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 thehill. Seventy feet high and more than two hundred feet long, it was,and, like the rest of the rooms, metal-walled and sound-proofed. EliotLeithgow's own personal space-ship, the _Sandra_, rested there on itsmooring cradle, and by its side was the laboratory's air-car, anidentical shape in miniature, designed for atmospheric transit.
The adventurer, a silent, swift figure, went straight to the air-carand climbed into its control seat. He tested the controls, found themresponsive, then pressed a button set apart from the others: and thehuge port-lock door set in the farther wall of the hangar slidsmoothly open, revealing a metal chamber similar to that of the shipport-lock on Ku Sui's asteroid. But whereas the chamber of theasteroid's port-lock was for vacuum-atmosphere, this was forwater-atmosphere.
The clamps of the mooring cradle were released, and the air-car movedgently into the lock chamber. The door swung shut behind. On thepressing of another button there sounded a gurgling and splashing ofwater, and quickly the chamber was filled. The air-car was now asubmarine. All these operations were effected by radio control fromwithin it.
When the water filled the inside of the chamber, the second dooropened automatically, and the car started forward through a longsteel-lined, water-filled tube. It continued on even keel until Carse,watching through the bow window, saw a red light flash in the ceilingof the tube: and then he tilted the car and rose.
A second later, the shiny, water-dripping shape of the car brokethrough the surface of the lake that edged on the hill, and forsookthe water for the air.
To an outside observer, the appearance of the air-car and itssubsequent movements would have been incomprehensible. There lay thehill, desolate, barren, apparently lifeless: and there, washingagainst its slopes, the lake; nothing more. Then suddenly a curve ofgleaming steel thrust up through the muddy water, rose swiftly almoststraight into the cloudless blue of the sky, and as suddenlydisappeared, and remained gone from sight, as if the ether had openedand swallowed it.
* * * * *
Using his infra-red device, Carse brought the car in neatly throughthe ship-size port-lock of the dome, and sped it across to thecentral 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 theasteroid'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 totheir looks of welcome and issued curt orders.
"All ready. Ban, the air-car's just outside; go over and get thosefour 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 thelaboratory. 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 init, and in a moment the bonds were ripped off; all save those on thewrists. 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. MasterLeithgow 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 truthfuland helpful, too. Now--outside, please, and do not attempt to delay mein any way. I am in a great hurry, and consequently will not bepatient at any tricks." He turned to the Negro. "Friday. I'm leavingyou 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 tothe air-car outside. There, Ban Wilson was waiting with the four whiteassistants of Dr. Ku and the one robot-coolie, all unarmed, stolid,emotionless. Carse placed them all in the rear seats of the car'scompartment, Ban facing them with drawn raygun. Then with a hum fromits generators the car raised, wheeled, slid forward, until throughthe large port-lock, and swooped down to the lake.
Dr. Ku Sui watched everything with an interest he did not attempt todisguise. There was being revealed to him the secret entrance to EliotLeithgow'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, buthad never given them a second glance. Yet here, right in the lake, wasthe doorway to Leithgow's refuge!
The air-car lowered like a humming bird to the lake's surface, pausedand dipped under. The light left the sealed ports and entrancehatchway, and the water pressed around, dark and muddy. Down the carsunk, 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 leadingthrough the hill. Quickly it was in the chamber of the lock, the outerdoor closed automatically behind, the water was drained out, and thenthe inner door opened and the car, dripping, emerged into thebrilliantly-lit hangar and went to rest in its mooring cradle besideLeithgow's space-ship.
A minute later its passengers were in the laboratory of the MasterScientist.
* * * * *
Dr. Ku Sui took in the arrangements made in the laboratory with aswift glance, and then his eyes went to a door that opened in theopposite wall and to the slight, smock-garbed figure that came throughit. He smiled.
"Ah, Master Leithgow! A return visit, you see. At Captain Carse'sinvitation. It is very interesting to me, this home of yours: socleverly concealed!"
Leithgow vouchsafed his archenemy no more than a look, but turned tothe Hawk.
"You are ready, Carse?"
"Some preliminaries first, Eliot. These men, the four whites and theyellow, must be put in some place of safety. You can take care ofthem, 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 Carseand Ku Sui were left alone in the laboratory, and for a minute therewas silence.
How much had passed between these three! How many plots, andcounter-plots: how much blood: how many lives affected! The feud ofHawk Carse and Dr. Ku Sui--and Eliot Leithgow, who was the chief causeof it--here again had come to a head. Here again were all the variedforces of brains and guile, science and skill, marshaled in the great,vital game on whose outcome depended the restoration of Eliot Leithgowand the lives of the coordinated brains and, indeed, though moredistantly, the fate of all the tribes of men on all the planets. Forif Ku Sui won free he would go on irresistibly, and his goal was thedomination of the solar system....
Three men, alone in a room--and the course of the creature Man beingaffected by their every move. Large words: but the histories of theperiod bear them out. Though, doubtless, Ku Sui alone knew how greatwere the stakes as they stood there in the laboratory.
* * * * *
Hawk Carse was uneasy. The odds seemed all on his side--yet there wasKu Sui's strange, almost imperceptible smile, his mysterious words upon the asteroid, his smooth, unruffled assurance! What did thesethings mean? He intended now to find out. He said, tersely:
"Eliot. I have informed Dr. Ku that he is to be the means of thetransplantation of the coordinated brains to living human bodies,since he is the only person capable of performing the operations. Hedoes not believe that we can force him to do our will, yet all thesame he is taking no chances: he started the death of the brains. Weshall have to work very fast--all right. But Dr. Ku has other cards toplay against us, and I don't know what they are. You and I must findout now."
"I somehow feel that you mistrust me," interposed the Eurasian withmock sadness. "Ah, if you could only read my mind.... Or can you? Isthat what you are comin
g to?"
The Hawk glanced at Leithgow; and Leithgow nodded, and placed a metalchair close to one of the cylindrical drums--the one fitted with atube 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 atthe two men facing him, and said pleasantly to Carse:
"Things repeat! Not long ago I asked you to sit in a chair and submitto a treatment of mine, and you did as I asked. After so gallant aprecedent, how could I refuse? All right. Now, Master Leithgow, yourgas!"
* * * * *
With gentle fingers Eliot Leithgow fitted the cone on the Eurasian'sface and fastened it there. The fingers and thumb of one hand he kepton Dr. Ku's pulse; with the other he pulled over slowly a control setin 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 slowfall, the silk-clad figure in the chair, watched closely by Carse onone side and Eliot Leithgow on the other--and a change was apparent. Aripple flowed over the Eurasian's silken garments; the body appearedto loosen up, to become free of all muscular and mental tension. Thegas hissed on.
"The first step," murmured Leithgow abstractedly, out of hisconcentration on dials and patient. "The muscles--notice--relaxed. Thewill--the ego--the nexi of emotions and volitions which opposeexternal direction--all being worked upon, submerged, neutralized--butnot his knowledge, not his skill. No--all that he will retain! You'llnotice nothing more until you see his eyes. A few minutes. What saysthe red hand? Thirteen. At nineteen it should be completed."
Carse watched intently. It was wonderful to know that when the correctamount of this substance, which he knew only as V-27, had beenadministered, and Ku Sui awoke, there would be no enmity in him, noopposition to their demands, no fencing with wits; that this same KuSui, his great mentality unimpaired, would be subservient and entirelydependable.
"Seventeen," murmured the old scientist. "Eighteen ... now!" With aflick of his fingers he shut off the stream of V-27 and gentlyunloosened the cone from Dr. Ku's face.
The ascetic features were in repose, the eyelids closed, their longblack lashes lying against the delicate saffron of the skin. Dr. KuSui seemed resting in dreamless, unclouded sleep. But for only amoment. Soon the eyelids quivered and slowly opened--and a greatchange was immediately visible in the man's green eyes.
Many observers have recorded that under the veiled, enigmatic eyes ofDr. Ku Sui there lurked a sultry glimmer of fire; or perhaps it wasthat the observers who met these eyes always imagined the fire, beingconscious of the devil and the tiger in the man. But Carse andLeithgow now saw that all that was gone.
No mask lay over the green eyes now, no spark of fire glinted deep inthem. They were clear and serene; they hid nothing; almost they werethe eyes of a fresh, innocent child. Dr. Ku Sui, he of a hundredschemes, a score of plots, he of the magnificent capacity and untiringbrain bearing ever toward his goal of lordship of the solar system--itwas as if he had slipped into a magic pool whose waters had washed himclean and given him innocence and eyes of peace....
* * * * *
The Eurasian breathed deeply, then smiled at the two men standing byhim.
"Now," whispered Eliot Leithgow. "Ask him anything. He will answertruthfully."
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 customarypolite mockery; it was frank, open, genuinely pleasant.
"Is it true, Dr. Ku, that your coordinated brains will die, if left intheir case?"
"Yes, they will die if left there."
"Within what time, to save them, must the operations to transplantthem into human bodies be started?"
"Within twenty-five, perhaps thirty, minutes at the most."
"Can all five brains be given the initial steps for transplantationinto the heads of your four white assistants and the coolie prisonerwithin one hour--the remaining half of the two hours the brains saidthey would retain the necessary vitality?"
Dr. Ku smiled at him. There was no malice in the thunderbolt that heunleashed then. He simply told what he knew to be the truth.
"By fast work they could be, and so saved, although the subsequentoperations will take weeks. But the brains cannot be transplanted intothe heads of my four white assistants."
"What?" Both the Hawk and Leithgow cried the word out together. "Theycannot?"
* * * * *
Dr. Ku looked at them as though astonished.
"Why, no, my friends! I wish I were able to, but I cannot perform theoperations by myself, unaided. That would be impossible, absurd....You seem startled. Surely you must have known that those assistantswould 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 notbelieve there are any others this side of Mars who could take theirplace in operations of this type. Without them, I could nevertransplant the brains."
This, then, had been the trick up his sleeve! This was why, in thecontrol room of the asteroid, he had shown relief when the Hawk toldhim what bodies were to be used for the transplantation! For he hadknown that, whatever Eliot Leithgow's method of forcing him toperform the operations might be, and no matter how efficacious, thecoordinated brains simply could not be put in the heads of his fourassistants--because the assistants were themselves needed for theoperations!
"Then--it's hopeless!" said the Master Scientist bitterly. "All thisfor 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 tosave...."
"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 butthere does not seem to be...."
"Yes," broke in Hawk Carse suddenly. His left hand had been pulling athis bangs of flaxen hair; his brain had been working very fast. Headded 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 notneeded to assist in the operations. Four bodies--and here, ready, intwenty-five minutes. Not the bodies of normal men, of those with lifeahead of them. No. That would be murder. Four bodies of condemnedmen--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 steelnow, 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 musttake your assistants and Dr. Ku up to the asteroid in the air-car andtransfer down here all the equipment Dr. Ku says he'll need. Beextremely careful with the case of coordinated brains. If you possiblycan, have everything in readiness by the time Ban and I return withthe four bodies."
Ban Wilson, in his suit, entered the laboratory. The Hawk gestured himto the door which led to the tree-shaft to the surface.
"But, Carse, _what_ bodies? Where can you get four more living humanbodies?" Leithgow cried.
"No time, now, Eliot!" the Hawk rapped out, turning at the door. "Justdo as I say--and hurry! I'll get them!"
And he was gone.