The Passing of Ku Sui   By: Anthony Gilmore

This etext was produced from Astounding Stories November 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

The Table of Contents is not part of the original magazine.

One word in Chapter II could not be read. It has been marked as illegible.

The Passing of Ku Sui

A Complete Novelette

By Anthony Gilmore

CONTENTS

Chapter I The Plan II Three Figures in the Dawn III The Raid IV The Voice of the Brains V "My Congratulations, Captain Carse!" VI The Deadline VII To the Laboratory VIII White's Brain Yellow's Head IX Four Bodies X The Promise Fulfilled XI Ordeal XII Flight XIII In Earth's Shadow XIV The Hawk Strikes XV There Is a Meteor

CHAPTER I

The Plan

[Illustration: Like a projectile Hawk Carse shot out in a direction away from Earth. ]

[Sidenote: A screaming streak in the night a cloud of billowing steam and the climax of Hawk Carse's spectacular "Affair of the Brains" is over.]

The career of Hawk Carse, taken broadly, divides itself into three main phases, and it is with the Ku Sui adventures of the second phase that we have been concerned in this intimate narrative. John Sewell, the historian, baldly condenses those adventures of a century ago together, but on research and closer scrutiny they take on an individuality and significance deserving of separate treatment, and this they have been given here. For fictionized presentation, we have spaced the adventures into four connected episodes, four acts of a vibrant drama which ranged clear from Saturn to Earth, the core of which was the feud between Captain Carse and the power lusting Eurasian scientist, Dr. Ku Sui that feud the reverberations of whose terrible settling still echo over the solar system and in this last act of the drama, set out below, we come to its spectacular climax.

The words of John Sewell's epic history sit lightly on paper; easy words for Sewell, once the collection of data was over, to write; not very significant words for the uninitiated and casual reader who does not see the irresistible forces beneath them. But consider the full meaning of these words, and glance for a moment at the two figures conjured up by them. We see Hawk Carse, a man slender in build, but with gray eyes and lithe, strong fingered hands and cold, intent face that give the clue to the steel of him; we see Dr. Ku Sui, tall, suave, unhurried, formed as though by a master sculptor, in whose rare green eyes slumbered the soul of a tiger, notwithstanding the courtesy and the grace that masked always his most infamous moves. These two we see looming through and dwarfing Sewell's words as they face each other, for they were probably the most bitter, and certainly the most spectacular, foe men of that raw period before the patrol ships swept up from the home of man to lay Earth's laws through space.