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He promised the bodies, but ... well, we can only go ahead with the preparations and trust to him. Is everything ready?" "All but my assistants. I had better see them now." The Master Scientist issued an order to one of his men, and presently the four white assistants of Dr. Ku were led into the laboratory. For these men, no V-27 was needed; their brains were utterly subservient to Dr.
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.
"I suspected that he might have someone hidden behind it, and I intended to question him when he was under the V-27, but in the terrific rush of things it slipped my mind. Sheer carelessness, Eliot; I'm very sorry. I should have known, for when we captured Ku Sui he spoke some words in Chinese through his helmet-radio.
The Hawk Strikes No surprise showed on the Hawk's face, though the others were visibly shaken. He, at the helm, merely nodded and continued with further orders. "Williams," he said to one of Leithgow's assistants, "get Thorpe and go and dose Ku Sui with V-27. Give him plenty. Then both of you station yourselves, ray guns in hand, outside his cabin. We'll take no chances with him, gassed or not.
"The best I could do on such short notice," Leithgow commented. "Where are your assistants?" "At work on the V-27. All I had on hand is in those cylinders." "Much?" "Enough for twelve hours for one man, but the process of its manufacture is accelerating; fortunately I had plenty of ingredients. Of course I've divined your intention, Carse. Ku Sui to perform the operations under the V-27.
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!"
Though for safety's sake they continued to dose him with the V-27, it was apparent that the gas had less and less effect on him. Four, then eight, then twelve times a day they re-gassed him as often as they dared, considering its ultimate destructive mental effect but more and more of the frankness and serenity foreign to his green eyes melted away.
He took two of his three laboratory assistants off their hurried manufacture of quantities of the V-27, and with Ku Sui went out into the air-car. Passing 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.
Regularly, every four waking hours, he was led to the metal chair and gassed afresh with the V-27; and his expression remained pleasant; his eyes were always friendly. But the artificial state in which he was kept showed soon on his face. It lost its clearness and became a jaundiced yellow in color: and also it grew peaked and drawn. But the other faces around him were peaked and drawn, too.
Even when he was normal there are only moments when, through some recorded speech or action of his, we can peer past the man's personality into his brain; how great a sealed mystery must his thoughts remain to us when held in that abnormal state by Eliot Leithgow's V-27!
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