The Light-Kill Affair (6 page)

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.