Chapter 9: 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?”