2026-02-04 00:05:37
Welcome back to 3 Tech Polls, HackerNoon's Weekly Newsletter that curates Results from our Poll of the Week, and related polls around the web. Thanks for voting and helping us shape these important conversations!
\ This week, we're talking about the humanoid robots that stole the show at CES 2026.
CES (the Consumer Electronics Show) can be described as the "World Cup of Technology." It is the premier global stage where the world's biggest brands debut their most ambitious breakthroughs before they hit the market.
CES 2026 provided a glimpse into a future where humanoid robots might actually work alongside humans. But which one has the most potential?
\
:::tip Vote in this week’s poll: Would you pay $20–$30/month to use ChatGPT’s most advanced model without ads?
:::
\ \
\ Atlas (Boston Dynamics) dominated the poll with 39% of the vote. For good reasons, Boston Dynamics unveiled the production-ready version of Atlas at CES 2026, winning CNET's "Best Robot" award. The fully electric humanoid is already in production, with deployments scheduled for Hyundai's manufacturing facilities and Google DeepMind in 2026. Atlas can lift up to 50 kg, has 56 degrees of freedom, and can autonomously swap its own batteries without human intervention.
\ HackerNoon Senior Editor, Asher Umerie, summed up the Atlas enthusiasm perfectly:
Seeing as it was one of the only showcases with a production-ready humanoid, my money's on Atlas from Boston Dynamics.
\ Coming in second place with 16% was The Laundry Assistant (Dyna Robotics). This robot is described as "boring, practical, and already deployed." Sometimes boring is exactly what the market needs as long as it gets the job done.
Dyna Robotics showcased its laundry-folding robot at CES 2026, demonstrating a pair of robotic arms with arcade game-esque claw "hands" efficiently folding laundry and organizing linens. While the robot often needs up to five attempts to catch a corner of a garment, it represents one of the most successful real-world deployments in commercial robotics.
\ Third place went to The Convenience Store Assistant (Galbot) with 11%, representing a clear example of service robots in real settings. The humanoid robot was synced with a menu app where customers would select an item from the menu (like Sour Patch Kids), and the robot would autonomously navigate to the shelf, retrieve the product, and deliver it to the customer.
\
Other: 11%
The Boxer (EngineAI) — Unpolished, but a glimpse at expressive humanoid movement: 10%
The EngineAI T800 made its global debut at CES 2026 in a mock boxing ring, performing shadowboxing demonstrations and martial arts movements. Standing 1.73 meters tall and weighing 75 kg, the T800 is built on a magnesium-aluminum alloy frame with joint actuators capable of delivering up to 450 Nm of peak torque and 14,000 watts of instantaneous joint peak power.
Dancing Humanoid (Unitree) — More capable than it looks, even if mostly for show: 7%
Unitree Robotics showcased multiple dancing and boxing demonstrations with its G1 humanoid at CES 2026. The G1 stands 130 cm tall, weighs 35 kg, and is priced at approximately $13,500-$16,000, roughly half the price of many comparable humanoids. The G1 is already on the market and available for purchase.
The Home Butler (LG's CLOiD) — Early, slow, but clearly aimed at everyday domestic use: 7%
LG Electronics unveiled its CLOiD home humanoid robot at CES 2026 under the exhibition theme "AI Robotics, From the Lab to Life." The robot is part of LG's "Zero Labor Home" vision aimed at reducing daily household burdens so customers can focus on more meaningful moments. LG is positioning CLOiD as a domestic helper that can cook, do laundry, and bring items from around the house, targeting everyday home use rather than industrial applications.
\
The HackerNoon community clearly values production readiness over flashy demos. After years of impressive parkour videos and viral stunts, Boston Dynamics is finally delivering a robot designed for factory floors rather than YouTube views and voters rewarded this practical approach with a decisive win.
That's the HackerNoon community's stance on the subject. But what does the broader prediction market community think about humanoid robots reaching the real world?
\
:::tip It’s not too late to join the conversation. Weigh in on the poll results here.
:::
\
The Polymarket community is tracking broader questions about the humanoid robotics industry. While specific CES 2026 robot predictions aren't yet available on the platform, traders are actively betting on Tesla's Full Self-Driving capabilities and robotaxi launches, which are technologies that share the same AI foundation models with humanoid robots.
Interestingly, Polymarket showed 5% odds that Tesla would launch unsupervised Full Self-Driving by June 30, 2026 and 15% odds that the launch must have taken place by December 31, 2026.
This suggests that while traders are skeptical of Optimus specifically, they have more confidence in Tesla's underlying AI capabilities.
\
According to Kalshi's prediction market, traders are giving Tesla's Optimus robot only a 23.8% chance of being released to the public in 2026. This is particularly notable given Tesla's ambitious plans.
But prediction market traders are skeptical, and for a good reason. Elon Musk's track record on timing is notoriously unreliable. His own biographer, Walter Isaacson, says Musk is "always wrong by two or three times" on his timeframes. Even Musk himself has acknowledged this pattern, albeit in his characteristic backhanded way.
The latest version, Optimus Gen 3, won't enter mass production until Q1 2026, according to Tesla's own timeline. At CES 2026, Tesla was notably absent from the humanoid robot showcase, while Boston Dynamics took center stage with a production-ready product.
The market's message is clear: Don't bet on timeline, bet on production reality.
\ The internet has spoken. After decades of research, demos, and science fiction promises, 2026-2027 appears to be the inflection point where these machines finally move from labs to factory floors. The question is no longer "can we build them?" but "can we build them at scale, safely, and profitably?"
For now, the smart money is on the robots that prioritize production capability over parkour tricks. Boring, perhaps, but that's exactly what real-world deployment requires.
\ That’s all for this week.
\ Until next time, Hackers!
2026-02-04 00:02:23
How are you, hacker?
🪐 What’s happening in tech today, February 3, 2026?
The HackerNoon Newsletter brings the HackerNoon homepage straight to your inbox. On this day, we present you with these top quality stories. From Riak as a Reference Implementation of Dynamo-Style Leaderless Databases to SnapPoint: A Hard Reset for Your Dev Machine, let’s dive right in.
By @theirix [ 15 Min read ] A retrospective of Riak database, covering its Dynamo design, Erlang implementation, consistency options, MapReduce support, and Bitcask storage engine. Read More.
By @alexcloudstar [ 5 Min read ] SnapPoint helps developers audit, clean, and realign their system by finding ghost binaries, PATH conflicts, and leftover tool junk. Read More.
By @obyte [ 6 Min read ] Explore here five open-source projects making life easier for animals and their humans. You can also support them with cryptos via Kivach! Read More.
🧑💻 What happened in your world this week?
It's been said that writing can help consolidate technical knowledge, establish credibility, and contribute to emerging community standards. Feeling stuck? We got you covered ⬇️⬇️⬇️
ANSWER THESE GREATEST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS OF ALL TIME
We hope you enjoy this worth of free reading material. Feel free to forward this email to a nerdy friend who'll love you for it.See you on Planet Internet! With love, The HackerNoon Team ✌️
2026-02-03 23:03:56
\
Can blockchain-based fan engagement actually generate liquidity for traditional sportsbooks?
\ BetOnline.ag appears to be betting yes. The platform announced on February 2, 2026, that it has integrated $SCOR, the native token of the SCOR blockchain network, as a supported cryptocurrency for deposits and withdrawals. The timing matters. Super Bowl LX takes place February 8, and BetOnline is positioning $SCOR as a bridge between verified fan activity and real-money gaming during one of sports betting's highest-volume periods.
\
SCOR operates as the native token for a Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for sports and entertainment intellectual property. According to SCOR's documentation, the network launched with a fixed supply of 4 billion tokens and functions through a dual-structure model. At the network level, $SCOR serves as gas for transactions and enables proof-of-stake validation. At the application level, the token powers what SCOR calls the Fan Engagement Protocol, which includes officially licensed digital collectibles of athletes and teams, skill-based mini-games, and competitive tournaments through the SCOR Battle League.
\ The integration creates a conversion mechanism. Users who earn $SCOR through participation in Sweet's licensed sports games can now deposit those tokens directly into BetOnline for sports betting, casino games, or poker. BetOnline has accepted cryptocurrency since first integrating Bitcoin in 2010, but this partnership represents something different from adding another payment rail. It connects earned tokens from engagement-based gameplay to risk-based gambling.
\ Eddie Robbins III, CEO of BetOnline.ag, states,
\
$SCOR isn't just another cryptocurrency, it's the premier token of the sports industry. This partnership allows us to directly engage with a new generation of sports fans who value real-world gameplay, verifiable achievements and interoperable rewards.
\
Sweet, the team that developed SCOR, brings over 600 professional athletes and official partnerships with leagues including the NHL and MLS, according to SCOR's network documentation. The platform uses SCOR-ID, a soulbound non-transferable NFT that functions as a permanent identity tracking achievements, competition results, and asset ownership. This creates a verifiable record of fan engagement that travels with the token.
\ BetOnline gains access to this verified fan data layer. When a user deposits $SCOR, the sportsbook can potentially identify them as someone who has demonstrated sports knowledge through competitive gameplay, participated in licensed tournaments, or accumulated specific team intellectual property assets. This differs from traditional customer acquisition where betting platforms know deposit amounts but lack context about a user's demonstrated sports expertise or engagement depth.
\ Betsy Proctor, EVP of Global Partnerships at Sweet, explains,
\
We built $SCOR to bridge the passion of sports fandom with tangible utility and value. BetOnline's integration is a landmark moment, turning fan-earned $SCOR into a key for premium gaming experiences. This partnership validates our vision of a reward-first portable fan identity.
\ The platform plans token-gated private poker and casino tournaments exclusively for verified $SCOR holders, with prizes distributed in both $SCOR and cash. These closed competitions function as customer retention mechanisms while creating additional utility for the token beyond simple payment processing.
\
SCOR's economic model includes what the network calls a "Three-Way Allocation" for application-level token usage. When $SCOR is spent within ecosystem apps, 33.3% goes to community rewards for skilled players, 33.3% is permanently burned until total supply reaches 1 billion tokens, and 33.3% flows to the treasury for development funding, according to SCOR's token documentation. The token allocation breaks down as 45% to ecosystem reserves for airdrops and incentives, 15% each to private sales, Sweet treasury, and core team, with 5% each to advisors and foundation endowment.
\ The integration raises questions about how this deflationary mechanism interacts with BetOnline's deposit and withdrawal system. When users deposit $SCOR into BetOnline, those tokens exit the Sweet ecosystem's consumption flywheel. If a user earns $SCOR through tournament participation, then immediately deposits it into BetOnline rather than spending it on IP asset upgrades or additional competition entry fees, the burn mechanism doesn't activate. The tokens become betting capital instead of ecosystem fuel.
\ This creates competing utility paths. BetOnline's value proposition depends on converting earned tokens into gambling deposits. SCOR's deflationary model depends on those same tokens being consumed within the ecosystem's applications. The partnership works for both parties because it expands $SCOR utility, but the long-term tokenomics implications remain unclear as users choose between ecosystem consumption and external platform deposits.
\
BetOnline is offering deposit bonuses for $SCOR users during the launch period, including free-play credits and casino spins for qualifying deposits, according to the partnership announcement. Super Bowl Sunday traditionally generates the highest single-day sports betting volume in the United States. By timing the integration for the week before the game, BetOnline positions $SCOR deposits as part of seasonal promotional activity when customer acquisition costs are already elevated across the industry.
\ The economics favor both parties during this window. Sweet gains a high-profile use case that demonstrates $SCOR utility beyond closed ecosystem applications. BetOnline acquires potentially high-value customers who have already demonstrated sports engagement through verified on-chain activity. Traditional sportsbook customer acquisition relies on marketing spend and deposit bonuses. This integration theoretically provides pre-qualified users who have proven sports interest through competitive participation rather than simple ad response.
\ Whether this translates to better customer lifetime value depends on factors neither party has disclosed. Do users who earn $SCOR through skill-based gameplay deposit more, bet more intelligently, or retain longer than customers acquired through traditional channels? These metrics will determine if the partnership represents meaningful innovation in customer acquisition or simply adds another cryptocurrency to BetOnline's payment options.
\
BetOnline's $SCOR integration creates infrastructure for converting verified fan engagement into gambling capital. The partnership solves a real problem for blockchain sports platforms trying to demonstrate token utility beyond closed ecosystems. Earning tokens through competitive gameplay only matters if those tokens unlock tangible value. Depositing them into an established sportsbook provides that value in a form users already understand.
\ The broader question is whether this model scales beyond early adopters. Sports betting operates on thin margins with customer acquisition costs that make profitability difficult. If $SCOR deposits consistently attract higher-value customers with better retention, other sportsbooks will adopt similar integrations. If the users simply treat $SCOR as another deposit method without meaningful behavioral differences, the innovation remains limited to payment rail expansion rather than customer acquisition transformation.
\ Don’t forget to like and share the story!
:::tip This author is an independent contributor publishing via our business blogging program. HackerNoon has reviewed the report for quality, but the claims herein belong to the author. #DYO
:::
\
2026-02-03 21:27:12
I recently made a non-negotiable call for my engineering team: Using AI is no longer optional. I’m pushing my developers to integrate AI bots into their workflows for writing, refactoring, and testing code every single day. In the current landscape, the tech world is moving at a velocity that makes "manual-only" coding feel like trying to win a Formula 1 race on a bicycle. If we don’t leverage these tools, we aren't just slowing down; we are becoming obsolete.
But if I’m being completely honest, this mandate makes me incredibly uneasy. As a Head of Engineering, I’m balancing the need for speed with the terrifying possibility of "automated mediocrity." Here is why I’m mandating AI, the traps I’m watching out for, and the rules I’ve set to ensure we don't lose our souls to the LLMs.
The biggest productivity killer I see isn’t a lack of tools; it’s the Dead Loop. We’ve all experienced that hypnotic trance where you believe the AI is just one prompt away from the perfect solution.
It usually goes like this:
In those two hours, a seasoned engineer could have written the logic from scratch, unit-tested it, and grabbed a coffee. The "Dead Loop" is dangerous because it feels like work, but it’s actually just expensive wheel-spinning. We cannot let the convenience of a "generate" button override our fundamental problem-solving instincts.
AI is a master of the micro, but a novice of the macro. It can write a flawless regex or a concise helper function in seconds. However, it has zero concept of how that function impacts the long-term scalability of our entire application architecture.
When developers lean too hard on copy-pasted AI snippets, the codebase starts to look like a "Frankenstein" project—a collection of parts that work individually but don't quite belong together. We risk creating Leaky Abstractions and massive amounts of Technical Debt that won’t reveal itself today, but will make our lives a nightmare a year from now when we try to refactor.
As a leader, my fear is that we stop building cohesive systems and start just "managing" a series of disconnected scripts.
To keep our engineering edge sharp, I’ve established three "ground rules" that every developer on my team must follow:
Think of the AI as a very fast, very eager junior intern. An intern can save you hours of grunt work, but you would never commit their code to production without a line-by-line review. You are the senior architect; the AI is the helper. If you can't explain what the AI wrote, you aren't allowed to merge it.
Use AI for the "mechanical" parts of coding—repetitive boilerplate, converting data formats, or writing basic UI components in Vue or Tailwind. But the architectural decisions—the "why" behind the database schema or the security protocols—must come from a human brain. We use the bots for the labor, not the logic.
If you have spent more than 10 minutes arguing with a bot or trying to "prompt engineer" a fix for a specific bug, turn it off. This is the circuit breaker for the Dead Loop. Sometimes, the "old school" way of opening documentation and typing it out yourself is still the fastest, most reliable path to a solution.
We are entering an era where the definition of a "Senior Engineer" is changing. It’s no longer just about how well you know a syntax; it’s about how well you can direct a suite of tools to produce a secure, scalable result.
I want my team to have the best tools in the world. I want us to be the fastest software house in the market. But I refuse to let us lose our "engineering gut." Use the bots, stay in control, and never let the AI do the heavy thinking for you. The moment we stop questioning the output is the moment we stop being engineers and start being data entry clerks for the LLMs.
\ \
2026-02-03 21:13:06
Traditional cyber insurance models were built for a slower, more predictable digital era. Today’s threat landscape—driven by ransomware, deepfakes, supply-chain attacks, and cloud complexity—has exposed the limitations of static questionnaires, annual risk assessments, and backward-looking actuarial models.
2026-02-03 20:00:06
:::info Astounding Stories of Super-Science March, 1932, by Astounding Stories is part of HackerNoon’s Book Blog Post series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. The Affair of the Brains - Chapter IV: Soil
By Anthony Gilmore
:::
\ Hawk Carse awoke with a slight feeling of nausea, and the smell of the drug faint in his nostrils. He found he was lying on the floor of a large, square cell whose walls and ceiling were of some burnished brown metal and which was bare of any kind of furnishing. In one wall was a tightly closed door, also of metal and studded by the knob of a lock. Barred slits, high in opposite walls, gave ventilation; a single tube set in the ceiling provided illumination.
He was not bound. He sat up and regarded the outflung figure of Friday, lying to one side. "Something in his look seemed to reach the giant negro, for, as he watched, the man's eyelids flickered, and a sigh escaped his full lips. He stared up at Carse, recognition, followed by gladness, flooding his eyes. The Hawk smiled also. There were close bonds between these two.
"Lord, I'm sure thankful to be with you, suh!" said the negro with relief. His eyes rolled as he took in the cabinlike cell. "Hmff—nice homey little place," he remarked. "Where do you reckon we are, suh?"
"I think we're at last at that place we have searched so long for—Ku Sui's headquarters, his own spaceship."
It will be remembered by those who have read their history that the Eurasian's actual base of operations was for a long time the greatest of the mysteries that enveloped him. Half a dozen times had the Hawk and his comrade in arms, Eliot Leithgow, hunted for it with all their separate skill of adventurer and scientist, and, although they had twice found the man himself, always they had failed to find his actual retreat.
For those who are unacquainted with the histories of that raw period a hundred years ago, it will be impossible to understand the spell of fear which accompanied mention of Dr. Ku throughout the universe—a fear engendered chiefly by the man's unpredictable comings and goings, thanks to his secret hiding place. Those who were as close to him as henchmen could be—which was not very close—only added to the general mystery of the whereabouts of the base by their sincerely offered but utterly contradictory notions and data. One thing all agreed on: the outlaw's lair was a place most frightening.
Therefore it can be understood why, on hearing the Hawk's opinion, Friday's face fell somewhat.
"Guess that means we're finished, suh," he opined moodily.
\ Carse had walked to the lone door and found, as he of course expected, that it was tightly locked. He responded crisply:
"It's not like you to talk that way, Eclipse. We're far from that. We have succeeded in the first step—if, as I suspect, this cell is part of Dr. Ku's real headquarters—and surely before he decides to eliminate us we will be able to learn something of the nature of his space-ship; perhaps how it can be attacked and conquered."
Conversation always cheered the naturally social Friday; he seldom had the opportunity for it with his usually curt master. He objected:
"But what good'll that do us, suh, if we take what we've learned to where it won't help anybody, least of all us? An' what chance we got against Ku Sui now, when we're prisoners? Why, he's a magician; it ain't natural, what he does. Lands in our ship plop right out of empty space! Puts us out with a wave of his handkerchief!" With final misery in his voice he added: "We're sunk, suh. This time we surely are."
Carse smiled at his emotional friend. "All you need is a good fight, Eclipse. It's thinking that disintegrates your morale; you should never try to think. Why—there was an anesthetic on that handkerchief! Simple enough; I might have expected it. As for his getting into our ship, he entered from behind, through the after port-lock, while we were looking for his ship on the visi-screen. I don't understand yet why we could not see his craft. It's too much to suppose he could make it invisible. Paint, perhaps, or camouflage. He might have a way of preventing, from a distance, the registering of his ship on our screen. Oh, he's dangerous, clever, deep—but somewhere, there'll be a loophole. Somewhere. There always is." His tone changed, and he snapped: "Now be quiet. I want to think."
\ His face stiffened into a cold, calm mask, but behind his gray eyes lay anything but calmness. Ku Sui's easy assumption that the information as to Eliot Leithgow's whereabouts would be forthcoming from his lips, puzzled him, brought real anxiety. Torture would probably not be able to force his tongue to betray his friend, but there were perhaps other means. Of these he had a vague and ominous apprehension. Dr. Ku was preeminently a specialist in the human brain; he had implied his will to have that information. Suppose he should use something it was impossible to fight against?
And he alone, Hawk Carse, brought the responsibility. He had asked Leithgow where he would be, and he remembered well the place agreed upon. He dared not lose the battle of wits he knew was coming!…
His eyes shot to the door. It was opening. In a moment Ku Sui stood revealed there, and behind him, in the corridor, were three other figures, their yellow coolie faces strangely dumb and lifeless above the tasteful gray smocks which extended a little below their belted waists. Each bore embroidered on his chest the planetary insignia of Ku Sui in yellow, and each was armed with two ray-guns.
"I must ask forgiveness, my friend, for these retainers who accompany me," the Eurasian began suavely. "Please don't let them disturb you, however; they are more robots than men, obeying only my words. A little adjustment of the brain, you understand. I have brought them only for your protection; for you would find it would result most unpleasantly to make a break for freedom."
"Of course, you're not the one who wants protection!" sneered Friday, with devastating sarcasm. "Or else you'd 'a' brought a whole army!"
But the negro paled a little when the Oriental's green tiger eyes caught him full. It was with a physical shock—such was the power of the man—that he received the soft-spoken reply:
"Yours is a most subtle and entertaining wit, black one; I am overcome with the honor and pleasure of having you for my guest. But perhaps—may I suggest?—that you save your humor for a more suitable occasion. I would like to make the last few hours of your visit as pleasant as possible."
\ He turned to Hawk Carse. "I have thought that an inspection of this, my home in space, would intrigue you more than anything else my poor hospitality affords. May I do you the honor, my friend?"
"You are too good to me," the Hawk replied frostily. "I will duplicate your kindness some day."
The Eurasian bowed. "After you," he said, and waited until Friday and the Hawk passed first through the door. Close after them came the three automatons of yellow men.
The passageway was square, plain and bare, and spaced at intervals by other closed doors. "Storerooms in this wing," the Eurasian explained as they progressed. He stopped in front of one of the doors and pressed a button beside it. It slid noiselessly open, revealing, not another room, but a short metal spider ladder. Up this they climbed, one of the guards going first in the half darkness; then a trap-door above opened to douse them with warm ruddy light. They stepped out.
And the scene that met them took them completely off guard. Friday gasped, and Carse so far lost his habitual poise as to stare in wonder.
Soil! And a great glassy dome!
\ Not a space-ship, this realm of Ku Sui. Soil—soil with a whole settlement built upon it! Hard, grayish soil, and on it several buildings of the familiar burnished metal. And overhead, cupping the entire outlay, arched a great hemisphere of what resembled glass, ribbed with silvery supporting beams and struts: an enormous bowl, turned down, and on its other side the glorious vista of space.
Straight above hung the red-belted disk of Jupiter, with the pale globes of Satellites II and III wheeling close, and all of them were of the same relative size they had appeared when last seen from the Scorpion!
Dr. Ku smiled unctuously at the puzzlement that showed on the faces of his captives.
"Have you noticed," he asked, "that you are still in the neighborhood of the spot in space where we had our rendezvous? But this isn't another of Jupiter's satellites. Ah, no. This is my own world—my own personally controlled little world!"
"Snakes of the Santo!" Friday gasped, the whites of his eyes showing all around. "Then we must be on an asteroid!"
They were. From the far side of the dome ahead of them the asteroid stretched back hard and sharp in Jupiter's ruddy light against the backdrop of black space. It was a craggy, uneven body, seemingly about twenty miles in length, pinched in the middle and thus shaped roughly like a peanut shell. One end had been leveled off to accommodate the dome with its cradled buildings; outside the dome all was untouched. The landscape was a gargantuan jumble of coarse, hard, sharp rocks which had crystallized into a maze of hollows, crevices, long crazy splits and jagged out-thrusting lumps of boulders. Without an atmosphere, with but the feeblest of gravities and utterly without any form of life—save for that within the dome built upon it—it was simply a typical small asteroid, of which race only the largest are globe-shaped.
"Once," the Eurasian went on softly as they took all this in, "this world of mine circled with its thousands of fellows between Mars and Jupiter. I picked it from the rest because of certain mineral qualities, and had this air-containing dome constructed on it, and these buildings inside the dome. Then, with batteries of gravity-plates inserted precisely in the asteroid's center of gravity, I nullified the gravital pull of Mars and Jupiter, wrenched it from its age-old orbit and swung it free into space. An achievement that would command the respect even of Eliot Leithgow, I think. So now you see, Carse; now you know. This is my secret base, this my hidden laboratory. I take it always with me, and I travel where I will."
The Hawk nodded coldly his acceptance of the astounding fact; he was too busy to make comment. He was observing the buildings, the nature of them, the exits from the dome, how they could best be reached.
\ They stood on the roof of the largest and central building, a low metal structure with four wings, crossing at right angles to make the figure of a great plus mark. The hub was probably Dr. Ku's chief laboratory, Carse conjectured. On each side stood other buildings, low, long, like barracks, with figures of coolies moving in and out. Workshops, living quarters, power-rooms, he supposed: power-rooms certainly, for a soft hum filled the air.
There were two great port-locks at ground level in the dome, one on each side, each sizable enough to admit the largest space-ship and each flanked by a smaller, man-sized lock. To reach them….
"And over there," Dr. Ku's voice broke in, "you see your borrowed ship, the Scorpion. But please don't let it tempt you to cut short your visit with me, my friend. It would avail you nothing even if you reached her, for it requires a secret combination to open the port-locks, and my servants' brains have been so altered that they are physically incapable of divulging it to you. And of course I have offensive rays and other devices hidden about—just in case. All rather hopeless, isn't it? But surely interesting.
"Let us go: I have more. Below, in my main laboratory in the center of this building, there's something far more interesting, and it concerns you, Carse, and me, and also Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow." He let the words sink in. "Will you follow me?"
And so they went below again, down the spider ladder into the corridor. There was nothing else to do: the guards, ever watchful, pressed close behind. But a tattoo of alarm was beating in Hawk Carse's brain. Eliot Leithgow again—the hint of something ominous to be aimed at him, Carse, for the extraction of information he alone possessed: the whereabouts of his elderly friend the Master Scientist.
\ \
:::info About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books.
This book is part of the public domain. Astounding Stories. (2009). ASTOUNDING STORIES OF SUPER-SCIENCE, MARCH 1932. USA. Project Gutenberg. Updated JAN 5 2021, from https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/29310/pg29310-images.html
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.
:::
\
