The Affair of the Brains Read online

  CHAPTER V

  _The Color-Storm_

  The corridor was stopped by a heavy metal door. As the small partyapproached, it swung inward in two halves, and a figure clad in a whitesurgeon's smock emerged. He was a white man, tall, with highlyintelligent face but eyes strangely dull and lifeless, like those of thecoolie-guards. His gaze rested on Ku Sui, and the Eurasian asked him:

  "Is it ready?"

  "Yes, lord,"--tonelessly.

  "Through here, then, my friends." The door opened and closed behind themas they stepped inside. "This is my main laboratory. And there, friendCarse, is the object which is to concern us."

  With one glance the adventurer took in the laboratory. It was a greatroom, a perfect circle in shape, with doors opening into the four wingsof the building. The walls were lined with strange, complicatedmachines, whose purpose he could not even guess at; in one place therewas a table strewn with tangled shapes of wire, rows of odd-bulgingtubes and other apparatus; and conspicuous by one door was an ordinaryoperating table, with light dome overhead. A tall wide screen placed afew feet out from the wall hid something bulky from view. Carse notedall these things; then his gaze went back to the object in the middle ofthe floor which Ku Sui had indicated.

  It was, primarily, a chair, within a suspended framework of steely bars,themselves the foundation for a network of fine-drawn colored wires.Shimmering, like the gossamer threads of a spider's spinning, they woveupward, around and over the chair, so that he who sat there would becompletely surrounded by the gleaming mesh.

  Within the whole hung a plain square boxlike device, attached to thechair and so placed that it would be directly in front of the eyes ofanyone sitting there. Ropes were reeved through pulleys in the ceiling,for raising the wire-ball device to permit entrance. And standing readyaround it, were four men in surgeons' smocks--white men with intelligentfaces and dull, lifeless eyes.

  * * * * *

  The Hawk knew the answer to the question he curtly asked. "Its purpose,Dr. Ku?"

  "That," came the suave reply, "it will be your pleasure to discover foryourself. I can promise you some novel sensations. Nothing harmful,though, however much they may tire you. Now!" He gave a sign; one of hisassistants touched a switch. The wire ball rose, leaving the centralseat free for entrance. "All is ready. May I ask you to enter?"

  Hawk Carse faced his old foe. There was stillness in the laboratory thenas his bleak gray eyes met and held for long seconds Ku Sui's enigmaticgreen-black ones.

  "If I don't?"

  For answer the Eurasian gestured apologetically to his guards.

  "I see," Carse whispered. There was nothing to be done. Three coolies,each with ray-guns at the ready; four white assistants.... No hope. Nochance for anything. He looked at the negro. "Don't move, Friday," hewarned him. "They'll only shoot; it can do no good. Eight to two are bigodds when the two are unarmed."

  He turned and faced the Eurasian, holding him with his eyes. "Ku Sui,"he said, clipping the words, "you have said that this would notpermanently harm me, and, although I know you for the most deadly,vicious egomaniac in the solar system, I am believing you. I do not knowyou for a liar.... I will enter."

  The faint smile on the Oriental's face did not alter one bit at this.Carse stepped to the metal seat and sat down.

  * * * * *

  The web of shimmering wires descended, cupping him completely. Throughthem he saw Ku Sui go to a switchboard adjoining and study theindicators, finally placing one hand on a black-knobbed switch and withthe other drawing from some recess a little cone, trailing a wire, likea microphone. A breathless silence hung over the laboratory. Thewhite-clad figures stood like statues, dumb, unfeeling, emotionless. Thewatching negro trembled, his mouth half open, his brow already bedewedwith perspiration. But the only sign of strain or tension that showed inthe slender flaxen-haired man sitting in the wire ball in the center ofthe laboratory, came when he licked his dry lips.

  Then Dr. Ku Sui pulled the switch down, and there surged out alow-throated murmur of power. And immediately the ball of wire came tolife. The fine, crisscrossing wires disappeared, and in their stead wascolor, every color in the spectrum. Like waves rhythmically rising andfalling, the tinted brilliances dissolved back and forth through eachother; and the reflected light, caroming off the surfaces of theinstruments and tables and walls, so filled the laboratory that thegroup of men surrounding the fire-ball were like resplendent figures outof another universe.

  Ku Sui pressed a button, and the side of the boxlike device nearest HawkCarse's eyes assumed transparency and started to glow. Beautiful colorsbegan to float over its face, colors never still but constantly weavingand clouding into an infinity of combinations and designs. Eyes staringwide, as if unable to close them to the brilliant kaleidoscopicprocession, the adventurer looked on.

  * * * * *

  Friday knew that his master at that moment was impotent to move, even toshut his eyes, and, with a wild notion that he was being electrocuted,he made a rash rush to destroy the device and free him. He learneddiscretion when two ray-streaks pronged before him and forced him back;and thereafter he was given the undivided attention of two guards.

  From the outside, through the ball of color, Carse was a ghostlikefigure. Rigid and quivering, he sat in the chair and watched thecolor-maelstrom. His face was contorted; his cheek muscles stood outweltlike in his sweat-glistening skin; his eyes, which he could notclose, throbbed with agony. But yet he was conscious; yet he still couldwill.

  He defended his secret as best he could. Obviously this machine wasbeing used to force from his mind the knowledge of Eliot Leithgow'swhereabouts, and therefore he attempted to seal his mind. He fastened iton something definite--on Iapetus, satellite of Saturn, and his ranchthere--and barred every other thought from his head. Mechanically herepeated to himself: "Iapetus, Iapetus--my ranch on Iapetus--Iapetus,Iapetus." Hundreds of times.... Hours.... Days....

  The blinding waves of color rioted about him, submerged him, fatiguedhim. He had a strong impulse to sleep, but he resisted it.

  Days seemed to pass.... Years.... Eons. All this.... Continued withoutchange.... To the end of the world....

  Dimly he knew that the color-storm was working on him; sensed dangerwhen a great drowsiness stole over him; but he fought it off, his brainbeating out hundreds of times more: "Iapetus, Iapetus--I have a ranchthere--Iapetus, Iapetus...."

  Then came excruciating pain!

  * * * * *

  An electric shock suddenly speared him. His nerves seemed to curl up,and for a second his mind was thoroughly disorganized before it againtook up the drone about Iapetus. Recovery ... dullness ... a kind ofpeace--and again the shock leaped through him. It was followed by aquestion from afar off:

  "_Where is Eliot Leithgow?_"

  Somehow the question meant a great deal and should not be answered....

  Again the stab of agony. Again the voice:

  "_Where is Eliot Leithgow?_"

  Again the shock, and again the voice. Alternating, over and over. Hecould brace himself against the shock, but the voice could in no way beavoided. It was everywhere about him, over, around, under him; he beganto see it. Desperately he forced his brain on the path it must notleave. He had forgotten years ago why, but knew there must be some goodreason.

  "Iapetus, Iapetus--I have a ranch there--Iapetus, Iapetus--_Where isEliot Leithgow?_--Iapetus, Iapetus--I have a ranch there--_Where isEliot Leithgow_--I have a ranch there--a ranch there--Iapetus, aranch--_Where is Eliot Leithgow?_--_Where is Eliot Leithgow?_--_Where isEliot Leithgow?_" ...

  After two hours and ten minutes the Hawk crumpled.

  He was quite delirious at the time. The combined effect of the pain, thephysical and nervous exhaustion of the shocks and light, the endlesslyrepeated question, his own close concentration on his Iapetusranch--these were too much for
any human body to stand against. He losthis grip on his mind, lost the fine control that had never been lostbefore, the control about which he was so vain. And the lump of fleshthat was Hawk Carse gave the information that was tearing wildly at itsprison.

  A stammering voice came from the heart of the color-sphere:

  "Port o' Porno, Satellite III--Port o' Porno, Satellite III--Port o'Porno Sat----"

  Dr. Ku Sui interrupted him; leaned forward.

  "The house is number----?"

  "574--574--574----"

  "Ah!" breathed the Eurasian. "Port o' Porno! So near!"

  Ku Sui returned the switch and pressed one of the buttons. The pool ofcolors faded; the laboratory returned to comparative dimness. Themachine in its center seemed but a great web of wire.

  Slumped in the seat within it was a slender figure, his flaxen headbowed over on his chest, his eyes closed, and sweat still trickling downhis unconscious brow.

  And lying on the floor was another unconscious figure.

  Friday had fainted.