Текст книги "[Magazine 1967-­01] - The Light-­Kill Affair"

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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He heard people chatting calmly around him. A stewardess tried to engage him in conversation, but he was in too much discomfort to think casually.

He went back over all he had seen, and had not seen, what he'd found and failed to find in that jungle.

He was still kicking it around in his mind when the plane set down at Kennedy airport. He passed through customs, came out on the concourse and hailed a taxi.

The cab driver had just missed making a killing in the market. He told Solo all about it on the ride into Manhattan. He was still explaining the details when Napoleon Solo stepped out of the cab in the east forties.

He walked toward the gleaming structure of the United Nations Building which dominated the neighborhood.

Going down a flight of steps, Solo entered Del Floria's Cleaning' and Tailoring shop, an unprepossessing establishment in the basement of an ordinary-appearing whitestone building in the middle of a long block.

At the rear of the shop, Solo passed through a curtained dressing room; soon he entered the charged atmosphere of United Network Command for Law and Enforcement headquarters.

It was a gleaming place of chrome and steel where men and women moved swiftly.

The building itself quivered with the electronic feelers that reached out from roof and under ground to the farthest crannies of the earth, continuously sending and receiving messages by every known method from carrier pigeon to the highest-secret sound-by-light apparatus.

At the admissions desk the young receptionist pinned an identification tag to Solo's lapel. This tag would be scanned and read and approved by concealed electric eyes every few feet throughout the labyrinth of corridors.

Solo had gone only a few steps when lovely April Dancer came hurrying from one of the many elevators. "Solo." She touched his arm, wincing slightly at the sight of his bruised face. "What did you learn about Don?"

"I'm afraid he's dead," Solo said.

"You look as if you'd met his enemies. I hope they look even worse than you do."

"Afraid it was THRUSH's inning this time, April. But at least I know they were there, even if I don't why, or where they got to."

"You look ready to fall on your face."

Napoleon Solo tried to smile. "Nothing that a little loving care wouldn't improve. How about dinner after I report to Waverly?"

"Afraid I wouldn't be very good company," April said. "Just can't get my mind on pleasure—this dreadful business we're in."

Solo smiled at her. "Man does not live by dread alone, April."

April squeezed his arm. "Why don't you see me after you've talked with Alexander?"

Solo hadn't realized he was still smiling faintly when he faced Alexander Waverly in the Command Room until the chief demanded testily, "What do you find to smile about in a battered face like that?"

Solo wiped away the smile. "No, sir," he agreed. "There's nothing to smile about."

He made a full report of his arrival in San Miguel, his trek into the jungle. "At first I thought the whole thing was insane. There was absolutely no trace of this laboratory that Sayres described in such detail. In fact, the jungle in that spot looked exactly like all the swamp around it."

"Impossible."

"That's what I thought. But I was able to find the general outline of where the lab had stood—less than a week before!"

"Plant life grows lushly in the tropics, Solo," Waverly said. "But nothing like this."

"Nothing like this," Solo agreed. "Plants, vines, trees growing, full height, where a lab had stood a few days earlier. There is some kind of artificial stimulation of growth here, and as far as I can see, this must be behind whatever project THRUSH is working on."

"You're convinced THRUSH is behind this?"

Solo touched gingerly at his bruised face. "Physically I am convinced, sir. THRUSH—or somebody—left three guards at the port shipping warehouse to be sure nobody pried into the shipment of plants and equipment."

"Obviously you pried," Waverly said with a faint smile.

"I have the scars to prove it," Solo said. "But I also have an address. Big Belt, Montana. I could barely locate it on any map. A village in the Big Belt Mountain ranges."

Waverly stood up, smiling crookedly. "I am proud of you, Solo. And I don't often say this to my men. I don't like to spoil them."

"I didn't find out how Sayres and Diego Viero were killed," So lo said. "But somehow, all traces of their body, clothing and equipment were destroyed, as if by some kind of intense heat."

Waverly nodded. "You'll want to be most cautious then."

"Sir?"

"When you arrive in the Big Belt Mountains. Our computers showed an area of disturbance up there. We dispatched Mr. Kuryakin to investigate a short time ago. You will join him at once via jet and copter."

Solo opened his battered mouth to protest—he could barely walk and he was looking forward to a hot shower and a date with April Dancer, in that order—but he was too tired to make the effort. Mr. Waverly was like the umpire in a baseball game. You couldn't win, disputing one of his decisions anyhow.

SIX

ILLYA KURYAKIN stepped off the Greyhound bus into the flat village silence of Big Belt, Montana.

"You're sure this is the place?" he said doubtfully to the driver.

The driver grinned at him. "Leave the driving to us."

"Your driving was all right. I'm worried about your sense of direction," Illya said. He stared along the single hard packed main street, the dusty trees, the aged, wind abrased buildings.

Inside the cafe-bus station, Illya inquired about the four-wheel jeep that had been ordered for him.

The clerk behind the desk didn't even bother looking up. "Afraid that jeep's not ready, sir."

"But we ordered it ready and waiting!" Illya said, annoyed by the villager's apathy.

The clerk shrugged. "Like I said, I'm sorry, mister."

Illya counted a slow ten. He managed a smile. "Where is the jeep?"

"Round the corner there at Mapes' Garage. You can't miss it."

Illya grinned. You couldn't miss anything in this town.

The bus was gone and there were only a few people lounging along Main Street when Illya stepped out on the walk.

He turned right, going past a grocery store, a dress shop toward a bar and the side street.

The gun that fired was not silenced. The rifle cracked and instinctively Illya toppled forward. The bullet sang waspishly past his head.

Illya crawled forward, then sprawled behind the questionable concealment of a rain barrel.

He did not move for a moment. He tried to make sense in his being ambushed. Friendly little town. No wonder U.N.C.L.E.'s computers kept spewing out reports of turbulence in the area, mysterious influx of strangers, sudden unexplained activity.

Cautiously, Illya edged his unruly blond head around the barrel. He stared across the street. A two-storied brick hotel, a window open, a curtain riffling in the breeze. The shot had come from that window, all right.

He waited another few seconds. The rifle barrel did not reappear in that window.

People ran out of stores, and at the hotel men and women were shouting.

Illya leaped up from behind the rain barrel, taking advantage of the excitement and people milling in the streets.

He almost bowled over a stout man in straw hat and smudged butcher's apron outside the grocery. The man yelled involuntarily.

"Charming little town," Illya said to him, bowing as he hurried past. "Charming. Loud, though."

The greasy mechanic at Mapes' garage had run halfway down the block as Illya rounded the corner.

"What's the excitement?" the man called to Illya.

Illya forced himself to walk slowly, speak casually. "Tire blew out."

"That a fact?" The mechanic's face showed disappointment. "Could have sworn it was a deer rifle. Thought I knowed a deer rifle for sure. You positive it was a tire?" He fell in beside Illya and walked back to the littered garage-filling station with him.

Illya gazed in sick disbelief at the jeep parked on the garage ramp. The four tires were pancaked flat, the hood was up and he saw the wiring had been ripped loose.

The mechanic said, "You the fellow ordered this jeep? It was ready. Last night I checked it out myself. It was all ready for you. But this morning, when I got here, I found it just like this."

"My grandmother always said never waste time crying over spilt milk," Illya said. "Let's get to work."

"Your grandmother live around here?" the mechanic asked.

"Why?" Illya bent over the engine.

"Lots of folks have that saying around here. I never really knowed what it meant."

"You repair the tires," Illya said, "I'll get these wires back together."

In less than half an hour the tires were fixed and Illya had the jeep engine purring.

"Never heard that car running so sweet," the mechanic said admiringly. He smiled at Illya. "Say, you ever want a job as a mechanic, you got one with me."

"I'll remember that," Illya promised. He swung into the jeep.

"You going up in the Big Belts prospecting, mister?" the mechanic shouted.

"Why?"

"Lots of men up there prospecting lately. Never have seen so much action going on."

"Not me," Illya assured him with a bland smile. "I'm just looking for the place where the deer and the antelope play."

A few miles outside the settlement the hard-packed road ended. An ill-defined trail led upward to ward the foothills and the raw brown mountains rearing above them.

The car rattled as if the rocks would shake it to pieces. Illya clung to the wheel, bouncing on the hard seat.

He frowned, hearing distant thunder.

He checked the sky, finding it cloudless, sun-struck. But the thunder rumbled closer.

Illya turned, staring across his shoulder. His eyes widened. The noise was not thunder. From the foothills south of him a Cessna four-seater raced toward him.

He tried to tell himself that cattlemen and coyote hunters used small planes up here. But in less than two minutes, Illya admitted that the Cessna was zeroing in on him.

The plane banked, losing altitude. Watching it, Illya almost drove headlong into a boulder.

He jerked the car back onto the trail at the moment someone in the Cessna opened fire with a repeating rifle.

Illya yelled, clinging to the wheel. This attack was senseless. But it occurred to him that the attack from the hotel window in Big Belt village hadn't made a lot of sense, either.

Illya stepped down hard on the gas.

The plane zoomed down, hawk-like, in pursuit. Bullets battered the little car, windshield shattering.

Holding his breath, Illya watched the plane climb slightly as it passed.

He looked about for concealment, but there was none except boulders and stunted trees. He stepped harder on the gas, climbing toward a distant hammock of pines.

He wasn't going to make it. He watched the plane bank daringly and turn at a few hundred feet, maneuvering with maniacal skill.

The plane returned, coming directly down and toward him.

Illya leaned forward into the protection of the dash. He whipped the jeep off the trail into a cluster of boulders.

Rifle bullets ricocheted off the hood and black holes pocked the shatter-webbed windshield.

Kuryakin swore. The boulders slowed him, but didn't impede the plane at all.

"Doesn't make sense letting them drive me out into these rocks," Illya said aloud.

He quickly whipped the little jeep back toward the trail. He cut across country, heading toward the pine hammock on the ridge.

The plane banked, making a steep turn. The roar of the plane engine was louder than the rattling of the jeep.

Suddenly Illya smelled gas. Nobody had to point out to him that the rifleman had scored a hit on the gas tank.

A tire whistled and the car listed, bumping frantically down slope. Another tire went and Illya lost control in the shale and rock outcroppings.

The plane had reached a turn. It climbed slightly and peeled off, returning.

Raging, talking to himself and sweat-wet, Illya slammed on brakes so hard the jeep side– slipped.

Catching up his overnight kit, Illya plunged from the car, striking hard on his knees. He felt the cuts of the sharp rocks, but had no time to submit to pain.

He thrust himself hard into the shadow of the boulder. He heard bullets rattling off the jeep, the shatter of glass, the scream of engine and fuselage as the plane passed less than a hundred feet above him.

He opened the bag, inching around the boulder. He watched the banking plane, saw it skid along the wind, making its turn for another pass.

He drew his U.N.C.L.E. special from the bag and socked an extension barrel on it, flipped up the telescopic sights.

Above him and directly before him the Cessna faltered as if pilot and gunman were seeking him in the rocks, trying for a final and fatal pass.

The plane moved swiftly. It nosed toward him again, the rifle spitting red.

Pressed against the bounder, Illya coldly set the special, sighted through the telescopic glass. A section of the plane was magnified for him, brought inches before his face.

Around him shale and rock chips flew as the bullets clipped them from the approaching plane.

Illya Kuryakin held his breath and pressed the trigger.

He shot only once. He sagged against the boulder then and waited.

For a long time it was as if nothing happened, as though he'd missed. He knew better.

The sleek plane flicked past, its shadow slapping at him and for a brief instant shutting away the sun.

Slowly, Illya turned, watching the plane. It fled outward as if one with the wind. It banked, started an Immelmann, and then it was as if the string ran out.

The Cessna stopped, suddenly, as if it had struck an invisible wall. It faltered, wavered, went out of control. Nosing over, it plunged toward the earth far out in the rocky hillside.

Illya remained unmoving watching it. It was already burning before it struck the rocks. It landed with a wild explosion that rocked the hillside like a mild quake.

Illya sagged against the rocks, and put his blond head back.

His face was expressionless as he stared upward into the infinite blue.

After a moment he lifted his head and gazed out there where the remains of the plane and the land around it for a radius of fifty feet still burned.

He got up, slowly, dismounting his gun and replacing it in his over night bag.

He inspected the gun-battered jeep. The job they'd done on it was thorough. The windshield was webbed, gray and opaque. Two tires were flat. Gas leaked to the ground. Even if he could make it run, it wouldn't go far.

He stood up, shoulders sagged round. He turned tiredly, inspecting the hills, the flat graze land, the wild mountains and the ranges lost in the blue haze. And this was when he heard the drone of another plane motor.

A shudder racked his body.

He was too tired to feel fear, or even rage. He toppled against the jeep, staring into the bleached sky.

It came racing toward him. The motor was different and he recognized that it was a helicopter. It could still chase him like a fox through this rocky country.

"Somebody's trying to tell me something," he said. He sighed and opened the overnight bag again. He'd have to have his answer ready. They were persistent.

But he was stubborn.

ACT II—THE SUMMONS TO DEATH

ILLYA KURYAKIN slapped the Special together again and snapped the telescopic sight into place.

He straightened then, standing braced with his legs apart. Around him the rocks glinted back at the sun and his damaged jeep leaked it's gasoline into the sand.

The copter engine rattled and reverberated in the rocks, drowning out everything except the rage that gorged up in Kuryakin.

He tightened his grip on the gun, ready to slap it into place against his shoulder for a steady brace.

"Go ahead! Start it!" Illya raged, his voice lost and puny in the thunder of the chopper motors.

He shook his fist. The helicopter circled him. It whipped around him as if battering at him with its shadow. Then it side-slipped, flying out over the burned Cessna.

Gun ready, Illya awaited the first move from the men he could see in the plastic bubble.

The chopper returned to the rocks where Illya waited in impotent rage for the first attack. Suddenly it climbed, going almost vertically above him.

"Come back and fight, you finks!" Illya raged, shaking his weapon at the climbing copter.

The chopper continued upward, its engines quieting in the distance.

Illya didn't relax because it was going straight up, not leaving.

Suddenly the sun glinted as a plastic door was opened up there. A man hung balanced for a moment and then plunged suddenly outward.

Illya held the gun forgotten in his arms, watching. The jumper tumbled, one, two, three.

Suddenly parachute ropes popped free from the falling figure. The brilliantly colored chute budded and then blossomed like an air plant.

The figure dangled on the end of its strings and then floated toward Illya in the rocks.

Illya exhaled expansively, recognizing Napoleon Solo, even in the distance, even in a jump suit.

Solo struck the shale outcropping hard and was bobbled along like a cork for a few seconds be fore the chute deflated.

Illya remained where he was in the rocks. Solo unfastened the chute, loosened the bulky jump suit and walked toward Illya, pushing his dark hair back from his face.

Illya flinched slightly at the sight of Solo's battered face. He looked as if he'd gone a few rounds with a meat grinder.

But Solo grinned, bowing slightly. "Howdy, partner. They sent me looking for you."

Illya Kuryakin remained tense, holding the light gun across his chest.

Solo laughed. "What's the matter? Don't you trust anybody anymore?"

Illya exhaled and lowered the Special. He said, still raging, "I'd tell you just some of the violent things that have happened to me since I arrived in Big Belt this morning, but I can see by the condition of your face that you don't really care."

Solo nodded, touching gingerly at his bruised face with the back of his hand. "Right. You don't tell me your woes, I won't tell you mine."

Illya nodded in agreement and sagged against a boulder.

Solo strode past him, going toward the jeep.

"Where you going?" Illya asked mildly.

"Come on. Let's get out of here."

Illya shook his head. "Not in the jeep. That's one of my woes that I won't tell you about."

TWO

IT WAS late afternoon.

Footsore, sweated and thirsty, Solo and Kuryakin climbed an escarpment in the east range of the Big Belt mountains.

They stood on the brown rock ledge. All man's evil for that instant seemed dwarfed by the purpled majesty of the late afternoon mountain ranges. The peaks jutted upward toward the darkening sky, and beyond them higher peaks, capped with snow were yellow and ash gray far in the distance.

"One thing wrong with the world," Solo mused. "People."

Illya nodded. "Funny. Greedy men won't stop long enough to look around and see what they've got."

"Well, because they won't, we've got to get to work," Solo said. He unpacked the kit he'd carried strapped to his back, setting up a range-scanner like the one he'd used in the tropics.

When the instrument was set up, he said across his shoulder, "Just better warn you, Don Sayres was using one of these things when he was killed—mysteriously, instantly."

Illya shrugged. "One way is like another."

"Pleased you feel that way."

Illya sank to a small boulder. He removed his dust-caked shoes. "Right now I feel nothing but tired and hungry. Let's find out what's going on and get out of here."

Solo nodded in silent assent. He worked some moments in silence and deep concentration.

Suddenly Napoleon Solo whistled.

Illya got up from the rock in his bare feet. Napoleon Solo moved aside.

Illya studied the pictures jumping darkly on the six-inch dial face, or screen, a scene picked up as sound and transmitted as light, reproduced as photographs through any obstructions, even mountains.

Illya was silent a long time. At last he shook his head, "I see it. But I don't believe it. Tropical plants don't grow in Montana."

"I believe it," Solo said. "I know where those plants came from."

"What's the point of growing tropical plants in this part of the world?"

"There's a point to it, all right. Those plants are growing even larger and greener and wilder than they did down in that damned rain forest."

Illya shook his head. "What's the exact distance and range reading?"

Solo checked the readings. "Four miles, due west."

"That could be a long walk."

"Yes. That four miles is as the scanner and the crow flies."

Illya Kuryakin pushed his feet back into his shoes. "Much as I don't want to, we've got to get closer. We've got to get in there."

Solo checked the flickering pictures reproduced on the tiny screen another few moments. Illya Kuryakin sank to the rock and tied his shoes.

They both heard the noise from the rocks behind them at the same instant.

They moved as one man. Illya came up from the rock and Solo spun around, .38 U.N.C.L.E. Special drawn.

They stared down the barrel of a waiting rifle.

Tense, they gazed at the girl holding that gun. The first thing they saw was that she was extraordinarily beautifully, unspeakably frightened.

She trembled, barely able to hold the rifle fixed on them. This made her triply dangerous because her finger on the trigger quavered, too.

Her voice shook. "Don't move, either one of you, or I'll kill you."

Solo gave the quivering girl his blandest smile. "I wasn't planning any move."

"Nor me," Illya said. "Matter of fact, we were just sitting here, waiting for you to come along."

"Go ahead. Laugh," the girl said on the verge of tears. "I hope you can laugh as easily with a bullet in you."

"That's the hard way, all right," Solo agreed.

THREE

"WHO ARE YOU?" Napoleon Solo kept his voice level, afraid any undue excitement might drive her into hysterical use of that gun. Her voice slashed at him, quavering, but the rage riding it. "Never mind that. I'll ask the questions."

Napoleon Solo watched the girl narrowly. "You don't act like a professional with that gun, but THRUSH has used more obvious gimmicks."

"THRUSH?" The girl scowled.

"That's right," Illya Kuryakin said. "Are you from THRUSH?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the girl said, hysteria mounting behind her voice again.

"She thinks THRUSH is a bird," Illya said.

"Make your jokes," the girl said savagely, tilting the mouth of the rifle. Even with the gun in her hands there was a breathtaking loveliness about her. Not even the functional clothes she wore could truly detract from her eye-widening beauty.

Her hour-before-dawn black hair was brushed back carelessly from her face and toppled in lustrous waves almost to her shoulders. She wore Levis, denim shirt and scuffled boots as if they were the latest from the House of Dior. She looked to be somewhere between eighteen and twenty. "Death is no joke to me."

"You misunderstand," Illya said. "Would you want to see grown men cry?"

"My father cried," she said in that savage tone. "You people made him cry."

"Wait a minute! This is a case of mistaken identity," Illya began.

Her quavering voice rang out. "You stay where you are."

She jerked the gun up, her finger trembling on the trigger.

"Hang cool, miss," Solo advised. "You got a hate on, but we haven't earned it yet."

"That's right," Illya said. "If you shoot us for something that happened to your father, you've got the wrong men."

She stared at them, her lovely face gray. Her lips were perfectly formed, even without lip rouge. Her eyes were the color of violets, and her gaze wavered between them for a moment.

Suddenly she burst into tears, crying violently. She sobbed, standing shoulders round, the gun dangling at her side. Tears streaked across her cheeks, but she did not even lift her hand to her face.

It was as if she were too tired to raise her fingers.

Solo went slowly forward and gently removed the rifle from her arms.

She did not protest. It was as if she were relieved to be rid of it.

Solo started the fire in the gas cooker outside the girl's car, camped six miles down the west side of the mountain. The car was parked hidden in a copse of pine between a narrow trail and a mountain brook.

He put on the coffee and when it was ready, carried the girl a steaming cup. She took it, her hands trembling.

Illya and Solo sat near her, drinking coffee in the gathering dark.

The girl held the cup in both hands. She seemed depleted, finished.

Solo said gently, "Why don't you tell us about it? Who are you looking for?"

"That's it." Her chin tilted. "I don't know. I could have killed both of you—and been wrong. I know that now. I've been half out of my mind since my father disappeared."

"That's a good place to begin," Solo said. "Tell us about your father, how he disappeared."

"He disappeared last night," the girl said. "But that wasn't the beginning of it. I don't know where it began, really. Everything's been so strange for the past year... My father was an associate professor of biology at Northwestern—"

"Under Professor Ivey Nesbitt," Illya finished for her, as if thinking aloud.

She stared at them, caught between astonishment and suspicion. "How did you know that?"

Solo said, "We've been looking for Dr. Nesbitt. For a long time."

She frowned, staring at the steam rising from her coffee. "Well then, you know that Dr. Nesbitt simply disappeared from the school. No one heard anything from him."

"But your father came out here to Montana looking for Dr. Nesbitt," Solo prompted.

"Yes. He took a leave from the school this summer, I came along with him. I'm a secretary in a publishing office, but I gave up my job. I was worried about my father, and didn't want him traveling alone."

"Do you know why he came here to the Big Belt Mountains?"

"You're sure he never got any word from Dr. Nesbitt?"

"Of course I'm sure." Her voice rose slightly. "I would have known. He would have told me. No. It was a hunch he had. He said he and Dr. Nesbitt had done some biology experiments out in these ranges once years before. He had no other place to look, and so he came here, perhaps in desperation."

"Perhaps," Solo agreed. "Except that we're pretty sure that if Dr. Nesbitt is still alive he is some where in these mountains."

"Well, my father didn't know that, not for sure. He would have told me."

"Do you think he could have met Dr. Nesbitt somewhere and simply have gone away with him?"

"And left me? Why should he do that?"

"I don't know. Sometimes scientists do strange things."

"Not my father. The strange things were done to him."

"What strange things?" Illya prompted her.

She held her breath a moment. She stared upward, past the dark trees toward the star-silvered sky. They gazed at the perfection of her classic profile. She said, "The strangest of all was the summons to death that he got—"

"Summons to death?" Solo asked.

"Oh, I know it sounds incredible." She looked from Illya to Solo. "We were in the hotel at Big Belt. It was night. Father had been alone, riding through these mountains on horseback. He was tired. But he was troubled. Something was on his mind. Three or four times he looked as if he were going to tell me about it.

"Then suddenly a man walked into the lobby of the hotel where we were sitting. He walked across the room directly to us. He stared straight ahead. It was as if his eyes did not focus, as if he had no idea where he was, or what he was saying. It was as if he were in some mind-numbing trance, following orders, speaking words he'd been programmed to speak.

"He said to my father, 'Are you Professor Samuel Connors?'"

She exhaled, watching them narrowly, knowing they would have trouble believing what she'd say next. "Then he handed my father this summons to death."

Solo whistled slightly. "You'll have to tell me more about that summons."

"Oh, I know you'll find it as hard to believe as I did—harder because at least I saw it, I know it existed."

"What did it look like?" Illya asked.

"A perfectly legal looking document. Like any summons to court, a subpoena. Only it was to no court I ever heard of, and the wording was so strange, accusing my father of a capital crime. I thought it was a joke. But my father didn't. He became very upset. He went up to his room, and later I heard him in there alone, and he was crying."

"Where was the court to be held? What was its name?"

She frowned, remembering. "It didn't make sense. It was called the seating of The Highest Referendary of Unquestioned Supreme Hearings. A jumble of words."

"Not quite," Solo said. "A jumble, all right. T-H-R-U-S-H. It makes that much sense."

"Sure. THRUSH's own Supreme Court, where they dispense their own brand of international law."

"They accused my father of crimes against them, crimes which were to be detailed at his trial, and before his execution. All this was in the summons."

"One thing emerges clearly from all this," Solo said. "Your father may not have found his friend Nesbitt, but he got so close to something or somebody, that THRUSH couldn't afford to permit him to live."

"But he didn't even know what they were accusing him of. I tried to talk him out of it, but he took it with deadly seriousness—and hardly knew I was there. But he kept saying he didn't know what he had done."

"That does make sense," Solo said, "even if it sounds wild to you. Perhaps he came near to some thing, nearer than he realized at that time, or saw something that was without meaning for him at that moment, but which THRUSH was afraid might become clear to him once he gave it some thought."

"Who are you?" the girl said, "that you know so much about this organization that calls itself THRUSH?"

"Well, we're no friends of theirs," Illya said. "We can safely tell you that much." He smiled at her. "Why don't you tell us now who you are?"

"I told you. I'm Professor Connor's daughter, his only child. My mother has been dead for three years. The name that everybody calls me sounds so frivolous here, when my father is missing, and may be dead. But my father started it years ago. He said one day that bikinis were made for me, or that I was made for them." Her face flushed beautifully. "And the nickname, Bikini, has stuck ever since."

"Bikini?" Illya said. He smiled. "Believe me, it fits you—like a bikini."

FOUR

SOLO AND ILLYA sat for a long time outside the car-trailer after the exhausted Bikini had gone into bed.