"Eliot. I have informed Dr. Ku that he is to be the means of the transplantation of the coordinated brains to living human bodies, since he is the only person capable of performing the operations. He does not believe that we can force him to do our will, yet all the same he is taking no chances: he started the death of the brains. We shall have to work very fast--all right. But Dr. Ku has other cards to play against us, and I don't know what they are. You and I must find out now." "I somehow feel that you mistrust me," interposed the Eurasian with mock sadness. "Ah, if you could only read my mind.... Or can you? Is that what you are coming to?" The Hawk glanced at Leithgow; 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.