, a giant, clumsy figure,
poised far out in the air, a soft breeze washing his face as he gazed
down at the hill five miles below, judging his descent. As he did not
use the infra-red instrument hanging from his neck, the asteroid might
not have been there at all.
A moment or so later, after a straight, swift drop, Carse landed on
the hill, close to a particular, gnarled oxi-tree stump. The nearby
ranch-house looked deserted, the whole place seemed desolate. The Hawk
waddled over to the stump, pressed a crooked little twig sticking out
from it, and a section of the seeming-bark slid down, revealing the
hollow, metal-sided interior of a cleverly camouflaged shaft.
There were rungs inside, but Carse could not use them. He squeezed
himself in, closed the entrance panel, and, carefully manipulating his
gravity controls, floated down. A descent of twenty-five feet, and he
was on the floor of a short, level corridor with gray walls and
ceiling.
Carse clumped along to the door at the other end of the corridor,
opened it, and stepped into the hidden underground laboratory of
Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow, which, with its storerooms, living
quarters and space-ship hangar, had been built into the hollowed-out
hill.
* * * * *
"Welcome back, Carse!"
"Hello, Eliot," the Hawk nodded, rapidly divesting himself of the
suit but retaining his infra-red device. "You've lost no time, I see."
The elderly scientist, his frail form clad in a buff-colored smock,
turned and surveyed the laboratory. In the center of the square room
five improvised operating tables were drawn up, each one flooded
individually with, light from focused flood-tubes above in the white
ceiling. Flanking them were tables for instruments and sterilizers,
and, more prominent, two small sleek cylindrical drums, from one of
which sprouted a tube ending in a breathing-cone.
"The best I could do on such short notice," Leithgow commented.
"Where are your assistants?"
"At work on the V-27. All I had on hand is in those cylinders."
"Much?"
"Enough for twelve hours for one man, but the process of its
manufacture is accelerating; fortunately I had plenty of ingredients.
Of course I've divined your intention, Carse. Ku Sui to perform the
operations under the V-27. And it's possible, possible! It's
stupendous--and possible!"
"Yes," said the Hawk, "but more later. I'm going up now to get Dr. Ku.
I'll use the air-car. It's ready?"
"Yes." Leithgow answered. "But, Carse--one question I must ask--"
The Hawk, already halfway to the door in the opposite wall of the
laboratory, paused and looked back inquiringly.
"What bodies are to be used?"
"The only ones available, Eliot," the adventurer replied, "since Ku
Sui, in his attempt to destroy the brains, left us only two hours--now
one hour--to complete the first steps of the transfer. They'll be
those four white assistants of his--those men, you remember, whose
intellects he's dehumanized--"
"Yes, yes?" Leithgow pressed him eagerly. "And the fifth?"
"A robot coolie."
"Good God!"
"I know, Eliot! It won't be pleasant for one of those brains to find
itself in a yellow body. But it's that or nothing."
The scientist nodded slowly, his first expression of shock leaving his
old face to sadness: "But, a coolie. A coolie...."
"Come, Eliot, we need speed! Speed! We've but an hour, remember, to
complete the first steps! I'll have Ku Sui and the five men down
immediately."
The Hawk opened the door and strode down the long corridor beyond. His
footsteps were swiftly gone: and then the sound of another door
opening and closing. In the laboratory there was a murmur from the old
man.
"A coolie! A scientist's brain in that ugly yellow head! When
consciousness returns, what a cruel shock!"