08-The Monster Wheel Affair

by David McDaniel

  The Monster Wheel Affair

  By David McDaniel

  A Gigantic Space Station Orbiting The Earth...And No One Knew Who Put It There!

  United States officials knew the monstrous space satellite was not theirs. The Russians could not claim it either...nor England, nor France. It was an enigma, an awesome weapon of war hanging over the entire world...waiting...

  Waiting for what?

  Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin had to uncover the mystery behind the Monster Wheel before it was too late—and with each clue they uncovered, the threat became more horrifying.

  THE MONSTER WHEEL AFFAIR

  Dawn was a ghostly tint of gold separating the sea from the sky. The stars were lost behind the brightening glow of the coming day, and the horizon was a flat circle with only a misty lump of distant island to break its perfection.

  The tramp steamer Paxton Merchant extinguished her running lights as morning began to overtake her from astern. A new day of work was beginning for her crew, and a new day of pleasurable boredom for her half-dozen passengers.

  Suzie Danz, 26, American, stood at the after rail on the bridge and checked over her camera. Three years' savings had gone into this trip, and she intended to capture everything possible on film. She had a plentitude of studies of shipboard life taken since their departure from Perth, but she had chosen this morning to rise early to view the Indian Ocean dawn, reputedly the most beautiful in the world. The weather had been inclement the last few days, but this morning the sky was as clear as could be imagined.

  She took a last light reading and set her camera towards the horizon above the fantail. Her long telephoto lens would magnify the first bright sliver of the sun, and her wide-angle lens stood ready to catch the splendid panorama of golden clouds and angel-eye blue which would herald the morning. She cocked the shutter.

  Behind her, at the forward rail of the bridge, John MacKendricks squinted suddenly through the powerful binoculars which were at that moment focused on the nameless island some twenty-five miles ahead of them. Something was happening there. A cloud of smoke rose from the haze-shimmering mountain peak, and a flickering light illuminated it from below. A volcanic eruption?

  He turned and called to the pretty photographer, whose attention was half a horizon away.

  "Miss Danz! Come forward and look. There's a volcano going off up there!"

  She only took a moment to react. After all, dawn happened every day, wherever you were. But volcanoes were a special treat, and took priority. A glance at her light meter, and her telephoto-magnified viewfinder centered on the island as she braced the camera on the rail. She snapped the first shot, and then looked again.

  "Look, Mac!" she said. "The smoke's getting thicker in the center. No..." She gasped, wound the film and fired again. "There's something coming out of the volcano!"

  She got a third shot as something did indeed rise from the smoking crest of the distant mountain. To MacKendricks it seemed for a moment of disbelief like the neck of some impossible monster, rising straight up from a prehistoric hillside. Then the shape resolved into a shining cylinder. A fraction of a second later its base was clearly visible, and he squinted against the brilliance of the ravening waterfall of flame that drove it upward.

  Suzie crouched, tilting and firing her camera at the thing as fast as she could wind and shoot. Then the sound began to reach them, faint over the watery distance. It was a familiar sound to a girl of the city, where jets crossed the sky dozens of times a day, but an alien one here, halfway around the world from her home. It was the roar of a continuous explosion—a rocket blast driving an intercontinental ballistic missile either on a test flight, on a sudden atomic attack, or on a space voyage. Whatever it was, it had no place here, far from the world's centers of international conflict and scientific research.

  The rocket left a rising white track behind it as it drove up through the stratosphere, and became no more than a glittering speck in the camera's viewfinder, catching the sun. Suzie wound one more time, and felt the advance lever stick as it pulled at the end of the film. She looked up at last and was slightly surprised to find she could hardly see the vapor trail a few miles above them. She started to rewind the film as she looked around for MacKendricks.

  Mac was no longer there. He was inside the wheelhouse in excited converse with the steersman, Kurt Schneider.

  "Did you pick that up on the navigational radar?"

  Kurt nodded. "Ja. It was a missile. Did you see it?"

  "Sure did, and I think Miss Danz got some pictures of it. What island is that, anyway? Got it on the chart?"

  Kurt turned and bent over a large map. "I make our position here," he said slowly. "This would be the island." His closed dividers touched their slightly bent points to a speck on the chart. "There is no warning notice here—but this is an old chart. Perhaps I should suggest the Captain write it in himself."

  MacKendricks grunted agreement, while privately reserving his opinion as to the public knowledge on any chart concerning this little island. The Paxton Merchant was a good many miles north of the regular shipping lane, as their course from Perth was not directly to Capetown, but to Tamatave. This island might not be seen by a ship from one year to the next.

  He looked again at the little green screen of the radar, where the shape of the island glowed near the top. Then he looked more closely and pointed. "What's that?"

  "That" was a speck of green that had detached itself from the larger mass and was moving directly down the face of the tube towards the central dot that represented the ship. Kurt watched it for a few seconds while the pale green radius swept once around the face of the tube. Then the spec was visibly closer.

  "Donnerwetter!" he said as he jumped for a panel high on the wall. His fingers flipped aside the red metal cover and his palm slapped against the red button. Instantly a clangorous alarm went off all over the ship. Kurt grabbed the log book from its case and ran for the door of the wheelhouse.

  "In the absence of Captain I take command," he barked to three sailors who appeared, unshaven and half dressed. "Lower boats—right now!"

  MacKendricks grabbed his arm. "What was that?"

  "Either a jet plane or a rocket launched from the island. In two minutes we could be blown out of the water!"

  The emergency alarm hammered its hysterical monotone as the nearest boat was swung out over the water. MacKendricks grabbed Suzie, who grabbed her camera case, and threw her into the boat as it was being lowered. One by one sleep-dazed heads began appearing as crewmen stumbled on deck. The Captain himself stepped out, struggling into a bathrobe.

  "Schneider," he bawled, "what the hell is all this?"

  "We are under attack, sir, and may be hit in a minute or two. There is not time to explain."

  "Take command here—I'll rouse the passengers." The Captain turned and dived down a hatch.

  The first boat, with Suzie in it, hit the water. Mac and three other sailors were in it with her—how they'd got there, she couldn't tell. Someone started the motor, and they began to pull away from the ship.

  Suddenly the Captain reappeared on deck, as a second boat rocked out on its davits, and he ordered Schneider in along with several people Suzie recognized as her fellow passengers.

  Then Mac pointed and shouted. Suzie looked up.

  Something fat and stubby-winged appeared in the distance, growing larger. "Everybody lie down flat and hold onto something," Mac commanded. "And pray as hard as you ever did in your life."

  Suzie had to look over the side of the boat, and as she did so she was the only one to see clearly what happened.

  The rocket struck high, well above the waterline, but directly in the center of the ship, aft of t
he bridge. For an instant there was only a ragged hole. Then from the depths of the ship came a puff of flame, and a wave of concussion pounded her face. It was followed by a muffled roar, and a billow of fire swept up from a great tear across the center of the ship. A moment later it had broken in half and was already starting to sink. Of the men who had stood on her decks a few seconds before Suzie could see nothing. Part of a shattered lifeboat hung from one burning rope, and as she watched, her eyes fixed on the horrible scene by shock, the rope parted and dropped the wrecked prow of the boat into the water.

  A series of explosions came now from both halves of the hulk as the waves rose swiftly around them. The motor of the little lifeboat chattered desperately as it drove away from the sucking swirl of water that tried to pull them down with the ship.

  At last the great bubbles stopped and the roiling surface calmed. And only wreckage remained, gummed and surrounded in a wide and spreading black oil slick—the life blood of the ship, gushing forth as she sank into the endless night below.

  Section I: "The Sailor Told Me Before He Died..."

  Chapter 1: "A Dollar A Round."

  Chapter 2: "An Awfully Big Haystack."

  Chapter 3: "What Did You Expect—Big Ben?"

  Chapter 4: "You Know A Party Named Kropotkin?"

  Section II: "They Built Themselves A Monster Wheel..."

  Chapter 5: "Neu-Schloss? Where's That?"

  Chapter 6: "I'll Show You A Magic Trick."

  Chapter 7: "Sing For Us, Rameses."

  Chapter 8: "A Message From Space."

  Section III: "Round And Round Went The Monster Wheel..."

  Chapter 9: "This Is Your Submarine—Keep It Clean."

  Chapter 10: "Island Ho!"

  Chapter 11: "Get Those Intruders!"

  Chapter 12: "Head For Home, James!"

  Section IV: "Is There No Way Of Stopping It?"

  Chapter 13: "The Highest Con In The History Of The World."

  Chapter 14: "We'll Have To Ditch!"

  Chapter 15: "Accidental Misfire."

  Chapter 16: "Dauringa Island Calling The World!"

  Section I: "The Sailor Told Me Before He Died..."

  Chapter 1: "A Dollar A Round."

  The cablegram from Capetown was addressed simply UNCLEHQNYC. It arrived in the east-side Manhattan offices of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement on a Tuesday morning, and was brought directly to the desk of Alexander Waverly. The message was terse and cryptic:

  IMPORTANT BUSINESS DEAL. SEND NEPHEW IMMEDIATELY. PHOTOGRAPHS FOLLOW. MACKENDRICKS.

  Waverly read it again. The return address was the Voortrek Hotel, Capetown, South Africa. The meaning of the cable was clear enough, but...He touched a panel at his elbow.

  "Do we have a file on anyone named MacKendricks who might be sending us a report from South Africa?"

  The voice answered immediately. "Yes, sir. A Mr. MacKendricks has supplied us with information from several quarters of the world almost a dozen times in the last fifteen years. I'll bring his file in."

  "Very good. And page Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin."

  "Yes, sir."

  The little pistol looked like a toy made of stamped tin, and felt like one in his hand as Napoleon Solo leveled it at the brightly-lighted target fifty feet away. Trigger's a little stiff, he thought as he squeezed it gently. There was the slight jar of the hammer striking, a burst of fire from the vents along the barrel, and a puff of heat over his hand, arm and face. With a sound like a starched handkerchief being ripped, amplified many times, a faint trail of smoke zipped out of the gun and ended half way to the far wall. The noise echoed around the concrete walls of the basement range for a few seconds before vanishing into the acoustic tile.

  The range master squinted through the little spotting scope. "Not bad," he said. "Five ring at seven o'clock."

  Napoleon squinted. A terrible shot, considering his usual accuracy. He consciously relaxed his hand, which had tensed to receive the recoil which had never come, and centered his sights on the blank circle.

  Another sharp spitting shot, and another puff of heat. And the laconic voice saying, "Seven ring at six o'clock."

  He was shooting low; time to apply Tennessee windage. He drew a careful bead a couple of inches above the distant bullseye and fired a third time. This time there was a pause as the rangemaster searched the target. "Just outside the five ring at one-thirty."

  Napoleon set the safety, lowered his right hand and flexed his fingers after laying the weapon on the bench. A soft voice spoke behind him.

  "I see you found the new toy. What do you think?"

  He turned to see Illya, hands in the pockets of an acid-stained lab smock, regarding him and the Gyrojet pistol.

  He started to speak, but Illya continued: "Tell me on the way upstairs. We have been summoned to Mr. Waverly's office. Save the rest of the magazine," he added as Napoleon started to reach for the rocket pistol. "At a dollar a round, someone else can use the practice."

  In the elevator, as Napoleon ran a quick comb through his hair and straightened his tie, Illya said, "I tried the Gyrojet as soon as it came in. A good idea, but the pistol is quite inaccurate."

  "Accurate enough," said Napoleon, as he checked his appearance in a polished metal panel. "Even at fifty feet all three of those slugs would have connected. And at close range accuracy wouldn't matter."

  "But at close range it has no striking power," said the Russian. "It takes twenty-five feet for the rocket projectile to achieve maximum velocity. I prefer the more traditional 9 mm parabellums we use."

  "There's no recoil at all," said Napoleon. "If the barrel were longer, or the burning time shorter, it'd be more accurate."

  "The whole reason for a gun," said Illya flatly, as the door slid open and they stepped out, "is to put a little piece of metal exactly where you want it when you want it there. Anything that fails in this purpose fails as a gun."

  "But suppose you want to put it there without attracting undue attention," said his partner. "The rocket pistol is a lot quieter than an ordinary gun. And suppose you wanted to shoot something underwater—the Gyrojet works as well there as in the air."

  "Yes, and every bit as accurately, too," said Illya. "If I ever go shooting for whales, I may take one."

  "I tell you what," said Napoleon. "Next assignment we go on, I'll carry the Gyrojet and you carry your U.N.C.L.E. Special. And we'll see which one comes in handier."

  They stopped at Mr. Waverly's door, and he added, "And come to think of it, it's not a bad murder gun—no ballistic marks on the bullet."

  "I don't think they'd stop to look for them," said Illya, with his slight smile, "if you are the only man in the country who owns one."

  Napoleon looked at him consideringly for a moment, and finally said, "Are you going to take off that lab coat, or do you want to impress him with your tireless industry?"

  Illya glanced down, startled, and the corner of his mouth twitched in mild embarrassment. He quickly slipped out of the coat and handed it to the secretary, who accepted it without a flicker of reaction.

  He stepped through the door after his partner and felt rather than heard it slide closed behind him.

  Waverly looked up from a file folder as they took their seats at the round table which dominated the office. "A cablegram arrived from South Africa this morning," he said, as Solo picked up the yellow flimsy and held it so his partner could read.

  A moment later Illya looked up. "Who's MacKendricks?"

  "John Calvin MacKendricks," said Waverly, "is third officer on the Paxton Merchant, a tramp freighter which sailed from Perth about a month ago. He has no official position with U.N.C.L.E., but has been the source of useful information to us a few times in the past. A trustworthy man, with neither home nor family outside of his ship. Now he is an orphan and a widower—the Paxton Merchant was reported sunk a week ago by a ship which picked up a single lifeboat. MacKendricks, four other crewmen, and an American girl who had been a passenger wer
e the only survivors. They said there must have been a boiler explosion.

  "It now appears something of extreme importance is involved. If I did not trust MacKendricks' evaluation, I would simply turn the data over to the African office—either the local branch in Capetown or the Continental Office in Addis Ababa. But they lack the facilities for a problem of international scope, and are fully occupied keeping the African situation from getting any worse. Because of this probable importance, Mr. Solo, you will fly to Capetown via London tomorrow morning. You, Mr. Kuryakin, will follow him in a few days with the information contained in the photographs which are supposed to be on their way here. Any questions?"

  "Several," said Napoleon. "What am I supposed to do in Capetown?"

  "Evaluate the situation. Meet Mr. MacKendricks and find out what he is being so secretive about. If the problem warrants our action, proceed at will. If not, turn it over to U.N.C.L.E. Capetown. We have problems enough in our own bailiwick to occupy our attention."

  "Ah, one more thing—I would like permission to add an extra weapon to my kit."

  "What?"

  "The Gyrojet. Any weapon that radical should be extensively field tested by trained personnel before thought is given to its adoption into the armory."

  "And you want to play with it for a while. Very well. But remember it is still untested. Don't trust your life to it in a tight spot." He turned to Illya. "By the way, that reminds me. How did your experimentation with the smaller version of the rocket work out?"

  Napoleon glanced at his partner with a slightly raised eyebrow, as the Russian said, "Inconclusive. The Fin-jets seemed to have a great deal of potential; easily concealable, fairly accurate, and quite deadly. In fact, I have one concealed here." He pulled the older model communicator out of his coat pocket and opened the side of it which doubled as a cigarette case. He selected the end cigarette, and held it out. It was a filter-tip, indistinguishable from the others.

  "The fuse extends to the front," he said, pointing, "where it is concealed behind a quarter inch of tobacco." He placed the cigarette between his lips and pantomimed striking a match. Talking around the filter, he continued, "The fuse ignites when the cigarette has burned to this point. Five seconds later it has burned the length of the Fin-jet, inside the tobacco, and the little missile fires. The filter tip protects the user from the back-blast, and sighting is not difficult."