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Updated: May 9, 2025
"You're hit!" cried Leithgow. "It's nothing...." The slender adventurer stood very still, thinking. He was trapped. But he was never more dangerous than when he was trapped. Leithgow timidly ventured a suggestion. "Why can't we put on our space-suits and rise up in the dome?" Crisply the answer came back: "Hard to maneuver laterally. Never get out ports. Sure death.... I have it!" he ended.
The Hawk's lips compressed as his old enemy neared, and into his watching gray eyes came the deadly cold emotionless look that was known and feared throughout space, wherever outlaws walked or flew. Ku Sui so close! There, in that even-gliding figure, was the author of the infamy done to Leithgow, of the crime to the brains that lived though their bodies were dead; of the organized isuan trade.
"There were two others, but we let them go. They were worse." The gray eyes looked steadily at Eliot Leithgow. "I know," the Hawk said. "It's horrible but it can't be helped. It was these or nothing. There was no choice." Hawk Carse had fulfilled his promise. He had brought back four isuanacs. Ordeal Five bodies lay on the operating tables in Eliot Leithgow's laboratory.
He was the one posted in a watrari tree "south" of Tantril's ranch. Flung on the tight beam of his helmet-radio, which had been tuned and adjusted by Eliot Leithgow so as to reach only two other radios, the words rang simultaneously in the receivers of Friday, who was "east" of the ranch, and Carse, who was "north."
But I warn you I have terrific power, and if you move towards me of your own volition, I can burn you to a cinder in three seconds, and I'll do it. You can't escape! If I have to destroy Ku Sui, all right but I'll get you!" The Hawk strapped over his eyes the infra-red glasses Leithgow now gave him.
He hurled himself against it, but it did not budge. How to get through? On the other side of the door was Leithgow, and probably Ku Sui; on this side they were trapped in a blind end. They could never make it back down that gauntlet and live, and anything like concerted action on the part of the yellows would do for them where they were. That concerted action came at once.
The path he left across the frontiers of space was primarily a lonely one; but Friday and Eliot Leithgow and two or three others were friends and very precious to him, and they received all the emotion in his tough, hard soul. Especially Leithgow old, alone, dishonored on Earth, frail and nearing the end of the long years he needed protection. He had trusted Carse. Trusted him! And now this!
There were the efficient white-clad assistant-surgeons, their dull eyes showing through the holes in their masks. And there was the black figure of Ku Sui, an ironic smile on his lips, and before him the resigned and helpless form of Eliot Leithgow. The Eurasian gestured.
The Hawk glanced at Leithgow; and Leithgow nodded, and placed a metal chair close to one of the cylindrical drums the one fitted with a tube and breathing cone. "Will you sit there. Dr. Ku?" Carse asked. The green eyes scanned the drum. "A gas, Master Leithgow?" "That is all. Not harmful, not painful." "I see. I see...." the Eurasian murmured.
Eliot Leithgow had been shocked at the idea of a scientist's brain in the head of the robot-coolie; how much greater, then, was his horror when confronted by the need of using these appalling remnants of men! But he could not protest. What else was there? Ku Sui, under the V-27, had spoken the truth: the operations would be impossible without the aid of his four assistants.
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