CHAPTER IX

_The Brain Speaks_

A case lay revealed.

At first, while it was unlit, it seemed nothing more than that: a case
like those glass-sided and glass-topped ones found in museums, a case
perhaps three feet high, three feet deep and five feet in width. Under
this glass upper part of the case was an enclosed section a little more
than a foot in depth. The whole structure was supported at each corner
by short strong metal legs. And that was all.

But, second by second, as the captives took in these details, a change
came over the interior. No doubt it was the result of the increasing
action of some electrical current loosed by the throwing of the switch;
the whole insides of the glass case little by little lightened, until it
became apparent it was full of a strange liquid that seemed of itself to
have the property of glowing with soft light. As this light increased, a
row of five shadowy bulks the size of footballs began to take form
between what looked, from where the men sat, like a forest of fibers of
silk.

In a few more seconds a miracle of complicated wiring came into
visibility. The silk fibers were seen to be wires, threads of silver
gossamer that interconnected the five emerging bulks in a maze of
ordered complexity. Thousands interlaced the interior; hundreds were
gathered in each of five close bunches that sprouted from the floor of
the case and then spread, fanwise, to various groupings of delicate
liquid-immersed instruments.

In several seconds more Eliot Leithgow and Hawk Carse were staring with
horror at what the now brilliantly glowing liquid revealed the five
shapes to be. As one man they rose, went to the cabinet and gazed with
terrible fascination.

"Brains!" exclaimed Leithgow. "Human brains! But not alive--surely not
alive!"

"But yes," contradicted the triumphant Eurasian. "Alive."

* * * * *

Five human brains lay all immersed in the glowing case, each resting in
a shallow metal pan. There were pulsings in narrow gray tubes which led
into their under-sides--theatrical evidence that the brains held
imprisoned there were, as the Eurasian had said, alive--most strangely,
unnaturally and horribly alive. Stark and cruelly naked they lay there,
pulsing with life that should not have been.

"Yes, alive!" repeated Ku Sui. "And never to die while their needs are
attended!"

One of his long artistic fingers tapped the glass before the ce