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Updated: May 9, 2025
And that being the case, he could expect to see one door after another battered down and then a concerted, four-point rush which would end everything.... Eliot Leithgow said the extraordinary thing that pointed a way out. "May I suggest," he said mildly, "that we try to get Dr. Ku Sui's brains to help us?" "What do you mean?" The older man smiled, a little sadly.
Ku was preeminently a specialist in the human brain; he had implied his will to have that information. Suppose he should use something it was impossible to fight against? And he alone, Hawk Carse, brought the responsibility. He had asked Leithgow where he would be, and he remembered well the place agreed upon. He dared not lose the battle of wits he knew was coming!... His eyes shot to the door.
He saw other figures, too, spread out in a scattered fringe figures of men in smocks, dead and bloated and white. They were the coolies, these last, and the other two were of course Leithgow and Friday. But had they survived the outrush of air? Carse felt in his left glove for the suit's gravity control lever; found it and tentatively moved it. His acceleration slowly increased.
He steadied himself and said into the speaking grille: "I am Eliot Leithgow Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow. Once you knew me. Professors Geinst, Estapp and Norman, Dr. Swanson and Master Scientist Cram do you remember me? Do you remember how once we worked together; how, long ago on our Earth, we were friends? Do you remember your old colleague, Leithgow?" He stopped, deeply shaken.
His nerves seemed to curl up, and for a second his mind was thoroughly disorganized before it again took up the drone about Iapetus. Recovery ... dullness ... a kind of peace and again the shock leaped through him. It was followed by a question from afar off: "Where is Eliot Leithgow?" Somehow the question meant a great deal and should not be answered.... Again the stab of agony.
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.
A minute of this the ticking and soft hissing, the indicator's slow fall, the silk-clad figure in the chair, watched closely by Carse 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.
For there was nothing above or around them no dwindling fragment of rock no sign of any asteroid: only the eternal stars. "Yes," said Eliot Leithgow slowly, "that explains it all...." "It explains what?" asked Friday, staring. "And where is the asteroid?" "It's up there," the Hawk replied. "Don't you see now, Eclipse, why no one's ever found it; why we could hunt forever for it and hunt in vain?
Ku Sui and his four assistant surgeons and his intended victim, Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow.... They were all gone from the room now, but there was in it one thing of life that had been there before. It lay behind the inlaid screen which, standing on roller-legs, lay along the wall at one place. The Hawk did not look behind the screen. He could see under it, to know that no one lurked there.
He came stumbling heavily along the beach, his feet dragging through its coarse sand, and it seemed as if he would drop any moment. With a slight smile he greeted Friday, then Eliot Leithgow and Wilson, all running down. "Hello, Eclipse," he murmured, "and Eliot and Ban " There he wavered and half fell against the Negro's body.
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