The Passing of Ku Sui Part 20

After another hundred yards or so the light from ahead winked again.

It was stronger. Only a second of it, but he now suspected that it came at regular intervals. It was a machine, perhaps, working under the hands of the Eurasian. On--on! With the seconds fleeting by, building to the small total which would bring friction to the asteroid, and incandescence, and scalding death for him within it!

Again, suddenly, the mysterious light. It left instantly as usual, but not before it revealed, well ahead, the end of the pa.s.sage. Quickly he traversed the remaining distance and felt around with his hands. He found what he half expected. There was an opening, a doorway, to his right. The room beyond surely held the final secret of the asteroid.

And if Dr. Ku Sui were anywhere, he was in there.

Ca.r.s.e restrained an impulse to rush in, deciding to wait for the recurring light. Everything in him told him that this was the climax, that through the door to his right lay the object of his chase; and in spite of his consciousness of the plunging asteroid, and the up-leaping skin of Earth's atmosphere, now so close, he stood full in the doorway, gun ready, waiting. Seconds were precious, but this was the part of common sense. He needed the light to show him what perils he must face; he could not go into that chamber ignorant of the situation there.

For what seemed ages the fantastic figure stood there. The great rock turning over and over, with awful speed dropping down. Earth nearing, death ever closer--and he standing in silence and darkness, waiting to finish the feud! He might never escape; he knew that; it might already be too late to try; but the core of the man, his grim and steely will, would not let him think of retreating towards safety until he had faced Dr. Ku Sui and decided the account between them forever.

The wall of darkness melted. A ghostly light filtered through. He stared, and in its brief maximum saw before him a high, bare rectangular room, hewn out of the rock--and at its far side a man in a s.p.a.ce-suit. Ku Sui, brought to bay!

But Ca.r.s.e, for one of the few times in his life, doubted his eyes.

What trick were they playing him? For it was not a real, sharp figure that he saw; it was an indefinite one, shimmering and elusive, like a mirage. A prank of the strange light, perhaps. But Ku Sui nevertheless! Ku Sui trapped!

The Hawk leaped forward with outstretched arms to seize and hold the Eurasian's motionless figure. As he moved, the second of ghostly light dissolved away, and in the blackness his eager reaching arms closed on--nothing!

Surely Ku Sui had been there! Surely he had not just imagined he saw him!

Baffled and coldly raging, the Hawk whirled and groped frantically.

The centrifugal force caught him off balance and hurled him into a wall, but dizzy he continued his desperate search, sweeping his arms all around him, over walls and floor and, rising, the ceiling. The tumbling asteroid banged him unmercifully into the six sides of the room, but even as he was flung he reached and felt in every direction--felt without result.

In some incredible way, Ku Sui had eluded him. The second the light failed, he must have slipped by and escaped down the pa.s.sageway behind. The Hawk could hardly understand how it might have been achieved, but there was no other explanation. So, with lips firm set in his cold, grim face, he felt to the doorway, ready to track back through the long, unlit pa.s.sage. He might still overhaul and capture the other. If there was still time....

But _was_ there?

The pa.s.sing seconds had not been idle. Inexorably they had brought him to Earth's atmosphere. He stared around the room in sheer horror.

For its blackness was relieved by the faintest of glows. It was not that of the recurring light; it came from the whole rock ceiling above. Ca.r.s.e was overwhelmed by the realization that within numbered seconds the surface of the asteroid would reach incandescence.

Thoughts raced like lightning through his head. He could not get free through the corridor and dome behind: that would take at least three minutes, and not a quarter of a minute was left. Ku Sui too, if he were in the corridor trying to reach the dome, was trapped and finished. A meteor flaming to Earth would be their common grave!

A searing, hideous death! Trapped within fiery walls of melting rock!

At that moment the regularly re-recurring flash of light came, and under pressure of his great need the phenomenon meshed with understanding in Ca.r.s.e's mind. That light was sunlight! It come at definite intervals as the dome side of the asteroid rotated to face the sun.

And that light could reach the room only by way of some channel in the ceiling!

In the waxing glow of the rock above him, Ca.r.s.e swiftly found the channel--a vertical bore several feet wide, in one corner of the ceiling. Its rock sides glowed redly, and at their end was a round black patch that caused his heart to leap with hope. Outer s.p.a.ce!--and a short, straight escape to it! In a flash he saw how Ku Sui perhaps had eluded him.

The Eurasian's prepared emergency exit would also be his!

He lost not a fraction of a second. Turning his glove controls to maximum acceleration, he rose with a rush into the bore. Despite his good aim the asteroid's centrifugal force threw him heavily into one red-hot side. His heart went cold; would the fabric of the suit burn through? No time for such worries--must make the frigid air outside--fast--fast--never mind b.u.mps--quick out--and must stay conscious--_must_ stay conscious to exert repulsion against Earth!

Like a projectile Hawk Ca.r.s.e shot out of that tunnel of h.e.l.l at a tangent to the asteroid and in a direction away from Earth, and in an instant the doomed body was far below him, and streaking faster and ever faster to the annihilation now so near.

He fought to come out of his dizziness. Shaking his head, he glanced back for sight of a minute, suit-clad figure. Had Ku Sui preceded him through the emergency exit, his shape should be visible somewhere, etched by the sunlight.

There was no sign of him.

Ca.r.s.e's eyes dropped to the asteroid. He saw it already miles below, a breath-taking celestial object, a second sun, brilliant and increasingly brilliant as it diminished over the watery plain waiting to receive it. His mind saw the Eurasian, caught in the long corridor to the dome, already dead on this last flight of his extraordinary vehicle of s.p.a.ce....

The end came at once. The sun was quickly a great, brilliant shooting star, then a blinding smaller one: then its straight mad flight through the heavens was over, and it was received in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and buried deep.

A cataclysmic burial. A t.i.tanic meteor, an incandescent, screaming streak in the night--a cloud of billowing steam--a wall of water rearing back from the strange grave of the asteroid, so far come from its accustomed orbit around Mars.... The thought came to Ca.r.s.e that Dr. Ku Sui had died as he lived, spectacularly, with a brilliance and a tidal wave and an earthquake to disturb the lives of men....

And a sadness fell over the heart of the Hawk....

He roused from it in a moment. He felt heat! In the rush of events he had not before noticed that his s.p.a.ce-suit had started to burn from the friction of his own pa.s.sage through the atmosphere. Fortunately, it was already cooling off.

For in spite of his own leaving speed and the added centrifugal velocity the asteroid had given him, he had hurtled down after the doomed rock; and only then was his building repulsion neutralizing Earth's gravity and his initial Earthward velocity. He had slowed down just in time to keep his s.p.a.ce suit intact.

He came to rest, in relation to the Earth, and hovered there. Again he scrutinized the black untenanted wastes of s.p.a.ce above. Far out, approaching as rapidly as it dared, was the _Sandra_.

He wanted to be sure, so he cut in his mike and asked Leithgow if they had, through their electelscope, seen, Ku Sui leave the asteroid.

The anxious scientist told him they had not.

With a slight sigh Hawk Ca.r.s.e snapped off his contact and waited till the sharp, growing spot that was the _Sandra_ should come dropping down to pick him up, and his friends learn from his own lips the story of the pa.s.sing of Ku Sui....

[Ill.u.s.tration: Advertis.e.m.e.nt.]