ds.

"I see," Carse whispered. There was nothing to be done. Three coolies,
each with ray-guns at the ready; four white assistants.... No hope. No
chance for anything. He looked at the negro. "Don't move, Friday," he
warned him. "They'll only shoot; it can do no good. Eight to two are big
odds when the two are unarmed."

He turned and faced the Eurasian, holding him with his eyes. "Ku Sui,"
he said, clipping the words, "you have said that this would not
permanently harm me, and, although I know you for the most deadly,
vicious egomaniac in the solar system, I am believing you. I do not know
you for a liar.... I will enter."

The faint smile on the Oriental's face did not alter one bit at this.
Carse stepped to the metal seat and sat down.

* * * * *

The web of shimmering wires descended, cupping him completely. Through
them he saw Ku Sui go to a switchboard adjoining and study the
indicators, finally placing one hand on a black-knobbed switch and with
the other drawing from some recess a little cone, trailing a wire, like
a microphone. A breathless silence hung over the laboratory. The
white-clad figures stood like statues, dumb, unfeeling, emotionless. The
watching negro trembled, his mouth half open, his brow already bedewed
with perspiration. But the only sign of strain or tension that showed in
the slender flaxen-haired man sitting in the wire ball in the center of
the laboratory, came when he licked his dry lips.

Then Dr. Ku Sui pulled the switch down, and there surged out a
low-throated murmur of power. And immediately the ball of wire came to
life. The fine, crisscrossing wires disappeared, and in their stead was
color, every color in the spectrum. Like waves rhythmically rising and
falling, the tinted brilliances dissolved back and forth through each
other; and the reflected light, caroming off the surfaces of the
instruments and tables and walls, so filled the laboratory that the
group of men surrounding the fire-ball were like resplendent figures out
of another universe.

Ku Sui pressed a button, and the side of the boxlike device nearest Hawk
Carse's eyes assumed transparency and started to glow. Beautiful colors
began to float over its face, colors never still but constantly weaving
and clouding into an infinity of combinations and designs. Eyes staring
wide, as if unable to close them to the brilliant kaleidoscopic
procession, the adventurer looked on.