-it seemed even
desolate--but in Carse's moment of memory it was peopled. There had
been the tall, graceful shape in black silk; there the operating table
and the frail old man bound on it; there the four other men, white men
and gowned in the smocks of surgeons, but whose faces were lifeless
and expressionless. Dr. Ku Sui and his four assistant surgeons and his
intended victim, Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow....

They were all gone from the room now, but there was in it one thing of
life that had been there before. It lay behind the inlaid screen
which, standing on roller-legs, lay along the wall at one place. The
Hawk did not look behind the screen. He could see under it, to know
that no one lurked there. He knew what it was meant to conceal. There
his promise lay.

But his promise could not be fulfilled immediately. There were four
wings to the building, four doors leading into the laboratory, and he
had inspected but one.

An open door to his right revealed a corridor similar to the one he
had reconnoitered. He repeated down it his methodical search and found
no one. Then he returned to the laboratory.

Surely there were men somewhere! Surely someone was behind one of the
two closed doors remaining! Gun and flashlight still at the ready,
Carse listened a moment at the nearest one.

Silence. He grasped the knob, turned it and quickly threw the door
open. A rapid glance revealed no one. Wary and alert, he passed
through, and discovered that in this wing were the personal living
quarters of Dr. Ku Sui.

The quarters were divided into five rooms: living room, bedroom,
library, dining room and kitchen, and the huge metal figure passed
through all five, the cold gray eyes taking in every detail of the
comfortable but not luxurious furnishings. There was a great interest
to him, but it would have to wait.

He reentered the laboratory and went to the remaining door. Bending
his head he again listened. A sound--a faint whisper? He fancied he
heard something.

Ready for whatever it was, Carse pulled the door wide. And before him
he saw the control room of the asteroid, and the men for whom he had
been hunting.

* * * * *

They were white men. Carse recognized them immediately as the four
assistants of Dr. Ku Sui. Once, they had been eminent on Earth,
respected doctors of medicine and brain surgery, leaders in their
profession: now they were like the mechanicalized coolies. For the