The Passing of Ku Sui Part 9

"What's wrong?"

"Lordy, suh," the Negro whispered, "Dr. Ku could hear all you said!

He'll know where Master Leithgow's laboratory is!"

The Hawk smiled briefly. "No matter, Eclipse. I'm quite sure the information will avail him nothing. For this ride to the laboratory will be his last ride but one." He turned. "We're starting at once.

Ban, you've bound him well?"

"If he can get out of those knots," grinned Wilson, "I'll kiss him on the mouth!"

The Eurasian's nostrils distended. "Then," he said. "I most certainly will not try. But Captain Ca.r.s.e, may I have a cigarro before we start on this journey?"

Ca.r.s.e had gone over so the s.p.a.ce-stick and his eyes were on the visi-screen, but he now turned them to his old foe for a moment. "Not just now, Dr. Ku," he said levelly. "For it might be that all but two puffs of it would be wasted. Yes--later--if we survive these next few minutes."

The remark did nothing to ease the tension of their leaving. Ban Wilson could not restrain a question.

"Ca.r.s.e, are you going to risk atmospheric friction all the way to the laboratory?"

"No. Haven't time for that. Up and down--up into s.p.a.ce, then down to the lab--high acceleration and deceleration."

He grasped the s.p.a.ce-stick, then in neutral, holding the asteroid motionless in the valley. He glanced at the visi-screen again, checked over the main controls and tightened his hand on the stick.

"Ready everyone," he said, and gently moved the stick up and forward.

There was, to the men in the control room, little consciousness of power unleashed: only the visi-screen and the bank of positional instruments told what had happened with that first, delicate movement of the s.p.a.ce-stick. It was an experiment, a feeler. The indicators of the positionals quivered a little and altered, and in the visi-screen the hills of the valley, that a moment before had been quite close and large, had diminished to purple-green mounds below.

Then the accelerating sensations began. Ca.r.s.e had the "feel" of the asteroidal ship and his controlling hand grew bolder. The steady pressure on the s.p.a.ce-stick increased, it went up farther and farther, and the whole mighty ma.s.s of the asteroid streaked out at a tangent through the atmosphere of Satellite III toward the gulf beyond.

With dangerous acceleration the gigantic body rose, and from outside there grew a moaning which was quickly a shrieking--a terrible, maddened sound as of a t.i.tan dying in agony--the sound of the cloven atmosphere. Twenty miles of rock were hurled out by the firm hand on the s.p.a.ce-stick, and that hand only increased its driving pressure when the screaming of the air died away in the depthless silence of outer s.p.a.ce.

In one special visi-screen lay mirrored the craggy back-stretch of the asteroid, half of it clear-cut and hard in Jupiter's flood of light, the other half lost in the encompa.s.sing blackness of s.p.a.ce. Over this shadowed portion a faint, unearthly glow clung close, the result of the terrific friction of the ascent. In miniature, in the regular screens, was Satellite III, but a distorted miniature, for its half-face appeared concave in shape, and dusted with the haze of its atmosphere.

The Hawk was visibly relieved. He turned to the silent Ku Sui.

"I must congratulate you, Dr. Ku," he said, "on the operation of the asteroid. It's as smooth as any ship. And now, your cigarro. Ban, have you one?"

Wilson produced a small metal case from which he extracted one of the long black cylinders.

"You will have to put it in my lips, please," murmured Dr. Ku. "Thank you. And a light? Again thanks. Ah...." He drew in the smoke, exhaled a fine stream of it from his delicately carved nostrils. "Good." Then he looked up pleasantly at the Hawk.

"And my congratulations to you, Captain. Not only on your expert maneuvering of my asteroid, but on everything: your resourcefulness, your decision, your caution. I have long admired these qualities in you, and the events of to-day, though for me perhaps unfortunate, increase my admiration. My own weak resistance, my attempt to frustrate your plans in connection with the brains--how miserable in comparison! It would seem, Captain, that you cannot fail, and that you will indeed succeed in giving the brains new life, so swiftly do you move. Yes, my congratulations!"

He drew at the cigarro, and the smoke wreathed gently around his ascetic saffron face. A faint, queer glint was visible under the long lashes that half-veiled his eyes as he continued:

"But I have a question, Captain. A mere nothing, but still--"

"Yes, Dr. Ku?"

"The living bodies into which you propose to transplant the brains--where are they?"

Hawk Ca.r.s.e's face was stern and his voice frigid as he answered:

"Fortunately, those bodies are right here on the asteroid."

"Here on the asteroid, Captain? I don't understand. What bodies are here?"

"The bodies of your four white a.s.sistants, whom I have safely confined, and one of your robot-coolies, also confined. I did not intend to use these five, but, because you put a premium on time by your attempted destruction of the brains, it cannot be helped."

Dr. Ku Sui's impa.s.sive demeanor did not change. He did not seem in the least surprised. He puffed quietly at the cigarro and nodded.

"Of course, of course. You have five bodies right here on the asteroid. Yes."

"At least," continued Ca.r.s.e levelly, "I do not regret having to use the bodies of your men. They are no longer human: they are not men: they are in effect but machines of your making, Dr. Ku."

"Quite. Quite."

"I suppose you find it an unpleasant thought, to have to be the means of re-making them into whole, normal human beings?"

"On the contrary," breathed the Eurasian, "you inspire a very pleasant thought in my brain, Captain Ca.r.s.e--though I must confess it is not exactly the thought you mention." A smile, veiled by the smoke of the cigarro, appeared on his lips.

The Hawk looked at him closely: the words had a hidden meaning, and it was clear he was not intended to miss the implied threat. But what was Ku Sui's thought? Back in his mind an anxiety grew, indefinite, vague and devilish.

And that vague anxiety was still with him when, fifty-seven minutes later, the asteroid returned from its inverted U-flight, slowed in its hurtling drop from s.p.a.ce and hovered directly over the secret, hidden laboratory of Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow.

CHAPTER VIII

_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 Ca.r.s.e 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 Ca.r.s.e," he whispered, coming close to the adventurer, "look, suh--he's seein' it all! Shouldn't I blindfold him?"

Ca.r.s.e 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!"