The Passing of Ku Sui Part 12

A minute of this--the ticking and soft hissing, the indicator's slow fall, the silk-clad figure in the chair, watched closely by Ca.r.s.e on one side and Eliot Leithgow on the other--and a change was apparent. A ripple flowed over the Eurasian's silken garments; the body appeared to loosen up, to become free of all muscular and mental tension. The gas hissed on.

"The first step," murmured Leithgow abstractedly, out of his concentration on dials and patient. "The muscles--notice--relaxed. The will--the ego--the nexi of emotions and volitions which oppose external direction--all being worked upon, submerged, neutralized--but not his knowledge, not his skill. No--all that he will retain! You'll notice nothing more until you see his eyes. A few minutes. What says the red hand? Thirteen. At nineteen it should be completed."

Ca.r.s.e watched intently. It was wonderful to know that when the correct amount of this substance, which he knew only as V-27, had been administered, and Ku Sui awoke, there would be no enmity in him, no opposition to their demands, no fencing with wits; that this same Ku Sui, his great mentality unimpaired, would be subservient and entirely dependable.

"Seventeen," murmured the old scientist. "Eighteen ... now!" With a flick of his fingers he shut off the stream of V-27 and gently unloosened the cone from Dr. Ku's face.

The ascetic features were in repose, the eyelids closed, their long black lashes lying against the delicate saffron of the skin. Dr. Ku Sui seemed resting in dreamless, unclouded sleep. But for only a moment. Soon the eyelids quivered and slowly opened--and a great change was immediately visible in the man's green eyes.

Many observers have recorded that under the veiled, enigmatic eyes of Dr. Ku Sui there lurked a sultry glimmer of fire; or perhaps it was that the observers who met these eyes always imagined the fire, being conscious of the devil and the tiger in the man. But Ca.r.s.e and Leithgow now saw that all that was gone.

No mask lay over the green eyes now, no spark of fire glinted deep in them. They were clear and serene; they hid nothing; almost they were the eyes of a fresh, innocent child. Dr. Ku Sui, he of a hundred schemes, a score of plots, he of the magnificent capacity and untiring brain bearing ever toward his goal of lords.h.i.+p of the solar system--it was as if he had slipped into a magic pool whose waters had washed him clean and given him innocence and eyes of peace....

The Eurasian breathed deeply, then smiled at the two men standing by him.

"Now," whispered Eliot Leithgow. "Ask him anything. He will answer truthfully."

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 customary polite mockery; it was frank, open, genuinely pleasant.

"Is it true, Dr. Ku, that your coordinated brains will die, if left in their case?"

"Yes, they will die if left there."

"Within what time, to save them, must the operations to transplant them into human bodies be started?"

"Within twenty-five, perhaps thirty, minutes at the most."

"Can all five brains be given the initial steps for transplantation into the heads of your four white a.s.sistants and the coolie prisoner within one hour--the remaining half of the two hours the brains said they would retain the necessary vitality?"

Dr. Ku smiled at him. There was no malice in the thunderbolt that he unleashed then. He simply told what he knew to be the truth.

"By fast work they could be, and so saved, although the subsequent operations will take weeks. But the brains cannot be transplanted into the heads of my four white a.s.sistants."

"What?" Both the Hawk and Leithgow cried the word out together. "They cannot?"

Dr. Ku looked at them as though astonished.

"Why, no, my friends! I wish I were able to, but I cannot perform the operations by myself, unaided. That would be impossible, absurd....

You seem startled. Surely you must have known that those a.s.sistants would 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 not believe there are any others this side of Mars who could take their place in operations of this type. Without them, I could never transplant the brains."

This, then, had been the trick up his sleeve! This was why, in the control room of the asteroid, he had shown relief when the Hawk told him what bodies were to be used for the transplantation! For he had known that, whatever Eliot Leithgow's method of forcing him to perform the operations might be, and no matter how efficacious, the coordinated brains simply could not be put in the heads of his four a.s.sistants--because the a.s.sistants were themselves needed for the operations!

"Then--it's hopeless!" said the Master Scientist bitterly. "All this for nothing! You might find other bodies in Port o' p.o.r.no, Ca.r.s.e--condemned men, criminals--but p.o.r.no's an hour away, two hours'

round trip, and in thirty minutes the brains will be too weak to save...."

"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 but there does not seem to be...."

"Yes," broke in Hawk Ca.r.s.e suddenly. His left hand had been pulling at his bangs of flaxen hair; his brain had been working very fast. He added 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 not needed to a.s.sist in the operations. Four bodies--and here, ready, in twenty-five minutes. Not the bodies of normal men, of those with life ahead of them. No. That would be murder. Four bodies of condemned men--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 steel now, frigid, intent, hard. "Ban!" he called. "Ban Wilson!"

"Yes, Ca.r.s.e?" Ban had been waiting outside the laboratory.

"Put on your propulsive s.p.a.ce-suit. Hurry. Then here."

"Right!"

Ca.r.s.e 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 must take your a.s.sistants and Dr. Ku up to the asteroid in the air-car and transfer down here all the equipment Dr. Ku says he'll need. Be extremely careful with the case of coordinated brains. If you possibly can, have everything in readiness by the time Ban and I return with the four bodies."

Ban Wilson, in his suit, entered the laboratory. The Hawk gestured him to the door which led to the tree-shaft to the surface.

"But, Ca.r.s.e, _what_ bodies? Where can you get four more living human bodies?" Leithgow cried.

"No time, now, Eliot!" the Hawk rapped out, turning at the door. "Just do as I say--and hurry! I'll get them!"

And he was gone.

CHAPTER X

_The Promise Fulfilled_

Although puzzled by the Hawk's promise, Leithgow could only put his trust in it and go ahead with the preparations as he had been directed. He took two of his three laboratory a.s.sistants off their hurried manufacture of quant.i.ties of the V-27, and with Ku Sui went out into the air-car. Pa.s.sing by way of tube and lake and air, they were quickly inside the dome on the asteroid, and then into Ku Sui's laboratory, where Friday waited on guard.