"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!"



CHAPTER IX

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.



CHAPTER X

The Promise Fulfilled

Although puzzled by the Hawk's promise, Leithgow could only put his trust in it and go ahead with the preparations as he had been directed. He took two of his three laboratory assistants off their hurried manufacture of quantities of the V-27, and with Ku Sui went out into the air-car. Passing by way of tube and lake and air, they were quickly inside the dome on the asteroid, and then into Ku Sui's laboratory, where Friday waited on guard.

Completely docile and friendly, the Eurasian indicated the various instruments and devices he would need for the operations, and these were transported quickly. Then came the case of coordinated brains. Dr. Ku detached in connections with expert fingers, and all but Leithgow took a corner and carried it with infinite care to the air-car outside.

"Do I stay here, suh?" Friday asked the Master Scientist in a whisper. Though informed of the change in Dr. Ku effected by the V-27, he was still very suspicious of him. "Seems to me he's a bit too meek and mild, suh. I think I ought to go down and watch him."

Eliot Leithgow did not quite know what answer to give. The Eurasian forced the decision.

"I will need," he observed, in his new, frank voice, "all the assistance you can possibly give me. I am faced by a tremendous task, and the use of every man will be necessary. I would suggest, Master Leithgow that the Negro be brought down."

And so Friday came and the asteroid was left unguarded. A mistake, this turned out to be, but under the circumstances Eliot Leithgow could hardly be blamed for it. There was so much on their minds, so much work of vital importance, so desperate a need for speed, that quite naturally other considerations were subordinated. The asteroid, to the naked eye, was invisible; it could attract no attention; its occupants had all been disposed of. Certainly it seemed safe enough to leave it unguarded for a while.

However, Eliot Leithgow took one precaution. Down in his own laboratory again, in the midst of the work of transferring Dr. Ku's operating equipment from the air-car, he called aside one of his assistants and instructed him to go and survey the asteroid through the infra-red device every ten minutes: and with this order the old scientist dismissed the matter from his mind, and turned all his energies to preparing the laboratory for the operations.

* * * * *

Under Ku Sui's directions his cases of equipment were brought in and arrayed, and the various drills and delicate saws, and such other instruments as worked by electricity, were connected. Everything was sterilized. Rapidly the plain, square room assumed the appearance of an operating arena, the five tables in the center, spotlessly white and clean under the direct beams of the tubes hanging from the ceiling, at the head of every table a stand on which were containers of antiseptics, bottles of etheloid, a breathing cone, rolls of gauze and other materials, and along the edge of the stand identical, complete sets of fine instruments.

The case of coordinated brains was brought into the laboratory last. The inner liquid was now dark and apparently lifeless; to the casual eye, it would not have seemed possible that the five grayish mounds immersed in the liquid held life. And, indeed, Leithgow looked at them doubtfully.

"Are you sure they're still alive? Do you think there's still time?" he asked Dr. Ku.

The Eurasian picked up a long, slender, tubelike instrument with a dial topping it. Then, going to the brain-case, he touched a cleverly concealed catch and a square pane set in the top of the case swung back. He dipped the instrument he held into the liquid, and for a moment stood silent, watching the dial. Then he took it out, re-closed the pane and turned to Leithgow.

"A test," he explained. "The indicator, interpreted means we have about forty-eight minutes in which to complete the first phase of the transplantation of the brains into human heads. It might be done if we start in eight minutes. But the human heads—?" He paused.

"Eight minutes!" said Leithgow worriedly. "Eight minutes for Carse to come! He promised the bodies, but ... well, we can only go ahead with the preparations and trust to him. Is everything ready?"

"All but my assistants. I had better see them now."

* * * * *

The Master Scientist issued an order to one of his men, and presently the four white assistants of Dr. Ku were led into the laboratory. For these men, no V-27 was needed; their brains were utterly subservient to Dr. Ku Sui, and his orders they would obey unquestioningly, no matter what the work. There was no danger from them.

They stood motionless, their eyes fastened on their master, as he spoke to them.

"Brain operations," he said. "These"—he indicated the case—"are to be transplanted again into human heads. You have done work similar to it before; you know the routine. But now it must be quick. Synchronize your speed with mine; I will be working very rapidly, and it is vital that you be in harmony with me every instant. When the bodies come, you will prepare the heads: and then you will attend me through every step. You understand." He turned to the old scientist. "Operating gowns, gloves, masks, Master Leithgow?"

"I have your own. Over there. Your black costume is among them."

But Leithgow's answer was abstracted. Four minutes for Carse to come! Or else, everything lost! He busied himself helping the four surgeons and two of his own assistants into the white, sterilized gowns, and the masks that left only the eyes free and the skin-tight rubber gloves, but his mind was not with his actions. The old man looked very frail now; his age showed in the deep lines now eminent on his face. Three minutes—swiftly two....

"At least," observed Ku Sui, "we have one body ... the coolie. I had better start immediately on him."

"Bring him out," Leithgow instructed one of his men. "One brain will be saved. But—there! Thank God! Hear that? Coming down the passage? It's Carse, returning!"

* * * * *

It was Carse. He and Ban Wilson, coming down the passage from the top of the tree-shaft. Everyone in the laboratory could hear plainly the heavy, sliding tread of the great space-boots. Eliot Leithgow was first to the door. He opened it, peered through eagerly and called:

"Carse? You've got them?"

"Yes, Eliot. Here—we need help."

The Hawk's voice sounded weary. Friday and the scientist ran down the passageway until they reached the adventurer. In the faint light, they saw he was carrying a limp body. He laid it carefully down on the floor.

"Ban's coming down with another," he said, "and there are two more above. Go up and get them, Friday."

The Negro started to obey. But Eliot Leithgow did not move, did not utter a sound. He stood staring at the body Carse had laid down. The parchmentlike skin of his face seemed to whiten; that was all; but he winced and slowly brushed his eyes with his hands when, in a moment, Ban Wilson floated down the shaft and, approached with a second unconscious body.

At last Leithgow whispered:

"They're all—like that, Carse?"

"Yes," answered the emotionless voice. "There were two others, but we let them go. They were worse." The gray eyes looked steadily at Eliot Leithgow. "I know," the Hawk said. "It's horrible—but it can't be helped. It was these or nothing. There was no choice."

Hawk Carse had fulfilled his promise. He had brought back four isuanacs.



CHAPTER XI

Ordeal

Five bodies lay on the operating tables in Eliot Leithgow's laboratory. The air, hushed and heavy, was pervaded by the various odors of antiseptics and etheloid. The breathing cones had been applied to each of the bodies, and they were now locked fast in controlled unconsciousness.

On the first table lay the body of the robot-coolie, a man of medium size, sturdy, well-muscled, with the smooth round yellow face and stub nose of his kind. His short-cropped, bristly black hair had been shaved off; the head was now bald. That head was destined to hold the mighty brain of Master Scientist Raymond Cram.

On the second table lay a twisted, distorted thing, an apelike body with which fate had played grotesque pranks. It was hairy, of middle height, and its dark skin all over was wizened and coarse, almost like the bark of a tree. The legs were short and bowed, the hands stubby claws; the face, puckered even in unconsciousness, was that of a gargoyle in pain. The long matted hair had been shaved away; the large pate washed with antiseptics. Soon, were the operation successful, that head would hold the brain of Professor Edgar Estapp, world-famous chemist and bio-chemist.

On the third table lay a shape skeletonlike in appearance, so emaciated was it, so closely did the bones press into the dry, fever-yellowed skin. Of one leg, only the stump was left; this creature had been forced to hop or crawl his way through the isuan swamps. The head, too, was no more than a skull, with great sunken dark-rimmed eyes, discolored fangs and loose, leathery lips. There had been no hair on this death's head; it had long been bald, and now, washed, clean for the first time in months or even years, it was to hold the brain of Dr. Ralph Swanson, Earth's one-time leader in the science of psychology.

On the fourth table lay a giant's body—but a hollow giant, a giant made thin and pitiful by the ravages of his destroyer, isuan. A roistering, free-booting space-ship sailor, this man may once have been, but, from the drug, the mighty arms had been twisted and shrivelled, the strong legs wasted away. One ear had been torn from the skull in an old brawl, and what was left was naked and ugly to the eye. Behind that bitter, drug-coarsened face would be the new home of the brain of Sir Charles Esme Norman, wizard of mathematics and once a polished, charming Englishman.

On the fifth table lay a dwarf. Its ridiculous body was not over four and a half feet long, though the head was larger than that of a normal man. In the old dark ages on Earth this body would have served for the jester of a lord, the comic butt of a king; in more recent times as the prize of a circus side-show. The huge, weighty head with its ugly brooding mask of a face, the child's body below—this was for the brain of Professor Erich Geinst, the solitary German who had stood preeminent on Earth in astronomy.

* * * * *

These creatures were the result of Hawk Carse's desperate search. They had composed, with one other, the band of isuanacs that had been rooting in the swamp at the end of the lake when the asteroid had first arrived. The Hawk had remembered them, and had quickly seen that they were the only answer to the problem. And so, with Ban Wilson, he had gone out for them, his mind steeled to the ghastly thought of the great scientists' brains in such bodies. In space-suits they had swept down on them. There had been no time for considerate measures: the four isuanacs had been abruptly knocked out by the impact of the great suits swooping against them, and carried back to the laboratory.

Eliot Leithgow had been shocked at the idea of a scientist's brain in the head of the robot-coolie; how much greater, then, was his horror when confronted by the need of using these appalling remnants of men! But he could not protest. What else was there? Ku Sui, under the V-27, had spoken the truth: the operations would be impossible without the aid of his four assistants. The brains even now were dying. The choice was: bodies of isuanacs or death for the brains. The scientist and the adventurer had chosen.

Circumstances had required their use. Ku Sui's attempt to kill the brains, thus inflicting a time limit: the presence of the band of isuanacs near the laboratory; each circumstance with a long train of other, minor ones behind it. Chance or Fate—whatever it is—whether predetermined or accidental—men must wonder at its working, and know awe from its patterns and results. Seldom, certainly, was there a pattern more strange than this now being worked out in the laboratory of Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow.

The bodies lay there, washed, shaved and swathed in customary loose operating garments: globules of etheloid dropped steadily down into the breathing cones, of hunchback, living skeleton, twisted giant, dwarf and robot-coolie. One by one the isuanacs dropped with the falling of the etheloid into unconsciousness—and that was their farewell to the brains, each one debauched either by isuan-drug or skill of genius, that they had known.

And movement began in the laboratory. White-clothed figures, masked and capped, used gleaming instruments in their gloved hands; and all the figures were mute—mute from their great concentration on the delicate work in progress—or mute from horror that would not die....

* * * * *

So began the ordeal.

Of its details, Hawk Carse knew little. They were not of his world. Only for the first half-hour could he follow intelligently what was being done. He too had put on a white robe, as had Ban Wilson and Friday; and he stood at one side of the room, a silent, intently watching figure, with the two other men of action, Ban and the Negro, while the rest moved in a kind of rhythm. The center-piece was the black-garbed Ku Sui, moving from this table to that, slim gloved hands flying, pausing, flying again, steadying, concentrating on a detail, once more sweeping forward. No more than single words came from him; he and his assistants worked almost as a whole, in perfect sympathy and coordination, and a constant stream of instruments flowed to him and then away, their task done.

The first table, and then to the second, with one white figure staying behind at the first, finishing off details of the work, left by the master. The third table; the fourth; the fifth; and then back to the first, while two white figures detached themselves from the main group and went to the nearby case of coordinated brains. An object held in a specially formed type of pan was lifted out and carried to the first table; and Carse sensed a crisis in the attitudes of the working men. This, he knew, was the first great, step. A brain was being re-born. The fingers of men, and one man in particular, were fashioning a miracle.

How could he hope to understand? He could only hang on the movements of that group of figures, and feel relief as he saw them settle into smoothness again. Evidently the first crisis was past. A few minutes more were spent at the first table; then once more Dr. Ku Sui went to the second, and another object was carried from the coldly gleaming case.

And in a long, deep pan standing on short legs beside the case, something gray and shapeless and warm was placed.

The first phase came to an end when there were five similar things in the open pan, and nothing, except the liquid and a multitude of spidery, disconnected wires, in the case that but shortly before had harbored the brains of five scientists....

* * * * *

A pause. Relaxation. Tests. The black-clad figure spoke to one in yellow in a tone of pleased relief.

"Successful so far, Master Leithgow! We may congratulate ourselves on the consummation of the first step. It has been done, I believe, well within the time limit."

"Yes, Dr. Ku; yes. And now—how long will be needed to finish?"

"That is up to you. Normally, I would require a month. In that time all could be done safely, with small chance—"

"Too long!" said Leithgow.

Carse intervened:

"Why too long, Eliot?"

The old scientist went over close to him, and, in a lowered voice, explained:

"Ku Sui would develop immunity to the V-27 in a month. Two weeks of it would give him part immunity. Even ten days might. He has to be re-gassed four times a day."

"But, letting him come out of it every night and resting normally?" the Hawk objected.

"I have allowed for that. The gas would still be in his system. No—nine or ten days is the limit." He raised his voice again to reach the Eurasian. "Can you complete the work within nine days, Dr. Ku?"

Ku Sui considered it. At last he said:

"That is a lot to ask, Master Leithgow. But—it might be possible. However, it would mean prodigies of sustained, concentrated labor; work and skill never-ceasing. We'll have to work in shifts, naturally."

So it was arranged. All the assistants, both Ku Sui's and Leithgow's, were portioned off into shifts of four hours' sleep and eight hours' work: Carse, Ban Wilson and Friday, too, for now every one of them was needed.

Nine days for the work of a month—and work as delicate and vital as could possibly be! Small wonder that in the minds of all of them, the Hawk and the old scientist, and Ban and the Negro, that period, when remembered later, seemed no more than a confused, unreal, hazy dream; rather, a nightmare connected imperishably with the odors of an operating room, antiseptics, etheloid, and the glint of small, sharp instruments.

It was a titanic task, an ordeal that stretched to the limit the powers of the men working in that confined space. Normal life for them ceased; the operating room became a new universe. Swiftly they lost consciousness of time, even with the routine of the changing shifts and the food which was brought in at regular hours. Antiseptics, etheloid, the never-ceasing flow of the instruments, the five bodies lying still and deathlike on the tables, the hard white glare of the light beating down on them—all this and nothing more—all sealed away underground from the life of the forgotten world above. On and on and on....

* * * * *

It is impossible even to conjecture how the mind of Ku Sui saw the colossal work that he was doing to aid his most bitter enemies. Even when he was normal there are only moments when, through some recorded speech or action of his, we can peer past the man's personality into his brain; how great a sealed mystery must his thoughts remain to us when held in that abnormal state by Eliot Leithgow's V-27! Envision it: this arch-foe of Hawk Carse and Leithgow helping their designs, lending all his intellect, his great skill, to their purposes, aiding them in everything! Certainly, afterwards, the memory of what he had been forced to do must have occasioned Dr. Ku many bitter moments. Regularly, every four waking hours, he was led to the metal chair and gassed afresh with the V-27; and his expression remained pleasant; his eyes were always friendly. But the artificial state in which he was kept showed soon on his face. It lost its clearness and became a jaundiced yellow in color: and also it grew peaked and drawn.

But the other faces around him were peaked and drawn, too. The terrific strain told in definite terms on all, no matter what stimulants they took to keep going. Many a man would have been driven to insanity by their sustained, terrible concentration, and the knowledge that five lives hung on every action, however minute....

On and on and on, science made into a marathon. Four hours of exhausted, deathlike sleep; eight hours more of the smells, and the glaring light, and the moving instruments. Days of this, sealing the brains permanently into their new homes, into their hideous new bodies....

But finally came the climax, and the last exhausted spurt of work. For the concluding twelve hours there was no sleep or rest for anyone; and at the end a breathless, haggard tension held them as Dr. Ku Sui, a shell of his former self, reviewed the results of the nine days' ordeal. His verdict was:

"Four have come through, I think, safe. The fifth—I do not know. His body was near death when he was brought here. He may live or die; it is impossible to tell now. But it is finished."

Then the men slept. Some slipped to the floor and slept where they were. In nine days, the work of a month had been done, and a miracle wrought. The brains had been born again.



CHAPTER XII

Flight

It was to Hawk Carse that the news of imminent danger came first.

He had staggered from the laboratory into a sleeping room and, clad as he was, fallen over into a berth. He would have wakened in a few hours, such was his custom of years to four-hour watches on ships, but he was permitted less than an hour of sleep. A hand pulled at him; a voice kept calling his name. Awareness returned to him slowly as his brain roused from the coma of sleep.

"Captain Carse! Captain Carse! Wake up, sir!"

It was one of Leithgow's assistants, a man named Thorpe. His tone was excited and his manner distraught.

"Yes?" the Hawk muttered thickly. "What is it?"

"It's the asteroid, sir! I was instructed to watch it at intervals, but I—I guess I fell asleep, and just now—"

Carse sat up. "Yes? What?"

"—when I looked, through the glasses—it was gone!"

"Gone? You're sure? Let me see."

Swiftly, Thorpe at his heels, Carse strode out from the room to a cubby just off the laboratory, the watch-post, where observational electelscopes and visi-screens provided a panorama of the surrounding territory.

He gazed through the electelscope, which had been equipped with an infra-red device and trained on the asteroid, and saw that now, where the massive body of rock had been poised, there was nothing. Only the brilliant light of mid-afternoon, the cloudless sky. Carse swept the glass around. The search was fruitless. The heavens were bare. The asteroid had gone.

In half a minute Carse had reasoned out the disappearance, saw the consequences and made the inevitable decision. Gone was the torpor of sleep, the weariness of the laboratory; this was a crisis, and this was his work. During the operations, he had been able merely to obey orders and do manual work. Now he assumed command.

"Your lapse has imperilled us all," he said curtly to Thorpe. "From now on we're in great danger. Stay here and keep on watch, and sound the alarm immediately if the asteroid reappears."

"Yes, sir. I—I'm sorry—"

The adventurer cut him off with a frigid nod and ran on silent, rapid feet to the laboratory, where both Ban Wilson and Friday lay fast asleep. Roughly Carse shook them into consciousness. Trained to shipboard routine and the sudden emergencies of space, they needed but little time to return to full wakefulness. In staccato sentences the new situation was outlined to them.

"The asteroid's gone. That means danger to everything here. We will have to evacuate. Ban, wake all the men, including Ku Sui and his assistants, then come to me for further orders. Friday, see that Leithgow's ship is ready for instant departure. Quick!"

Alarmed, but without questions, the two parted on their separate errands. Carse went to the room where Eliot Leithgow lay asleep.

* * * * *

The pallor and weariness of the old scientist's face were emphasized by the alarming news his friend brought him, but he took it with spirit, and his voice was level and controlled as he asked:

"What does it mean, Carse? What must we do?"

"Leave, Eliot, and at once. We have no choice. Our danger while here is immense. The asteroid, in the hands of enemies, could crush us like a fly, simply by coming down on the top of the hill."

"But who could have taken it? There was no one on it, was there?"

The Hawk said wryly: "I thought not, but well, you remember the secret panel in Dr. Ku's laboratory?"

"Through, which he escaped before? Yes."

"I suspected that he might have someone hidden behind it, and I intended to question him when he was under the V-27, but in the terrific rush of things it slipped my mind. Sheer carelessness, Eliot; I'm very sorry. I should have known, for when we captured Ku Sui he spoke some words in Chinese through his helmet-radio. Now I can see that they must have gone to some man of his hidden there; and that man, obeying instructions, simply lay low, heard all that passed in Dr. Ku's laboratory, and then, at a suitable opportunity, took the asteroid away in search of allies. He knows his master is a prisoner here and unquestionably he will be back to release him. We must be out of here and far away by the time he arrives."

"Yes," Leithgow nodded slowly. "As you say, there is no choice."

"But your work here is finished, Eliot," Carse went on. "If only we can get to Earth safely, with Ku Sui and the brains in their new bodies, we will have achieved everything we wanted to achieve. We have proof of the crime done you, and we have Ku Sui, too. Your position will be restored and the blame put where it belongs. But we must leave for Earth at once! God knows how near the asteroid is, or who's on it."

"All right, Carse." The scientist got up. "What are your instructions?"

Ban Wilson appeared in the door, reporting that all the men had been accounted for and awakened. Carse started the wheels moving.

"Everything of value here must be transported aboard the ship. Eliot, you know better than I what to take, so you'll assume charge of the loading. Ban, you and all the men save two of Eliot's assistants will help. I'll need them to move the bodies. Send them to me in the laboratory. But first, be sure Ku Sui and his four men are safely confined. All right; let's go."

Within half an hour the general evacuation was finished and the ship loaded.

* * * * *

The Sandra, Leithgow's ship, bearing his daughter's name, was a sturdy vessel designed more for comfort and utility than speed, and so her appointments, including offensive and defensive weapons, though modern were limited. Her commodious cargo-holds were easily capable of accommodating all of the Master Scientist's laboratory instruments and devices, the volumes of his extensive library, his great mass of personal papers and more intimate effects; all the more important stores of the place, too, and its furnishings. The laboratory and its surrounding rooms were pretty well stripped.

The largest of the Sandra's cabins was transformed under the direction of Leithgow into a hospital bay, and the five cots bearing the prostrate, unconscious bodies of the patients put there. Though hastily improvised, this hospital was complete, as fully equipped and nearly as efficient as if it were on Earth and not in the belly of a space-ship. The chances of the patients for complete recovery were not diminished in any way by the sudden necessity for flight.

In a second, much smaller cabin, Dr. Ku Sui was confined by himself. Its walls, of course, were of metal, and there was no possible means of exit from it save by the door, which bore double locks. The Eurasian, silent and drugged and stupid, immediately stretched his tall form out on the single berth and in seconds was again sound asleep. A third cabin was made over to his four assistants.

With everything completed, the underground refuge bare of articles of value and the Sandra stored and made ready for the long trip, the inner door of the exit tube swung open, and the ship slid slowly out of her cradle and into the water chamber for the last time. Her flight to Earth had begun.

Eliot Leithgow stood near the Hawk in the control cabin, and his old face was made sad by many memories. For years, this place that he was now leaving had been his only home, his one sure haven. How carefully, long ago, had he and Carse planned it and built it! How many times had they met there, often when danger was close and enemies near, and cemented still more firmly the bonds between them! To Leithgow, the hill symbolized safety and friendship and his beloved work. Dangerous, weary years, those he had spent in the hill, but priceless nevertheless, warmed as they were by his achievements and the friendship of Hawk Carse.

Now he was leaving it and going back to Earth. The outlaw years, it seemed, were ended: Ku Sui was a prisoner, and the proof of his great crime, which had been laid to Leithgow, was aboard. Earth—green Earth! Separate, distinct, peerless in the universe; home of men, of his kind! He had loved and worked and known honor and respect on Earth; it held the grave of his wife, and the fresh, warm young love of his wife reincarnate, his daughter Sandra. He was at last going home to Earth from his exile on this desolate, raw frontier post.

There was a choking in Eliot Leithgow's throat at leaving the hill, and he turned away, afraid at that moment of being observed by the steel-gray eyes of his friend, Hawk Carse....

* * * * *

The Sandra swam up through the lake's muddy tide and launched herself, dripping, into the warm air of afternoon. Her generators hummed with life given them by the firm hand at the controls, and swiftly she arrowed forth into the blue. With a few words as to the visual course, Carse handed the space-stick over to Friday, and devoted himself to the matter of the watches.

Satellite III dropped swiftly to concavity, as the Sandra was expertly jockeyed through the rare outer layer of the stratosphere, became a true globe again. The Negro reported:

"Through the atmosphere, suh. Orders?"

"Full acceleration. Continue visually for the present. I'll work out the true course in a few minutes."

"Yes, suh!"

The hum of the generators deepened. In a matter of ten minutes, shipboard routine was arranged, Carse, Friday and Ban splitting the watches. The Hawk, as was his custom, took the first. Friday was relieved of the space-stick and immediately went back for sleep, as did Wilson. Eliot Leithgow did not retire right away, however.

He watched Carse snap on the automatic control and go to an electelscope which had been equipped with an infra-red device. He directed it rearward on Satellite III, back along the course the Sandra had described, and peered through its eyepiece for several minutes. Then he turned to the old scientist.

"Nothing," he said. "No sign of the asteroid as yet. We'll have to keep careful watch. The visi-screen's useless against the invisibility of the asteroid; and the high magnification of this scope, with its resulting small field of view, will require us continually and methodically to search through a wide circle behind, in the attempt to pick up the asteroid, should it appear. A tedious job, with chances of sighting it about even.... At any rate, we'll have some sort of a head-start," he finished.

* * * * *

This was the opportunity Leithgow had waited for; he wanted a few frank words with his friend.

"Carse," he said slowly, "I wonder just where that man concealed behind the secret panel would take the asteroid?"

"I've thought about that too," replied the Hawk. "We may be sure that he went for allies: Dr. Ku has several on Satellite III. Of them all, I think he would go for Lar Tantril."

"Tantril?"

"Yes, I think so. Lar Tantril, the Venusian. A fellow of much self-confidence and one of Ku Sui's chief agents, and who at present"—he smiled faintly—"nurses a special bitterness against me. I told you how I tricked him on his ranch. He'd be very eager to pursue us in the asteroid simply for the opportunity of repaying me for that trick." The adventurer's left hand rose to the bangs of flaxen hair combing down over his forehead, and he murmured, musingly: "I rather hope it is Lar Tantril...."

"You hope so?" Leithgow repeated, surprised. "When he hates you so? And would be on the lookout for tricks? Why?"

"I would guess, Eliot, that Lar Tantril is not notable for intellect. Blustering, domineering—pretty much of a braggart, you know. Certainly he is not a model of caution; and he is not acquainted with Dr. Ku's asteroid, for he did not even know it existed. He will be able to run it, of course, with the advice of this hidden man, but surely he will not have the perception to discern the weakness in it. Yes, I hope it is he."

Leithgow went on to the main thing on his mind.

"I'm a little unsettled, Carse," he admitted. "I've been imagining this as the end of my outlaw years, and the beginning of my re-establishment on Earth. But this ship is slow, and I see now that if the asteroid does pursue us and capture us.... What do you really think of our chances?"

* * * * *

The Hawk pursed his lips slightly, and for a little while he looked away and did not answer. When his voice came, it was tinged with bitterness.

"Eliot," he said, "I've been trying to find an excuse for my lapse. But there is none. It was the blunder of a novice, my not remembering to question Ku Sui about that secret panel. That was the cardinal point, yet it slipped my mind, in my preoccupation with the emergencies connected with the restoration of the brains.

"Our chances are only fair, Eliot; I'm telling you frankly how it appears to me. I believe we'll be pursued, and if we are the odds are greatly against us. The asteroid's far more powerful than we. And Jupiter only knows what new offensive resources Ku Sui may have given it: I had no time to study the several strange mechanisms I saw in its control room. Then, no nearby patrol ship would help us if we were attacked, for to them our enemy would be invisible, and they'd think us crazy."

He paused. But seeing the somber expression on the other's face, he smiled and cuffed him on the back.

"But maybe we won't even be pursued, Eliot! Maybe we'll be too far ahead for them to catch us! No doubt I've made it look too serious, so cheer up! We're alive, we've got everything we wanted, and we're hitting at full speed for Earth! And you know the luck of that space-adventurer they call the Hawk!"

Leithgow smiled gently in answer, then left the cabin for the sleep he needed so badly. Hawk Carse was left alone on watch in the fleeing Sandra.

A lonely, intent figure, he stood over the chart-table, working out their best course to Earth. Presently, however, he went back to the infra-red electelscope and swept it over the leagues behind. Carse could not detect any sign of the asteroid, but he remained for a little while at the eyepiece, staring at Satellite III. There it lay, a diminishing globe, three-quarters of it gleaming in the light flung by Jupiter. Dark patches mottled it: they would be the jungles. And there was the scintillant sheet that was the Great Briney Lake, with Port o' Porno nearby. On the other side of the little world, now, lay the hill containing Leithgow's laboratory. All going ... going ... falling swiftly behind. Satellite III, scene of so many clashes, plots and counter-plots, where so many times he and Eliot Leithgow had fought off the reaching hand of Ku Sui—soon it would be a million miles away. What adventures would he have before he saw it again?...

A little sound came from the Hawk, a half-sigh. Abruptly he called one of the men on his watch and stationed him at the 'scope, and then he returned to the chart-table and the work of calculating their course to Earth.



CHAPTER XIII

In Earth's Shadow

Hour after hour and day after day, for a week the Sandra tracked on through the boundless leagues, the waxing sunlight beating steadily on her starboard bow and her silent gravity-plates and singing generators bringing Earth ever nearer. Friday, who possessed an extensive knowledge of all the practical sciences, did extra service in the role of cook, and his regularly served meals disguised the undifferentiated hours of space into Earth-mornings, noons and nights. Watch in and watch out, and nothing to disturb the even routine.

As for the ever-feared pursuit, there was no sign of it. Systematically and carefully the men stationed at the electelscope turned it through the region behind, but never did their watching eyes discern the bulk of the asteroid. Its disappearance, and the kindred mystery of who had been on it, remained unsolved.

Therefore peace came to Eliot Leithgow's face, and the tiredness left his eyes. The long, hunted years were beginning to be washed from him, and daily, to Carse, he appeared younger. Often in the control cabin or over a meal he talked of what lay ahead, and the happiness Earth held waiting for him. There was his daughter, Sandra, whom he had seen last as a girl of fourteen, and even then interested in his work. She would be matured now, and she would perhaps be eager to help him in the work he intended to resume. There was so much of it! Discoveries, theories, evolved during his fugitive years—now he could complete them and give them to his old circles of brother scientists. All this was in his conversations; but secret and unworded in his thoughts were anticipations of the old dear beauty of Earth, that beauty for which his ageing heart had pined so long....

And Earth was drawing nearer.

* * * * *

Another week passed.

Twice a day the door of Dr. Ku Sui's cabin was unlocked and he was brought out under guard for several turns through the ship. Though for safety's sake they continued to dose him with the V-27, it was apparent that the gas had less and less effect on him. Four, then eight, then twelve times a day they re-gassed him—as often as they dared, considering its ultimate destructive mental effect—but more and more of the frankness and serenity foreign to his green eyes melted away. Gradually the normal veil came to hide their depths and make them enigmatic; and sometimes there was again on his face the hint of something strong and tigerish and cruel lying waiting. They no longer trusted him to attend to the five patients. He spoke seldom. A tall, reserved figure in black silk, attended either by Ban Wilson or Friday, he strolled through the ship for fifteen minutes and was returned to his lonely cabin. Of all the marks his experience must have left upon him, the only one apparent was his silence.

It was on the seventeenth day that he forsook that silence and directly accosted Carse. He had a request. The saffron face impassive, the long lashes lying low over the eyes, he said softly:

"I wonder, Captain Carse, if I might be permitted a glimpse of the subjects of my transplantation?"

Leithgow and Wilson were at the time with Carse in the control cabin, and they regarded their friend intently, curious as to what the reply would be. They saw his steel-gray eyes meet Dr. Ku's gaze squarely; and the two men looked at each other: Hawk Carse, complete victor at last, and Ku Sui, the vanquished.

The adventurer answered:

"Your request is only natural, Dr. Ku. Certainly you may see them, and perhaps offer an opinion on their progress, which has so far been in the hands of your assistants. But I shall have to accompany you."

"You are kind."

"Take the controls, Ban," Carse directed, and together they left the cabin.

* * * * *

There was no visible change in the five bodies. They lay stretched out in cots, sheets drawn up to their necks, and it seemed almost as if they were quietly slumbering and would presently wake up; though in reality consciousness would not return to the fine brains in their hideous, distorted bodies for many weeks, and then only if the healing processes were successful. Bandages swathed the heads, leaving eyes and nostrils alone visible. An assistant of Leithgow's, at present on watch there, moved occasionally with instrument in hand to time the fevered pulses.

"I must ask you to stand back here, Dr. Ku," said the Hawk, indicating a spot some five feet from the nearest cot. His left arm hung easily by his side, the hand resting by the butt of his holstered raygun; and the position was not accidental.

Ku Sui nodded and doubtless noted the gun, but his eyes were on the bodies. He stood regarding his own handiwork in silence, his face inscrutable, and Carse did not disturb him. At last, in a low tone he asked the assistant:

"The food injections take successfully?"

The man nodded.

"I remember," the beautifully modulated voice went on. "I was not sure of one subject. Swanson's brain, was it not? Is his condition any better?"

"We are not sure."

"Ah, yes ... yes...." He appeared to muse, and no one disturbed him in the minutes of silence that followed. Finally he looked away and said:

"It was a great feat. Thank you, Captain Carse. I am pleased by this glimpse of the miracle my hands were made to perform. I am ready to return."

But at the door of his cabin he paused, and his eyes rested again on the cold, firm face close to him. He said:

"I suppose, Captain Carse, you intend to bring me before Earth's World Court of Justice?"

"Yes. Along with our living proof of your abduction of the five scientists."

The Eurasian smiled. "I see. And since there is no questioning that proof, it would appear that Earthlings will soon levy punishment on Dr. Ku Sui.... So.... You know, Captain Carse, I find your caution a great handicap. You keep gassing me; I am locked in; and since I have observed no excitement aboard the ship, apparently there are no friends anywhere near me. You have stripped me of everything." His eyes lowered for a moment. "Everything save this ring."

On the forefinger of his right hand, set simply in a platinum band, was a large dark stone.

"A black opal," said Dr. Ku. "I have worn it for years and I prize it highly. Perhaps at the last I will give it to you as a memento of these past years, Captain Carse." And he went into the cabin, where they gassed him again.

* * * * *

The third week passed.

Crossing the orbit of Mars, now approximately in opposition to Jupiter, the Sandra streaked on into the last leg of her long voyage. The sun was a vast, flame-belching disk on her starboard side, and ahead lay Earth, growing each hour. Cheerfulness pervaded the ship, nerves were relaxing, faces lightening. Carse could not remember when Eliot Leithgow had worn a smile so constantly. It was only natural, for to the old scientist and his personal assistants Earth was home, the fulfillment of every desire, the reality and symbol of normal life and love of man.

But to Hawk Carse the Green Planet was not home. He was the adventurer, and wanderer, the seeker of new places with the alluring lustre of peril. Earth was to him little more than a port of call, and it brought him sadness to see how eagerly Leithgow stared at her growing face. Their parting was not far away now.

The Sandra logged off the miles. Then came the day when only ten thousand were left, and, soon after, five thousand. Deceleration had long since been begun. Slightly but unvaryingly the ship's momentum slackened until she arrived at the two thousand mile mark, where the great curving stretch of the planet filled her bow windows, and the well-remembered continents and seas stood out as clearly as on a tilted classroom globe.

Carse leaned musing in a corner of the control cabin, oblivious to the well-meaning but toneless voice with which Ban Wilson, at the electelscope was butchering a song. A gentle tap on the shoulder summoned him out of his study.

He turned and saw that Leithgow had come to him. Carse smiled at the old scientist, and said:

"Well, Eliot, we'll be in soon now. Apparently we've made it safely, and there's nothing to stand between you and the day you've waited for so long."

* * * * *

"Yes. But Carse—what of you? How long will you stay? I only wish I could persuade you—"

"To retire, Eliot? Settle down? Become a humdrum landlocked Earthling?" He chuckled, and shook his head. "No, no, old friend. Oh, I'll stay on Earth for a few weeks; I suppose I'll have to, to testify before the World Court of Justice when it takes up your case; but after that's settled, I'll be going back. You know me, Eliot: I'll never change. There are a number of things I must attend to at once. My ship, the Star Devil, is still on Iapetus, remember; I must find her and get her tuned up again. She's the fastest craft in space, bar none. Then I must make the round of my ranches and see that things are running smoothly. I've a lot of work on the Iapetus ranch, particularly. Then, there's that Pool of Radium—not that I need the wealth, if it really exists; but the job has killed so many who have sought for it that I'd like to take a crack at it myself. Oh, plenty to do!"

Leithgow looked at him, and there was all affection in his eyes, and friendship as close as it can be between men.

"No, Carse," said Leithgow softly. "I suppose Earth will never get her gravity on you for keeps. But I hope you will come down occasionally to see me, and perhaps once a year, say, spend a month with Sandra and me in our—"

"Carse!"

Ban shouted the name out. His face, turned from the electelscope, was alive with excitement.

"Here! Look!"

"What is it?"

"The asteroid! It's close!"

In two strides Carse was at the eyepiece of the infra-red glass attached to the instrument. One look through it served to verify Ban's report. The asteroid of Dr. Ku Sui had at last appeared.

* * * * *

It was not more than fifty miles from the Sandra, a craggy fragment of rock, peanut-shaped, and tipped by its gleaming dome. Its speed seemed the same as theirs, but its course was different; and to Carse, that fact immediately explained its sudden appearance. He turned from the eyepiece with a face grown hard and cold.

"Well, it's happened," he said. "Instead of a stern chase, which would give us some chance of spotting them, they at once got off to the side and have all this time been flanking us. Now they're cutting in, straight behind, no doubt ready for business. All right. Ban, sound the alarm."

Like a gladiator about to step sword in hand into the arena, the Sandra, though a ship never designed for space duels, girded her loins and made herself ready for what at its best could only be an unequal struggle. She was outclassed in weapons, weight and speed—in all save pilots. She had Hawk Carse at her helm.

The harsh alarm bell at once rang through the ship, an emergency call to stations. Carse, at the controls, rapped out another order.

"Defensive web on, Ban, and build up power for the ray batteries."

As the echoes of the bell died, a piercing whine grew amidships, and shreds of blue light swiftly scattered by the Sandra's ports. They were quickly gone, but they left behind an almost invisible envelope of blue which enwrapped the ship completely. The defensive web against attacking rays was on.

Friday tumbled into the control cabin, and on his heels two of Leithgow's assistants, the third being on duty with the patients. Carse briefly explained what had happened. "Friday," he ordered, "you take the stern ray batteries. Ban—"

But Ban Wilson had returned to the electelscope, and it had given him more news. Interrupting, he cried out:

"They must be attacking! A light just flashed in the dome!"

With his words they all saw the light. The visi-screen, though it did not reveal the asteroid, showed the first weapon with which it struck—a lustrous ray of purple which in a blink had leaped out to the Sandra and enfolded her. A shower of sparks crackled out from the ship's defensive web, but the purple ray continued.

"I don't know that ray, Eliot." Carse said. "What's on our speed indicator?"

The scientist's gasp was plainly audible as he read the dial. "Why, it—it's dropping! Much faster than our deceleration accounts for! That ray—why, it must have magnetic properties! Carse, the asteroid's stopping us!"



CHAPTER XIV

The Hawk Strikes

No surprise showed on the Hawk's face, though the others were visibly shaken. He, at the helm, merely nodded and continued with further orders.

"Williams," he said to one of Leithgow's assistants, "get Thorpe and go and dose Ku Sui with V-27. Give him plenty. Then both of you station yourselves, ray guns in hand, outside his cabin. We'll take no chances with him, gassed or not. Friday, open our radio receiver to the general band. Just the receiver, not the mike.... Our speed, Eliot?"

"Down to seven hundred, and falling steadily."

Carse went to the electelscope, after giving the controls over to Ban.

Squarely behind the Sandra, and within twenty-five miles, the peanut-shaped body had come. It was an ominous and silent approach. The Sandra remained pinned by the purple ray for minutes while the Hawk studied her aggressor. As he watched the asteroid, the others watched him; Ban Wilson fidgety, Friday clenching and unclenching his big hands. Eliot Leithgow with whitened face and shoulders that seemed to have bowed a little.

The forward speed of the Sandra decreased to four hundred miles an hour, and still the Hawk studied the massive body behind....

A sputter sounded in the radio receiver. Carse turned away from the electelscope and listened to the heavy Venusian voice that was suddenly speaking to him from it.

"Carse, I've got you! You've seen our ray, of course, but have you looked at your speed-indicator? You're caught—and this time you're going to stay caught. You cannot possibly resist the magnetic ray I have on you, and in a few minutes you will be drawn right into me. I advise you to surrender peacefully. No tricks—though there's no trick that could do you any good! Nothing! I have you this time!"

A frosty smile tightened the Hawk's lips.

"I was right, Eliot," he murmured. "The man behind the panel took the asteroid to Lar Tantril. He is our opponent."

* * * * *

Those were his words, but he did nothing. He seemed content to stand with cold, intent face looking back through the infra-red electelscope. The Sandra's speed sank to three hundred, two hundred and soon a hundred, and the asteroid, which was of course also decelerating, crept up remorselessly. Ban Wilson had every confidence in the Hawk, but finally the inaction grew too much for him to bear.

"Jumping Jupiter, Carse!" he sputtered. "—aren't you going to do anything? Use our rays! Try maneuvering to the side! Damn it, we're just letting them take us!"

The adventurer might not have heard, for all the sign he gave. The Earth-clock on the wall ticked on; seconds built minutes, and the minutes passed. The asteroid was only ten miles astern.

"Eliot," said Carse quietly, "get me one of your infra-red glasses."

He took over the controls again. Carefully he varied the forward repulsion and sent current to the side gravity-plates, and slowly the Sandra answered by rotating, longitudinally, reversing her position. Still maintaining a slight and dwindling speed toward Earth, her bow swung from that planet's eye-filling panorama and came to face, instead, the invisible asteroid. When turned completely around, the men in her control cabin looked through the bow windows right into the brilliant cone of the purple ray.

Lar Tantril's voice again boomed from the broadcasting shell, and this time it was harsh with anger.

"Try no tricks, Carse! I see what you intend. You plan to suddenly answer my ray, instead of continuing to resist it, and so drive right past me and escape. But I warn you I have terrific power, and if you move towards me of your own volition, I can burn you to a cinder in three seconds, and I'll do it. You can't escape! If I have to destroy Ku Sui, all right—but I'll get you!"

* * * * *

The Hawk strapped over his eyes the infra-red glasses Leithgow now gave him.

Reversing the Sandra's ends had neither increased nor decreased the rate at which the asteroid's purple stream was bringing her closer. Obviously the magnetic stream was being varied. The space-ship's forward momentum merely continued to drop normally until the moment came when she had no Earthward velocity at all; and then more quickly she moved toward the restraining asteroid.

With his infra-red glasses, through the bow windows, Carse could now see the massive body in full detail. There was the dome, a huge, gleaming cup of transparent stuff now showing wisps of blue, from the defensive web around it; and inside were the several buildings, and minute black dots which were the figures of men. There was a great number of them. The largest group was clustered inside one of the large ship-size port-locks in the dome. The lock's outer door was open, and it was from there that the purple ray seemed to originate. Obviously the intention of the enemy was to draw the Sandra right in. Five miles now separated asteroid and ship.

Again the Venusian chief spoke.

"I warn you once more, Sparrow Hawk, try no tricks. You can see the men I have here, but you can't see my ray projectors. They're hidden, but they're centered on you, every one, and my hand's at the control that fires them. They have terrific power, Carse. Better not attempt anything!"

The Hawk switched on the extension microphone at his side. He said levelly into it:

"Lar Tantril, I'll make a bargain with you: a favor for a favor."

"What?" shot from the loudspeaker.

"I will agree to surrender peaceably when you've drawn my ship inside if, for your part, you promise to free Eliot Leithgow, who is aboard with me, and the five patients on whom Ku Sui operated. If you don't grant me that, I will oppose you to the last pull of my finger on trigger."

"But, Carse—" the Master Scientist began, horrified: but his expression of amazement faded when the slender man at the radio turned his head and half-closed one eye in a wink.

"You will agree to that—and no tricks?" Tantril's voice repeated.

"I will agree to it. And as for tricks, what could I possibly try? Your rays could burn through the maximum power of my web in three seconds, as you say: I know it as well as you. I only wish there was a chance to get out of your range in time."

"All right!" the Venusian replied decisively. "I agree. I'll release Leithgow and the five patients. Keep away from the controls and I'll draw you in."

* * * * *

Carse switched off the microphone.

"A hell of a lot Tantril's word is worth!" muttered Ban Wilson. Once more, surprisingly, the Hawk winked. Friday was grinning now. For once in his life he had guessed his master's strategy before the others.

A mile and a half to the front lay the dome-end of the asteroid. Perhaps nine hundred miles to the rear lay the tremendous mottled curve of Earth with her dangerous upper layers of the stratosphere all too close. In the very face of Earth, all three on a line, the ship lay linked by a stream of purple to the great rough-hewn, errant asteroid. Half the bulk of all three lay sharply outlined against the black of space by the intense yellow light of the flaming distant sun.

The asteroid neared to a mile, then a half-mile. Hawk Carse said curtly:

"Ban, when I give the word, put all the power we've got into our defensive web. Load the generators; overload them; tax them to the limit. That web must be as tough as possible for five seconds."

"Got you, Carse."

"You've—a trick?" ventured Leithgow timidly.

"I think I have, Eliot. Lar Tantril might have caught on when I turned the ship, but unfortunately for him his brain is incapable of proceeding past a certain point.... All right, Ban."

"Feel it!"

In answer to Ban's hands, the deck of the control cabin was literally vibrating under the mounting speed of the generators in the power-room. The generators could not stand that terrific overload long: they would burn out. But Carse needed only a few seconds of it.

The asteroid was a quarter of a mile away, seen through the infra-red. The dome loomed large.

"All right!" whispered Hawk Carse. "Hold on!"

With the words he unleashed the Sandra's full acceleration.

* * * * *

It was a risk and a big one, but the Hawk had it calculated to a fraction of a second, and so, without hesitation, he took the chance. A little less than four seconds to reach his objective, he reckoned; a little more than one second for Tantril to release the asteroid's disintegrating rays as he had threatened; therefore about two and a half seconds for the Sandra to be exposed to those rays. The chance that her defensive web could resist them for that long would decide it.

From almost a standing start, the Sandra swept ahead, generators humming, her web a blue mist around her, acceleration at the full. Straight down through the heart of the narrowing purple ray she sped, a hurtling metallic projectile, hundreds of tons in mass, her stub bow levelled dead at the dome.

After a second the asteroid bared its fangs.

A cone of brilliant orange flamed and washed around the Sandra's bow, and a storm of soundless sparks engulfed her. She was caught in a maw of fire, and held there for the remaining terrific seconds of her wild forward dash. But the seconds passed; the hands of Hawk Carse were delicate on her controls; and the Sandra, curving slightly upward, struck, crashed, wrenched terribly in every joint; and then the jolt and the protesting wrench and the spluttering sparks were gone from her, and there was around her only the deep silence of lifeless space.

At three hundred miles an hour the Sandra had nicked the upper plates of the dome and streaked on, unharmed!

It was not necessary now to use infra-red glasses to see the asteroid. It was there in the visi-screen for naked eyes, but for seconds not one of the men in the ship's control-cabin thought to look. The awful acceleration and shock had dazed them. They had not known what was coming, except Friday and the Hawk, and only the latter was able to retain reasonable alertness. He, almost immediately after the impact, cut down the load on the generators, and brought the Sandra out of her mad drive forward, rotating the ship until she was facing back towards the asteroid. Then all of them looked through the bow windows, and what they saw told the story in an instant.

"It's visible! See—the invisibility's gone!" cried Friday.

* * * * *

A score of miles away the body lay, fully revealed, its starboard half gleaming hard and sharp in the sunlight. Cautiously the Sandra drew closer. Carse gave the controls to Ban and examined it carefully through the electelscope, after removing the infra-red attachment.

He saw that the keel of the Sandra had torn a great, mangled rent in the dome and through this the air had rushed out. Space had taken possession. The disintegrating rays which had been burning at the Sandra had been snapped off with the sheathing of invisibility; in that one wild second of impact, all the asteroid's functioning mechanism had been destroyed. Lar Tantril had not thought quite far enough: he had not sealed the buildings air-tight against a possible crashing of the dome, and for that reason alone he and his men had gone down in full defeat under the drive of the Hawk.

Shreds of flotsam drifting and turning in space around the dome now became visible—bits of wreckage hurled out from the tear, and also a number of white, bloated things which once had been the bodies of men. The outrushing tide of air had taken them along, and now they drifted, shapeless, all of a kind, in the lifelessness of space.

"Merciful heaven!" whispered Eliot Leithgow, staring at the desolation. "Gone! Just snuffed out!"

The Hawk took over again and brought and held the Sandra in a position a quarter of a mile above the now rapidly falling asteroid.

"They're all dead, I'm sure," he said in a voice hard and emotionless as his graven face. "They must be, for the asteroid is now visible, and that means that the doors of the power building were open. Inside and out, all there is dead, machinery and men.... Still, it had to be done. It was they or we. A variation of the trick we used to escape from the dome before, Eliot; and Tantril of course didn't expect it and protect himself as Ku Sui did that other time. It's all done now—yes, its gravity-plates too, for see, it's turning."

"And fast!" murmured Friday.

The body was rotating around its longer axis at about twice the speed of an Earth-watch's second hand. Now the dome was sliding under, out of their sight, the craggy rock belly coming up to take its place. Nine hundred miles away was Earth—rather, less than that, for the body was now free to accept the tremendous gravity pull of the planet so near. Soon it would plunge to destruction there....

* * * * *

A thought came to Carse, and he said:

"Perhaps Ku Sui would like to see what has become—"

On the last word he stopped and whirled around. His eyes were suddenly intense and his face startled.

"I heard a hiss!" said Friday.

"You too? Then it was a port-lock!" Carse turned to the visi-screen. "Look there!" he cried.

In the screen Earth made a titanic background against which, a falling, dwindling figure in a clear-cut in the sunlight, gleamed space-suit. Down it went, rapidly, even as they stared, until it hung just off the also-falling asteroid. It was obviously preparing to enter the dome.

"Take the helm, Ban, and watch him!" Carse ordered harshly, and ran aft from the control cabin.

Leithgow and Friday, following at once, found him inside the open door of Dr. Ku Sui's cabin, examining two figures stretched limp at his feet. The men were Thorpe and Williams, who had been set to gas and guard the Eurasian. Carse said:

"Both dead. Poison. Look at Thorpe's wrist."

On the right wrist of the dead man was a line of red, a scratch, and swollen, discolored flesh was ugly around it. One cheek of Williams bore a similar patch. Both had been armed with rayguns, but now they were gone. Half to himself, the Hawk murmured:

"Yes, poison. It might have been in the ring. Everyone else was in the control cabin. The men entered the door, Ku Sui was waiting—quick death.... Well, I'm going after him."

Not understanding, still horrified by the contorted face of the man on the deck, the other two gazed at the adventurer.

"But, Carse!" Leithgow broke out. "How can you? How can you possibly—"

"He's gone back to the dome," the Hawk cut in frostily. "He can't make it to Earth as he is now, for we'd see him and easily be able to pick him up. No; he's got some reason for returning, to the dome. Something important. He thinks he's escaped.... He's mistaken."

A shudder passed over Friday, for Hawk Carse's eyes had fallen on him, and they were deadly.

"Let me by, Eliot," the man whispered. "This time he goes or I go, but by the gods of space it'll be one of us!"



CHAPTER XV

There Is a Meteor

His face set and cold, Carse ran to the stores cabin, just as the Eurasian must have hurried there a few minutes before. He took one of Dr. Ku's self-propulsive space-suits down from the rack and slipped into it, sticking a raygun in the belt. Still not speaking, he glided to the rear port-lock, Leithgow and Friday running alongside and attempting to dissuade him from the dangerous pursuit. Their words were wasted. Carse gave them only a faint smile and a few directions.

"Keep the ship as close as you can without danger. No, Eclipse; I'm going by myself; there's no need to risk two. If I don't come out, you've everything needed to prove your case. Eliot—the re-embodied brains, Ku Sui's four white assistants—"

"I tell you you're going to your death! You'll be caught inside! Earth's attracting the asteroid now, and in a few minutes it will be plunging through the atmosphere with terrific speed! The friction will make it a meteor, and you'll burn. Carse! You'll die in flames! You haven't but a few minutes to do the whole thing!"

"Have to risk that, Eliot." He swung open the inner door of the lock and stepped into the chamber. "Remember, keep as close to the asteroid as possible, and a steady watch for Ku Sui and me." He looked levelly at them, white man and black, for a moment, then turned his face away. "That's all. Good-by," he said.

The door swung shut in their faces with a hiss of compressed air.

The Hawk closed the face-plate of his helmet and rapidly spun over the controls. Another hiss, and the outer door moved wide. He stepped with force into space.

* * * * *

The panorama below him was breath-taking: Earth seemed almost to hit him in the face. He had not realized it was so close. The sheer, mighty stretch of the globe filled his eyes, and for seconds he could not focus on anything else, so overwhelming to his vision was the colossal map. It reached away to left and right, before and behind, and he was so near that it seemed almost flat, a sun-gleaming plain on which stood out in sharp outline the continent of Europe, the Atlantic Ocean and, bordering it, the edge of North America.

To his left was the flaming orb of the sun; and directly underfoot, rotating against the vast background of the North Atlantic, he now saw the asteroid, glinting metallically along its craggy length as it swung over. Carse centered every bit of power he had on it, and at maximum acceleration began to overhaul his objective.

The asteroid was plunging free to Earth, and the rate of its uncontrolled plunge was second by second mounting tremendously; but Carse's power-fall quickly enabled him to overtake it. As the dome swooped up in front of him, and the sunlight washed briefly over its desolate buildings, he looked hard for a shape moving amongst them, without success. Doubtless the Eurasian was well inside by now.

The job of getting into the dome was a hazardous one. About every thirty seconds the asteroid described a complete rotation, making the rim turn at a speed of half a mile a second, and that made the task of entering extremely dangerous to a man whose only protection was the metal and fabric of a space-suit. Misjudgment would either rip the suit or dash him to instant death. He had to slip cleanly down through the jagged tear in the dome, planning his swoop accurately to the fraction of a second.

Never cooler, the Hawk made it. Building a parallel speed equal to that of the rotating dome, he followed it over in a dizzy whirl; and as the rent came below he shot curving down and in with sufficient precision, and at once swiftly adjusted his gravity to offset the asteroid's great centrifugal force.

* * * * *

For alternating fifteen-second periods the sunlight filled the dome and its buildings; and on the tail of the first of these, even as the sable tide swept all vision from him, the Hawk arrived at the door of one wing of the central building. He had not seen Ku Sui, and he had no time for exploration, but he did have a hunch as to where the Eurasian had gone, and he followed that hunch. A silent, giant-gray thing in the black silence of the corridor, grim, intent and seeming irresistible, he swept along it; and every second he knew that a raygun might spit from where it had been waiting in ambush to puncture his suit and kill him. For whether or not Ku Sui was aware that he was being tracked by his old, bitter foe, Carse did not know.

The asteroid plunged down faster and faster. Earth's atmosphere, with all its perils of friction, coming ever closer, and the great bosom of the planet lying waiting to receive and bury the rock hurtling towards it. Throughout most of the leagues of space that asteroid had tracked on its master's diverse errands, and in many distant places the trails of Hawk Carse and Ku Sui had crossed and left blood and crossed again; and now those three—asteroid, Eurasian and the Hawk—were drawn once more together for the spectacular and epic climax, now only minutes away. No power in the universe was to stop the plunge of the asteroid; it remained to be seen how one or both of the two living humans on it could get out in time....

But of all this, nothing was in Hawk Carse's mind except the beating, driving realization that few minutes were left in which to play out the last scene. With reckless haste he sped to where his hunch led him, the secret panel in Dr. Ku's laboratory. As he reached it, faint sunlight came filtering in from somewhere and he saw that the panel was open.

He looked within and dimly saw a ladder reaching down into black depths. Without hesitation he thrust through the opening and dropped into the blackness. He dared not lose a second.

* * * * *

He hit bottom with a thud, changed his glove controls and reached out in the darkness. He felt that he was in one end of a passageway. As rapidly as he could, his arms stretched wide, all his nerves and muscles and senses alert, he pressed along it.

Continually he was thrown into the rough wall at his right by the centrifugal force of the asteroid. How far did the passageway extend? Was Ku Sui at the end of it? It occurred to the Hawk that the asteroid was a developing shooting star, eating up the few hundred miles of life that remained, streaking down into the atmosphere, where waited quick friction and incandescence—and he down in the heart of it, blind, without clue to what lay in front of him, ignorant of everything, and with only minutes in which to achieve his end. There'd be no heat-warning through his insulated suit. Even now, perhaps, there was no time to get out; already the deadline might have been crossed; he could not know. He went on....

How far? A hundred yards; two hundred? Easily that, he thought, and still no variation in the blackness around him! The passageway seemed straight, so he might now be past the rim of the dome above.

Then, for just a second, he saw a faint wisp of light ahead!

Automatically Carse's raygun came up, but in the time that simple motion took the light was gone and the blackness was as deep and lifeless as before. But he was coming to something. He went on, perhaps a little faster, hot to discover the last emergency resource of Dr. Ku. He took no pains to avoid making noise, for he knew Ku Sui could not hear him through the airless space between.

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 passage. 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.

* * * * *

Carse 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 space-suit. Ku Sui, brought to bay!

But Carse, 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 passageway 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 passage. He might still overhaul and capture the other. If there was still time....

But was there?

The passing 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. Carse 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 Carse'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, Carse 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 space!—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 bumps—quick out—and must stay conscious—must stay conscious to exert repulsion against Earth!

Like a projectile Hawk Carse shot out of that tunnel of hell 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.

Carse'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 space....

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 titanic 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 Carse 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 space-suit had started to burn from the friction of his own passage 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 space suit intact.

He came to rest, in relation to the Earth, and hovered there. Again he scrutinized the black untenanted wastes of space 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 Carse 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 passing of Ku Sui....



* * * * *

THE END