The Stolen Spaceman Affair Read online

  "That man really meant it when he said that you were expendable," April said.

  The other girl's lips tightened. She hesitated and then said, "You're wasting your time if you think you can make a deal with me."

  ''I'm not asking you to betray THRUSH," April Dancer said. "I've been around. I know what happens to agents who give away THRUSH secrets. But---"

  "But, what?" the other girl asked suspiciously.

  "I also know what happens to THRUSH agents who fail on important jobs," April said.

  The other woman swallowed hard.

  "And you've failed twice," April went on. "Once with me, which led to the death of what I suspect is an important THRUSH man. And again when those spaceman-stealers attacked you. You were the agent I believe that they tried to kill, weren't you?"

  When the THRUSH girl did not reply, April Dancer added, "All I have to do is take you to police headquarters and make a check. You see now the difference between our organizations. I can get police assistance. You cannot."

  The girl took a deep breath. "Yes," she said in a low voice. "I was the one the men from Project X tried to kill. They were the same ones who tried to kill you and the U.N.C.L.E. agent a short time later."

  "Now," April said briskly, "we are getting somewhere. U.N.C.L.E. does not shoot its agents when they fail as THRUSH does. But we get let out. I like this job. I can't afford to fall down on this---"

  April hesitated and decided to bluff by using the name the girl from THRUSH dropped. "On this Project X thing," she added, "perhaps we could help each other to our mutual advantage."

  The girl from THRUSH bit her lower lip nervously. She took a deep breath and said, "I can't trust you."

  "I certainly am not fool enough to trust you," April said decisively. "We don't have to trust each other. We can exchange information that will help either or both of us to break Project X. Then may the best girl win!"

  "What do you know about Project X?" the girl asked.

  "Probably not any more than you do," April countered. "However, my partner, Mark Slate, is in New York being briefed on the very latest developments."

  "At least your people tell you enough to do your job," the blonde said bitterly. "I know too little."

  "Two of your people were killed last night," April said. "Are you going to take a chance now and be the third?"

  "Where can we talk?" the girl said.

  "Can you afford to come to my hotel room?" April asked.

  "I think so. After all, they know I'm your prisoner."

  "They are watching us?"

  "Probably."

  April Dancer nodded. She did not believe it. But she did not care to contradict her prisoner.

  "Okay," April said. "Come along with me."

  The two girls walked across the lobby, presenting a picture that turned every male eye in the place. They took the elevator to the third floor and walked down the hall to April's room. The hall boy, at his desk by the elevator, spoke to them as they went by.

  At April's door, the girl from U.N.C.L.E. took the key from her purse, but did not put it in the lock "Did that hall boy seem frightened to you?" she asked THRUSH girl in a low voice.

  "I can't tell anything about these Orientals," the blonde said nervously. "You think there's an ambush---?"

  "Possibly," April said. "Maybe I'm being overly jumpy, but I'm alive today because I'm cautious."

  She turned and motioned to the hall boy. His face remained passive, but his Adam's apple jerked as he swallowed. He got up reluctantly. When he joined them, April said in a low voice: "Open the door for me."

  She held out the key to him. He took a quick step backward. Fright showing on his moon- face.

  April Dancer snapped open her bag, pulling out a tiny automatic. The hall boy paled and started to tremble.

  "Missy---" he began.

  "Is there an empty room on this floor?" April cut in.

  He nodded. His eyes watered. He seemed on the verge of bursting into tears. An hysterical servant was the last annoyance April wanted at that moment.

  "Take us there," she commanded.

  He swallowed again. His head dropped.

  "Take us there!" April snapped,

  "Yes, Missy’" he said in a strangled voice.

  He shuffled down three doors and shoved a house key in the lock. He stood back for the girls to enter.

  "You first," April said coldly.

  He shuffled into the room. The two girls followed. April held the tiny automatic in one hand and had the pellet gun in her purse clasp ready where she could fire it with the other.

  The room, the sitting room for a suite, was empty.

  April reached in her handbag, taking out a tiny flesh-colored ear plug which was in reality an ingenious product of the U.N.C.L.E. laboratories. It gave a curious hum if any electronic listening devices were in the locality.

  Satisfied that the place was not bugged, April skirted the room. Convinced that the place really was empty, she turned back to the hall boy.

  He stood in the middle of the room, his head bowed, trembling in dejected misery.

  April Dancer perched herself on the arm of an overstuffed chair, where she could keep both the Chinaman and the girl from THRUSH under surveillance. Despite her sincere offer to work with the THRUSH woman against the men from Project X, she knew better than to trust the blonde.

  "What is in my room?" she asked the house boy.

  He swallowed hard and whispered in broken English that some men whom he did not know rigged up a booby trap. When the door was opened a revolver with a silencer on it would fire a bullet into anyone in the doorway.

  "How much did they pay you to let them do this?" April Dancer asked.

  In a low whisper the man said, "They paid the greatest price a man can ask for. They paid me with my life, for they said they would kill me if I refused to let them sneak up on my floor."

  "What did they look like?" April asked.

  The man described them minutely. The distinguishing features were a scar on one man's cheek and a mole on the other's chin. They were of foreign extraction. He didn't know the race.

  "Does that sound like any of your people?" April asked the THRUSH girl.

  The blonde shook her head. "The scar sounds like the Project X man who tried to kill me," she said.

  "It looks like our collaboration begins right here," April Dancer said. "If we can pin a murder attempt on the X-men, we can take them out of circulation." She pointed her automatic at the THRUSH girl. "Tell me what you know. How many X-men did you see?"

  "I don't know how many there are," the blonde said, frightened now. "All I really know for sure is that this American astronaut was brought down somewhere in Khmerrania by using a fake punch card smuggled in to the computers that calculated his descent angle. No one knows for sure where he landed."

  "Not even the Project X-men?" April asked.

  The blonde shook her head. "If they knew, they would pick up the space man and there would be no need to waste time trying to get THRUSH and U.N.C.L.E. out of the way. No, they don't know."

  April Dancer hesitated. She figured she could pretend to know a lot more. But at the same time April had to ask questions.

  "It was too bad, wasn't it?" she said.

  The other girl bit at the bait April fed her. "Wasn't it, though," she said bitterly. "If that damned typhoon had not come right at the wrong moment and disrupted all our tracking devices, we would have had him pinpointed. We figured the Khmerranians would get him first for they know their jungles so well. We don't."

  "Then you intended to steal him from the Khmerranians before they could deliver the astronaut to the Project X team?" April said.

  "Something like that," the blonde said evasively.

  April let it pass. "Do you know where the X team comes from?"

  The blonde looked at April Dancer. "I know they are employed by a South American dictator who hopes the secret of the cosmic ray condensers will make him ruler of the world, but I
don't know which country is involved."

  April Dancer now turned to the man. "I will not report you to the police if you will do what I tell you. I want you to trap these men. You help me and you will find I am more generous than these thieves and killers." She put her gun in her bag and took out a twenty dollar American bill. It was a fortune to a laboring Chinese in refugee jammed Hong Kong.

  The hall boy reached for it eagerly. But his reach became a lunge. April Dancer realized too late that he had tricked her. He was no innocent hall boy. He moved like lightning and caught her out stretched hand and slung her brutally back against the girl from THRUSH.

  Both young women were thrown on the floor. The purse containing the deadly pellet gun was knocked out of April's hand. She twisted frantically trying to snatch it back.

  Before she could, April found herself looking into the muzzle of a deadly little gun that suddenly materialized in the man's hand.

  "Make the slightest move and I'll kill you both!" he said.

  His voice was no longer shaking. He straightened up dropping his cringing manner so that he looked ten years younger than he had a moment before. The broken English accent was gone. He spoke English with the slightest Spanish accent.

  "Get up!" he snapped. "And now move back against that wall. A little closer together, please. I want both of you in my sight."

  Still covering the two young women, he stepped over to a telephone on an end table across the room. He dialed jerkily, eyeing the girls. His number answered almost immediately.

  "Get me Numero Cinco!" he said harshly. While he waited for his party to come to the phone, he smiled across at the two girls.

  "For two organizations as famous as U.N.C.L.E. and THRUSH, I am surprised to find such fools," he said contemptuously. "I am glad that I stayed myself after I set the booby trap in your room. Now I will get the credit for your capture!"

  He started to say something else, but someone on the other end of the line started to talk.

  The THRUSH girl was trembling slightly. April had a better grip on herself, but she was no less concerned about the desperateness of their situation. This man was a killer. It showed in his soulless eyes.

  April's purse with the pellet gun and her protective devices still lay on the rug, where it slid when knocked from her hand. She measured the distance with her eyes. It was too far away to risk a break. Their captor still had his gun pointed straight at them.

  "Yes?" he said into the phone.

  "Number Five? This is Twelve. The girl from U.N.C.L.E. was suspicious. She did not enter the room, but I was too clever for her! She fell into my trap!"

  He hesitated a moment, listening to the voice at the other end of the line. Then he smiled, a cruel twist of his thin lips.

  "Yes! I have her here as my captive . . . Yes, thank you, Excellency! You are very kind to say so. I only do my humble best. But there is more. I have captured the girl from THRUSH as well!"

  "Thank you! Thank you, Excellency!" he went on. "You are too kind. Yes! What shall I do with them? I can take them out of here in laundry baskets. Then with weights on their legs, their bodies will not float to the surface of the bay until our matter is completed and we have gone!"

  He hesitated. A slight shadow flitted across his evil face. April felt a glimmer of hope. As long as they stayed alive there was always a chance! Then she saw the Project X spy smile again.

  "Yes, of course, Excellency!" he said. "That is very true. The sharks are quite ravenous in that area! There will then never be any bodies to float and cause future trouble. You think of everything, Excellency!"

  He raised his eyes over the phone and smiled at his captives. It was the smile a tiger gives a deer just before he springs.

  FIVE

  THE KEY TO DEATH

  Back in the office of Alexander Waverly at U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, the Operations chief and Mark Slate gave each other a stricken look.

  Over the intercom, Randy Kovacs' excited voice repeated: "Yes, sir! She is dead! The report just came in from Mr. Shayer, who was---"

  "Shayer! Wait! Who are you talking about?" Waverly demanded. "You didn't mean April Dancer is dead?"

  "Oh, no, sir!" Kovacs said has hastily. "I mean the girl you suspected of faking the punch card for the computer that dropped the astronaut in Khmerrania. You'll recall that Mr. Shayer is the CIA under cover man working on the case too."

  "How did it happen?" Waverly demanded, his face grim. "We had six people watching her!"

  "Someone set the hotel on fire!"

  Randy said. "There was all kinds of confusion. Nobody could get down the hall to her room. She burned up!"

  "Has the body been recovered?" Waverly asked.

  "Yes, sir," Randy said. "It was burned to a crisp, but they know it is she because it is her room and no one saw her leave."

  "That proves nothing!" Waverly said. "We cannot afford to assume anything. Have our pathological laboratory assist the police in the autopsy. I have a feeling that she is not dead at all. We have been tricked. Call me just as soon as there is any report of any kind. I don't care how trivial. I want every fact!"

  "Yes, sir," Randy said. "I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions. I--"

  "Never mind that," the U.N.C.L.E. chief said. "Get moving!"

  "Mr. Waverly, I---" Slate began.

  “One moment, please," Waverly said. "I am convinced that woman was a very important member of an international spy ring. I cannot believe she is dead."

  He punched an orange button on his control console. "Get me Napoleon Solo!" he said to the Communications section.

  "This woman was not picked up because we needed her free in hope that other members of the ring would contact her. This would give us a lead to the gang."

  "Do we know where the direction for this is coming from?" Slate asked.

  "No!" Waverly said. "It appears to be an attempt by a South American dictator to expand his tyranny world-wide. We have two suspects, but have not been able to narrow them down."

  "I think I can guess," Mark Slate said.

  "Then you know that either of these men is cruel enough to loose this terrible weapon if the world does not give in to his demands."

  "Yes!" Mark Slate said, his mind filled with the horror of what might happen. “I was in one of their capitals when the dictator took over. He had over twenty thousand people slaughtered to remove any opposition."

  "And he would slaughter twenty million in the world to make his total dictatorship safe if he was successful in blackmailing his way to earth's supremacy."

  "But can he successfully operate the death ray condensers?” Slate asked. "Can't we destroy them?"

  "They have already been destroyed by telemetered destruct commands from the earth," Waverly said gently. "But this astronaut knows all the secrets. He had to in order to do his work up there. Any competent scientist can take this man's knowledge and reconstruct these damnable machines, including the means of putting them in orbit!"

  Before Slate could say anything, Waverly's call to Napoleon Solo was completed. "Go ahead, Mr. Waverly," the chief U.N.C.L.E. enforcement officer said from South America.

  Waverly quickly sketched for Napoleon Solo the situation in the Project X affair. "Is it possible for you and Mr. Kuryakin to drop your investigation there? I badly need you to follow up on this supposedly dead girl. I do not believe she died in that fire."

  "I'm sure one of us could come," Solo said slowly. "We are running on to something big here. I was just getting ready to report to you. We got a Project X member under a truth serum injection."

  "What did you find out?" Waverly asked eagerly.

  "It is worse than we thought, sir," Solo said. "It is true that the matter was set up by the dictator, but the real brains behind Project X are just using him to foot the bills. He will be shoved aside. The real directors are convinced that they cannot blackmail their way to power. They want decisive action."

  "Were you able to find out what their plan is?" Waverly asked.
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  "They intend to strike without warning. The cosmic death ray will be focused on every major world capital. London, New Delhi, Paris, Moscow, Washington, Berlin, Vienna and Rome will be destroyed in the opening phase."

  "This is terrible, Mr. Solo," Waverly said, almost shaken in spite of his iron control.

  "There is worse to come," Solo's sober voice said. "On the next pass, when the satellites are in spot position again, they intend to blast every state capital in the United States, and all the provincial capitals in Europe and Asia. They plan to completely disrupt all authority."

  "I see," Waverly said. "I knew we faced a terrible danger, but I did not know how bad it was."

  "Kuryakin and I are trying to get at the root of the thing here," Solo said.

  "Then you had better stay there," Waverly said slowly. "Mr. Slate will return to Hong Kong. Miss Dancer has disappeared and we don't yet know what that means. So we had better bring Mr. Kuryakin here to follow upon the death or disappearance of this punch card girl. She is a definite lead. How much time do we have?"

  "Our reluctant informer says these men can have Project X in operation within five days after they secure the astronaut."

  "Impossible!" Waverly said. Mark Slate knew his chief was profoundly disturbed.

  "No, sir," Solo said. "Apparently these men have everything ready to go. They were working on a similar system themselves. You remember the Russians are also. That's why the U.S. arranged this project to test it."

  "That's true," Waverly said. "They were stymied by a fundamental principle," Solo went on. "Once they get that, then they can adjust their now unworkable system. They estimate it will take only a week."

  "Dreadful!" Waverly said. "It means we must move faster."

  After breaking the circuit to Napoleon Solo in South America, Waverly turned back to Mark Slate.

  "Well, that is it, Mr. Slate," he said. "You must return to Hong Kong at once. That is the gathering point for the vultures waiting to pounce on this unfortunate spaceman. They are all waiting for some clue where to search and then they will all be off in a rush."

  "And in the meantime, just to keep from getting bored, they are eliminating each other," Slate said,