Текст книги "[Magazine 1968-012] - The Million Monsters Affair "

Автор книги: Robert Hart Davis

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The car ahead burst into flames. From somewhere in the crushing mass a gun fired. The windshield shattered. And then the car went over.

Solo was hurled back on top of Kuryakin. The police driver tried to get up and out through the broken window glass. As his head cleared the car, a screaming maniac slammed him in the throat with the jagged end of a broken bottle.

He feel back. Illya tried to cover the wound with his hand to stop the spurting blood. But the sharp glass had torn through the jugular vein.

The car was on its side and the gasoline poured out of the carburetor onto the hot engine. It burst into flames.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Illya gasped.

“If we do, they’ll tear us to pieces. That theater must have held fifteen hundred people and every one of them is jammed in this street and each one is a raging lunatic! We haven’t a chance, Illya!”

“I’ve heard that before!” his companion shot back. “This is your turn to furnish the brains. Remember, those energy pills we took only work for a short time. We can’t take another for four hours. We’re to be so weak we couldn’t fight off a baby midget in a strait jacket in just a short time.”

“Well, Illya -” Solo stopped to fire a paralyzing pellet into a distorted face that leaned in from the broken window on top to jab at them with a piece of iron pipe.

“The only chance we got is to use tear gas,” Solo said hurriedly.

“You got to do better than that if we are going to get out of this mess,” Illya retorted, his grim face dripping with sweat from the heat of the burning engine. “Any gas close enough to do us any good will blind us as well. I thought of that. No good, buddy!”

“Good or bad, it’s all we got left!” Solo replied. “Listen, get a good look and set your bearings straight. I’m going to lob off every pellet I got. We’ll be blinded, but we’ll have the advantage of knowing where we’re going. Just close your eyes tight and plow straight for that drug store. We might make it.”

“The knockout drops didn’t work on them,” Illya panted. “Maybe the tear gas won’t either.”

“Maybe not,” Solo said grimly. “But that is another detail. Are you ready?”

“No. But I’m even less ready to stay here and really get my goose cooked. Get moving!”

ACT III – THE MONSTER MASTER

NAPOLEON SOLO quickly extracted the super-miniature tear gas pellets from his wallet. No larger than buck shot, they packed a ultra-concentrated chemical formula that reacted with air to create a blinding cloud more powerful than ordinary tear gas. It was another of the special U.N.C.L.E. protective devices carried by all Alexander Waverly’s operatives.

“Hold my hand,” he said to Kuryakin as he prepared to hurl the bead sized bombs.

“I’m not that scared!” Illya retorted.

“Don’t try to be funny!” Napoleon snapped. “I just don’t want us to get separated in this damned mob!”

He stepped on the steering column and raised his head through the broken door. But as he drew back his hand to throw the tear gas bombs a thrown bottle smashed into his shoulder.

He was knocked back. His head hit the edge of the door. He fell on top of Illya. The tiny tear gas pellets dropped from his hand. A faint green smoke burst out, spreading rapidly under the force of the highly compressed gas.

Instantly both men’s eyes were streaming. Completely blinded and racked by coughing, they pushed their way out of the crumpled wreck.

It was impossible to tell immediately what effect the gas was having on the teenage monsters. The gas was spreading rapidly from the car, but the men from U.N.C.L.E. had gotten a worse dose because the pellets were crushed right beside them.

The two men clung to the top of the overturned car, trying to get some idea of what was happening.

“I think it’s affecting them,” Illya gasped.

“But we d-don’t know how far it has spread!” Solo choked. “But come on! There’s only one way to find out if we’re going to get out of this mess alive!”

Grasping his U.N.C.L.E. Special with its stunning needle pellet ammunition in one hand, and holding to Illya Kuryakin’s hand with the other, Solo slid off the car.

Instantly they were jammed in between a thick press of screaming, weeping teenagers-turned-monsters. They were slammed and buffeted as the blinded mob stumbled about.

A shrieking girl collided with Solo. She whirled in uncontrolled frenzy and tried to claw his face. Napoleon stumbled, falling to his knees. A boy, weaving drunkenly, fell across him. Illya jerked frantically to pull Napoleon to his feet before he was stomped in the milling mob.

Blinded, choking, the two men from U.N.C.L.E. hunched their shoulders and charged ahead. They crashed into equally blind and stumbling young men and women. Some they bowled over in their rush. Some they bounced off. One knocked Illya completely off his feet. Before Solo could drag him back up, a girl stepped on his leg. Her sharp heel broke through the skin. The pain was dull because the drug he and Solo took earlier still deadened the pain.

But the pain he did feel showed him that its effects were wearing off rapidly. His knees shook. He kept his feet with difficulty.

Neither men had any idea where they were now. They were completely lost in the rioting mass of humanity jamming the street. Their eyes felt as though hot needles were being rammed into them. Their bodies were beginning to ache with excruciating pain. It was becoming harder to keep from being knocked down and crushed.

Then they got a slight break. The mob apparently thinned out although they were too blinded to see where or why. Solo broke into a stumbling run, dragging Illya after him.

They covered about ten feet and then Solo rammed into something hard and rigid. The smack dazed him. He started to fall and threw his arms out to grasp the obstruction. It was a corner street lamp post. He clung to it in a desperate attempt to keep from falling. His senses whirled. For an awful moment he thought he was going to lose consciousness.

Dimly he heard Illya’s anxious voice calling to him.

“I – I’m okay,” he managed to gasp. “Let’s go!”

“Go where?” Illya’s choked reply answered him.

“Anywhere!” Napoleon Solo said. “Anywhere! It will have to be better than this, even if it turns out to be the devil’s doorstep!”

They got across the sidewalk. Through their blinding tears they could see sufficiently to know that they were pressed against a store window, one of the few left unbroken by the howling mob.

They worked their way toward the door, hoping to get inside where air conditioning would clear their eyes.

Illya, who forged ahead, whispered back to his companion: “The door is barred.”

“Follow the store fronts,” Solo said. “Find an alley to get us away from this mob so we won’t be trampled if we get down on the ground. This gas rises. It should be clear right on the ground.”

Wordlessly Illya went forward with Solo stumbling behind him. Each step was becoming worse. They were both near collapse.

They stumbled up a side street. Eventually they made their way outside the area choked with the tear gas cloud.

It was still some time before they could clear their eyes. In the meantime, the energy pills had lost their effect. The pills were so strong that they could not be taken more than once in a twenty-four hour period.

The waning of the pills’ effects left both men near exhaustion. The torture they had taken, first in the Mallon mansion fire and then in the Sunset Strip riots, was more than the human body could absorb and keep going.

Even so, rest was impossible. The ugly THRUSH threat was too great to permit the luxury of stopping even for a few minutes.

So as soon as they could see clearly again, Illya and Napoleon started back to the riot area. They circled the block and came in upwind to avoid the tear gas.

There was a light breeze. The slightly luminous green cloud of gas was moving slowly away.

As the two men from U.N.C.L.E. stumbled back on Sunset Boulevard, they were stunned by the magnitude of the destruction. Solo pulled out his pen communicator and called Waverly in New York.

It would then be about three o’clock on the East Coast, but he had no difficulty getting through to the U.N.C.L.E. chief. Waverly’s clipped slightly British accent came through without delay. There was no sign of fatigue or sleepiness in his voice when he replied to Napoleon Solo’s call sign.

“Yes, Mr. Solo,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“We are on Sunset Boulevard, sir,” Napoleon said in a strained voice. “The street looks like a war has passed by. It is terrible. Shop windows are smashed. Cars are overturned and burned. There are injured people everywhere. I can see a fire hydrant broken and spurting water in the air. There’s a fire blazing in a building across the street. A block away a mob of these monsters are overturning a police car. Everywhere these monsters are destroying, fighting, running wild!”

“This is terrible!” Waverly said, struggling to keep his ordinary calm. “It only bears out what I feared. If these riot continue, they will completely demoralize the world. I have reports that they are going on in both London and Paris right now. So they are not local.”

“This one was started by an audience leaving a showing of Mallon’s Million Monsters film, sir,” Solo said. “But there are more people involved than could possibly have been in the theater. It probably only holds about fifteen hundred. There are at least three thousand kids involved here.”

“Possibly a lot aren’t infected by the THRUSH madness,” Waverly said. “They saw a fight and joined in.”

“Yes, sir,” Illya put in, “and many could be previously infected. Apparently this madness comes and goes.”

“However,” Waverly said, “reports from here and abroad indicate that this film is definitely connected with this riot disease. We are now running tests and we may ask the government to ban the film if we find there is a connection.”

“I’m afraid,” Solo said, “that if THRUSH has found a way to poison an audience’s mind through one film, they can – and even may be – doing it through a hundred more.”

“That is correct, Mr. Solo,” Waverly said. “Also it is possible to expand it into every type of mass communications media. I suspect that this Million Monsters film is a pilot or test of a new mind slavery process. If it works, and it seems to, then it will be expanded.”

“I see,” Solo said soberly. “Then we will be confronted with ten billion monsters instead of just a million!”

“And all controlled by THRUSH!” Waverly said. “You can see how desperate our situation is. You must find out what is behind this terrible menace, Mr. Solo. What about Mallon? Were you able to see him?”

“He’s dead, sir,” Napoleon said solemnly.

“Then there was a connection!”

“It would seem so. We’re trying to find it,” the Man from U.N.C.L.E. said. “We’re at the riot now. We’re searching for a definite THRUSH connection.”

“Excellent, Mr. Solo,” Waverly said. “Please keep me informed, and I will pass along to you any information I receive from April Dancer in London. Will Mr. Kuryakin still be able to keep his schedule to fly to Paris and check on this film importer who saw Mallon?”

“Yes, sir,” Illya said.

“Excellent!” Waverly said. “Carry on, gentlemen.”

Wearily Napoleon Solo pushed down the antenna to cut off the pen communicator.

“Carry on!” he said, throwing a wry grin at his companion. “Easier said than done. I never felt less like carrying on.”

“Oh, you’ll feel better after you get some rest,” Illya said.

“When will that be?”

“A long, long time, I’m afraid,” Kuryakin said sadly. “I -”

He stopped as a girl came running breathlessly down the street, dodging her way through the riot mess. She came almost abreast of them.

“There’s something about her that looks familiar,” Illya said.

“You can bet your sweet life there is!” Solo cried. “That’s Marsha Mallon! Come on!”

But she was faster than they were. She vanished into the fighting mob ahead.

It was virtual suicide for anyone in their weakened condition to plunge into that seething mass of humanity again. But they had no choice. They went after her.

TWO

THEY WENT without question or second thought. Disregard of one’s own comfort and safety was the first requirement of an U.N.C.L.E. operative.

In the center of the riot those still affected by the tear gas were stumbling, shrieking and blindly striking out at everything that came within their distance.

Men and girls were sprawled in the street. Some were bleeding, hundreds injured, but like Marsha Mallon in the airline terminal, something kept driving them on.

Napoleon and Illya paused, pressed back against a store window just outside the gas area, watching closely. They needed to know everything about the reaction of people to the strange THRUSH-induced compulsion.

“They are affected by the gas just as your knockout drops rendered Marsha unconscious,” Illya observed. “But whatever is driving them will not let their bodies stop.”

Solo nodded and called Waverly on the pen communicator. Minutely he described every action of the zombie-like actions of the rioters.

“Your words are being fed directly into the computers. We will have a probability answer in about fifteen seconds,” Waverly said.

“My guess is that this film, The Million Monsters, has some sinister hypnotic affect on its audiences,” Napoleon said. “This renders them susceptible to some sort of brain wave generator that can send out impulses on the same wave length as the human mind. When their conscious mind is dormant, they react to orders from this THRUSH brain wave transmitter.”

“Is this a guess or do you have some solid evidence, Mr. Solo?” Alexander Waverly asked.

“Call it a hunch,” Solo replied.

“Hunches are for horse players,” Waverly said coldly. “We must have facts – good solid facts. We are on the verge of a complete collapse of law and order that could throw the entire world back into savagery! We -”

He broke off and then said hurriedly, “Keep tuned in. The computers are coming in with a probability report.”

“Yes, sir,” Solo said.

“But do not depend too much on this preliminary report. It will be as accurate as our limited information will permit the computer to be. But we may not know enough yet to permit the electronic machines to give us a true picture.”

A second later the computer’s mechanical voice came over the electronic beam from New York’s U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. The most likely probability, the machine said, followed almost exactly the theory that Napoleon had outlined to his chief.

Solo heard Waverly grunt.

The computer was silent for ten seconds and then a metallic voice said as it electronically scanned the algebraic computation tapes and picked out and assembled the words from its memory bank to make its report in voice:

“The probability is that some kind of subliminal suggestion is projected to the audience of the Million Monsters film. This suggestion is probably too fast and high a pitch to be consciously observed by the audience, but is indelibly impressed on the subject’s subconscious mind. This is nothing new. It has been tried on TV advertising until public complaints forced its discontinuance. THRUSH has evidently refined the process to achieve a method of enslaving minds.”

When the mechanical voice shut off, Solo heard Waverly speak into a transmitter to the chief of the computer section.

“Set up a new program,” he said sharply. “I personally viewed this Million Monsters film myself at the film exchange screening room. It had no effect on me. Nor did it affect any of the others. I want to know why as quickly as possible. I suspect there is a definite clue there.”

“Sir, if I can intrude with another hunch -” Solo began apologetically.

“Go ahead, Mr. Solo. If you are right this time, we’ll dispense with the computer and set you up with a roll of punch tape!” Waverly said.

It was like the U.N.C.L.E. chief to speak lightly when the situation was on the brink of desperation.

“Well, sir,” Solo said, “this is based on more than just speculation. I have been watching the crowd. This subliminal suggestion power seems to only affect young people. I have an idea it may have something to do with the age of the brain cells. I suspect that it would have its greatest effect upon young children and then would gradually decrease in power as the brain cells age and mature.”

“That might well explain why none of us who viewed the film came under the spell,” Waverly said. “So far as our reports have come in, everyone involved in the riots have been under thirty. You could well be right. We will need more data.”

“We’ll get it,” Solo said.

“Specifically,” Waverly went on, “we need to know how this subliminal suggestion is accomplished, how long the effects last, how THRUSH turns it off and on, and what THRUSH’s goal is.”

“I think we’re making some progress, sir,” Illya said.

“Then carry on, gentlemen – but be careful. Four of THRUSH’s most important liquidators have left Europe, April Dancer reports. It is my hunch that you two are the target. That indicates to me that you are pushing THRUSH harder than it appears to us right now.”

“Yes, sir,” Napoleon said. “I think we -”

“Napoleon!” Illya broke in. “It’s him!”

“Who?” Solo asked.

“The news photographer who tried to take our picture in the terminal!”

“So what? This thing is news. I’d be surprised if -”

“Yeah,” Illya cut in, “but he hasn’t taken a single picture. He keeps pointing that camera, but never shoots. If I remember correctly, the fight went out of those zombies in the terminal when he was bowled over and his camera broken!”

“A camera would be an excellent place to disguise a transmitter,” Waverly put in.

“We’ll find out right fast!” Napoleon said grimly. He shoved down the antenna to cut the connection with U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.

“Where is he?” Napoleon asked Illya.

His companion nodded his head. “He was standing atop that overturned car a moment ago. He can’t be far. Come on!”

Ahead of them the riot mob was weaving an insane dance. Then suddenly the fury went out of them. The length of the jam packed street of destruction men and girls were dropping in exhaustion. Panting, shivering, bewilderment on their faces, they sagged in their tracks, too tired to move a step. The terrible electronic will that had forced actions beyond their strength had released its hold upon their minds.

“There he is!” Illya cried, pointing across the street.

Solo whirled. The collapse of the riot revealed the man they sought crouched back against a brick wall almost directly opposite of them.

Napoleon saw the man duck and the blast of a gun cut above the sobbing gasps and moans of the suffering rioters. The glass window just opposite of the wall shattered as the bullet plowed into it.

“It’s the girl!” Illya gasped. “Marsha Mallon! She’s trying to kill him!”

Then Napoleon saw her. She was leaning around the corner of the building. The coat she was wearing was partly fallen open. Underneath he could see a polka dotted bikini.

She fired again. The photographer was knocked back as her bullet smashed into his leg. He twisted as he fell, apparently seeking desperately to keep his camera from being smashed in the fall.

The girl stepped from the partial protection of the brick corner. She raised her gun to get a better shot at the fallen man. It was not a case of protecting herself. She was out to commit murder!

Solo jerked up his U.N.C.L.E. Special, snapping the double cartridge cylinder to insure the stunning pellets were in place instead of the steel jacketed bullets. They would render her unconscious without any ill after-effects. He had a double motive in knocking the girl out: to prevent her from murdering the photographer and to save the man for questioning under the powerful U.N.C.L.E. truth serum.

But before he could shoot, Illya called frantically: “Quick, Napoleon! There, behind her!”

Kuryakin, who had lost his own gun in the fire, pointed to two men coming up fast behind the girl. One had the oddly shaped THRUSH gun in his hand.

Napoleon and the THRUSH agent fired at the same time. The agent collapsed with a strangled cry. Intent upon the second man from THRUSH, Solo did not see what happened to the girl.

The second killer dodged back around the corner. Solo shouted back over his shoulder to Kuryakin, “Get that photographer, Illya! I’ll try to take care of the other one!”

He started across the street, his way impeded by the fallen rioters. Kuryakin headed for the photographer, who was writhing in agony on the pavement.

But before he could reach him, a third man opened fire from across the street. Kuryakin ducked, falling flat on the pavement between two dead girls, killed when they fell in the crushing mob and were trampled.

Solo caught his frantic movement and whirled to see what the danger was. As he did a bullet whined past his head, shot from the gun of the man he had been pursuing.

Caught in the cross fire between the two THRUSH agents, Solo ducked behind an overturned car. Partially protected, he aimed through the broken windshield, firing first at the left side of the street and then at the right.

He shot rapidly, exhausting his ammunition to provide cover for Kuryakin. If he could keep the killer’s attention riveted on him, then the more exposed Kuryakin would have a chance to get better cover.

Illya, under cover of the rapid exchange of gunfire, got to his feet. His legs shook from fatigue. He stumbled and fell. Grimly he forced himself to get back up, although every muscle in his body screamed for rest.

Only his iron will kept him from falling. He got across the street. His legs were shaking as if he had run five miles. Illya Kuryakin’s throat was raw from his gasping breath.

He glanced back. Napoleon and the two THRUSH agents were still blasting away at each other. In the distance three police sirens were screaming as reinforcements poured into the area.

They were too far away to be of any help to the men from U.N.C.L.E. and the street was too much of a shambles to permit any fast action by anyone. They could expect no help. As so often happened in their dangerous work, the only persons Illya and Napoleon could depend upon were themselves.

As Kuryakin closed in on the suspected photographer, the man snaked his body around. He jerked up the camera. Illya tried to duck, but his exhausted legs wouldn’t support the sudden movement. He fell.

The photographer swung the camera in a murderous blow at Illya’s head.

Kuryakin threw his head back and took the blow on the shoulder. The camera burst open. Illya caught a momentary glimpse of the interior. It wasn’t the usual black box.

He saw a flash of complicated wiring and transistors.

He hurled himself at the THRUSH man. His shoulder was numb and his legs refused to support him. But he snaked his body around and grabbed the photographer’s arm. He threw all his dwindling strength on it, attempting to wrench the man’s limb back in an imprisoning grasp.

The man jerked back and then lunged forward, driving his head into Illya’s stomach. The man from U.N.C.L.E. was knocked back. His head struck the pavement. He gave a choking cry.

THREE

NAPOLEON SOLO saw his companion fall. But he was powerless to come to his aid. The two THRUSH killers had him in a cross fire. He raised his head, looking for a target. A THRUSH bullet smashed into the car and ricocheted up the street with a murderous whine.

Ducking as low as possible, Napoleon pulled out his pen communicator. He extended the antenna and called New York.

“Mr. Waverly? An emergency! Can you transmit a call to the Los Angeles sheriff’s office? They have men surrounding this area doing the best they can, but we need their help. The photographer is getting away. Can you ask the patrols to look out for him?”

“What is his description?” Waverly’s voice came back.

“About Kuryakin’s height. His hair is black and his chin so narrow that his face appears wedge-shaped. Light summer suit of an olive plaid.”

“The call will go out,” Waverly said. “And you? Isn’t that gunshot I hear in the distance?”

“Yes, sir. A slight detail to take care of. If you’ll excuse me, sir. I’m busy!”

Slamming down the pen communicator antenna, Napoleon Solo checked his weapon. His ammunition was dangerously low. There were three shots left. He was sure that his adversaries were in equally bad shape.

Their firing had tapered off. He suspected they were holding their shots, husbanding their ammunition and waiting for him to present a target.

“Give them what they want!” he said grimly.

He snaked his body forward. He half raised up, still protected from their sight by the body of the overturned car. From this vantage point he reached up with the barrel of the U.N.C.L.E. gun and gave the upturned front wheel a spin.

Instantly there was a crash of gunfire as the two THRUSH liquidators caught the movement and started shooting in nervous haste.

Solo caught a glimpse of the one across the street as he leaned around the corner of the building to shoot. He squeezed off the Special’s trigger. The shot caught the THRUSH man full in the chest. Solo whirled to face his second adversary.

He waited, full in the open now, presenting himself as a target to draw out the other. There was a long ten-second wait. At least it seemed long to – Napoleon. He slipped the gun cylinder back to the knockout pellets.

Still there was no sight of the man. Solo started cautiously forward, wondering if the THRUSH liquidator had fled. But as he stepped up on the sidewalk, Napoleon caught a sudden movement to the left. He whirled and fired. The THRUSH agent pitched forward.

Solo took a second to assure himself that the man was unconscious. Then he propped the THRUSH man against the wall where he would not be trampled as the bewildering rioters started moving again.

This done, he hurried across the street to see after Illya. Kuryakin was sitting with his back against a store front. His temple was bloody from the savage blow he had taken when his head hit the pavement.

“Okay?” Solo asked anxiously.

“Don’t bother to put the pieces back together!” Kuryakin said with a strained attempt to grin. “I’m broken in so many pieces it’s not worth the glue to repair me!”

“I’ll get a police car to run you down to the hospital.”

“You go for me,” Illya said weakly but with a stubborn thrust of his jaw. “I got business to tend to. Like, say, a photographer with a camera that isn’t a camera at all!”

“What is it then?” Napoleon asked.

“Sit down here beside me,” Illya said. “I’m not equal to standing up yet and you look like you’re about to fall.”

“For once in your life you’re right,” Solo said. He stiffly lowered himself down beside his friend.

“This has been one hell of a night,” he said.

“And it is still a long way to morning,” Illya said. “Man! How my head clangs. I feel like there are a couple of giants in there with sledge hammers pounding away for all they are worth.”

“Are you sure -?” Solo began, giving his companion a worried look.

“I’m sure!” Illya snapped. “I have no objection to going to a hospital, provided the nurses are pretty – just as soon as this case is in the file. But not one second sooner!”

Solo knew that it was useless to argue. Illya Kuryakin was a man who hated above everything else to fail. And his manner showed definitely that he felt that he had failed now. He did not view their lack of success in capturing the “photographer” as just a temporary setback, as Solo did. To him it was a failure and it rubbed his temper raw.

“Okay,” Napoleon said. “What about this peculiar cameraman? To save time, I’ll ring Mr. Waverly in on the report.”

After Solo extended the pen communicator antenna, Kuryakin said, “When he hit at me with the camera, it broke open. The inside of the box was a jumble of electronic circuits. The lens was actually a concentrating transmitter antenna. There is no doubt that it is a portable transmitter for emitting some kind of signal which definitely influence the minds of people who have seen The Million Monsters film.”

“It fits in very well with the probability given us by the computer,” Waverly said.

“Then this is the situation as we understand it right now,” Napoleon said. “THRUSH has tainted a motion picture called The Million Monsters with subliminal suggestion forces which have the power of impressing themselves on young people from the cradle to about thirty. The producer, Fred Mallon, learned what had happened to his film, and knowing he was watched, sent you an anonymous note of warning.

“Then he was murdered for his trouble. His daughter, a lovely but intellectual miss, evidently is under the influence of this subliminal suggestion force. We saw her leave her father’s house just before he was killed. If she is under THRUSH control she could have done it herself.”

“She was definitely under control when she attacked us in the air terminal,” Illya put in. “But she was not tonight, for she tried to murder the ‘cameramen.’”

“That is very odd,” Waverly said. “But we can be sure now that this ‘cameraman’ was actually the ‘monster master.’ These subconscious suggestions received from the film apparently lay dormant until excited by this exciter transmitter.”

“At least we are making progress,” Solo said. “The next thing is to try and get our hands on a wave transmitter. Once we know how it affects these rioters’ minds, then we can forge some sort of counter-measure.”

“I agree, Mr. Solo,” Alexander Waverly said. “I am certain that the outbreaks here and in Europe are just tests. This matter of portable wave machines is too crude. I have a horrible vision of these waves being sent out by huge transmitters bouncing their broadcast off Telstar communications satellite to blanket the world!”

“I believe, sir,” Napoleon said, “that half the world’s population is under thirty years of age.”

“That is correct, Mr. Solo,” Waverly said. Despite an effort to maintain his characteristic calm, the U.N.C.L.E. chief’s voice was not quite as steady as usual. “Can you imagine what will happen if half the world’s population becomes THRUSH’s slaves?”

Napoleon looked out across the devastation on Sunset Boulevard. He shuddered.