Vol Vi Part 20 (1/2)
He turned to Hawk Ca.r.s.e. ”I have thought that an inspection of this, my home in s.p.a.ce, would intrigue you more than anything else my poor hospitality affords. May I do you the honor, my friend?”
”You are too good to me,” the Hawk replied frostily. ”I will duplicate your kindness some day.”
The Eurasian bowed. ”After you,” he said, and waited until Friday and the Hawk pa.s.sed first through the door. Close after them came the three automatons of yellow men.
The pa.s.sageway was square, plain and bare, and s.p.a.ced at intervals by other closed doors. ”Storerooms in this wing,” the Eurasian explained as they progressed. He stopped in front of one of the doors and pressed a b.u.t.ton beside it. It slid noiselessly open, revealing, not another room, but a short metal spider ladder. Up this they climbed, one of the guards going first in the half darkness; then a trap-door above opened to douse them with warm ruddy light. They stepped out.
And the scene that met them took them completely off guard. Friday gasped, and Ca.r.s.e so far lost his habitual poise as to stare in wonder.
Soil! And a great gla.s.sy dome!
Not a s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p, this realm of Ku Sui. Soil--soil with a whole settlement built upon it! Hard, grayish soil, and on it several buildings of the familiar burnished metal. And overhead, cupping the entire outlay, arched a great hemisphere of what resembled gla.s.s, ribbed with silvery supporting beams and struts: an enormous bowl, turned down, and on its other side the glorious vista of s.p.a.ce.
Straight above hung the red-belted disk of Jupiter, with the pale globes of Satellites II and III wheeling close, and all of them were of the same relative size they had appeared when last seen from the Scorpion!
Dr. Ku smiled unctuously at the puzzlement that showed on the faces of his captives.
”Have you noticed,” he asked, ”that you are still in the neighborhood of the spot in s.p.a.ce where we had our rendezvous? But this isn't another of Jupiter's satellites. Ah, no. This is my own world--my own personally controlled little world!”
”Snakes of the Santo!” Friday gasped, the whites of his eyes showing all around. ”Then we must be on an asteroid!”
They were. From the far side of the dome ahead of them the asteroid stretched back hard and sharp in Jupiter's ruddy light against the backdrop of black s.p.a.ce. It was a craggy, uneven body, seemingly about twenty miles in length, pinched in the middle and thus shaped roughly like a peanut sh.e.l.l. One end had been leveled off to accommodate the dome with its cradled buildings; outside the dome all was untouched. The landscape was a gargantuan jumble of coa.r.s.e, hard, sharp rocks which had crystallized into a maze of hollows, crevices, long crazy splits and jagged out-thrusting lumps of boulders. Without an atmosphere, with but the feeblest of gravities and utterly without any form of life--save for that within the dome built upon it--it was simply a typical small asteroid, of which race only the largest are globe-shaped.
”Once,” the Eurasian went on softly as they took all this in, ”this world of mine circled with its thousands of fellows between Mars and Jupiter. I picked it from the rest because of certain mineral qualities, and had this air-containing dome constructed on it, and these buildings inside the dome. Then, with batteries of gravity-plates inserted precisely in the asteroid's center of gravity, I nullified the gravital pull of Mars and Jupiter, wrenched it from its age-old orbit and swung it free into s.p.a.ce. An achievement that would command the respect even of Eliot Leithgow, I think. So now you see, Ca.r.s.e; now you know. This is my secret base, this my hidden laboratory. I take it always with me, and I travel where I will.”
The Hawk nodded coldly his acceptance of the astounding fact; he was too busy to make comment. He was observing the buildings, the nature of them, the exits from the dome, how they could best be reached.
They stood on the roof of the largest and central building, a low metal structure with four wings, crossing at right angles to make the figure of a great plus mark. The hub was probably Dr. Ku's chief laboratory, Ca.r.s.e conjectured. On each side stood other buildings, low, long, like barracks, with figures of coolies moving in and out. Workshops, living quarters, power-rooms, he supposed: power-rooms certainly, for a soft hum filled the air.
There were two great port-locks at ground level in the dome, one on each side, each sizable enough to admit the largest s.p.a.ce-s.h.i.+p and each flanked by a smaller, man-sized lock. To reach them....
”And over there,” Dr. Ku's voice broke in, ”you see your borrowed s.h.i.+p, the Scorpion. But please don't let it tempt you to cut short your visit with me, my friend. It would avail you nothing even if you reached her, for it requires a secret combination to open the port-locks, and my servants' brains have been so altered that they are physically incapable of divulging it to you. And of course I have offensive rays and other devices hidden about--just in case. All rather hopeless, isn't it? But surely interesting.
”Let us go: I have more. Below, in my main laboratory in the center of this building, there's something far more interesting, and it concerns you, Ca.r.s.e, and me, and also Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow.” He let the words sink in. ”Will you follow me?”
And so they went below again, down the spider ladder into the corridor. There was nothing else to do: the guards, ever watchful, pressed close behind. But a tattoo of alarm was beating in Hawk Ca.r.s.e's brain. Eliot Leithgow again--the hint of something ominous to be aimed at him, Ca.r.s.e, for the extraction of information he alone possessed: the whereabouts of his elderly friend the Master Scientist.
CHAPTER V.
The Color-Storm The corridor was stopped by a heavy metal door. As the small party approached, it swung inward in two halves, and a figure clad in a white surgeon's smock emerged. He was a white man, tall, with highly intelligent face but eyes strangely dull and lifeless, like those of the coolie-guards. His gaze rested on Ku Sui, and the Eurasian asked him: ”Is it ready?”
”Yes, lord,”--tonelessly.
”Through here, then, my friends.” The door opened and closed behind them as they stepped inside. ”This is my main laboratory. And there, friend Ca.r.s.e, is the object which is to concern us.”
With one glance the adventurer took in the laboratory. It was a great room, a perfect circle in shape, with doors opening into the four wings of the building. The walls were lined with strange, complicated machines, whose purpose he could not even guess at; in one place there was a table strewn with tangled shapes of wire, rows of odd-bulging tubes and other apparatus; and conspicuous by one door was an ordinary operating table, with light dome overhead. A tall wide screen placed a few feet out from the wall hid something bulky from view. Ca.r.s.e noted all these things; then his gaze went back to the object in the middle of the floor which Ku Sui had indicated.
It was, primarily, a chair, within a suspended framework of steely bars, themselves the foundation for a network of fine-drawn colored wires. s.h.i.+mmering, like the gossamer threads of a spider's spinning, they wove upward, around and over the chair, so that he who sat there would be completely surrounded by the gleaming mesh.
Within the whole hung a plain square boxlike device, attached to the chair and so placed that it would be directly in front of the eyes of anyone sitting there. Ropes were reeved through pulleys in the ceiling, for raising the wire-ball device to permit entrance. And standing ready around it, were four men in surgeons' smocks--white men with intelligent faces and dull, lifeless eyes.
The Hawk knew the answer to the question he curtly asked. ”Its purpose, Dr. Ku?”
”That,” came the suave reply, ”it will be your pleasure to discover for yourself. I can promise you some novel sensations. Nothing harmful, though, however much they may tire you. Now!” He gave a sign; one of his a.s.sistants touched a switch. The wire ball rose, leaving the central seat free for entrance. ”All is ready. May I ask you to enter?”
Hawk Ca.r.s.e faced his old foe. There was stillness in the laboratory then as his bleak gray eyes met and held for long seconds Ku Sui's enigmatic green-black ones.
”If I don't?”
For answer the Eurasian gestured apologetically to his guards.
”I see,” Ca.r.s.e whispered. There was nothing to be done. Three coolies, each with ray-guns at the ready; four white a.s.sistants.... No hope. No chance for anything. He looked at the negro. ”Don't move, Friday,” he warned him. ”They'll only shoot; it can do no good. Eight to two are big odds when the two are unarmed.”
He turned and faced the Eurasian, holding him with his eyes. ”Ku Sui,” he said, clipping the words, ”you have said that this would not permanently harm me, and, although I know you for the most deadly, vicious egomaniac in the solar system, I am believing you. I do not know you for a liar.... I will enter.”
The faint smile on the Oriental's face did not alter one bit at this. Ca.r.s.e stepped to the metal seat and sat down.
The web of s.h.i.+mmering wires descended, cupping him completely. Through them he saw Ku Sui go to a switchboard adjoining and study the indicators, finally placing one hand on a black-k.n.o.bbed switch and with the other drawing from some recess a little cone, trailing a wire, like a microphone. A breathless silence hung over the laboratory. The white-clad figures stood like statues, dumb, unfeeling, emotionless. The watching negro trembled, his mouth half open, his brow already bedewed with perspiration. But the only sign of strain or tension that showed in the slender flaxen-haired man sitting in the wire ball in the center of the laboratory, came when he licked his dry lips.
Then Dr. Ku Sui pulled the switch down, and there surged out a low-throated murmur of power. And immediately the ball of wire came to life. The fine, crisscrossing wires disappeared, and in their stead was color, every color in the spectrum. Like waves rhythmically rising and falling, the tinted brilliances dissolved back and forth through each other; and the reflected light, caroming off the surfaces of the instruments and tables and walls, so filled the laboratory that the group of men surrounding the fire-ball were like resplendent figures out of another universe.
Ku Sui pressed a b.u.t.ton, and the side of the boxlike device nearest Hawk Ca.r.s.e's eyes a.s.sumed transparency and started to glow. Beautiful colors began to float over its face, colors never still but constantly weaving and clouding into an infinity of combinations and designs. Eyes staring wide, as if unable to close them to the brilliant kaleidoscopic procession, the adventurer looked on.
Friday knew that his master at that moment was impotent to move, even to shut his eyes, and, with a wild notion that he was being electrocuted, he made a rash rush to destroy the device and free him. He learned discretion when two ray-streaks p.r.o.nged before him and forced him back; and thereafter he was given the undivided attention of two guards.
From the outside, through the ball of color, Ca.r.s.e was a ghostlike figure. Rigid and quivering, he sat in the chair and watched the color-maelstrom. His face was contorted; his cheek muscles stood out weltlike in his sweat-glistening skin; his eyes, which he could not close, throbbed with agony. But yet he was conscious; yet he still could will.
He defended his secret as best he could. Obviously this machine was being used to force from his mind the knowledge of Eliot Leithgow's whereabouts, and therefore he attempted to seal his mind. He fastened it on something definite--on Iapetus, satellite of Saturn, and his ranch there--and barred every other thought from his head. Mechanically he repeated to himself: ”Iapetus, Iapetus--my ranch on Iapetus--Iapetus, Iapetus.” Hundreds of times.... Hours.... Days....
The blinding waves of color rioted about him, submerged him, fatigued him. He had a strong impulse to sleep, but he resisted it.
Days seemed to pa.s.s.... Years.... Eons. All this.... Continued without change.... To the end of the world....