The Affair of the Brains Part 13

"_It is my disposition to help you, Eliot Leithgow. On a shelf under one of the tables in this room you will find a portable heat-ray. Melt a hole in the ceiling and go out through the roof._"

"Then what can we do?"

"_In lockers behind the table there are s.p.a.ce-suits, hanging ready for emergencies. Don them and leave through one of the asteroid's port-locks._"

"Ask if the ports are sealed," Ca.r.s.e interjected instantly.

Leithgow asked the question.

"_Yes_," replied the unhuman voice. "_But twice four to the right will open any of them._"

The Master Scientist wiped his brow. Though trembling under the strain of conversing with this machine on which his life depended, he did not overlook a single point.

"But the asteroid's gravital pull would hold us close to it," he said.

"Is there a way of breaking free from it?"

"_You'll find the s.p.a.ce-suits are equipped with small generators and gravity-plates which I helped Ku Sui develop. The switch and main control are in the left-hand glove._"

"Thank you! Oh, thank you! You give us a chance!" exclaimed old Leithgow.

He turned and looked for the Hawk, and found him already in the lockers and pulling out three s.p.a.ce-suits. The clumsy, heavy cone of a portable heat-ray lay on the table ready to hand.

They had little time to waste. The torrid temperature of a new smell of burned metal around the door they had just entered told them as well as words that the large projector in the corridor was at last being used to bore a way in.

With surprising strength in one so slender, Ca.r.s.e lifted the ray and pointed it at an angle toward the middle of the ceiling. He pressed the control b.u.t.ton, and a blinding stream of violet radiance splashed against the metal above. It hissed and sputtered where it touched; molten drops fell sizzling and splattering to the floor; then suddenly there was a flood of ruddy illumination, and the Hawk dropped the heat-ray, stepped forward and looked up.

Up through a neatly melted round hole, up at the great gla.s.slike dome which arched over the whole settlement--up, past it, into the vast face of Jupiter, hanging out there oppressively near!

Friday, champing for action, left his post by the panel and dragged a long low cabinet to position under the hole. On top of it he placed the operating table, and, after he had tripped the table's small wheels, another table on top of that.

"You first, Eclipse!" his master rapped out as he finished. "I'll pa.s.s the suits to you; then swing Leithgow up."

The negro answered by acting. Swiftly he climbed the rude pile, and reached for the edge of the hole. It was still searingly hot, and he gasped with hurt as his palms and fingers clenched over it, but he did not let go. Levering himself rapidly up, he got a leg through and then his body. A second later he peered back in and lowered his hands down.

"No one up here yet!" he reported. "All right for the suits!"

Ca.r.s.e pa.s.sed the three bulky suits to him, and also two extra ray-guns he had found in the locker.

"Now, Eliot--up!"

With the Hawk's help, Leithgow clambered onto the cabinet. He was just mounting the operating table when, from behind, came a thin, metallic voice:

"_Master Leithgow--Eliot Leithgow--please, a favor?_"

Leithgow turned and stared, then understood. It was the coordinated brains. They had forgotten to return the switches. And now the cold voice was speaking of its own accord; and somehow--though it might have been imagination entirely--there seemed to be a tinge of loneliness to the words that sounded from its speaker.

Instantly Leithgow got down and hurried over to the grille. Seconds were precious, but Ca.r.s.e and he were heavily obligated to the brains, and any request in reason had to be fulfilled.

"Yes. What can I possibly do?"

The lower hinge of one side of the barricaded door gave, burned out, and the door wrenched inward at a resumption of the battering. The other hinge still held, but it was bending with each mighty blow. Outwardly calm, Hawk Ca.r.s.e watched the weakening door, a gun in each hand.

"_This_," said the toneless voice: "_Destroy me. Leave no slightest trace. I live in h.e.l.l, and have no way to move.... There are old memories ... things that once were dear ... Earth ... my homes ... my lives there.... Eliot Leithgow, destroy me. But promise, on your honor as a Master Scientist, never to let a single word regarding my fate reach those on Earth who knew me, loved me...._"

Leithgow looked at the Hawk. The adventurer nodded.

"I'll use the heat-ray," he said, with pity.

He ran and picked it up. But he had taken only one step in return when the second hinge of the yielding door wrenched free. An ear-piercing screech rent the bedlam--and the door fell, half twisting, to lie in the doorway.

As if by a signal the cras.h.i.+ng at the other doors stopped. In an extraordinary silence a mob of gray-smocked bodies pressed forward.

Orange streaks laced the dim laboratory. The Hawk shouted, "Up, Eliot!

For G.o.d's sake, up!" as, with deadly effect, he poured his two ray-guns at the advancing men.

For a second, shaken by the terrible barrage, they fell back, leaving several sprawled bodies on the floor; but they came right back again.

Leithgow got safely to the top of the pile and was s.n.a.t.c.hed out to temporary safety. Frantically Friday called down to his master; he seemed on the point of jumping down into the fight himself. But Hawk Ca.r.s.e had been party to a promise.

He was behind the structure of furniture under the hole he had made in the ceiling. With one gun he spat death at the coolies, while the other he emptied at the case of brains. Two stabbing streams of orange angled from him, one telling with awful effect on the men only two score feet away, and the other absolutely useless. All over the still-glowing case it spat its. .h.i.ts, but the gla.s.slike substance resisted it completely, and remained unscathed.

Ca.r.s.e swore harshly. He hurled one empty gun at the case, turned with a last salvo of shots at the coolies, and then was up on the pile and leaping for Friday's hands.

They caught and gripped his, swung him once--twice--and hauled him swiftly out. But as the Hawk disappeared he shouted down the case:

"I'll be back!"

CHAPTER XIII

_The Final Mystery_

On the roof, Ca.r.s.e quickly scanned their situation. They were standing on the hub of the four-winged building. Far to the left was one set of the dome's great and small port-locks; exactly opposite was the other.

Near the left hand ports; a little "north," lay the _Scorpion_. The whole area enclosed was a flat plain of gray soil.

Looming over the great transparent dome hung the flaming disk of Jupiter, so oppressively near that it seemed about to crash onto the asteroid. Its rays poured in a ruddy flood over the settlement, clearly illuminating each detail; and comparatively close against the face of the mighty planet they could see the whitish globe of Satellite III. It offered the nearest haven. They might arrive famished, but in the power-equipped s.p.a.ce-suits which Friday was lugging they should be able to span the gap.

The Hawk nodded to the port-locks on the left.