The Passing of Ku Sui Part 10

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 Ca.r.s.e 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' p.o.r.no. Thus it allowed Leithgow and Ca.r.s.e 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 en 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!

Ca.r.s.e 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 (p.r.o.nounced 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 p.o.r.no 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 d.a.m.ned.

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....

Ca.r.s.e 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, Ca.r.s.e. 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 s.p.a.ce-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 ma.s.s 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 Ca.r.s.e was again in his s.p.a.ce-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, Ca.r.s.e 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 Ca.r.s.e 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.

Ca.r.s.e 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 s.p.a.ce-ship hangar, had been built into the hollowed-out hill.

"Welcome back, Ca.r.s.e!"

"h.e.l.lo, 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 a.s.sistants?"

"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, Ca.r.s.e. 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, Ca.r.s.e--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 a.s.sistants of his--those men, you remember, whose intellects he's dehumanized--"

"Yes, yes?" Leithgow pressed him eagerly. "And the fifth?"

"A robot coolie."

"Good G.o.d!"

"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!"