FIVE
BUT THERE HAD been no explosion in the warehouse.
The building shook and rocked and cracked but this was from the explosions in the other parts of the plant. Flames filled the night sky outside the warehouse, but in the warehouse itself there was no explosion or fire, only the results of near explosions, and the smoke of close fire.
Danton shouted. "It's a destruct! But not in here! Grab the machine! Quickly now!"
Chaos and confusion filled the warehouse. Illya and Solo stood up. They hauled Heimat to his feet. They began to move across the warehouse, their guns ready.
THRUSH men saw them. "There! U. N. C.L.E.!"
Illya and Solo shot, staggered on across the broken floor among the chaos of men and littered boxes.
"Forget them!" Danton screamed. "The machine! Get the machine out! Hurry! Watch them, but get the machine!"
Firing as they went, Illya and Solo moved toward the door through the smoke and confusion. The door was blocked by fallen beams. Illya and Solo turned toward the outer loading doors. Some of the heavy double doors stood shattered and open to the night that was bright with flame.
"The machine!" Danton shouted. "You fools, get the machine! Hurry"
With a curse, Danton ran to the machine himself. He grabbed other THRUSH men and forced them to take hold of the Mind-Sweeper. They worked like smoke-blackened demons around the malignant machine, bent, took hold, strained to raise it.
Illya and Solo ran with Heimat toward the open loading doors at the far end. Suddenly Heimat looked back and saw Danton give the order to lift the Mind-Sweeper.
The stocky German fell to the floor.
Illya and Solo bent to pick him up.
The explosion ripped through the warehouse itself.
The Mind-Sweeper, the THRUSH men lifting it, and Emil Danton seemed to vanish in a sheet of flame.
One instant Danton was there with his arms out in an order to lift the Mind-Sweeper, and the next instant he was a shattered corpse in the twisted and broken metal of the exploded machine.
In the explosion, Illya and Solo were knocked flat. They lay stunned. All through the room—a shambles now—THRUSH men lay groaning on the floor.
Illya and Solo staggered up.
Heimat was gone.
"There!" Illya shouted.
Heimat was running some fifty yards ahead and almost at the doors out.
"He knew the machine would explode!" Illya cried.
"Come on!" Solo shouted.
"We've got to get him!" Illya cried.
They ran after the stocky German. They reached the doors and ran on out into the night. Heimat was still some fifty yards ahead running toward the woods. He turned and saw them gaining on him. He was an old man and they could easily outrun him.
Heimat turned and raced as fast as he could back toward the buildings of the plant that burned fiercely in the night.
"If he gets away we can still lose it all!" Solo panted as he ran.
"Head him off," Illya gasped.
They gained, but they were still some twenty-five yards behind the fleeing scientist when the ground suddenly rose up and seemed to enfold Heimat like a great mouth eating him. He rose into the air and for a long second his feet continued to move, his legs pumping madly as he ran on empty air.
Illya and Solo were flung down again.
The explosion tore up out of the bowels of the earth itself.
Heimat hung there, still trying to run suspended in mid-air, and then he fell screaming into the yawning pit of flames that came from below where the underground rooms had exploded in the final holocaust of the plant.
Illya and Solo lay where they were for a moment. Ten yards in front of them a great hole had opened in the ground and the flames licked up into the darkness. They stood up, battered and bruised but unhurt.
They looked around them. Flames burned everywhere. The entire plant was a shattered hulk. But there were no more explosions.
The darkness was almost dead in its silence.
Only the small sound of flames, and the faint screams of the injured.
Dawn was beginning to break in the east.
SIX
ALEXANDER WAVERLY sat in his helicopter on the edge of the field. Police and firemen swarmed over the still blazing wreckage of the plant in the distance. A thin sun had just risen over the eastern edge of the world. Illya and Solo, patched and bandaged but still black with smoke and charred wood, stood in front of the U.N.C.L.E. helicopter.
"Well, it seems the affair is ended," Waverly said, "and quite satisfactorily. Good work, gentlemen."
"Thank you," Illya said.
Waverly rubbed his hands. "I'm afraid it is all gone. The machine, Rand, Heimat, the plans, all the facilities. We will never have the secret of the—uh—Mind-Sweeper. But perhaps that is just as well. Rand had a most complete destruct mechanism in the plant. I imagine he expected to be far away when it went off."
The three U.N.C.L.E. men looked away toward the ruin of the plant and the firemen picking hopelessly among the wreckage. Men with stretchers were still carrying away the few survivors of the plant personnel, Rand's gang, and THRUSH's small army. Solo looked at Illya.
"One thing I don't get, Illya," Solo said. "Why did you stand up and shoot Rand? They didn't even know we were there."
"Plan F," Illya said. "I read it on the tape read-out from the machine. Rand's mind told me what Plan F was. It was the destruct. It also booby-trapped the Mind-Sweeper."
"But—" Solo began.
"I knew the machine was booby-trapped. As soon as Plan F was activated, Napoleon, the machine could not be moved without exploding, except by Rand, who could disconnect the explosive device. I knew when he started to tell Danton something, that what he was going to tell Danton was that the machine could not be moved, and that the plant would blow up."
Waverly nodded. "I see. So you stopped Rand from telling Danton. Clever. By shooting Rand, you prevented Danton from knowing that the machine would explode."
Illya Kuryakin nodded. "I had no way of being sure that Napoleon and I would get out alive. So I had to prevent Danton from knowing that the machine would explode if he moved it. That way, even if we were dead, Danton would not get the machine."
Waverly sucked on his cold pipe and looked again at the shattered plant that seemed to glow in the sun.
"The Mind-Sweeper is destroyed, and we got Danton, too," Waverly said slowly, and smiled. "A very good piece of work, indeed. An excellent night's work. Naturally, we will make no report about this, or Forsyte, or any of them. They were not spies. And you're sure that the outer-space defense data is completely destroyed?"
"Only Kevin Rand and the machine had the data," Solo said.
"Excellent," Waverly said, and looked at the sun, clear and gold above the eastern horizon. "It looks like a nice day. I suggest you gentlemen take the rest of the day, and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow, I think we have another small problem for you to tackle."
With a sigh, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin climbed into the helicopter. Moments later it was on its way back to U.N.C.L.E. Headquarters.
The shattered ruin of Rand Electronics smoldered behind.