CHAPTER XII
_Out Under the Dome_
Within the well of darkness rang the metallic reverberations from thebattering on the four doors all around. The fluid nothingness was aplace of fear. Its nerve-shattering, mind-confusing bedlam might havecome from the fantastic anvils of some giant, malevolent blacksmith.
The Hawk's curt voice cut through imperatively:
"Keep your heads. We'll have a light in a second. Light of a sort."
He threw the switch by the side of the chamber of brains.
Seconds passed, and where was darkness grew a faint glow. The switch hadoperated; the current, probably from the device's own batteries, wasthere! Quickly and steadily the liquid within the case took on itsself-originating glow, until the midnight laboratory was faintly washedwith the delicate rosy light. The wires emerged in their complexity asbefore, and then the brains, all gruesome and naked in their cradles ofunnatural life.
Around the internally-lit case were the three besieged Earthlings, halfin blackness, the light from the front making ghastly shadows on theirfaces. Acolites at some sorcerer's rite they looked, with the long inkypatches that left them to dissolve formlessly against the far walls ofthe room.
Grotesque in the operating garments he wore, his bald head shining inthe eery light, Eliot Leithgow approached the microphone Dr. Ku had usedto communicate with his pathetic subjects. He looked down at the brains,at the wires which threaded the pans they lay in, at the narrow graytubes that pulsed with blood--or whatever might be the fluid used in itsstead. All mechanical was the apparatus--all of metal and othercunningly fashioned man-made materials--all but the brains....
* * * * *
To the old Master Scientist there came a vision of five human figures,rising specterlike from the case they were entombed in; straight, proudyoung figures, two of them; two others old, like himself, and the fiftha gnarled hunchback. Very different were they, each from each other, buteach face had its mark of genius; and each face, to Eliot Leithgow, waswarm and smiling, for these five men were friends....
So he saw them in vision....
"Another switch has to be thrown to talk with them, Carse," he said. TheHawk indicated one inquiringly. Leithgow nodded. "Yes. That was it." Theswitch went over.
He steadied himself and said into the speaking grille:
"I am Eliot Leithgow--Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow. Once you knew me.Professors Geinst, Estapp and Norman, Dr. Swanson and Master ScientistCram--do you remember me? Do you remember how once we worked together;how, long ago on our Earth, we were friends? Do you remember your oldcolleague, Leithgow?"
He stopped, deeply shaken. In seconds his mind sped back through theyears to those five men as he had last seen them--and to two women hehad met, calm-faced as their husband-scientists.... God forbid thosewomen should ever learn of this!
Carse watched his old comrade closely, fearful of the strain this was onhim.
Then came a cold, thin, mechanical voice.
_"Yes, Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow. I remember you well."_
The scientist strove to keep level his voice as he continued:
"Two friends and I are trapped here. Dr. Ku Sui desires my brain. Hewishes to add it to----" He stammered, halted; then burst out: "If itwould help you in any way, I'd give it gladly! But it couldn't, I know;it would only aid his power-mad schemes. So my friends and I mustescape. And we can see now no way!
"You can hear that noise? It's very loud; men are outside each door,battering at them, and soon they must break through. How can we escape?Do you know of a way, out of your knowledge of conditions here? Will youtell me, old colleagues?"
He waited.
* * * * *
Fifty feet away from this scene, and missing almost all of it, wasFriday. From his post at the panel he kept throwing fearful looks at thenearest door, which was shuddering and clanging and threatening anymoment to be wrenched off its hinges. A good thing--he wasthinking--that the doors were of stout metal. When one did go he wouldget five or six of the soulless devils before they brought him down.
Carse waited tensely for the response--if one there was to be. His earswere throbbing in unison with the regular crash of rams on metal, buthis eyes never left the convoluted mounds of intelligent matter sofantastically featured by the internal radiance of the life-givingliquid. Impossible, it seemed, that thoughts were stirring inside thosegruesome things....
"Please hurry!" he said in a low voice; and Leithgow repeateddesperately:
"How can we escape? Please be quick!"
Then the miracle of mechanism and matter functioned and again gave forththe cold voice of the living dead.
"_It is my disposition to help you, Eliot Leithgow. On a shelf under oneof the tables in this room you will find a portable heat-ray. Melt ahole in the ceiling and go out through the roof._"
"Then what can we do?"
"_In lockers behind the table there are space-suits, hanging ready foremergencies. Don them and leave through one of the asteroid'sport-locks._"
"Ask if the ports are sealed," Carse interjected instantly.
Leithgow asked the question.
"_Yes_," replied the unhuman voice. "_But twice four to the right willopen any of them._"
* * * * *
The Master Scientist wiped his brow. Though trembling under the strainof conversing with this machine on which his life depended, he did notoverlook a single point.
"But the asteroid's gravital pull would hold us close to it," he said."Is there a way of breaking free from it?"
"_You'll find the space-suits are equipped with small generators andgravity-plates which I helped Ku Sui develop. The switch and maincontrol are in the left-hand glove._"
"Thank you! Oh, thank you! You give us a chance!" exclaimed oldLeithgow.
He turned and looked for the Hawk, and found him already in the lockersand pulling out three space-suits. The clumsy, heavy cone of a portableheat-ray lay on the table ready to hand.
They had little time to waste. The torrid temperature of a new smell ofburned metal around the door they had just entered told them as well aswords that the large projector in the corridor was at last being used tobore a way in.
With surprising strength in one so slender, Carse lifted the ray andpointed it at an angle toward the middle of the ceiling. He pressed thecontrol button, and a blinding stream of violet radiance splashedagainst the metal above. It hissed and sputtered where it touched;molten drops fell sizzling and splattering to the floor; then suddenlythere was a flood of ruddy illumination, and the Hawk dropped theheat-ray, stepped forward and looked up.
* * * * *
Up through a neatly melted round hole, up at the great glasslike domewhich arched over the whole settlement--up, past it, into the vast faceof Jupiter, hanging out there oppressively near!
Friday, champing for action, left his post by the panel and dragged along low cabinet to position under the hole. On top of it he placed theoperating table, and, after he had tripped the table's small wheels,another table on top of that.
"You first, Eclipse!" his master rapped out as he finished. "I'll passthe suits to you; then swing Leithgow up."
The negro answered by acting. Swiftly he climbed the rude pile, andreached for the edge of the hole. It was still searingly hot, and hegasped with hurt as his palms and fingers clenched over it, but he didnot let go. Levering himself rapidly up, he got a leg through and thenhis body. A second later he peered back in and lowered his hands down.
"No one up here yet!" he reported. "All right for the suits!"
Carse passed the three bulky suits to him, and also two extra ray-gunshe had found in the locker.
"Now, Eliot--up!"
With the Hawk's help, Leithgow clambered onto the cabinet. He was justmounting the operating table when, from behind, came a thin, metallicvoice:
&
nbsp; "_Master Leithgow--Eliot Leithgow--please, a favor?_"
* * * * *
Leithgow turned and stared, then understood. It was the coordinatedbrains. They had forgotten to return the switches. And now the coldvoice was speaking of its own accord; and somehow--though it might havebeen imagination entirely--there seemed to be a tinge of loneliness tothe words that sounded from its speaker.
Instantly Leithgow got down and hurried over to the grille. Seconds wereprecious, but Carse and he were heavily obligated to the brains, and anyrequest in reason had to be fulfilled.
"Yes. What can I possibly do?"
The lower hinge of one side of the barricaded door gave, burned out, andthe door wrenched inward at a resumption of the battering. The otherhinge still held, but it was bending with each mighty blow. Outwardlycalm, Hawk Carse watched the weakening door, a gun in each hand.
"_This_," said the toneless voice: "_Destroy me. Leave no slightesttrace. I live in hell, and have no way to move.... There are oldmemories ... things that once were dear ... Earth ... my homes ... mylives there.... Eliot Leithgow, destroy me. But promise, on your honoras a Master Scientist, never to let a single word regarding my fatereach those on Earth who knew me, loved me...._"
Leithgow looked at the Hawk. The adventurer nodded.
"I'll use the heat-ray," he said, with pity.
He ran and picked it up. But he had taken only one step in return whenthe second hinge of the yielding door wrenched free. An ear-piercingscreech rent the bedlam--and the door fell, half twisting, to lie in thedoorway.
As if by a signal the crashing at the other doors stopped. In anextraordinary silence a mob of gray-smocked bodies pressed forward.
Orange streaks laced the dim laboratory. The Hawk shouted, "Up, Eliot!For God's sake, up!" as, with deadly effect, he poured his two ray-gunsat the advancing men.
For a second, shaken by the terrible barrage, they fell back, leavingseveral sprawled bodies on the floor; but they came right back again.
Leithgow got safely to the top of the pile and was snatched out totemporary safety. Frantically Friday called down to his master; heseemed on the point of jumping down into the fight himself. But HawkCarse had been party to a promise.
He was behind the structure of furniture under the hole he had made inthe ceiling. With one gun he spat death at the coolies, while the otherhe emptied at the case of brains. Two stabbing streams of orange angledfrom him, one telling with awful effect on the men only two score feetaway, and the other absolutely useless. All over the still-glowing caseit spat its hits, but the glasslike substance resisted it completely,and remained unscathed.
Carse swore harshly. He hurled one empty gun at the case, turned with alast salvo of shots at the coolies, and then was up on the pile andleaping for Friday's hands.
They caught and gripped his, swung him once--twice--and hauled himswiftly out. But as the Hawk disappeared he shouted down the case:
"I'll be back!"