The Burning Air Affair

by Robert Hart Davis

  “You are paid to take chances. This is serious. We must find out what this damned woman did with that 'trigger bomb' or we'll all end up shoveling coal to keep hell's fires burning.”

  “Let's argue tomorrow or next year. I want to get out of here before something goes wrong,” his companion said.

  “Okay, but just remember: you take the blame for numbing her.”

  “Sure! Sure, but give me a hand, will you?”

  As they stooped to pick her up, one of the men felt the objects in her jacket pocket.

  Very dimly she heard him say, “What's this?” His voice was sharp.

  “A powder compact and a pack-age of mints,” his companion said. “And a comb. Nothing important.”

  “Wait a minute!” the other man said. “The handle on that comb looks pretty sharp and rigid. Yes it is! That thing is a genuine frog sticker!”

  The two men looked at each other. “Just what I tried to tell you. This girl is a professional. Take a look at that perfume dispenser. When I took it away from her I thought she was just going to throw it at us. I'm not so sure now.”

  Then, so faint it was dreamlike to her numbing mind, April heard the THRUSH agent exclaim, “The damned thing can throw out tear gas! This kid's no amateur. Take a look at those other objects.”

  “This one is just mints. Nothing there. And this---”

  He snapped open the compact. He removed the tiny powder puff and looked at the powder cake. The printed circuit was a flat sheet behind the mirror and added only an infinitesimal thickness to the lid. The recording head with its wire-thin tape and drive shaft was also a flat sheet under the powder container. The battery, even smaller than the cell used in electric watches, was concealed in the hinge.

  The whole assembly was not detectable without completely dismantling the ingenious device. The THRUSH man snapped the lid shut and stuck the compact back in April's pocket.

  The girl's head sagged. She made one last tremendous effort to fight off unconsciousness and failed ...

  April Dancer opened her eyes. She turned her head. For a moment she had difficulty placing where she was. Then the wild fight in the hotel room came back to her. She sat up, gingerly flexing legs and arms. Except for a curious tingling through her entire body, she felt no ill effects from the numbing pellet shot into her leg by the THRUSH agent.

  She looked around. She was in a small room, tastefully decorated; she was on a couch under a large oil painting of a Bavarian mountain scene.

  There was a door across from her. April walked over to it. To her surprise it wasn't locked. She looked out. There was a long corridor. A man was coming down it. He saw her and smiled.

  “Hi!” he said and waved his hand in a friendly manner.

  “I hope you feel better, Mrs. Harvey-Lancer,” he said as he approached.

  April Dancer recognized the voice. It was the friendly soul who called her to the telephone to detract her attention while the two THRUSH men broke in through her hotel window.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said, looking at him curiously.

  Surprisingly, his friendly, open face looked just exactly as she had pictured him after hearing his voice on the phone. It was a strong face, definitely not that of a weakling. From his friendly appearing face past his muscular shoulders to his athletic legs, he was the kind of man any woman would be attracted to.

  “I deeply regret the inconvenience this has caused you, Mrs. Ha--- Must I say all that name again? Can't I just call you Harve or Lance or something?”

  April found herself warming to his friendliness despite her knowledge that he was a man from THRUSH.

  “Well,” she said with a smile as bright as his own, “you may call me Cynthia, if you will permit me to call you Hank, or Pete or Steve or something appropriate.”

  “You are not even warm,” he said with a sad shake of his head. “It's Mike, Cynthia. And you are welcome to it.”

  “Okay, Mike. Now that we are old friends, why don't you just tell me just as one pal to another what all this means?”

  “Of course,” he said. “You know of course, Mr. Slate's business and the danger he runs.”

  “So?” April said noncommittally. “These men who kidnapped you were after him also. Fortunately we were able to overcome them,” he said.

  “Really?” April said. “And where then is Mr. Slate?”

  “We will meet him presently,” Mike said. “Unfortunately, he received the same numbing injection you did. Since he was struck later, he has not yet regained consciousness. At least he hadn't when I left. Would you like to go with me? We'll check on the young man.”

  “Thank you, but no.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because, Mike, you are the most charming---”

  The smile broadened on the THRUSH man's face and then froze when April added: “charming liar I have ever met.”

  “Liar? Really, Cynthia! I-” There was a steely look in April's eye that stopped him. He sighed and shrugged.

  “Well, you can't blame a fellow for trying,” he said.

  “And what were you trying, Mike?” she asked, her level gray eyes boring into him.

  “To put you at your ease,” he said. “See, I can be honest when pinned down.”

  “So I would make a better subject under your interrogation machine?” She asked quietly.

  Mike looked startled. His smile ebbed and it left his face with an entirely new cast. He no longer appeared so trustworthy or even so friendly.

  “How did you know about that?”

  His voice was still quiet but it carried a sinister, even frightened undertone.

  “Oh, I don't know,” April said airily. “I pick up things here and there.”

  “It seems you do,” he said in an odd voice. “We thought this machine was super secret. Less than six people know about it.”

  “Seven,” April said. “You forgot me.”

  “No, Cynthia---if that is your name. I've not forgotten you. You are not the kind a man forgets, I'll assure you of that. Will you come with me?”

  “No,” April said.

  “It will be a very simple matter to force you. Why make it hard on yourself? You are going. You have no choice.”

  “If you put it that way---” April said and smiled at him.

  He gave her a questioning look and his puzzled uneasiness was reflected on his face. April took an almost gleeful pleasure in his uncertainty. She knew she had him off-balance. Her familiarity with the super-secret interrogation machine made him wonder what else she knew.

  They walked down the hall together. Mike was deep in thought. The girl from U.N.C.L.E. preserved an outward calm she was far from feeling inside. She understood only too well her danger, and even more important, the danger to U.N.C.L.E., if the interrogation machine did successfully probe her mind.

  Mike politely opened the door for her. The room was painted white and all the objects in it were white. Soft, indirect light helped make everything blend together. The machine reminded April of an overgrown dentist's chair surmounted by a fantastic array of dull white tubes.

  As April looked around uneasily, another door opened. A small, nervous man entered. During the seconds the door was open, April glimpsed an extraordinarily long room jammed with rows of computing machines. She touched the tape recorder in her pocket, starting it.

  “Where am I” April asked Mike.

  “In the headquarters of an organization as devoted to its ideals as any patriotic group,” he said.

  The little man came over to them.

  “Is this the subject?” he asked shortly.

  Mike frowned. “This is Mrs. Harvey-Lancer,” he said.

  The little man shrugged. His wrinkled monkey face looked unpleasantly at her.

  “What difference does it make who she is?” he said in a sober voice. “Sit down, please.”

  April shook her head and the action made the room spin. Details were growing more indistinct. She realized that she had been drugged again, bu
t had no idea how. She would have fallen had not Mike caught her. As she sagged in his arms, her last conscious recollection was the little man saying, “This may kill her, you know!”

  FOUR

  THE MIND DREDGER

  The girl from U.N.C.L.E. turned fitfully. She rolled over and for a moment hung precariously on the edge of the couch. She opened her eyes and looked at the walls of the room. It was where she first found herself after the kidnapping from her hotel suite by the two THRUSH operatives.

  She felt strange. It wasn't weariness exactly, although kin to it. It was almost as if by some odd means something had depressed her vitality. She moved her legs and the action made her tired.

  April Dancer turned, not realizing in the fog of awakening that she was so close to the edge of the couch. She tumbled off. It wasn't a hard bump, but the effort to get up required too much for her depleted condition. She closed her eyes and continued to lie there.

  Slowly her disordered mind started to pick up the shattered remnants of memory. She realized that the condition of her body came from her ordeal in the interrogation machine.

  A sudden stab of fear cut through April. The jolt of adrenalin in her blood did something to counteract the sag of her normally splendid vitality.

  April sat up with difficulty. Her initial jab of fear increased, but it was not for herself. It was for U.N.C.L.E. and those she worked with there. The fear came from considering what she might have revealed under the merciless probing of the electronic third degree.

  She looked around. There was a decorator's mirror on the wall. She suspected that it was a two-way affair and that a THRUSH spy was watching her from the other side.

  The girl agent caught a glimpse of her face. It was pale. Her hair was tangled. Her lipstick was smeared. There was nothing she could do about it, since she lost her lipstick and comb when they brought her here. But she took her finger and smoothed out her lips as best she could.

  Then, using her fingers for a comb, she succeeded in making her hair look attractive.

  She was certain that a man was watching her. It gave her a perverse pleasure to suspect that he was smiling and making a sappy remark to himself about the vanity of women.

  Well, it was some of that, she admitted to herself. A girl's appearance is part of her stock-in-trade and always has been. But there was far more behind her actions than just an attempt to look attractive to her enemies.

  The improvised toilette gave April Dancer an excuse to search her pockets for something to help her. She removed the package of mints which exploded into a smoke screen when dropped in water and the powder compact with its sub-miniature tape recorder.

  April inspected her lips in the compact mirror and made an additional touchup with her little finger. Her head nodded. She feigned a weariness even beyond what she felt. She leaned back on the bed, the open compact in her hand. She closed her eyes, but her index finger gently pressed a hidden button which activated the recorder's replay. She turned her head restlessly, bringing her ear right against the compact so she could hear the very faint playback. She started to breathe deeply like a person in a hard sleep.

  “---may kill her, you know!”

  It was the little monkey man who operated the THRUSH interrogator. These were the last words she consciously remembered before the THRUSH drug numbed her mind.

  “It is a chance we have to take,” April heard Mike's voice say.

  It was no longer a friendly voice. It was hard, cruel and held a touch of uneasy fear.

  “It is imperative that we find out what she did with that damned trigger bomb. I personally saw Franklyn Royce slip it into her hand bag there in the cocktail lounge in Los Angeles. But she definitely did not have the thing when she got to her hotel.”

  “This interrogator is not perfected. It has some serious flaws,” the little operator said. “It has a deadly way of sapping vitality. It can kill.”

  “This woman is as strong as an ox,” Mike said irritably. “You should get tangled with her in a fight. She almost whipped two men twice her size. She has vitality to spare.”

  “Well---” the little monkey of a man replied. “I don't know. Shall I push to the limit?”

  “Push as hard as necessary to find out what we must know. We were closing in on Royce. He knew it and slipped the bomb to her. She must have been his accomplice, but she apparently double-crossed him. She left with the bomb. I know Royce is moving heaven and earth to find her. He placed ads in the Los Angeles papers seeking knowledge of her. He used a false name of a fictitious lawyer, Karman Caine.”

  “If she has knowledge of this, the machine will bring it out. It is impossible for anyone to hold back anything. However, you must frame your questions correctly. The machine does not think. It can find out only what you ask for.”

  “Can an exceptionally strong willed person overcome the machine's probing, as they sometimes can do with lie detectors?”

  “No, nothing can be held back. However, as I told you, the machine still has numerous imperfections. “

  “I can't help that! We must know. Don't you understand?”

  “No, I don't!” the little man cried. “You are forcing me to move before I am ready. If I had another week to make adjustments, I could guarantee results. As it is, I am not concerned with this woman's life. But I am concerned that the machine does not make a poor showing. It could mean cancellation of the project after all I've sacrificed for it.”

  “Damn the machine, the woman and you!” Mike cried. “Can't you get it through your fool head that we face the most serious threat the world has ever known?”

  “But my machine---”

  April, with her ear pressed against the recorder, felt a stirring of hope. If the two THRUSH men got to fighting, there might be a chance for her to turn the little man's resentment to her advantage.

  She suddenly realized that her growing excitement had caused her to clinch one fist. She relaxed slowly, fearful that the watching spy might realize that she was not asleep at all.

  “There won't be a machine or a you or I if we don't get our hands on that damnable bomb before Royce recovers it,” Mike's voice went on from the recording. “Let me explain to you:

  “This man Franklyn Royce worked for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He is extremely brilliant, but completely unstable. He is suffering from a persecution complex.”

  In a rapid burst of words April heard Mike tell how Royce, angered at a fancied failure of his superiors to appreciate his genius, detected to Russia. Then, because he was not made chief of the Russian scientific teams, he defected again to join THRUSH.

  Here again his instability was his undoing. He tried to organize a revolt to place himself head of THRUSH. In failing, he narrowly escaped with his life. But in doing so, he got away with the working model of a deadly weapon known as the trigger bomb.

  “This bomb was developed to set up a chain reaction in steel,” Mike said. “But what we didn't know was that it is even more potent in air. The terrible thing is no larger than an ordinary .45 caliber bullet, but when fired in the air, it can set off a nuclear chain reaction. And nothing can stop it as long as there is air to feed it. And there is air everywhere! If this thing is fired, all the air in the world will burn in one tremendous global explosion. The earth will become a new sun!”

  “This man Royce is trying to bluff you,” the little scientist said contemptuously. “He can't fire this thing. It would kill him as well as all the rest of us.”

  “You don't know Royce,” Mike said, his voice shaking with agitation. “He has a hunger for power worse than Adolf Hitler's megalomania. He is maniacally depressed when he is frustrated. Twice he tried to commit suicide. He wants this weapon to blackmail himself into power.

  “How is immaterial. He just wants, craves, must have supreme power. When he fails, he starts thinking of suicide, as he did when he failed in his bid to become Russian chief scientist. And what more spectacular way for such a man to kill himself than to die with the
world?”

  “I can't believe---”

  “Hitler was that way, you remember. He was willing to drag everyone down to death with him.”

  “Yes!” the little man said in a strangled voice. “I remember Hitler. There are men who would rather destroy the world than to-- -”

  “Now you see why it is so important that we learn from this girl what she did with that trigger bomb. We know Royce slipped it in her bag. We know she did not have it when she got back to the Los Angeles hotel. We know she did something with it. We know Royce is frantically trying to recover it. We must get that bomb---or all of us will die!”

  “I-I'll do what I can,” the THRUSH scientist said, shaken.

  There was a silence and then some strange crackling and humming noises as the machine apparently went into orderly operation. April suppressed a shiver.

  She distinctly recalled the incident Mike spoke of. At the time it seemed so trivial she dismissed it from her mind. She had taken the disguise of the red-haired widow, Mrs. Felix Harvey-Lancer, as part of her pursuit in the U.N.C.L.E. spy case. While waiting in the Los Angeles cocktail lounge, she saw Mark Slate enter. In a mischievous moment, she struck up a barroom flirtation with her co-agent just to see if her disguise was good enough to fool him.

  During the evening, a drunk brushed against her. Looking down she saw that her purse was open. She thought it was a pickpocket. Fearful that one of her U.N.C.L.E. protective devices had been stolen, she went to the ladies lounge to check. Nothing was missing, but she found what appeared to be a .45 bullet.

  She thought it some evidence a gangster needed to get rid of before being arrested. Not in a position to get involved and delay her spy chase, April dropped it in the humus packed around the base of a potted plant in the lounge.

  What had become of it? April shivered. Perhaps it was still there. If she betrayed the hiding place to the THRUSH men, at least they understood its danger. But there was always the possibility that Royce had gotten it back himself.

  The strain was beginning to tell on her. It was difficult to keep from shivering as she listened to the answers she gave under the stimulating rays of the new machine.