But Bauer wasn't happy with the situation.
"Do not touch the power-down control, Wolfgang! If you value your life, do not—"
"Wolfgang—" Illya said harshly.
Wolfgang apparently had a different view of his life's worth. There came the solid ka-thunk of a large control being slammed home. At once the power hum of the dynamo receded. The bluish light began to fade.
The marrow-hurting pain in Solo's bones waned. In a moment, after a flurry of footfalls, Illya's face appeared just above his, white, anxious. A knife blade flickered. Illya slashed at the straps. Seconds later Solo sat up and stretched his creaking muscles.
He wasted no words of thanks. They were in a serious situation and he had to move fast. Solo's eyes swept the chamber.
Dr. Bauer and his technicians were grouped around the control-board consoles, tense with fear. On the low balcony other THRUSH lab men had frozen by their instruments.
Near wide open double doors leading to a stainless steel corridor, Helene Bauer was just picking herself up. She shook her head groggily.
"I am not quite certain as to what is happening here, Napoleon," Illya whispered.
Dr. Bauer stared hatefully at the pistol in Illya's fist. "You can't escape."
"That remains to be seen, sir." From the corner of his mouth, Illya hissed at his friend, "I had to hit the girl when she screamed. If we reach her before she recovers, we can use her as I used her to get in here—for cover."
Solo nodded. He pointed overhead at the stainless steel ball. "First we've got to wreck that thing. It's Bauer's ray for making supermen—"
Illya grasped the situation instantly. He raised the pistol over his head. "Watch them, Napoleon. Here's my knife. Take it." With his gun turned toward the stainless steel ball he squinted up the muzzle over the sight—
Klaus Bauer let out another hysterical scream of rage and flung himself forward. Solo darted in to block the man's charge with his body so that Illya could get off his shot.
The shot never came.
Something flickered in the corner of Solo's eye. Bauer crashed into him, flailing and digging at Solo's face with savage fingernails. Illya heard noises, whirled around, precisely at the instant when an entire section of concrete block wall on the balcony shot upward to reveal Vanessa Robin and Felix Klaanger charging down a slanting corridor into the chamber with THRUSH troops pounding at their heels.
ACT FOUR — Pick a Rock, Any Rock—Or Die
ONE
Vanessa Robin's slanted green eyes were raging as she flung up a rapid-fire pistol and began to blaze away. Solo and Illya threw themselves to the concrete. Streaks of white fire ate towards them, chewing holes in the padding of the big table.
"Crawl toward the right," Solo said. "They'll fan out all around us in a couple of seconds. We'll be caught if we don't reach that door soon—"
Illya nodded, cheeks chalk-white as he took aim and fired. A THRUSH soldier climbing down over the balcony rail jerked his arms straight up in the air and toppled. Blood sprouted from a bullet hole in the side of his neck.
"Deploy, deploy!" Felix Klaanger bawled, gesturing with a rifle. "Encircle them, you idiots!"
Klaanger was crouching behind a concrete support post at the balcony's edge. Vanessa was right beside him. Her face was vengeful, but Klaanger's was even worse, a nightmare face with its gigantic wreck of a nose. Illya scrambled to his feet alongside Solo and tried a shot. Klaanger's bulbous, lemon-shaped head disappeared, unscathed.
The entire laboratory was now a pandemonium of shots, curses in German, shrieked orders and counter-orders. Solo and Illya raced full-tilt for the doors through which Helene Bauer had led Illya only moments ago. Helene too was crouching on the balcony, seeking cover from the deadly crossfire. The U.N.C.L.E. agents zigzagged through the maze of control consoles, ducking, bending, twisting—
Solo felt a slug pluck his left sleeve. Another chunked against Illya's flying left heel, dug out a section and spent itself on the concrete floor. They were five yards from the balcony and the doors.
Three yards.
Two -
Just ahead, Dr. Klaus Bauer loomed up. Somehow he had gotten around in front of them. Shrieking wildly, he launched himself from the balcony rail and landed on top of Napoleon, knocking him to the ground.
Over and over they tumbled. The scientist had gone berserk. His nails dug and clawed at Solo's neck. His knee slammed violently into Solo's groin, bringing intense pain. Solo lost all his scruples about hurting an older man and gave Bauer a wild bashing elbow in the mid-section.
Bauer's glasses slipped off and he groaned. But he managed to hang on to Solo's throat as Solo staggered to his feet, literally dragging Bauer along with him.
Illya had leaped up to the balcony rail, was hanging there by one hand. He sniped at the THRUSH soldiers who were creeping forward behind cover of the various consoles.
Violently Solo twisted, trying to shake Bauer off. For brief seconds, the white-coated back of Dr. Klaus Bauer was turned toward the center of the chamber. A rapid-fire pistol stuttered.
Dr. Bauer began to jiggle and sway like a marionette. Inches from Solo's face, his mouth sagged open. The light of life dimmed in his eyes. His hands slipped free of Solo's throat. Slowly, he corkscrewed to the floor. The back of the little man's lab coat was singed black, and stitched back and forth with a pattern of holes left by high-powered bullets.
On the far side of the chamber Vanessa Robin leaned on the top of the concrete support post. Smoke curled from the barrel of the rapid-fire pistol in her right hand.
Solo quickly became conscious of two things: the totally callous and inhuman way Vanessa Robin had murdered Bauer to get at him, and a sound behind and to his left—low feminine sobbing.
And then a hysterical scream tore out:
"Papa! Dear God—Papa!"
Helene Bauer plunged down off the railing and crawled along until she had her dead father's head in her lap. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She cried to Vanessa, "Why did you murder him? He was on your side!"
Voice colder than cold, Vanessa called back, "It's Solo and Kuryakin we want. Your father lost his senses. He got in the way. Besides we didn't need him any longer. He had done most of his work, after all."
Helene Bauer's face filled with hatred for a moment. Then her shoulders convulsed with sobs. She bent over her father's mutilated corpse, swaying back and forth.
All this took place in a matter of seconds. Napoleon Solo realized abruptly that the THRUSH soldiers were still creeping forward, rifles glinting as they scurried from machine to machine. He had the unpleasant feeling that Vanessa Robin had already issued orders that he and Illya were not to be killed.
He whirled, jumped, caught the top of the balcony rail, pulled himself up—
And found himself looking down the barrel of an automatic rifle held in the misshapen hands of a THRUSH soldier.
While Solo had struggled with Bauer, other THRUSH soldiers had rushed into the stainless steel corridor which had been their hoped-for escape route. These soldiers jammed the balcony now. Two had overpowered Illya from behind. One had a murderous elbow crooked around Illya's throat. The other held a rifle against his side.
Illya Kuryakin was disarmed, caught, his face a mask of disgust.
Solo stayed right where he was, breathing sibilantly. His first sudden movement would bring a THRUSH bullet crashing into his body.