eithgow; and Leithgow nodded, and placed a metal
chair close to one of the cylindrical drums--the one fitted with a
tube and breathing cone.

"Will you sit there. Dr. Ku?" Carse asked.

The green eyes scanned the drum.

"A gas, Master Leithgow?"

"That is all. Not harmful, not painful."

"I see. I see...." the Eurasian murmured. And suddenly, he smiled at
the two men facing him, and said pleasantly to Carse:

"Things repeat! Not long ago I asked you to sit in a chair and submit
to a treatment of mine, and you did as I asked. After so gallant a
precedent, how could I refuse? All right. Now, Master Leithgow, your
gas!"

* * * * *

With gentle fingers Eliot Leithgow fitted the cone on the Eurasian's
face and fastened it there. The fingers and thumb of one hand he kept
on Dr. Ku's pulse; with the other he pulled over slowly a control set
in the side of the drum. A ticking and slight hissing became audible,
and two indicators on the drum quivered and crept downward.

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.

"The first step," murmured Leithgow abstractedly, out of his
concentration on dials and patient. "The muscles--notice--relaxed. The
will--the ego--the nexi of emotions and volitions which oppose
external direction--all being worked upon, submerged, neutralized--but
not his knowledge, not his skill. No--all that he will retain! You'll
notice nothing more until you see his eyes. A few minutes. What says
the red hand? Thirteen. At nineteen it should be completed."

Carse watched intently. 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!" 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