"You disappoint me. I had such high regard for your taste. Tell me, if I'm not your type, why do you follow me around?"
She winced, looked helplessly both ways along the sun-stricken street. "Maybe you just happen to go all the same places I must go."
"An interesting theory. Maybe you can tell me why you want to go all these places where I so inconveniently show up—just ahead of you."
"Need I remind you, Mr. Solo? It's a free country. I can go where I like?"
He continued to smile, coldly. "And let me remind you. Freedom and life are being threatened here. It's no game. I won't play by any rules that will please you. I might even get rough. Now, shall we try again? What are you doing here?"
"Because I heard that one thousand of Mr. Maynard's cattle disappeared without a trace."
"Are you interested in cattle? Or disappearances?"
Mabel's head tilted slightly. "Like everyone else, I heard that two huge trains also disappeared without a trace."
Solo stopped smiling. He shook his head, puzzled. "And that's why you came here?"
She met his gave levelly. "Doesn't the name Finnish mean anything to you, Mr. Solo?"
Solo frowned, filtering the name through his mind. There was the faintest stirring of recall. He shook his head. "Should it?"
"Leonard Finnish," she said. "He was a geologist known all over the world. He was my grandfather. He disappeared without leaving a trace."
"On one of those trains?"
She shook her head. "My grandfather disappeared five years ago."
"Here in the Sawtooth mountains?"
"No. Grandfather vanished while on a geology expedition in Death Valley, in California."
Solo nodded, remembering. "Yes. He was exploring some subterranean caverns in Death Valley, but that's fifteen hundred miles from here."
"Yes. And five years ago. Still, he did vanish without a trace. Just as the cattle and the trains disappeared. Is it so wild that I'd look for my grandfather here—try to learn all I can about these disappearances? You're here. Yet those trains disappeared in Indiana, didn't they, Mr. Solo?"
Solo smiled, released her arm. "Checkmate."
SIX
Solo set up the polygraph machine in Maynard's ranch house den. He was checking it out when the door was thrown open and Maynard burst into the room.
The rancher's sun-tanned face was gray. His eyes were distended. He said, "Solo. The bunkhouse. You better come. Quick."
Maynard turned on his heel and Solo followed. The few dude ranchers remaining on the place eyed them silently, coldly as they passed. These people stood up, tense, watchful.
They found the same chilled reception at the bunkhouse. The ranch hands were taut, eyes bleak and troubled.
Maynard thrust open the bunkhouse door and Solo followed him inside it.
Inside the room, Solo slowed, stopped, staring at the men on the bunks.
"Pete and Marty," Maynard said. "They got violently ill last night. Mabel Finnish drove into Cripple Bend to fetch Doc Cullin, but I don't think she'll make it."
Maynard was right. Marty died before Doc Cullin arrived, and there was nothing the medic could do to save Pete.
Maynard caught the doctor's arm. "Why? What caused them to die like that, Doc?"
Cullin shook his head. "I don't know, Carlos. There are no physical signs of any kind. We'll just have to wait for the autopsy."
That evening Solo was working on his daily report when there was a knock at his door in the upstairs of the ranch house. He said, "Come in."
The door opened and Doctor Cullin entered. "Maynard said I should give you the results of the autopsy report, Mr. Solo. Autopsy shows the presence of a nerve gas in the lungs of both men. Death was caused by strangulation; that nerve gas had been in them for some days slowly choking them."
Solo gazed at the doctor, then stared beyond him at Mabel Finnish, standing gray-faced in his doorway.
ACT II: INCIDENT OF THE MISSING CASTLE
The train hurtled downward into the belly of the earth. The stifling darkness shrouded the car where Illya braced himself against the plunging descent.
Breathing was difficult, movement almost impossible. It seemed to Illya as the train lowered that his body became heavier with increased tug of gravity.
Suddenly there was the creaking of giant chains and winches. The train trembled as the huge lift settled into a brilliantly illumined cavern and came to rest.
Illya ran to the windows. Beyond the train, fluorescent lighting made the high-domed caverns brighter than sunlight. Yet Illya knew they were miles beneath the surface of the earth.
He checked the small sender attached to his lapel. Its transistors were in perfect order, its continual flow of bleeps flared unchecked—into the solid rock surrounding him. The small instrument was useless.
From outside the sealed car Illya heard the sounds of men running, shouting.
He wheeled around from the windows. From his jacket he took the components of his machine pistol, working swiftly. He tried to force his fingers to react more swiftly, but there was a languid heaviness to all his movements.
He set the barrel of the pistol into its stock, screwing it into place. But even as he worked he knew he would not work swiftly enough.
There was a whispered sound, as if some magnetic seal had been released. Doors at each end of the custom-built car swung open, suddenly freed.
The gush of machine-driven air filled the car. Illya straightened, feeling unexplained panic.
He took a backward step as the first warmth rushed over him. It enveloped him like some invisible cloak, striking him down to his knees as if it were a physical blow.
Stunned, Illya twisted half around under the unseen impact. He caught at a seat, but fell to his knees. The machine pistol was driven from his grasp, hurled to the floor some feet from him.
Striking on his knees, Illya stared at the gun, concentrating upon it, scrambling toward it.
"He's here! Take him!"
Illya's head jerked up. Men rushed into the car through the opened doors. The gusts of heated gas seemed to have ebbed.
Staring at the men rushing toward him, Illya grasped out for the machine pistol. In horror he saw his hand strike the gun and lie helpless upon it.
Lift it. Pick it up. Lift it. His mind sent frantic messages to his hand, but his fingers remained stiff, straight.
He could not close them.
Helplessly, sprawled like a bug on the car flooring, Illya stared upward incredulously at the men surrounding him.
His eyes widened. These men looked as if they were like him—or once had been. But all had undergone some strange metamorphosis down here. They were alike in body, with the roundness of moles or fat underground rats. They moved with their heads bent forward, peering through thick-lensed glasses as if life below surface was steadily destroying their sense of sight. Most appalling of all was the doughy pallor of their faces, their bodies—beings who lived shut away from the memory of sunlight.
Illya struggled frantically on the flooring. He managed to lift his weighted, slowly-responding body to his knees. But he could rise no further.
Illya hung there, supported on leaden arms, head drooping between his shoulders. He panted through parted lips, aware suddenly that he was breathing something that was not oxygen—this warm gas was slowly paralyzing his muscles and his body.
He tried to speak, tried to cry out.
It was like a nightmare. He was unable to make a sound.