The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Affair of the Brains, by Anthony Gilmore

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Affair of the Brains

Author: Anthony Gilmore

Release Date: July 4, 2009 [EBook #29310]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AFFAIR OF THE BRAINS ***

Produced by Greg Weeks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's Note: This e-text was produced from Astounding Stories,
March, 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

[Illustration: "I do not know you for a liar.... I will enter."]

The Affair of the Brains

_A Complete Novelette_

By Anthony Gilmore

CHAPTER I

_Off to the Rendezvous_

[Illustration: Hawk Carse himself goes to keep Judd the Kite's
rendezvous with the sinister genius Ku Sui.]

Though it is seldom nowadays that Earthmen hear mention of Hawk Carse,
there are still places in the universe where his name retains all its
old magic. These are the lonely outposts of the farthest planets, and
here when the outlanders gather to yarn the idle hours away their tales
conjure up from the past that raw, lusty period before the patrol-ships
came, and the slender adventurer, gray-eyed and with queer bangs of hair
obscuring his forehead, whose steely will, phenomenal ray-gun draw and
reckless space-ship maneuverings combined to make him the period's most
colorful figure. These qualities of his live again in the outlanders'
reminiscences and also of course his score of blood-feuds and the one
great feud that shook whole worlds in its final terrible settling--the
feud of Hawk Carse and Dr. Ku Sui.

Again and again the paths of the adventurer and the sinister, brilliant
Eurasian crossed, and each crossing makes a rich tale. Time after time
Ku Sui, through his several bands of space-pirates, his individual
agents and his ambitious web of power insidiously weaving over the
universe, whipped his tentacles after the Hawk, and always the tentacles
coiled back, repulsed and bloody. An almost typical episode is in the
affair which followed what has been called the Explo