The Light-Kill Affair Read online

  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, f
ollowing 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.

  He drove the shears into the soft green texture of the constricting limb. Sap spurted out, sap that was pouring pinkly, almost like very anemic human blood.

  ACT III—INCIDENT OF THE KILLER PLANTS

  DR. IVEY NESBITT strode along the corridor and entered his office. Neither side of his face betrayed any emotion at seeing that Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo were gone.

  He was immediately followed by his white-smocked assistant, a sullen, unsmiling man clearly of Indian ancestry.

  At a short distance behind the assistant, two staring-eyed guards came, half-dragging Bikini Connors.

  They led her into the office, deposited her in the chair in which Illya had sat. They stood at attention on each side of her then, gazing emptily ahead.

  "Please, Dr. Nesbitt," Bikini begged. "Where is my father?"

  At his desk, the tall scientist ignored her. He didn't look her way or appear to have heard her voice.

  He glanced at the guards testily, as he might have gazed once at recalcitrant students in his class rooms. "What is the meaning of deserting your posts, letting our two prisoners run free?"

  "Professor," the assistant said gently, "they don't hear you. Even if they do, they are unmoved by criticism or praise."

  The doctor waved his arm. "Of course. One forgets one is dealing here with mindless animals, eh, Joe?"

  "It's safest that way, Doctor," was all the Indian assistant said.

  Nesbitt nodded, dismissing the subject.

  Bikini spoke to him again, but it was as if he could not be reached by anyone from the outside world, from his past.

  He turned his back, went to a bank of closed-circuit television screens. All glittered blackly, powered, waiting to be activated.

  Nesbitt pressed buttons, opening the channel for each screen in turn, the walled yard, smaller labs, shipping areas, the hothouses, the corridors.

  A hothouse camera swung across the long arena of tropical growth. Catching his breath, Nesbitt pressed a button, holding the camera in its position.

  It was fixed on Solo, Kuryakin and a crushed body crumpled on the hothouse floor. The body the doctor ignored as if it did not exist for him, had never existed.

  For a few moments, almost as if entranced by what he saw, Nesbitt watched Solo slashing at the huge arm of the writhing plant.

  But as Napoleon Solo hacked the limb loose, the bloody sap spurting and oozing everywhere, Nesbitt's face darkened.

  He pressed a button, spoke into a microphone at his side. Intercoms throughout the laboratory carried his voice. "There are two intruders in Hothouse One. Bring them to me."

  Nesbitt's voice rattled through the humid greenhouse as Solo pulled Illya Kuryakin from the grasping tentacles of the plant.

  For one moment Illya stared down in horror at Sam Connor's crushed body, and thought, "But for the grace of God and Solo using pruning shears, that could be me—"

  All doors of the hothouse were thrust open and armed guards appeared in each of them.

  Illya and Solo stepped in close to the doors as they were thrust open near them. With all their strength they slammed the doors shut behind the guards.

  As the robot-men turned, both Illya and Solo lunged at them, thrusting them stumbling over Connor's body.

  The men threw their arms up as they went sprawling into the tangled green plants.

  Obviously following all this on his closed-circuit TV, Nesbitt shouted, his voice crackling over the intercom: "Door Six, Hot house One. Stop those men."

  But Illya and Solo were already going out of the door. Solo glanced back, watching the two guards trying to fight free of the grasping limbs, the rustling growing to a keening pitch.

  For that instant the incredibly long corridor was empty. It was brightly lighted with what seemed half a hundred doors along it.

  Solo waved his arm in the direction of the distant white-doored exit.

  They ran together.

  Nesbitt's laughter sounded chilled and sardonic from the intercom speakers around them. It was nightmarish, as if laughter battered them from everywhere.

  "He's watching us on TV," Illya gasped.

  "Run," Solo said. He stayed close to the wall, sprinting toward that white-doored exit which seemed to recede the way it might in a bad dream.

  "Run faster, gentlemen." Nesbitt's voice mocked them. "A little exercise, and then I shall stop you as I wish."

  "Stay close to the wall," Solo warned Illya.

  Illya nodded and sidestepped, but he was already too late.

  They both heard the rising hiss. It was as if Illya had run into an invisible wall. The beam struck him and he stopped running, slowing, taking long steps and then halting as if paralyzed.

  Solo leaped into the inset door nearest him as the hiss rose, approaching like an angry wasp.

  The beam lashed at him and Solo put all his weight against the door, thrusting his way into it
.

  He toppled into a brightly lighted room and the door swung shut behind him.

  He landed hard on his knees, and lifted his head slowly at the old chattering sound that over whelmed him.

  His eyes widened at the sight of the set faces, the empty eyes, the meaningless chatter. The people sat at long tables suspended from the ceiling. They didn't look at each other, or at anything. They chattered, but it was less meaningful than squealing monkey noises in a tree.

  Solo got to his feet, repelled and shaken by the sight of these mindless creatures.

  He shook his head, retreated toward the door.

  Faces turned his way, but not one pair of eyes actually focused on him. The eyes were like milky marbles and light reflected from them.

  Solo wheeled around and grabbed at the door. Again there was no inside handle, and the door was locked securely.

  Solo stared around helplessly. There was no other exit from this dormitory of the mindless. The only windows were set high in the walls.

  Solo sagged against the door. The chattering went on, but he no longer listened.

  From the intercom, Dr. Nesbitt's voice mocked him. "I expected you and Mr. Kuryakin to join our mindless ones eventually, Mr. Solo, but not so quickly. What's wrong, my dear fellow? You don't look overjoyed."

  Exhaling heavily, Solo sagged against the barred door.

  The voices rose chattering, excited, wildly agitated by the sound of the doctor's voice on the intercom.

  Napoleon Solo did not look at them.

  TWO

  SOLO FELT the door shiver. He recognized the sound: an electric impulse had activated the lock. He stepped away and the padded door was shoved open.

  Two expressionless guards stepped into the room. They were armed with a gun that had a base like a small cannon, but which was obviously aluminum light. The barrel of the gun tapered to the mouth, which suddenly lighted up.

  Solo toppled back, thinking they had subdued him with a portable light gun.

  The chattering raged, but none of the people at the tables moved. The guards lifted Napoleon Solo, half-carrying him through the corridor toward Nesbitt's office.