A moment or so later, after a straight, swift drop, Carse landed on the hill, close to a particular, gnarled oxi-tree stump. The nearby ranch-house looked deserted, the whole place seemed desolate. The Hawk waddled over to the stump, pressed a crooked little twig sticking out from it, and a section of the seeming-bark slid down, revealing the hollow, metal-sided interior of a cleverly camouflaged shaft. There were rungs inside, but Carse could not use them. He squeezed himself in, closed the entrance panel, and, carefully manipulating his gravity controls, floated down. A descent of twenty-five feet, and he was on the floor of a short, level corridor with gray walls and ceiling. Carse clumped along to the door at the other end of the corridor, opened it, and stepped into the hidden underground laboratory of Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow, which, with its storerooms, living quarters and space-ship hangar, had been built into the hollowed-out hill. * * * * * "Welcome back, Carse!" "Hello, Eliot," the Hawk nodded, rapidly divesting himself of the suit but retaining his infra-red device. "You've lost no time, I see." The elderly scientist, his frail form clad in a buff-colored smock, turned and surveyed the laboratory. In the center of the square room five improvised operating tables were drawn up, each one flooded individually with, light from focused flood-tubes above in the white ceiling. Flanking them were tables for instruments and sterilizers, and, more prominent, two small sleek cylindrical drums, from one of which sprouted a tube ending in a breathing-cone. "The best I could do on such short notice," Leithgow commented. "Where are your assistants?" "At work on the V-27. All I had on hand is in those cylinders." "Much?" "Enough for twelve hours for one man, but the process of its manufacture is accelerating; fortunately I had plenty of ingredients. Of course I've divined your intention, Carse. Ku Sui to perform the operations under the V-27. And it's possible, possible! It's stupendous--and possible!" "Yes," said the Hawk, "but more later. I'm going up now to get Dr. Ku. I'll use the air-car. It's ready?" "Yes." Leithgow answered. "But, Carse--one question I must ask--" The Hawk, already halfway to the door in the opposite wall of the laboratory, paused and looked back inquiringly. "What bodies are to be used?" "The only ones available, Eliot," the adventurer replied, "since Ku Sui, in his attempt to destroy the brains, left us only two hours--now one hour--to complete the first steps of the transfer. They'll be those four white assistants of his--those men, you remember, whose intellects he's dehumanized--" "Yes, yes?" Leithgow pressed him eagerly. "And the fifth?" "A robot coolie." "Good God!" "I know, Eliot! It won't be pleasant for one of those brains to find itself in a yellow body. But it's that or nothing."