He was already dragging a metal table there; and, upended under the knob, making an angle with the floor, it held stoutly closed the door, now thumping and quivering with blows given it from outside. The panting negro fell back from the door exhausted, but rose to help his master at the need for placing additional barricades.
That finished, the Hawk wheeled, and at once, pantherlike, ray-guns at the ready, stalked the room. There was no sign of the enemy. He approached the operating table.
A great relief flooded his grim face as he sighted Eliot Leithgow lying there, apparently untouched and still conscious. The elderly scientist was strapped down tight, but he was smiling.
"I knew you'd come, Carse, if you could," he said simply.
There was no time for visiting. "Where's Ku Sui?" the adventurer asked.
"Gone," Leithgow answered. "I heard a door open and close—which one I couldn't see. He went as soon as that bell began to ring. The assistants, too."
Through the shouts and batterings at the barricaded door came a new sound—from another direction. Like a streak the Hawk was at one of the three other doors, throwing its inside hand bolt; and by the time he had shot over the second, Friday had taken the cue and secured the remaining one.
The negro let out a vast breath. "Umph!" he said. "I'll tell the universe that was close!"
Hawk Carse said nothing. With eyes ever-watchful for sign of a trick or a trap in the apparently deserted laboratory, he quickly unbuckled the bands that held Leithgow to the operating table. Friday lifted the scientist to the floor, where he stretched weakly.