Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Not entirely," said the Hawk.

  * * * * *

  Ku Sui leaned forward a trifle. In that moment, perhaps, he first felt real concern, for Carse's quiet voice was so confident, so assured. He attempted to sound him out.

  "A gun?" he asked. "Torture? Threats? These against my will? Absurd! Consider, my friend--even if I seemed to consent to the operations, could I not easily destroy the brains while ostensibly working on them?"

  "Of course," said Carse, with a faint smile. "And threats and torture would be absurd. Against your will, Dr. Ku, a more powerful weapon will have to be used."

  The Eurasian's eyes were brilliant with intuition.

  "Ah--I see," he murmured. "Eliot Leithgow!"

  "Yes, Dr. Ku!"

  The two gazed at each other, Carse still with the faint smile, the other with the face of a statue. Presently the adventurer went on:

  "Unfortunately for you, Eliot Leithgow can provide a method of compulsion neither you nor any other man could ever resist. Not guns, torture, threats--no. A subtler weapon, worthy of your fine will."

  As he spoke, Carse saw the Eurasian's green eyes narrow, and in the pause that followed he knew that the swift, trained mind behind those eyes was working. What would it evolve? What move? And those Chinese words, uttered out by the port-lock--what would they result in, and when? Dr. Ku Sui was concerned now, the Hawk knew, seriously concerned, and inevitably, would take serious steps. What was growing in his resourceful brain? He would have to ward off any trouble when it came, for he could not know now. He said curtly:

  "But enough of that. Now, I have a trifling favor to ask of you--something concerning the laboratory. Will you please return to it."

  A strange light glimmered for an instant in Dr. Ku Sui's eyes--a mocking of the slender man before him. Only for an instant; then it was gone. Gracefully he raised his tall figure.

  "The laboratory? Of course, my friend. And as for the favor--almost anything."

  CHAPTER VI

  The Deadline

  Friday greeted them with another wide grin, and would again have bludgeoned the Eurasian with his wit had not the Hawk motioned him to silence. Looking at Dr. Ku, he said:

  "I have Friday posted here because of the secret panel somewhere in this wall. You escaped through it before--do you remember?"

  "Of course I remember. And if I'd had merely a fraction of your luck then, my present situation would be quite different."

  "Perhaps," said the Hawk. "This panel is now the unknown quantity so far as I'm concerned, and I don't like unknown quantities; so I am asking you to show me where it is and how it works. That's my favor. Of course you can refuse to reveal it, but that will not delay me very long. The method of compulsion I mentioned...."

  Dr. Ku-Sui appeared to reflect a moment, but his decision was not tardy in coming. He smiled.

  "You terrify me, Captain, with your ominous hints about compulsion. I suppose I'd better be reasonable and show it to you. Really, though, your concern over the panel is rather wasted, inasmuch as it conceals nothing more than a small escape passage leading out of this building. Nothing important at all."

  But his words, Carse somehow felt, were a screen; something else lay beneath them. He watched the tall figure with its always present odor of tsin-tsin blossoms move forward in a few indecisive steps, then back again, considering. The smile and the easy words were a camouflage, surely--but for what?

  "Nothing important at all." Dr. Ku Sui repeated pleasantly. "Come. I will show you. Friday--if I may so address you--over on that switchboard you will find a small lever-control. It is the one with a Chinese character above it. Will you be so kind as to throw it?"

  The Negro glanced inquiringly at his master. Grimly Carse nodded.

  An enigmatic light glimmered in the Eurasian's green eyes as they watched the Negro go to the switchboard and put thumb and forefinger on the control.

  "Only a small escape passage," he said deprecatingly as the Hawk crouched, gun ready, his eyes on the suspected place in the wall.

  Friday threw the switch.

  Immediately there sounded a short, sharp explosion. And acrid smoke billowed out from under the case of coordinated brains!

  * * * * *

  Carse sprang to Ku Sui, gripped one arm and cried harshly:

  "What have you done?"

  "Not I, Captain--your obedient servant, the Black. Please, your fingers--" He removed them from his arm; and then, smiling, he said:

  "I am afraid that all your assurance, your threats, are now but so much wasted breath."

  "You mean--?"

  "Surely, Captain," said Ku Sui, "you must have known I would provide for such an emergency, as this. I chose not to risk your darkly-hinted method of compulsion, and so had Friday remove the need for it. The Chinese character above the switch stands for 'Death.'"

  Frigidly the Hawk asked: "You've destroyed the brains?"

  "I have destroyed the brains." The Eurasian's voice was deep with a strange, unusual tone. "No matter: it was time. I am far, far ahead of that work, great though it was; it has destroyed itself with its inherent, irremediable fault. Yes, far ahead. Next time...." He appeared to lapse into profound and melancholy reflections; seemed to forget entirely the two men by him.

  But the Hawk acted.

  "We'll see," he said curtly. "Friday, watch the Doctor closely; this trick may be only the first." An intent, grim figure, he strode to the case of coordinated brains, pulled over the first of its two controlling switches, and stood silent while slowly the pulsings of light grew through the inner liquid and very slowly irradiated the five gray, naked mounds that were human brains. The light came to full, and Carse threw over the second switch. He said into the grille:

  "I am Captain Carse. I wish to know if you are aware of what has just happened. Do you hear me, and did you feel anything a minute ago?"

  * * * * *

  Silence. Friday, close to the Eurasian and watchful, hung breathless, hoping that words might come from the grille in answer. But the silken figure he watched was there only in body; Dr. Ku's mind was in a far space of his own.

  Cold, unhuman words spoke out.

  "Yes, Captain Carse, I hear you. I felt the vibrations of the explosion that occurred a minute ago."

  "Hah!" grunted Friday, immediately relieved. "All bluff, suh! No damage to 'em at all!"

  Carse asked quickly into the grille:

  "You felt the explosion, but do you know what it meant?--what it did?"

  Again a pause; and again the toneless voice:

  "A vital part of the machinery through which I live his been destroyed. I have left only some three hours of life."

  The Hawk returned to Ku Sui. "Is that true?" he snapped.

  "Yes, Captain." The words made a whisper, gentle and melancholy, coming from afar. A man was turning back from the scanning of the long years of one phase of his life. "Three hours is all that is left to them.... But there was a fault inherent in such coordinated brains; it is just as well that they are going.... Ah, Carse. I am so far ahead of you ... but I tell you it is a painful thing to destroy so wonderful a work of my hands...."

  Silence filled the laboratory. It was broken by the awful voice of the living dead.

  "I release you from your second promise, Captain Carse. No doubt what happened was beyond your control.... I will soon be dead. Although there is still nourishment in my liquid, I grow weaker already. I am dying...."

  Harshly, the Hawk asked a final question into the grille:

  "Within what time will you retain the vitality necessary to undergo the initial steps of the transplanting operations? Do you know?"

  Dr. Ku raised his head at this, though he seemed only mildly interested in what the reply would be.

  "I think for two of the remaining three hours."

  "All right!" said Hawk Carse decisively. He threw off the case's switches. "Dr. Ku," he said, "you've only succeeded in accelerating things. Now for speed! Friday, we're taking this as
teroid to Eliot Leithgow's laboratory. Go see that the port-lock doors are closed tight, then you and Wilson hurry back here! Fast! Run!"

  CHAPTER VII

  To the Laboratory

  When the Negro returned, panting, with Ban Wilson, it was to discover Carse in the control room of the asteroid. He was studying the multifarious devices and instruments: and they, seeing his face so set in concentration, did not disturb him, but went over to where Dr. Ku Sui sat in a chair, and posted themselves behind it.

  The apparatus in the control room resembled that of any modern space-ship of its time, except that there were extra pieces of unguessed function. Directly in front of Carse was the directional space-stick above its complicated mechanism: above his eyes was the wide six-part visi-screen, which in space would record the whole "sphere" of the heavens: while to his right was the chief control board, a smooth black surface studded with squads of vari-colored buttons and lights, These were the essentials, familiar to any ship navigator; but they were here awesome, for they controlled not the one or two hundred feet of an ordinary craft, but twenty miles of this space-ship of rock.

  "Yes ... yes...." Carse murmured presently out of his study, then turned and for the first time appeared to notice Friday and Ban. He gave orders.

  "Eclipse, you see the radio over there? Get Master Leithgow on it for me--protected beam. Ban, you bind Dr. Ku Sui in that chair, please."

  Wilson was surprised.

  "Bind him? Isn't he going to run this thing?"

  "No."

  "You're going to, Carse?"

  "Yes. I don't quite trust Dr. Ku. The asteroid's controlled on the same principles as a space-ship: I'll manage. Please hurry, Ban."

  "Cap'n., suh! Already got the Master Scientist!" called Friday from the radio panel. The Hawk strode swiftly to it and clamped the individual receivers over his ears.

  "M. S.?" he asked into the microphone. "You're there?"

  "Yes. Carse? What's happened?"

  "All's well, but I'm in a tremendous hurry: I've only got time, now, to tell you we're on the asteroid with Dr. Ku prisoner, and that I'm undertaking to transplant the coordinated brains into living human bodies.... What? Yes transplant them! Please, M. S.--not now: questions later. I'm calling primarily to learn whether you have any V-27 on hand?"

  Eliot Leithgow, in his distant laboratory, paused before replying. When his voice sounded in the receivers again, it was excited.

  "I think I see, Carse! Good! Yes, I have a little--"

  "We'll need a lot," the Hawk cut in tersely. "Will you instruct your assistants to begin preparing as much as they can in the next hour? Yes. And your laboratory--clear it for the operations, and improvise five operating tables. Powerful lights, too, M. S. Yes--yes--right--all accessories. Have someone stand by your radio; I'll radio further details while we're on our way."

  "Right, Carse. All understood."

  The Hawk remembered something else. "Oh, yes, Eliot--is everything safe in your vicinity?"

  "There's a small band of isuanacs foraging around somewhere in the neighborhood, but otherwise nothing. They're harmless--"

  "But possibly observant," finished Carse. "All right--I'll clear them away before descending to the lab. Until later, Eliot."

  * * * * *

  Carse switched off the microphone and turned to catch Friday's shocked expression. Carse looked inquiringly at his dark satellite.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Lordy, suh," the Negro whispered, "Dr. Ku could hear all you said! He'll know where Master Leithgow's laboratory is!"

  The Hawk smiled briefly. "No matter, Eclipse. I'm quite sure the information will avail him nothing. For this ride to the laboratory will be his last ride but one." He turned. "We're starting at once. Ban, you've bound him well?"

  "If he can get out of those knots," grinned Wilson, "I'll kiss him on the mouth!"

  The Eurasian's nostrils distended. "Then," he said. "I most certainly will not try. But Captain Carse, may I have a cigarro before we start on this journey?"

  Carse had gone over so the space-stick and his eyes were on the visi-screen, but he now turned them to his old foe for a moment. "Not just now, Dr. Ku," he said levelly. "For it might be that all but two puffs of it would be wasted. Yes--later--if we survive these next few minutes."

  The remark did nothing to ease the tension of their leaving. Ban Wilson could not restrain a question.

  "Carse, are you going to risk atmospheric friction all the way to the laboratory?"

  "No. Haven't time for that. Up and down--up into space, then down to the lab--high acceleration and deceleration."

  He grasped the space-stick, then in neutral, holding the asteroid motionless in the valley. He glanced at the visi-screen again, checked over the main controls and tightened his hand on the stick.

  "Ready everyone," he said, and gently moved the stick up and forward.

  * * * * *

  There was, to the men in the control room, little consciousness of power unleashed: only the visi-screen and the bank of positional instruments told what had happened with that first, delicate movement of the space-stick. It was an experiment, a feeler. The indicators of the positionals quivered a little and altered, and in the visi-screen the hills of the valley, that a moment before had been quite close and large, had diminished to purple-green mounds below.

  Then the accelerating sensations began. Carse had the "feel" of the asteroidal ship and his controlling hand grew bolder. The steady pressure on the space-stick increased, it went up farther and farther, and the whole mighty mass of the asteroid streaked out at a tangent through the atmosphere of Satellite III toward the gulf beyond.

  With dangerous acceleration the gigantic body rose, and from outside there grew a moaning which was quickly a shrieking--a terrible, maddened sound as of a Titan dying in agony--the sound of the cloven atmosphere. Twenty miles of rock were hurled out by the firm hand on the space-stick, and that hand only increased its driving pressure when the screaming of the air died away in the depthless silence of outer space.

  In one special visi-screen lay mirrored the craggy back-stretch of the asteroid, half of it clear-cut and hard in Jupiter's flood of light, the other half lost in the encompassing blackness of space. Over this shadowed portion a faint, unearthly glow clung close, the result of the terrific friction of the ascent. In miniature, in the regular screens, was Satellite III, but a distorted miniature, for its half-face appeared concave in shape, and dusted with the haze of its atmosphere.

  * * * * *

  The Hawk was visibly relieved. He turned to the silent Ku Sui.

  "I must congratulate you, Dr. Ku," he said, "on the operation of the asteroid. It's as smooth as any ship. And now, your cigarro. Ban, have you one?"

  Wilson produced a small metal case from which he extracted one of the long black cylinders.

  "You will have to put it in my lips, please," murmured Dr. Ku. "Thank you. And a light? Again thanks. Ah...." He drew in the smoke, exhaled a fine stream of it from his delicately carved nostrils. "Good." Then he looked up pleasantly at the Hawk.

  "And my congratulations to you, Captain. Not only on your expert maneuvering of my asteroid, but on everything: your resourcefulness, your decision, your caution. I have long admired these qualities in you, and the events of to-day, though for me perhaps unfortunate, increase my admiration. My own weak resistance, my attempt to frustrate your plans in connection with the brains--how miserable in comparison! It would seem, Captain, that you cannot fail, and that you will indeed succeed in giving the brains new life, so swiftly do you move. Yes, my congratulations!"

  He drew at the cigarro, and the smoke wreathed gently around his ascetic saffron face. A faint, queer glint was visible under the long lashes that half-veiled his eyes as he continued:

  "But I have a question, Captain. A mere nothing, but still--"

  "Yes, Dr. Ku?"

  "The living bodies into which you propose to transplant the brains--where are they?"

  H
awk Carse's face was stern and his voice frigid as he answered:

  "Fortunately, those bodies are right here on the asteroid."

  "Here on the asteroid, Captain? I don't understand. What bodies are here?"

  "The bodies of your four white assistants, whom I have safely confined, and one of your robot-coolies, also confined. I did not intend to use these five, but, because you put a premium on time by your attempted destruction of the brains, it cannot be helped."

  * * * * *

  Dr. Ku Sui's impassive demeanor did not change. He did not seem in the least surprised. He puffed quietly at the cigarro and nodded.

  "Of course, of course. You have five bodies right here on the asteroid. Yes."

  "At least," continued Carse levelly, "I do not regret having to use the bodies of your men. They are no longer human: they are not men: they are in effect but machines of your making, Dr. Ku."

  "Quite. Quite."

  "I suppose you find it an unpleasant thought, to have to be the means of re-making them into whole, normal human beings?"

  "On the contrary," breathed the Eurasian, "you inspire a very pleasant thought in my brain, Captain Carse--though I must confess it is not exactly the thought you mention." A smile, veiled by the smoke of the cigarro, appeared on his lips.

  The Hawk looked at him closely: the words had a hidden meaning, and it was clear he was not intended to miss the implied threat. But what was Ku Sui's thought? Back in his mind an anxiety grew, indefinite, vague and devilish.

  And that vague anxiety was still with him when, fifty-seven minutes later, the asteroid returned from its inverted U-flight, slowed in its hurtling drop from space and hovered directly over the secret, hidden laboratory of Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow.

  CHAPTER VIII

  White's Brain--Yellow's Head

  To Friday it was a bad mistake to reveal the location of the laboratory to Dr. Ku Sui. From him above all men had that location up to now been kept. Just a few days before, Hawk Carse had risked his life to preserve the secret. And yet now, deliberately, he was showing it to the Eurasian!