The Affair of the Brains Part 15

"I am very tired," the old scientist said. "Oh, but we'll sleep and feast and game when we get back to my hidden lab on Three--won't we!"

"Chicken for me!" exclaimed Friday. "Even at twenty dollars a can!"

"Your shoulder, Ca.r.s.e--how is it?" asked the Master Scientist solicitously. "And how did you ever get out of that s.p.a.ce-ship in time, after you had given it such an acceleration?"

There was a tired smile in the adventurer's voice when he replied:

"My shoulder--a trifle. I have a dozen such burns. But my feet still hurt from the twenty-foot drop I took out of the _Scorpion_. I had to get out: the shock of the crash would have killed me.

"But I've been looking for the asteroid," he went on--and interrupted himself. "By the horn of the phanti!" he exclaimed in amazement. "Look, Eliot! That explains it all!"

His whole body was tilted back to allow him to look upward. Friday and the Master Scientist followed his startled gaze, and they too gaped in wonder.

For there was nothing above or around them--no dwindling fragment of rock--no sign of any asteroid: only the eternal stars.

"Yes," said Eliot Leithgow slowly, "that explains it all...."

"It explains what?" asked Friday, staring. "And where is the asteroid?"

"It's up there," the Hawk replied. "Don't you see now, Eclipse, why no one's ever found it; why we could hunt forever for it and hunt in vain?

Ku Sui made his whole asteroid invisible!"