_Four Bodies_
Hawk Carse had gone into Leithgow's ship hangar.
It was a vast place, occupying most of the hollowed-out space of the
hill. Seventy feet high and more than two hundred feet long, it was,
and, like the rest of the rooms, metal-walled and sound-proofed. Eliot
Leithgow's own personal space-ship, the _Sandra_, rested there on its
mooring cradle, and by its side was the laboratory's air-car, an
identical shape in miniature, designed for atmospheric transit.
The adventurer, a silent, swift figure, went straight to the air-car
and climbed into its control seat. He tested the controls, found them
responsive, then pressed a button set apart from the others: and the
huge port-lock door set in the farther wall of the hangar slid
smoothly open, revealing a metal chamber similar to that of the ship
port-lock on Ku Sui's asteroid. But whereas the chamber of the
asteroid's port-lock was for vacuum-atmosphere, this was for
water-atmosphere.
The clamps of the mooring cradle were released, and the air-car moved
gently into the lock chamber. The door swung shut behind. On the
pressing of another button there sounded a gurgling and splashing of
water, and quickly the chamber was filled. The air-car was now a
submarine. All these operations were effected by radio control from
within it.
When the water filled the inside of the chamber, the second door
opened automatically, and the car started forward through a long
steel-lined, water-filled tube. It continued on even keel until Carse,
watching through the bow window, saw a red light flash in the ceiling
of the tube: and then he tilted the car and rose.
A second later, the shiny, water-dripping shape of the car broke
through the surface of the lake that edged on the hill, and forsook
the water for the air.
To an outside observer, the appearance of the air-car and its
subsequent movements would have been incomprehensible. There lay the
hill, desolate, barren, apparently lifeless: and there, washing
against its slopes, the lake; nothing more. Then suddenly a curve of
gleaming steel thrust up through the muddy water, rose swiftly almost
straight into the cloudless blue of the sky, and as suddenly
disappeared, and remained gone from sight, as if the ether had opened
and swallowed it.
* * * * *
Using his infra-red device, Carse brought the car in neatly through
the ship-size port-lock of the dome, and sped it across to the
central building, to land lightly beside one of the wings. Debarking,
he ran down the wing's passage and in a few seconds was back in the
asteroid's control room.
Friday was sitting in a chair close by the bound Eurasian; Ban Wilson,
more restless, was pacing up and down. The Hawk nodded in response to
their looks of welcome and issued curt orders.
"All ready. Ban, the air-car's just outside; go over and get those
four men and the coolie and put them in it. Have your raygun ready,
but don't use it if humanly possible. We're going down to the
laboratory. I want speed. Please hurry."
"Right Carse!"
"Friday," the Hawk continued, "help me untie Dr. Ku."
They stooped to the chair and the impassive, silken figure sitting in
it, and in a moment the bonds were ripped off; all save those on the
wrists. Stretching himself, the Eurasian asked:
"You are taking the brains down now, Captain Carse?"
"No--just you, your assistants and that one coolie, this trip. Master
Leithgow and I wish to have a talk with you."
"I am always agreeable, my friend."
"Yes," said the Hawk, "you'll be surprisingly agreeable. And truthful
and helpful, too. Now--outside, please, and do not attempt to delay me
in any way. I am in a great hurry, and consequently will not be
patient at any tricks." He turned to the Negro. "Friday. I'm leaving
you here on guard. Stay alert, gun handy, and keep in radio contact.
I'll be back soon."
"Yes, suh!"
* * * * *
Walking behind his captive, the Hawk left, passing down the wing to
the air-car outside. There, Ban Wilson was waiting with the four white
assistants of Dr. Ku and the one robot-coolie, all unarmed, stolid,
emotionless. Carse placed them all in the rear seats of the car's
compartment, Ban facing them with drawn raygun. Then with a hum from
its generators the car raised, wheeled, slid forward, until through
the large port-lock, and swooped down to the lake.
Dr. Ku Sui watched everything with an interest he did not attempt to
disguise. There was being revealed to him the secret entrance to Eliot
Leithgow's laboratory, and long had he sought for that laboratory,
long pondered on its probable location. No doubt, at various times,
pissing over, he had seen the barren hill and its flanking lake, but
had never given them a second glance. Yet here, right in the lake, was
the doorway to Leithgow's refuge!
The air-car lowered like a humming bird to the lake's surface, paused
and dipped under. The light left the sealed ports and entrance
hatchway, and the water pressed around, dark and muddy. Down the car
sunk, apparently without direction, its course very slow, until ahead,
out of the blackness, a spot of red winked.
At once the air-car made towards it and slid into the tube leading
through the hill. Quickly it was in the chamber of the lock, the outer
door closed automatically behind, the water was drained out, and then
the inner door opened and the car, dripping, emerged into the
brilliantly-lit hangar and went to rest in its mooring cradle beside
Leithgow's space-ship.
A minute later its passengers were in the laboratory of the Master
Scientist.
* * * * *
Dr. Ku Sui took in the arrangements made in the laboratory with a
swift glance, and then his eyes went to a door that opened in the
opposite wall and to the slight, smock-garbed figure that came through
it. He smiled.
"Ah, Master Leithgow! A return visit, you see. At Captain Carse's
invitation. It is very interesting to me, this home of yours: so
cleverly concealed!"
Leithgow vouchsafed his archenemy no more than a look, but turned to
the Hawk.
"You are ready, Carse?"
"Some preliminaries first, Eliot. These men, the four whites and the
yellow, must be put in some place of safety. You can take care of
them, Ban. One of the storerooms; lock them in. You remember your way?
Then, better take off your suit."
Ban nodded, and led the five robot humans out. Leithgow, Hawk Carse
and Ku Sui were left alone in the laboratory, and for a minute there
was silence.
How much had passed between these three! How many plots, and
counter-plots: how much blood: how many lives affected! The feud of
Hawk Carse and Dr. Ku Sui--and Eliot Leithgow, who was the chief cause
of it--here again had come to a head. Here again were all the varied
forces of brains and guile, science and skill, marshaled in the great,
vital game on whose outcome depended the restoration of Eliot Leithgow
and the lives of the coordinated brains and, indeed, though more
distantly, the fate of all the tribes of men on all the planets. For
if Ku Sui won free he would go on irresistibly, and his goal was the
domination of the solar system....
Three men, alone in a room--and the course of the creature Man being
affected by their every move. Large words: but the histories of the
period bear them out. Though, doubtless, Ku Sui alone knew how great
were the stakes as they stood there in the laboratory.
* * * * *
Hawk Carse was uneasy. The odds seemed all on his side--yet there was
Ku Sui's strange, almost imperceptible smile, his mysterious words up
on the asteroid, his smooth, unruffled assurance! What did these
things mean? He intended now to find out. He said, tersely:
"Eliot. I have informed Dr. Ku that he is to be the means of the
transplantation of the coordinated brains to living human bodies,
since he is the only person capable of performing the operations. He
does not believe that we can force him to do our will, yet all the
same he is taking no chances: he started the death of the brains. We
shall have to work very fast--all right. But Dr. Ku has other cards to
play against us, and I don't know what they are. You and I must find
out now."
"I somehow feel that you mistrust me," interposed the Eurasian with
mock sadness. "Ah, if you could only read my mind.... Or can you? Is
that what you are coming to?"
The Hawk glanced at Leithgow; and Leithgow nodded, and placed a metal
chair close to one of the cylindrical drums--the one fitted with a
tube and breathing cone.
"Will you sit there. Dr. Ku?" Carse asked.
The green eyes scanned the drum.
"A gas, Master Leithgow?"
"That is all. Not harmful, not painful."
"I see. I see...." the Eurasian murmured. And suddenly, he smiled at
the two men facing him, and said pleasantly to Carse:
"Things repeat! Not long ago I asked you to sit in a chair and submit
to a treatment of mine, and you did as I asked. After so gallant a
precedent, how could I refuse? All right. Now, Master Leithgow, your
gas!"
* * * * *
With gentle fingers Eliot Leithgow fitted the cone on the Eurasian's
face and fastened it there. The fingers and thumb of one hand he kept
on Dr. Ku's pulse; with the other he pulled over slowly a control set
in the side of the drum. A ticking and slight hissing became audible,
and two indicators on the drum quivered and crept downward.
A minute of this--the ticking and soft hissing, the indicator's slow
fall, the silk-clad figure in the chair, watched closely by Carse on
one side and Eliot Leithgow on the other--and a change was apparent. A
ripple flowed over the Eurasian's silken garments; the body appeared
to loosen up, to become free of all muscular and mental tension. The
gas hissed on.
"The first step," murmured Leithgow abstractedly, out of his
concentration on dials and patient. "The muscles--notice--relaxed. The
will--the ego--the nexi of emotions and volitions which oppose
external direction--all being worked upon, submerged, neutralized--but
not his knowledge, not his skill. No--all that he will retain! You'll
notice nothing more until you see his eyes. A few minutes. What says
the red hand? Thirteen. At nineteen it should be completed."
Carse watched intently. It was wonderful to know that when the correct
amount of this substance, which he knew only as V-27, had been
administered, and Ku Sui awoke, there would be no enmity in him, no
opposition to their demands, no fencing with wits; that this same Ku
Sui, his great mentality unimpaired, would be subservient and entirely
dependable.
"Seventeen," murmured the old scientist. "Eighteen ... now!" With a
flick of his fingers he shut off the stream of V-27 and gently
unloosened the cone from Dr. Ku's face.
The ascetic features were in repose, the eyelids closed, their long
black lashes lying against the delicate saffron of the skin. Dr. Ku
Sui seemed resting in dreamless, unclouded sleep. But for only a
moment. Soon the eyelids quivered and slowly opened--and a great
change was immediately visible in the man's green eyes.
Many observers have recorded that under the veiled, enigmatic eyes of
Dr. Ku Sui there lurked a sultry glimmer of fire; or perhaps it was
that the observers who met these eyes always imagined the fire, being
conscious of the devil and the tiger in the man. But Carse and
Leithgow now saw that all that was gone.
No mask lay over the green eyes now, no spark of fire glinted deep in
them. They were clear and serene; they hid nothing; almost they were
the eyes of a fresh, innocent child. Dr. Ku Sui, he of a hundred
schemes, a score of plots, he of the magnificent capacity and untiring
brain bearing ever toward his goal of lordship of the solar system--it
was as if he had slipped into a magic pool whose waters had washed him
clean and given him innocence and eyes of peace....
* * * * *
The Eurasian breathed deeply, then smiled at the two men standing by
him.
"Now," whispered Eliot Leithgow. "Ask him anything. He will answer
truthfully."
The Hawk lost no time. He asked:
"Dr. Ku, you will perform the brain transplantations for us?"
"Yes, my friend."
The man's tone was different. Gone was the suaveness, the customary
polite mockery; it was frank, open, genuinely pleasant.
"Is it true, Dr. Ku, that your coordinated brains will die, if left in
their case?"
"Yes, they will die if left there."
"Within what time, to save them, must the operations to transplant
them into human bodies be started?"
"Within twenty-five, perhaps thirty, minutes at the most."
"Can all five brains be given the initial steps for transplantation
into the heads of your four white assistants and the coolie prisoner
within one hour--the remaining half of the two hours the brains said
they would retain the necessary vitality?"
Dr. Ku smiled at him. There was no malice in the thunderbolt that he
unleashed then. He simply told what he knew to be the truth.
"By fast work they could be, and so saved, although the subsequent
operations will take weeks. But the brains cannot be transplanted into
the heads of my four white assistants."
"What?" Both the Hawk and Leithgow cried the word out together. "They
cannot?"
* * * * *
Dr. Ku looked at them as though astonished.
"Why, no, my friends! I wish I were able to, but I cannot perform the
operations by myself, unaided. That would be impossible, absurd....
You seem startled. Surely you must have known that those assistants
would be vital to the work! I have taught them, you see; trained them;
they were specialists in brain surgery to begin with, and I do not
believe there are any others this side of Mars who could take their
place in operations of this type. Without them, I could never
transplant the brains."
This, then, had been the trick up his sleeve! This was why, in the
control room of the asteroid, he had shown relief when the Hawk told
him what bodies were to be used for the transplantation! For he had
known that, whatever Eliot Leithgow's method of forcing him to
perform the operations might be, and no matter how efficacious, the
coordinated brains simply could not be put in the heads of his four
assistants--because the assistants were themselves needed for the
operations!
"Then--it's hopeless!" said the Master Scientist bitterly. "All this
for nothing! You might find other bodies in Port o' Porno,
Carse--condemned men, criminals--but Porno's an hour away, two hours'
round trip, and in thirty minutes the brains will be too weak to
save...."
"I am sorry," Ku Sui continued. "I should have told you before,
perhaps. If there were any way out I knew of, I would tell you but
there does not seem to be...."
"Yes," broke in Hawk Carse suddenly. His left hand had been pulling at
his bangs of flaxen hair; his brain had been working very fast. He
added coldly:
"Yes, there is a way."
* * * * *
Leithgow and Ku Sui looked at him inquiringly.
"We need four bodies," he went on. "We have one--the coolie; he is not
needed to assist in the operations. Four bodies--and here, ready, in
twenty-five minutes. Not the bodies of normal men, of those with life
ahead of them. No. That would be murder. Four bodies of condemned
men--men with no hope left, nothing left to live for. I can get them!"
He brushed aside Ku Sui's and Leithgow's questions. He was all steel
now, frigid, intent, hard. "Ban!" he called. "Ban Wilson!"
"Yes, Carse?" Ban had been waiting outside the laboratory.
"Put on your propulsive space-suit. Hurry. Then here."
"Right!"
Carse ran over to where he had left his suit and rapidly got inside.
As he did so, he said:
"Eliot, there's fast work to be done while I'm gone with Ban. You must
take your assistants and Dr. Ku up to the asteroid in the air-car and
transfer down here all the equipment Dr. Ku says he'll need. Be
extremely careful with the case of coordinated brains. If you possibly
can, have everything in readiness by the time Ban and I return with
the four bodies."
Ban Wilson, in his suit, entered the laboratory. The Hawk gestured him
to the door which led to the tree-shaft to the surface.
"But, Carse, _what_ bodies? Where can you get four more living human
bodies?" Leithgow cried.
"No time, now, Eliot!" the Hawk rapped out, turning at the door. "Just
do as I say--and hurry! I'll get them!"
And he was gone.