No chance now to learn whether it held any clues to the awful Armageddon THRUSH might be plotting with its incredible saucer aircraft---
Strange saucer-shaped lights danced in his mind. Then the blackness came down completely.
THREE
Slowly, swimmingly, Napoleon Solo returned to consciousness. He thought he’d gone mad.
Either that, or he had been transported to some other planet and was even now confronting one of its senior citizens. A space monster was staring at him.
A part of his mind instantly told him the notion was absurd. On the other hand, the way things had been going, who could tell?
Exactly where he might be, Solo had no way of knowing. Chilly darkness tinged with an elusively familiar scent surrounded him. He was propped awkwardly against a cold concrete wall.
The monster watched him with strange, sparkling eyes.
Solo reached out with both hands, discovered that he was sitting on a cold floor. A bit of broken flooring material brushed against his fingertips. It felt like conventional floor tile.
Aching from ankles to ears, he shook his head. Some of the haze cleared from his eyes. The scarlet thing surveying him took on sharper, more hideous detail.
Off in the dark, the scarlet thing watched him. Its misshapen, scaly red face was only vaguely human. It nodded slowly. The scarlet eye pulsed brighter, then dimmer. It had no nose, only a slit for a mouth. The longer Napoleon Solo looked at it, the more artificial it seemed. Just to be sure he hadn’t slipped a mental cog, he said, “Hey. Take me to your leader.”
Mechanically the alien-shaped head continued to nod up and down, up and down, up and down.
Solo recalled the little green men that smoked and came apart in a tangle of articulated metal and burned insulation. He stood up, his joints were stiff. The cold of the place didn’t help any. Nor did the nauseating aroma filling the darkness, which he finally identified as the reek of paint.
He started forward in the darkness toward the shiny scarlet head. He collided with what his hands told him was a metal work bench. His fingers told him he was feeling the housings, knobs and control levers of small machine tools. A workshop? Napoleon needed some light.
Light from somewhere was falling across the scarlet face of the glass-eyed monster. This light, Solo discerned, was leaking in from behind metal venetian blinds. It highlighted the head of the mechanical doll sitting on a window sill, causing it to shine disembodied in the otherwise total darkness.
Solo rounded the end of the workbench and reached the window. He picked up the two-foot-high doll. It buzzed faintly and continued to nod its head. Solo put the doll down, found the pull cord of the venetian blinds, gave it a yank. Up shot the blinds on a scene which finally reassured him that he hadn’t been transported off the earth.
He was on the fourth floor of a building, looking out over a rain-swept street lit by mercury lights. Skyscrapers gleamed on the horizon. The building on the opposite side of the street was old red brick, five stories high. On its roof was a dilapidated metal signboard. The sign read COSMO TOYS, INC.---Finest Toys in the Cosmos. A smaller, bottom line was incomplete. The name of the town had peeled away, but ew Jersey was still visible.
He was a prisoner somewhere across the river from Manhattan.
Solo made a quick search and discovered without great surprise that his THRUSH captors had thoroughly gone over the hidden pockets of his black night-warfare clothes and removed everything, including his communicator and the suicide capsule which all U.N.C.L.E. agents carried. He still wore his crepe-soled shoes though. So he had one weapon left. He’d conserve it, wait and use it when it would count most.
Now to tackle the problem of escape. He tried the first, most obvious way. He unlatched the window lock, reached for the rusty handle to lift the window upward.
The moment his fingers touched the metal handle, an electrical charge hurled him against the work bench. The back of his head struck the edge. He went down in a daze and tin-shaded lights spaced along the ceiling flashed on. Alarm bells began to ring, deafening loud.
Solo climbed to his feet again. The bells pealed, hurting his eardrums. A door in the wall opposite the window flew open. Three uniformed THRUSH guards with snub-nosed anti-personnel rifles crowded inside.
The guard in front snapped over his shoulder, “Fetch him. He wanted to be informed the moment this one woke up. And turn off those bells before we all go deaf.”
Solo blinked in the light. The workshop looked disused. Most of the metal benches and machine tools were covered with dust. Along one entire wall, shelves held neatly stacked metal boxes. The ends of the boxes were inscribed with legends like, Part #268A---Model RM “red Martian.” Large elbow gear.
The guards, typical THRUSH uglies, ranged themselves on either side of the door. Solo leaned on the work bench and said: “Well, well. I thought everybody who worked in toyland wore an elf suit.”
“Very funny, Mr. Solo,” said a guard.
“You know who I am?”
“Of course. We ran your prints through the THRUSH Central computer. You’re quite a catch. I have already asked the man in charge for the privilege of finishing you off.” The guard grinned.
“Just who is the man in charge?” Solo asked.
From the door a husky voice rasped, “I am, Mr. Solo. Perhaps you have heard of me. My name is Dohm.”
For a moment Solo couldn’t believe what he’d heard. The name struck his ears like a thunderclap. Dohm. Even the highest echelons of U.N.C.L.E. had never been entirely convinced that a man with that name existed on THRUSH’s research staff.
Solo had first heard about Dohm years ago, in a discussion with an U.N.C.L.E. agent in Bucharest. Within its ranks THRUSH had many malevolent research specialists. These men dedicated their immense learning to the evil cause of world domination. But the accomplishments of all researchers together, so the story went, were as nothing compared to the brain-power, the total intellectual superiority of the one madman-genius who ranked highest of all on the THRUSH scientific roster.
Dohm.
No photograph of Dohm had ever been taken. Only scattered bits of biographical information could be located in the memory banks of U.N.C.L.E.’s computers, and most of that was considered unreliable.
Dohm. THRUSH agents had taunted U.N.C.L.E. with his name. He had been pictured as a mental giant, as the greatest of all THRUSH menaces to the free world. Even Mr. Waverly had never been quite certain that Dohm existed, except as a psychological bogey-man.
“Yes, I am Dohm,” said the man, walking in the door. “How are you Mr. Solo? I apologize for leaving you locked in this dismal place. But we have quite a few preparations to complete. My time is valuable. Now that you are awake, I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Your name is known to me. You have been a formidable foe of THRUSH.”
All Solo could do for a moment was stand speechless. His host was incredible, a man only a few inches above five feet, dressed in a simple white coverall. Dohm’s fingers, hands, arms, legs, and neck were normally proportioned. But from his scrawny neck sprouted an immense oval head almost twice normal size.
Dohm’s cheeks shone yellow-sallow. He had a flat nose, a tiny prune mouth, big, distended brown eyes. The top of his oval skull was the largest part of his head. It was bald except for a fringe of white hair around the oversized ears.
From the white hair and the line deeply etched into Dohm’s face, Napoleon Solo judged the man to be approaching fifty. He was grotesque. The tight-stretched skin on top of his swollen head showed the blood vessels beneath. One such vessel actually stood out, pressing up from underneath the skin and pulsing with a monotonous regularity.
“And we’ve heard about you,” Solo said. “We never really knew you existed.”
Dohm bobbed his immense head. “Quite right, quite right. I have been in the background, shall we say, for over twenty years. In fact since the very inception of THRUSH. I have been in charge of the research project which has enj
oyed our number one priority all those years. Due to the complex nature of the program, I have also been forced to labor in obscurity. But it won’t be long now, Mr. Solo, until all the world knows Dohm and his work.”
And the little man covered his prune mouth, and tittered.
There was no humor in the bulging brown eyes. Those eyes focused on Napoleon Solo with an amusement that was all the more horrible because of its inherent cruelty.
Dohm contained his laughter, went on: “Like your charming female associate before you, you have blundered into the heart of this operation just as it is about to bear fruit, and so---“
Solo interrupted: “You’ve got Sabrina Slayton here?”
“Mercy, no!” Dohm replied. Not here, Mr. Solo. She and that insensate lump of pork, that dreadful taxi person, are now---ah, but we mustn’t disclose too much. We must tease you a little longer. We must let the fear and anxiety work and work on your imagination---“
Dohm demonstrated what he meant by twisting his yellow fingers together into a complex knot which he suddenly broke apart.
“---until your mind reels and boggles at my success! I am the one who has to defend the largest THRUSH budget. It is I who has had to plead for its continuance year after year. But at last, SLAV is a reality.”
Eyebrow lifting, Solo repeated, “Slav?”
“All capital letters. The THRUSH Strategic and Logistics Aerial Vehicle. I named it as a tribute to my European origins.”
“I thought maybe you came out of a test-tube somewhere.”
“You crude ruffian!” Dohm shrieked, lifting himself to tiptoes and drawing his hand back. At the last moment he contained his anger, didn’t strike. “Ah, but I must realize that your cheap witticisms are the outpourings of desperation. You have seen SLAV in operation, haven’t you? You realize that its tremendous speed and mobility will give us an advantage which U.N.C.L.E. cannot overcome.”
“Slav is the flying saucer.”
Dohm wiped his nose, sniggered. “Yes, that’s the name some idiot reporter in the penny press conceived years ago when someone sighted one of our early flight-test models. I must admit that we did take advantage of the term. We equipped and operated this establishment, a quite legal and profitable toy manufacturing concern, for the purpose of manufacturing of little red, green and purple herrings. Dohm strolled to the sill. He picked up the mechanical space creature. “Actually, they come in thirteen different sizes and colors. Several deluded persons have actually reported conversations with them, though of course they have no speech mechanisms. It’s been rather galling to see these saucer addicts publish books on the subject, I don’t mind telling you. They’ve profited from our technology. But we still get a chuckle whenever some sub-normal individual reports a conversation with a Venusian.”
“Then most of the saucer sightings over the years have been sightings of your test models?”
“All the sightings, Mr. Solo. Every last one. Our computers confirm it.” With a wistful little shrug, Dohm let the red metal doll fall. It crashed and shattered on the tiles. “Now the years of camouflage are at an end. SLAV has received green light clearance to proceed to its final phase. We no longer need the Cosmo toy works nor its products.”As a matter of fact, when you were brought in from the Westchester hangar site, which has now been destroyed, we were preparing to remove all our records from here and depart. Every SLAV test site and hangar facility world-wide is being closed down, save for our central headquarters.” Dohm’s brown eyes shoe with a moist film as he added, “The overture is concluded, Mr. Solo. The play itself begins.”
Napoleon Solo wouldn’t have believed a word this egg-headed little madman said if he hadn’t seen the saucer craft for himself. In the next hours and days, U.N.C.L.E. might very well face its most awesome challenge.
Solo didn’t know whether Illya Kuryakin was alive or dead. Sabrina and the hackie Jackie might be alive, but they would be of little help. Solo realized coldly that stopping THRUSH, if they could be stopped now at all, was entirely up to him.
Cautiously he asked, “What are you going to do with me, Dohm?”
“Rest assured we are not going to leave you here. As soon as we depart, this site will be burned to the ground. I believe we shall take you along and---“
A flurry of activity in the hallway. A burly technologist in a white coverall like Dohm’s stuck his head in.
“The last of the crates is aboard, sir.”
Dohm spun around on one tiny heel to face the door. “All of the microfilm too?”
“Yes sir. Miss Brocade is powered up and ready for flight.”
“Dismiss the guards who will be leaving the area by conventional routes. Alert the gate men to check the departing guards. All uniforms and weapons must be left behind first.”
Dohm seized Solo’s arm with small fingers that were surprisingly strong. “You will come with me, Mr. Solo. I want you to see first hand why my name will be enshrined in all the textbooks one day. The Wright brothers? Pfui! When we control the capitals of the world---and it won’t be long!---official histories will name Dohm as the greatest aero dynamical genius in history. Poor U.N.C.L.E. I do feel rather sorry for your team of lackwits. There is nothing in the world that can stop me, or SLAV, or THRUSH.”
Dohm turned smartly and exited into the corridor, the taps on the heels of his elevator shoes clicking in brisk rhythm.
The pair of guards moved in on either side of Solo. They hustled him down the hall past empty offices and into a rickety elevator. Dohm held the door. The cage rose slowly. They stepped out into the rainy darkness of the roof. Directly ahead, legs supporting it, hatchway open and staircase telescoped down to ground level, was the huge, golden-pink saucer craft.
A thick-meshed camouflage netting was propped up on poles above it. The net shielded the saucer from overhead observation.
“Please hurry along, Solo,” Dohm said at the stairs.
Solo thought briefly about turning on them, attacking. It would be a relatively worthless gesture at this point. He’d do better to conserve his strength, keep his wits alert. He’d try to move effectively if and when he reached the central headquarters Dohm mentioned.
Solo climbed the stairs. They were made of smoothly turned aluminum. He ducked his head at the hatch and stepped into a round, dome-ceilinged control chamber whose circular wall was completely covered with display panels, sequencing lights and TV screens.
Two black-leather bucket seats were bolted to the floor in front of a main control board.
From one of these seats, a girl looked around. Her sensuous face quickly changed from cold, professional alertness to lazy delight.
“Is this the legendary Napoleon Solo?” she said. “He does cut a dashing figure.’
“Keep your mind on the takeoff,” Dohm snapped.
Two of the guards had come aboard. They shoved Solo toward three other seat-buckets behind the main control area. Solo sank down in one. A guard pointed to the shoulder-type safety belts. Solo buckled both belts across his chest without protest. The guards seated themselves on either side, buckling themselves in. Dohm made a final survey of the chamber.
Solo noticed the girl watching him again. He could see her face in an angled mirror above the control board. She was quite pretty, in a hot-eyed, full-lipped way. She wore a single softly glowing pearl in her pierce left earlobe.
And the glimpse Solo had gotten of her splendid figure tightly sheathed in a white plastic flight suit was intriguing. In other circumstances her presence would have raised his romantic temperature several degrees.
Dohm noticed Solo’s interest, said rather snappishly:
“I neglected to introduce my assistant, Miss Brocade. This is Mr. Napoleon Solo.”
“Charmed,” Solo grinned. Dohm scowled.
“Mr. Solo is reputed to be quite the ladies’ man,” Brocade said. Her voice was like honey. Again she threw him a challenging glance via the mirror. One of the guards seated beside Napoleon Solo gave a crude snicker.<
br />
Brocade’s eyes glittered angrily in the mirror. The guard went white.”Your loyalty is to me and to THRUSH!” Dohm exclaimed to the girl as he buckled himself into his control chair. “Remember, Brocade, you are property. Pretty and intelligent, yes---but property nonetheless.”
“Dohm dear,” she bit back, “you never allow me to forget that.”
“We are wasting time,” the scientist said. The top of his misshapen skull projected above the back of his chair. In the interplay of flickering lights along the circular walls, the frantically pulsing blood vessel just under his skin stood out like a pulsing snake. “Begin the sequence.”
Dohm threw levers, flipped switches. Three oversized TV monitors in front of the control chairs lit up. One showed the toy factory roof. Another displayed an infra-red night panorama of the surrounding area. The third was a gridded radar display with a large silvery dollop of light in the center.
Brocade gave Napoleon Solo a last glance in the mirror and began working switches and levers in tandem with Dohm. On the left-hand TV screen Solo saw the camouflage net above them peel back. A strange, whining roar filled the control room as the hatchway slid shut.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Solo said, “where are we going?”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Dohm replied. “To our central headquarters. The top-secret factory where we are just completing assembly of twenty-three SLAVs similar to this.”
“You have only two dozen?” Solo sounded surprised.
“Do you think we will need more to move our forces anywhere in the world and execute our master attack plan? Mr. Solo, this SLAV flies at a speed of fourteen thousand miles per hour. Can anything in the world stand against that, especially when the other twenty-three craft will be equipped with nuclear-powered cannon which this model does not carry? I doubt it. Still, you may judge for yourself. You will see our little armada. That’s why I have brought you along. To show it to you before I kill you.”
Brocade murmured: “Kill him? What a pity.”
The Dolls of Death Affair Page 6
