r. Ku looked at them as though astonished.
"Why, no, my friends! I wish I were able to, but I cannot perform the operations by myself, unaided. That would be impossible, absurd.... You seem startled. Surely you must have known that those assistants would be vital to the work! I have taught them, you see; trained them; they were specialists in brain surgery to begin with, and I do not believe there are any others this side of Mars who could take their place in operations of this type. Without them, I could never transplant the brains."
This, then, had been the trick up his sleeve! This was why, in the control room of the asteroid, he had shown relief when the Hawk told him what bodies were to be used for the transplantation! For he had known that, whatever Eliot Leithgow's method of forcing him to perform the operations might be, and no matter how efficacious, the coordinated brains simply could not be put in the heads of his four assistants—because the assistants were themselves needed for the operations!
"Then—it's hopeless!" said the Master Scientist bitterly. "All this for nothing! You might find other bodies in Port o' Porno, Carse—condemned men, criminals—but Porno's an hour away, two hours' round trip, and in thirty minutes the brains will be too weak to save...."
"I am sorry," Ku Sui continued. "I should have told you before, perhaps. If there were any way out I knew of, I would tell you but there does not seem to be...."
"Yes," broke in Hawk Carse suddenly. His left hand had been pulling at his bangs of flaxen hair; his brain had been working very fast. He added coldly:
"Yes, there is a way."
