CHAPTER XIII
_The Final Mystery_
On the roof, Carse quickly scanned their situation. They were standingon the hub of the four-winged building. Far to the left was one set ofthe dome's great and small port-locks; exactly opposite was the other.Near the left hand ports; a little "north," lay the _Scorpion_. Thewhole area enclosed was a flat plain of gray soil.
Looming over the great transparent dome hung the flaming disk ofJupiter, so oppressively near that it seemed about to crash onto theasteroid. Its rays poured in a ruddy flood over the settlement, clearlyilluminating each detail; and comparatively close against the face ofthe mighty planet they could see the whitish globe of Satellite III. Itoffered the nearest haven. They might arrive famished, but in thepower-equipped space-suits which Friday was lugging they should be ableto span the gap.
The Hawk nodded to the port-locks on the left.
"That one," he snapped. "We'll have two chances, the _Scorpion_ and theport, but the port's safest; we could never get the whole ship underwayand through the lock in time. To prevent pursuit, all we have to do isleave the lock open after us."
They hastened along the roof of the wing that ran that way. As yet therewas no outside pursuit; most of the settlement's guards seemed to havebeen concentrated in the attack on the laboratory. But Carse knew itwould only be a matter of seconds before coolies would emerge from halfa dozen different points. He was trying to figure out which points theywere likely to be when there passed, perilously close, the spit of anorange ray. He glanced back, to see the first of the crowd which hadbroken into the laboratory come clambering up through the roof. Then, asa second shot sizzled by, they arrived at the end of the wing.
* * * * *
Friday took the fifteen-foot drop without hesitation. Carse loweredLeithgow to him and then swung down himself. They panted forward again,over grayish, glittering soil.
Some three hundred yards of open space lay between them and theport-locks. Friday now led the way, weighted down under the heavy suits;the scientist came next and then the Hawk, his sole remaining gunreplying at intervals to the ever-thickening barrage from behind. Theyhad covered perhaps a half of that distance when the negro's stepssuddenly faltered and he halted.
"Look there!" he groaned. "Cuttin' us off! We'll never make it, suh!"
Carse looked where he pointed, and saw a squad of half a dozen menemerging from a building well to their left. They were running at fullspeed for the lock, and, as Friday had said, it was obvious that theywould get there first. He glanced quickly around. Pursuit from thelaboratory in the rear was hot--and moreover three coolies were anglingsharply out on each side, to outflank them! In a minute they would besurrounded! Unable to reach either the port or the ship!
And then came the crowning piece of ill-luck. Suddenly the Hawk winced;staggered; clapped a hand to his shoulder. A lucky shot from an enemygun had caught him.
"You're hit!" cried Leithgow.
"It's nothing...."
* * * * *
The slender adventurer stood very still, thinking. He was trapped. Buthe was never more dangerous than when he was trapped.
Leithgow timidly ventured a suggestion.
"Why can't we put on our space-suits and rise up in the dome?"
Crisply the answer came back:
"Hard to maneuver laterally. Never get out ports. Sure death.... _I haveit!_" he ended.
Tersely he gave the two men orders:
"We've a bare chance--if I'm lucky. Now listen, and obey me exactly. Puton your space-suits. Shut them tight. Lie flat. You, Friday, use yourray-guns _and keep the guards from coming close_. Wait here. Doabsolutely nothing save keep them off. And keep your suits intact oryou're dead!"
He grabbed one of the suits from Friday and crept toward the _Scorpion_on hands and knees. The three coolies from the pursuit at the rear hadalready cut him off from the ship. Friday could not control his alarm atthis apparently crazy act. He called after:
"But you can't get to the ship through those guards! And if you did, youcouldn't run it yourself--and pick us up!"
Carse turned, his face white with cold passion. "When will you learn toobey me implicitly?" he said harshly--and crept on.
Old Leithgow trusted his friend a little more. "Get your suit on,Friday," he said gently, and slipped into his own. The negro, ashamed,followed his example; then both were flat on the ground, back to back,sniping--Leithgow also--as best they could under such conditions at thegroups of men who now were bellying ever nearer from three directions.
The Hawk's plan might well have appeared hair-brained to one who did notknow the man, and what he was capable of accomplishing under pressure.The very first step in this plan required the destroying of the threeoutflanking guards between him and the space-ship.
* * * * *
As so often in the great adventurer's career, he was lucky. Theunthinking have always admitted his luck, but never seen that he forcedit--forced it by doing the unexpected--attacking when he was attacked.He was doing that now. The three coolie-guards in his way must haveknown who he was, so their alarm at finding themselves, the attackers,attacked, will account for their making a move of poor strategy. Insteadof scattering and defending the open entrance-port of the space-shipfrom a short distance, they in their alarm made haste to get inside todefend it from there. The interior was the best place to defend theship--if they had already been inside--for they could lie in the innerdarkness and sweep the open port when the Hawk entered.
But to try to pass through the port--that was bad judgment. It was onlynecessary for Carse to hold bead on it and fire when they passed inline.
This was the present "luck" of the adventurer. He might have sniped theguards anyway, but he had it easier. From fifty yards away, prone andcarefully sighting, he took the three lives that had been so viciously,so subversively altered by Ku Sui.
A moment later, the way cleared, he was inside the ship--and hisspace-suit lay on the ground outside.
* * * * *
Rapidly the three groups of guards closed in on Leithgow and Friday. Thetwo men made their advance as uncomfortable as possible, but they coulddo no accurate shooting at such difficult targets as crawling men, fromwithin the cramped interiors of their cumbrous suits. Not even Friday,who was a crack shot. They could not hold out long--nor did they expectto.
They had been too occupied to notice what had become of Carse. Withintheir suits all was silence; they heard neither their friend's shots ashe struck down the three coolies nor their own. Quick glances at theship's open port revealed no one; nothing. Probably, they thought, theHawk was dead. Even if he were not, they would soon be. A matter of aminute. Maybe two. Their suits were still intact, but they could notremain so much longer. Ku Sui had this time ordered them destroyed.
And now half a dozen coolies were leaving the ring tightening aroundthem and creeping to the _Scorpion_ as additional guards....
It was then, in those last few seconds, with death staring them in theface, that Friday did a magnificent thing. It happened that Carse sawhim do it as the adventurer jumped out of the _Scorpion_ again and withfrantic speed slipped into the space-suit he had left waiting. Fridaystood straight up, a hundred feet from the enemy--a great bloatedmonster in his padded suit--and charged. Leithgow and the Hawk heard, bytheir suit helmet-radios, his battle yell of defiance, but the cooliesdid not. All silent, apparently, he rushed them--slowly, because of hishampering suit--his ray-gun spitting orange contempt--and other pencilsof fiery death passing him narrowly by.
And then, while he still charged, the rays stopped stabbing past him,and he saw the faces of the coolie-guards turn upward. So surprised wasthe expression on their faces, that he turned and looked too--and sawthe _Scorpion_, her entrance ports still open, forty feet off the groundand rising with swift acceleration.
Faster and faste
r she rose; all ray-guns were silenced before herastounding ascent. Higher and higher--faster and faster--till with astunning, ear-deafening crash she struck the great dome and was through.
Then came chaos.
A huge, jagged gash marked the ship's passage, and through this the airinside the dome poured with cyclonic force, snatching into in maelstromeverything unfastened within the dome and hurling it crazily into space.For seconds the flood rushed out, a visible thing, gray from the soilwhich it scooped up; and while its fury lasted every building on theasteroid quivered and groaned from the terrific strain.
And where, a moment before, men had stood--two white men and a black,and a score of coolie-guards--there was now nothing save the flat rockunder the gaping hole. The upper soil had been ripped out and flungforth like a concealing veil around the bodies that had gone with it....
* * * * *
For an interval Hawk Carse knew nothing. He had ceased to live, itseemed, and was soaring through Eternity. He never knew how much timepassed before his numbed senses began to return and he became aware ofweight and of a furious roaring in his head.
He was moving forward at blinding speed. Something kept flashing beforehim--a wide stream of ruddy orange light: his dazed brain could connectit with nothing he had ever known. Soon the orange stream settled intospasmodic bursts, pitch blackness filling the intervals; and when itcame more slowly he saw that it was in reality the vast flaming ball ofJupiter, streaking across the line of vision as he tumbled over andover, head over heels--free in space!
The realization helped his return to alertness. As the wild tumblingmotion gradually ceased, and Jupiter tended to stay more and more underhis feet, he peered around through his face-plate. To one side heglimpsed two grotesque, bulky figures, one half of them limned glaringlyagainst the blackness of space by the near-by planet's light. He sawother figures, too, spread out in a scattered fringe--figures of men insmocks, dead and bloated and white.
They were the coolies, these last, and the other two were of courseLeithgow and Friday. But had they survived the outrush of air? Carsefelt in his left glove for the suit's gravity control lever; found itand tentatively moved it. His acceleration slowly increased. He broughtthe lever part-way back. Then, into the microphone encased inside thehelmet, he called:
"Leithgow! Leithgow! Can you hear me? Friday!"
The radio broadcast his words. Soon welcome answers came in EliotLeithgow's tired voice and the negro's emphatic bass.
"Maneuver together," Carse instructed them. "We must lock arms and stayclose."
* * * * *
Slowly, clumsily, the three monstrous figures made toward each other,and presently they were reunited in a close group. Carse pointed an arminto the face of Jupiter where there hung poised a gleaming globe ofwhite, dappled with dark splotches.
"Satellite III," he said, "--our goal. And we'll get there withoutinterruption now that Ku Sui, his laboratory, his coordinated brains,are destroyed.... You are very quiet, Eliot. Aren't you happy at oursuccess?"
"I am very tired," the old scientist said. "Oh, but we'll sleep andfeast and game when we get back to my hidden lab on Three--won't we!"
"Chicken for me!" exclaimed Friday. "Even at twenty dollars a can!"
"Your shoulder, Carse--how is it?" asked the Master Scientistsolicitously. "And how did you ever get out of that space-ship in time,after you had given it such an acceleration?"
There was a tired smile in the adventurer's voice when he replied:
"My shoulder--a trifle. I have a dozen such burns. But my feet stillhurt from the twenty-foot drop I took out of the _Scorpion_. I had toget out: the shock of the crash would have killed me.
"But I've been looking for the asteroid," he went on--and interruptedhimself. "By the horn of the phanti!" he exclaimed in amazement. "Look,Eliot! That explains it all!"
His whole body was tilted back to allow him to look upward. Friday andthe Master Scientist followed his startled gaze, and they too gaped inwonder.
For there was nothing above or around them--no dwindling fragment ofrock--no sign of any asteroid: only the eternal stars.
"Yes," said Eliot Leithgow slowly, "that explains it all...."
"It explains what?" asked Friday, staring. "And where is the asteroid?"
"It's up there," the Hawk replied. "Don't you see now, Eclipse, why noone's ever found it; why we could hunt forever for it and hunt in vain?Ku Sui made his whole asteroid invisible!"
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