ing intellects of
Earth, here gathered in one priceless instrument! Here are my advisors;
here my trusty, never-tiring assistants. I can have their help toward
the solution of any problem; obtain from their individual and combined
intelligences even those rare intuitions which I have found almost
always precede brilliant discoveries.

"For they not only retain all they ever knew of science, but they can
_develop_, even as brains in bodies can develop. Their knowledge does
not become outmoded, if they are kept informed of the latest currents of
scientific thought. From old knowledge and new they build their
structures of logic once my command sets them on. Wills of their own
they have none.

"I have not succeeded in all my secondary alterations, however. For one
thing, I have been unable to deprive them altogether of the memory of
what they formerly were; but it is a subdued memory, to them doubtless
like a dream, familiar yet puzzling. Because of this I imagine they hate
me--heartily!--yet they lack the will, the egocentricity which would
enable them to refuse to answer my questions and do my work.

"Frankly, without them this whole structure"--his hands swept out
widely--"my whole asteroidal kingdom, would have been impossible. Most
of my problems in constructing it were solved here. And in the future
other problems, far greater, will be solved here!"

* * * * *

Hawk Carse by now understood very well Dr. Ku Sui's purpose in bringing
M. S. Leithgow to his laboratory, and was already goading his brain in
search of a way out. Death was by all means preferable to what the
Eurasian intended--death self-inflicted, and death that mutilated the
brain--but there were no present chances that his searching mind could
see.

If Leithgow suspected what was in store, his face gave no sign of it. He
only said:

"Dr. Ku, of all the things you have ever done, this is the most
heartless and most vile. I would have thought there was a limit in you
somewhere, but this--this thing--this horrible life you have condemned
these five men to----"

He could not continue. The Eurasian only smiled, and replied, with his
always seeming courtesy:

"Your opinion is natural Master: I could expect no other. But when great
ends are to be gained, he who would gain them must strip himself of
those disturbing atavistic things we call the tender emotions. The
pathway to power is not for those who wince at