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

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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She had handed out sleeping bags.

"I know you're on some vital mission," she said. "But please stay here tonight. Whatever it is will wait for morning."

Solo and Illya talked in whispers.

Illya said, "A frightened girl."

"On the brink of hysteria," Solo agreed. "She shouldn't be out here alone."

"There remains that lab over there, and the night may be the best time to sneak in there," Illya said. "She's a lovely doll, and she's got a big problem, but we came out here looking for THRUSH and Dr. Nesbitt."

Solo checked his wrist watch.

"Why don't we hit the sack for three or four hours? By that time she'll be deep asleep. We'll clear out then."

Illya nodded, yawning. "I could use the sack time."

"I'm too tired to ache even in the places that hurt," Solo said.

He fell asleep almost at once when he pushed down into the sleeping bag. Night winds riffled the tall pines, and the air was fresh, heavy, making him sleepier than ever. He dreamed he was wrestling an alligator, knowing he had to keep the animal on its back, or die. He struggled, but the saurian was too strong, and he was thrown over and he was being held down, but it was not an alligator holding him helpless, it was a girl.

She was shaking him, whispering his name over and over. "Mr. Solo. Please, Mr. Solo, wake up."

Solo struggled up from the depths of sleep with anguished reluctance.

He sat up, seeing Bikini bending over him in the darkness. She wore pajamas and a robe, and not even this combination could defeat her dream-stirring beauty.

He checked his wrist watch, and almost moaned. He had been asleep for fifteen minutes. A few feet away Illya breathed deeply and regularly, completely exhausted and sound asleep.

"Yes," he whispered. "What is it."

"I couldn't sleep."

He moaned. "Is that what you woke me up to tell me?"

She stayed on her knees, close beside him. "I know you are planning to leave during the night."

Solo winced. "Important business, Bikini."

"I know. But that's why I can't sleep. I'm going with you."

"You can't do that."

"I've got to. It's my only chance of finding my father. I know you're not looking for my father, but you may find him, along with whatever else you find. I want to be there."

"We'll bring him back to you if we can."

"I don't want you to leave me. Before I met you I wasn't scared; maybe I was too numb to be frightened. But now I realize the terrible danger in this place."

"Get in your car. Get out of here. If we find Dr. Connors we'll get word to you."

"I've no place to go without my father."

"Still, we can't take you with us."

"If you don't I'll follow you. I've got to find my father."

"Bikini, I don't know what kind of danger lies over there—"

"I've learned tonight that danger is all around here, in every direction. Please. Take me with you. I won't make any trouble—"

"That's what Eve must have said." Solo sighed heavily under the witchery of Bikini's sudden smile. "Get so sleep. You in on the party.

FIVE

ONCE THEY were in the dry canyon, locating the strange laboratory was no problem. Lights shielded from view by the high rising narrow ledge a thousand feet from the gorge sump, the building illumined the twisting dead riverbed for miles in both directions.

"We can't talk any more," Solo warned Illya and Bikini before they entered the mouth of the canyon. "They may be able to pick up my whispering from here. We know they were monitoring Don Sayres long before he came near them in the jungle."

"Maybe I should come in from the other end," Illya said. "That way one of us would have a surer chance of making it."

"Dark is running out," Solo said. "It'll be a tough trek to the other end of the canyon."

"It's worth a try."

Solo nodded. "Take Bikini with you."

"Illya laughs," Illya said. "If you're smart, you'll send her back. If she's smart, she'll go."

Solo shrugged. "We'll try to get in from here. Good luck."

Illya nodded and bounded up the steep ledge like a mountain goat. Solo watched him a moment; then he nodded at Bikini. "Stay close behind me."

She caught his belt in her fingers and he moved into the mouth of the canyon. Inside these rocks they were attacked by an incessant buzzing sound. Smile, Solo thought, you're on candid radar.

There was no sense turning back. He kept as close to the rocky wall as possible, slithering forward in the darkness. The buzzing sound grew louder. Far ahead he saw the brighter illumination of the lab around the sharp twists in the dry river bed.

The new sound was like a fist striking against a hand, swiftly, repeatedly.

Solo paused, listening. Bikini pressed close against his back.

He recognized the sound; it was that of men running in some sort of padded shoes.

Two armed guards came running around a sharp bend. They wore green fatigues, green caps with small, brilliant lights attached above the visors. The lights played across the ground ahead of them, illuminating the narrow canyon floor and the mountain wails.

Solo pressed hard against the rocks, pressing Bikini behind him.

The first guard ran past, his light touching at their feet until he was almost past. Then the glow illumined their faces.

The first guard didn't see them, but the second did. The first continued running.

As the second guard stopped, bringing up his gun, Solo chopped with the side of his hand across the man's throat. The guard slumped with a faint outcry.

It was enough to stop the man ahead. He turned around, his light raking across Bikini's stricken face.

Solo caught up the fallen guard's gun in one hand and threw it at the man running toward him.

The gun caught the guard across the chest, slowing him. Solo sprang toward him, tackling him and carrying him down to the ground under him.

The guard lost his hat. It fell to the ground and as the man rose, Solo saw his eyes were flat, did not focus, the face expressionless.

He remembered Bikini's saying that the man who had delivered the "summons to death" to her father had looked like a mindless robot.

Mindless or not, the man bad been programmed to fight furiously and to kill.

He brought his knee up, sending Solo sprawling beyond him.

Then he stalked Napoleon, gun hefted like a club.

Solo retreated, going into a side turn off the main artery of the canyon. This seemed to be what the guard wanted. He lunged at Solo, swung the rifle, and Napoleon Solo leaped back into the darkness to safety.

He swung again and Solo backed away again. Suddenly though, instinct and the abrupt chill cry of wind warned Solo that he was being driven toward a brink.

Solo flung himself against a boulder, stayed there, timing himself. The guard swung the rifle. At the last instant Solo ducked and the rifle smashed.

Solo sprang upward, catching the guard around the knees, taking him down. They fought on the floor of the narrow gorge, rolling almost to the edge.

Solo caught his breath. The pit yawned, bottomless, narrow, a fault in the rocks. A man's body would stay there forever.

The guard's cold hands closed on Solo's throat. Solo's head hung out over the chasm.

Solo set himself, trying to lever the guard over his head. It was impossible, the silent man was possessed of superhuman strength.

Solo forgot trying to throw the man and concentrated upon staying alive.

Those hands tightened. Solo felt the canyon and the sky changing places. Red stars wheeled and skidded before him.

He swung his legs up as high as he could, caught his shoe. The fingers closed on his throat. He felt consciousness slipping away, felt his body being pressed closer to the precipice edge.

He slipped the shoe off, gripping it with all his strength. He struck the guard across the nose with it. He did it again and again.

Nothing changed. In horror he began to be afraid that the man was incapable of feeling pain. The fingers closed and he felt the last oxygen burning in his lungs.

In desperation because there was nothing else to do, Solo kept striking the guard across the nose, knowing each time he struck the blows were weaker.

Suddenly the guard whimpered, as if the battering had broken whatever mind-binding spell he was under. The hands loosened. Solo didn't delay hoping for more. Gasping in a deep, sobbing breath, he fought upward, rolling over with the guard, pulling himself back to safety.

The guard went on fighting, striking, choking, pounding. But there was a difference and Solo felt it. Now he was fighting an ordinary man of ordinary strength, no longer driven by some outside will.

Solo's fist caught the guard on the jaw. The guard slumped, then grabbed Solo's body, rolling with him toward the side of the bottomless chasm.

Solo fought wildly, realizing that the guard had been programed to kill, even if he died, too. This much remained to drive him.

Solo caught at the jutting rocks, fighting free of the guard's grasp. He thrust the heel of his hand against the man's jaw and thrust with all his strength.

The guard loosened his grip on Solo, gasping. Then Solo thrust out one more time and the guard fell away, slipping in terrible slow motion over the side of the cliff. His fingers grasped at jutting rocks, held.

Solo sank for a moment against the mountain wall, panting. He took up his shoe, stared at the man's hands gripping those rocks. Then he slipped the shoe on his foot and stood up. He exhaled heavily, speaking over the side of the cliff, "You will hang on, won't you?"

He ran around the curve in the canyon.

SIX

BIKINI WAS crouched in the shadows where he'd left her. In the light from the guard's cap he read the terror in her face. He wondered if she began to see just some of the peril into which she'd walked.

Her lips parted and she almost cried out her shock and relief at the sight of him.

He shook his head, warning her against speaking. She nodded and reached out her hand to him. Her fingers were icy.

He nodded, motioning her to follow him again. One thing he was sure of, even the lab radar would show only two of them. It was unlikely that it could reveal their identity. Two guards had come running out. Two people were returning. Perhaps they had bought a few moments of safety.

He decided to use it to the best advantage. Holding Bikini's hand tightly, he ran along the narrow gorge between the high dark canyon walls.

Suddenly the illumination was like the sun at noon. Solo paused at the turn in the rocks. Leaving Bikini pressed into the darkness, he inched forward, peered around the corner.

He caught his breath. He had seen this lab on the long-range scanner, but he'd had no idea of its immensity or complexity.

The floor of the canyon widened abruptly to a width of a hundred yards around this turn. Hundreds of feet above, the crest of the mountains closed to a few inches.

In this gorge the laboratory had been set up, and everything depended on its own artificial lighting and heating. A green haze seemed to envelope the glass walled building, but only because everywhere strange tropical plants grew lush and deeply green under this strange light. A kind of buffalo grass had sprouted wild on the bare canyon flooring under this light, growing almost to the narrowing turn.

Eyes distended, Solo remained an instant too long staring across the open space toward that glass-walled lab.

A sudden hissing alerted him. The sound ripped through the incessant buzzing which had almost become a part of the charged atmosphere.

Solo fell back behind the rock. A sharp beam of light whipped across the mouth of the open space.

Shocked, Napoleon Solo saw the buffalo grass burned gray where the beam touched it.

He stayed there for some moments, while his heart slowed to a regular beating again. Three more times the light beam reached for him, and barely missed.

He inched his way back to Bikini. She stared up at him questioningly.

Solo gazed down at Bikini for a moment, almost regretfully. She whispered. "What's the matter?"

He didn't answer. He reached out his left hand, tilting her chin slightly. Then he struck her sharply with his right, on the side of her jaw.

She slumped forward and he caught her gently.

Carrying her in his arms, he found a small break in the wall. He laid her down in the darkness, whispering, "You'll be safe here, Beautiful. Safer anyhow. Sweet dreams."

He ran back to the mouth of the canyon sump. The light beam still hissed, tilted now, no longer touching the grass as it swung out, reaching for him.

From his pack be took the small canister and sprayed it from his legs upward, covering his body with a fine mist. As he worked, the haze hardened into a flexible plastic.

After a few moments the plastic was like suiting which encased his entire body.

He waited a few seconds longer, watching that beam whip across the open. When the light passed, he stepped boldly out and ran across the opening toward the lab. The plastic was unwieldy but was flexible enough to permit movement.

Solo was within fifty feet of the lab doors when the beam raked across him.

The plastic melted and ran like teardrops. But he was only barely aware of it.

Solo staggered.

His mind fogged over. The green lights dimmed, seeming to recede into a darker canyon.

He felt as if an invisible fist struck him in the chest, barring his way, but not really hurting because it was as though he were numb.

He tried to stride forward, but his legs no longer obeyed commands from his mind.

He slumped to the ground, hearing the buzzing and the hissing louder than ever.

Gradually the green lights brightened and Napoleon Solo opened his eyes.

He was slumped upon his knees, half supported by two men, neither of whom even looked at him.

Things took shape before him. He saw that he was in a brilliantly illumined office-lab. Rows of equipment led away toward the greenhouses, where the lush tropical plants appeared to be growing visibly, as they might when seen in time-lapse photography.

Solo shook his head, trying to clear it.

"Ah, our guest is waking up."

Solo tilted his head, gazing at the man who had spoken.

He was a tall man with a wide frame upon which the flesh hung loosely. He was turned away from Solo at first and Solo was struck by the resemblance between this man and the statues of Julius Caesar– the strong chin, the fine Roman nose, the intelligent forehead, the balding head.

Then the man in the white smock turned full face and Solo caught his breath, wincing. The scientist's face was badly disfigured, the left eye sitting in the corner of its misshapen socket, the skin mottled, rutted.

"Dr. Nesbitt," he whispered. Nesbitt fixed his glowering gaze upon Solo so intently that the young agent turned away, and then caught his breath, shocked a second time.

A few feet from him Illya Kuryakin was slumped in a chair, battered, scarcely more than half alive.

Illya gave him a faint salute. Solo whispered it. "How did you get here?"

"It was a lot easier than I thought."

"What happened to you?"

Illya shrugged. Blood showed at the corner of his mouth. "You don't tell me your woes, I won't tell you mine."

Dr. Nesbitt came around the cluttered desk where he had been working. Turning his scarred face at an angle away from Napoleon Solo, he smiled.

"So now you and your friend have found me, Mr. Solo. Are you pleased?"

Solo spoke ruefully. "This isn't exactly the way we planned it."

"I suppose not. Still, you must have known, you and your interfering spy organization—"

"We were only trying to help, sir—"

"Help? Did it occur to any of you that I might not want help? You must have learned from what happened to your agents in Central America when they came prying that we could have easily have killed you and Mr. Kuryakin."

"We couldn't let that stop us, Doctor. We still believed you might want to communicate through us with your friends in the outside world."

Nesbitt's voice slashed at him. "I have no friends in the outside world. I have only my work."

"But that's it, sir. That's what puzzled us. You turned your back on a most rewarding and selfless career—disappeared. The world was puzzled. We couldn't turn our backs on you."

"I assure you there is no puzzlement. I'm here doing what I want to do. I have my experiments. I am successful beyond my most fantastic expectations."

"Jungle plants growing in Montana," Illya said.

Nesbitt heeled around, the scarred half of his face livid. "That is only the smallest part of it. Mr. Kuryakin. Plants that are like living things, plants growing to huge trees overnight. Incredible, wonderful plants."

Solo kept his voice low. "Your friends are deeply concerned, Doctor."

"I said it once, Solo. I have no friends. None. Except here. My plants. My living, breathing plants."

Solo continued trying to appeal to Nesbitt's reason. "You do have friends. Evidently more than you know, or care to admit. You have one friend who may have given his life searching for you."

Nesbitt straightened slightly. "Oh?"

"Sam Connors," Solo persisted. "Does the name mean anything to you?"

Nesbitt hesitated the space of a breath. He shrugged. "Connors? Once an under-professor of mine."

"At Northwestern. He thought he was a close friend."

"Well, he was wrong."

"He's disappeared. He may be dead. He was looking for you, deeply worried."

Nesbitt shrugged again. "Sorry to hear that."

"But you're not really concerned about his fate?"

Nesbitt straightened his wide, thin shoulders. "No. Not particularly. I am in no wise responsible for a misguided man like Professor Connors—"

"But he was looking for you!"

"I am very busy here. The people who are financing my experiments expect quick results. Nothing else concerns me."

"Not even the life or death of Sam Connors?"

"Nothing! I have no knowledge of Sam's death. I have no wish to kill—not even two meddlers like you—but I wish to be let alone. And I will be let alone—at whatever cost!"

Solo brought the "summons to death" which had been delivered to Sam Connors, from his pocket. The two guards were alert.

Solo handed the paper to the doctor. Nesbitt took it, scanned it calmly.

"Does it mean anything to you?" Solo persisted.

"Nothing. It looks like some one's tasteless idea of a joke."

"Whoever sent it had a deadly sense of humor."

At this instant whistles wailed throughout the laboratory. The guards leaped to attention.

A white-smocked man ran into the office from the corridor. "Dr. Nesbitt, there's a woman in the walled yard."

Swearing, Nesbitt ran from the room, following the white-smocked assistant.

A moment later an intercom blared, "All guards to the yard. At once."

The guards standing beside Solo and Kuryakin snapped to attention and ran like robots from the room.

"Mindless," Illya whispered. "They're mindless slaves."

Napoleon Solo jerked his head toward the doors opening off the office. "We've got less than two minutes. We've got to find out anything we can."

Illya nodded, agreeing. They ran toward the long hothouse beyond Nesbitt's rows of equipment.

Illya jerked open the door and they entered the room. They hesitated, staggered by the unnatural heat and humidity. It was almost impossible to breathe.

Quick scanning showed them the plants were all of one species, but there was every size from one inch to huge tubular plants with six foot leaves and twisting, snake-like branches.

The room was loud with a rustling, stirring of leaves and limbs.

"This is far enough," Solo said, gasping for breath and already sweating profusely. "Let's get out of here."

Illya nodded and heeled around. There was no handle on the inside of these doors. Illya thrust against them. They were securely locked and would not open from this side.

Solo wiped the sweat from his eyes. "Never mind. There's got to be more than one way out of here."

They saw another door far through narrowing aisles to their right. They ran toward it.

As they ran the large leaves brushed them, dripping water as hot as tears on them. The smell was sickeningly sweet, the smell of death. When they brushed one of the tentacle-like limbs, it adhered to their clothing and they had to break free.

The rustling was louder and the limbs stirred faster all through the hot-house, although there was not the slightest breeze.

"Out that door," Solo said, the horror mounting in him.

He pushed through overhanging leaves and limbs that seemed to fight back at him, almost like human arms.

He broke clear and lunged to ward the door. His feet brushed something and he stumbled to his knees.

"Solo!"

Illya's voice cried out behind him, but for the moment Solo stared at the dead man on the floor.

"Connors," he whispered, shaking his head. He'd seen the photograph Bikini carried of her father, but Sam had resembled his daughter in life, and he recognized him instantly.

Connors lay twisted on the floor, limp as a sawdust doll. He looked as if he had been crushed by a boa constrictor. All the bones in his body had been smashed.

"Solo!" Illya Kuryakin yelled again.

Solo jumped up, bringing his gaze from the shattered body on the floor.

Illya had tried to follow him through the growth of jungle plants, but had not made it. A green tentacle, larger than a fire hose had constricted about his throat and head.

Illya fought at it helplessly.

Solo looked around, feeling panic, sweated and almost drowned in the now wailing rustle of the plants all around them.

He caught up a pruning shears near the door and leaped toward the plant where Illya was trapped.

He drove the shears into the soft green texture of the constricting limb. Sap spurted out, sap that was pouring pinkly, almost like very anemic human blood.

ACT III—INCIDENT OF THE KILLER PLANTS

DR. IVEY NESBITT strode along the corridor and entered his office. Neither side of his face betrayed any emotion at seeing that Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo were gone.

He was immediately followed by his white-smocked assistant, a sullen, unsmiling man clearly of Indian ancestry.

At a short distance behind the assistant, two staring-eyed guards came, half-dragging Bikini Connors.

They led her into the office, deposited her in the chair in which Illya had sat. They stood at attention on each side of her then, gazing emptily ahead.

"Please, Dr. Nesbitt," Bikini begged. "Where is my father?"

At his desk, the tall scientist ignored her. He didn't look her way or appear to have heard her voice.

He glanced at the guards testily, as he might have gazed once at recalcitrant students in his class rooms. "What is the meaning of deserting your posts, letting our two prisoners run free?"

"Professor," the assistant said gently, "they don't hear you. Even if they do, they are unmoved by criticism or praise."

The doctor waved his arm. "Of course. One forgets one is dealing here with mindless animals, eh, Joe?"

"It's safest that way, Doctor," was all the Indian assistant said.

Nesbitt nodded, dismissing the subject.

Bikini spoke to him again, but it was as if he could not be reached by anyone from the outside world, from his past.

He turned his back, went to a bank of closed-circuit television screens. All glittered blackly, powered, waiting to be activated.

Nesbitt pressed buttons, opening the channel for each screen in turn, the walled yard, smaller labs, shipping areas, the hothouses, the corridors.

A hothouse camera swung across the long arena of tropical growth. Catching his breath, Nesbitt pressed a button, holding the camera in its position.

It was fixed on Solo, Kuryakin and a crushed body crumpled on the hothouse floor. The body the doctor ignored as if it did not exist for him, had never existed.

For a few moments, almost as if entranced by what he saw, Nesbitt watched Solo slashing at the huge arm of the writhing plant.

But as Napoleon Solo hacked the limb loose, the bloody sap spurting and oozing everywhere, Nesbitt's face darkened.

He pressed a button, spoke into a microphone at his side. Intercoms throughout the laboratory carried his voice. "There are two intruders in Hothouse One. Bring them to me."

Nesbitt's voice rattled through the humid greenhouse as Solo pulled Illya Kuryakin from the grasping tentacles of the plant.

For one moment Illya stared down in horror at Sam Connor's crushed body, and thought, "But for the grace of God and Solo using pruning shears, that could be me—"

All doors of the hothouse were thrust open and armed guards appeared in each of them.

Illya and Solo stepped in close to the doors as they were thrust open near them. With all their strength they slammed the doors shut behind the guards.

As the robot-men turned, both Illya and Solo lunged at them, thrusting them stumbling over Connor's body.

The men threw their arms up as they went sprawling into the tangled green plants.

Obviously following all this on his closed-circuit TV, Nesbitt shouted, his voice crackling over the intercom: "Door Six, Hot house One. Stop those men."

But Illya and Solo were already going out of the door. Solo glanced back, watching the two guards trying to fight free of the grasping limbs, the rustling growing to a keening pitch.

For that instant the incredibly long corridor was empty. It was brightly lighted with what seemed half a hundred doors along it.

Solo waved his arm in the direction of the distant white-doored exit.

They ran together.

Nesbitt's laughter sounded chilled and sardonic from the intercom speakers around them. It was nightmarish, as if laughter battered them from everywhere.

"He's watching us on TV," Illya gasped.

"Run," Solo said. He stayed close to the wall, sprinting toward that white-doored exit which seemed to recede the way it might in a bad dream.

"Run faster, gentlemen." Nesbitt's voice mocked them. "A little exercise, and then I shall stop you as I wish."

"Stay close to the wall," Solo warned Illya.

Illya nodded and sidestepped, but he was already too late.

They both heard the rising hiss. It was as if Illya had run into an invisible wall. The beam struck him and he stopped running, slowing, taking long steps and then halting as if paralyzed.

Solo leaped into the inset door nearest him as the hiss rose, approaching like an angry wasp.

The beam lashed at him and Solo put all his weight against the door, thrusting his way into it.

He toppled into a brightly lighted room and the door swung shut behind him.

He landed hard on his knees, and lifted his head slowly at the old chattering sound that over whelmed him.

His eyes widened at the sight of the set faces, the empty eyes, the meaningless chatter. The people sat at long tables suspended from the ceiling. They didn't look at each other, or at anything. They chattered, but it was less meaningful than squealing monkey noises in a tree.

Solo got to his feet, repelled and shaken by the sight of these mindless creatures.

He shook his head, retreated toward the door.

Faces turned his way, but not one pair of eyes actually focused on him. The eyes were like milky marbles and light reflected from them.

Solo wheeled around and grabbed at the door. Again there was no inside handle, and the door was locked securely.

Solo stared around helplessly. There was no other exit from this dormitory of the mindless. The only windows were set high in the walls.

Solo sagged against the door. The chattering went on, but he no longer listened.

From the intercom, Dr. Nesbitt's voice mocked him. "I expected you and Mr. Kuryakin to join our mindless ones eventually, Mr. Solo, but not so quickly. What's wrong, my dear fellow? You don't look overjoyed."

Exhaling heavily, Solo sagged against the barred door.

The voices rose chattering, excited, wildly agitated by the sound of the doctor's voice on the intercom.

Napoleon Solo did not look at them.

TWO

SOLO FELT the door shiver. He recognized the sound: an electric impulse had activated the lock. He stepped away and the padded door was shoved open.

Two expressionless guards stepped into the room. They were armed with a gun that had a base like a small cannon, but which was obviously aluminum light. The barrel of the gun tapered to the mouth, which suddenly lighted up.

Solo toppled back, thinking they had subdued him with a portable light gun.

The chattering raged, but none of the people at the tables moved. The guards lifted Napoleon Solo, half-carrying him through the corridor toward Nesbitt's office.

There was no sign of Illya Kuryakin in the corridor. Solo felt ill, searching for him.

Strength had returned to his legs and arms by the time the guards led him inside Nesbitt's white-walled office.

Bikini jumped up and ran to him.

She pressed herself against him. Solo gritted his teeth to keep from falling under the pressure of her weight.

"Oh, Solo. He won't look at me," Bikini said. "He won't listen to me. He acts as if I don't exist."

"I don't think any of us exist for him very much, Bikini," Solo said.

"But he's known me since I was a baby. He's my godfather. He was at my house all the time."

"I don't think he cares to re member that." Solo looked up at Nesbitt behind his desk. He spoke over the top of Bikini's dark hair, "Where is Illya, Doctor?"

Nesbitt smiled blandly. "You'll join him soon enough, Mr. Solo. Need I say any more than that?"

Bikini turned, but remained in side the circle of Solo's arms. She stared up at Nesbitt. "Please, where is my father?"

Solo stared up at Nesbitt, waiting for him to answer. But Nesbitt merely shrugged.

Solo knew he owed Bikini the truth about her father. But the truth was too brutal for her at this moment.

Just now he could not bring himself to say the words, your father is dead, Bikini.

He stood, watching Nesbitt.

The doctor's good eye gazed at him unblinkingly, the smile set. "I'm afraid my plans for you have been altered—by your own actions. I'd hoped to be able to allow the three of you to leave this place after undergoing a series of minor treatments for the removal of recent memory."

He shook his head. "I can't do that now. I'm sorry. The risk is too great."

Solo spoke coldly to Bikini. "What Dr. Nesbitt means is that Illya and I know your father is dead, and how he was killed—and that 'memory' removal is too risky because it doesn't work, but death does."

"My father," Bikini whispered. She pressed her face hard upon Napoleon's shoulder.

He touched her hair, gently, holding her. He felt her heated tears against his shoulder. Somehow it gave the world a sense of sanity that a girl could still cry for her father in this place.