understood. It was the coordinated
brains. They had forgotten to return the switches. And now the cold
voice was speaking of its own accord; and somehow--though it might have
been imagination entirely--there seemed to be a tinge of loneliness to
the words that sounded from its speaker.

Instantly Leithgow got down and hurried over to the grille. Seconds were
precious, but Carse and he were heavily obligated to the brains, and any
request in reason had to be fulfilled.

"Yes. What can I possibly do?"

The lower hinge of one side of the barricaded door gave, burned out, and
the door wrenched inward at a resumption of the battering. The other
hinge still held, but it was bending with each mighty blow. Outwardly
calm, Hawk Carse watched the weakening door, a gun in each hand.

"_This_," said the toneless voice: "_Destroy me. Leave no slightest
trace. I live in hell, and have no way to move.... There are old
memories ... things that once were dear ... Earth ... my homes ... my
lives there.... Eliot Leithgow, destroy me. 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. An ear-piercing
screech rent the bedlam--and the door fell, half twisting, to lie in the
doorway.

As if by a signal the crashing at the other doors stopped. In an
extraordinary silence a mob of gray-smocked bodies pressed forward.

Orange streaks laced the dim laboratory. The Hawk shouted, "Up, Eliot!
For God's sake, up!" as, with deadly effect, he poured his two ray-guns
at the advancing men.

For a second, shaken by the terrible barrage, they fell back, leaving
several sprawled bodies on the floor; but they came right back again.

Leithgow got safely to the top of the pile and was snatched out to
temporary safety. Frantically Friday called down to his master; he
seemed on the point of jumping down into the fight himself. But Hawk
Carse had been party to a promise.

He was behind the structure of furniture under the hole he had made in
the ceiling. With one gun he spat death at the coolies, while the other
he emptied at the case of brains. Two stabbing streams of orange angled
from him, one telling with awful effect on the men only