Chapter 12: 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.