Yet, something had to be done fast or THRUSH would launch its worldwide monsterizing transmissions. All they were waiting for was for the communications satellite to come into position - and that was only minutes away.
A dozen mad schemes for stopping THRUSH flashed through Solo’s mind. He considered everything from setting the studio on fire to trying to get the Air Force to bomb it out of existence. But each scheme required communications with the outside to put it into operation. And that seemed impossible in itself.
There was only one possible way he could see to smash the THRUSH control team and wipe out the threat in the thin margin of time left to them. And that directly involved Marsha Mallon’s cooperation. Without her there was no hope. The world was doomed to THRUSH slavery - that half of it that would survive the debacle.
He tried to explain to her what he had in mind. She wouldn’t listen. She kept threatening to shoot if he did not back away so she could get out of her trap.
“Okay,” Solo said in a beaten tone. “Do what you will.”
“Move around to the side,” Marsha ordered. “I’m going past you. If you try to stop me, I’ll kill you!”
“Go on,” he said in a dull, dispirited voice. He moved cautiously along the wall on the opposite side of the still processing machines.
Marsha started to inch forward on the other side. Solo stood where she could watch him. His head and shoulders were visible above the machines. She could not see the rest of him.
Solo took a deep, unsteady breath.
“It’s now or never!” he told himself. “If this doesn’t work -”
He broke off the thought, unable to consider the awful consequences.
THREE
AS MARSHA MOVED toward the light trap to make her way back into the room where Kuryakin waited, Solo brought his knee up quickly. She could not see his swift action, for his body was blocked from her sight by the processing machine.
He jerked off his shoe. As she came around the other end of the machine, inching toward the light trap, he hurled the shoe at her.
She saw it coming too late. She tried to duck. The shoe hit her shoulder. She was knocked back against the wall.
The instant he threw the shoe, Solo vaulted up on the processing machine. He got his feet on the edge of the big vat-like box and scrambled over the plexiglass top that enclosed the multitude of reels over which the film moved up and down through the developing solutions. From here he leaped straight for the girl.
When Marsha leaped back in an attempt to dodge the thrown shoe, she went off balance. It was this more than the blow that knocked her off her feet. She hit the wall and slipped to the floor.
Instantly she jerked her body around as Napoleon leaped off the processing machine. She fired at him from the floor. There wasn’t time to aim. The bullet smashed into the ceiling as he landed on top of her.
The weight of his body hit her with such force that the breath was knocked out of the confused girl. She collapsed, gasping.
Solo leaped to his feet. Blood oozed from a gash where his head struck the wall. He was not even conscious of the blow.
He pulled the gun from her slack fingers and shoved it in his pocket. Then, lifting her in his arms, he went back to the office.
He dumped her in a chair by the desk. The dead body of Griffis was beside her. Across the small room lay the unconscious figures of two THRUSH men and Theresa LeBrun. Illya Kuryakin was gone.
“Illya!” Solo called. Then realizing he had spoken in his normal tones, repeated his call, aping the inflections of Theresa LeBrun.
Kuryakin stuck his head in from the hall.
“You can forget that, Napoleon,” he said quickly. “I’m coming out from under the drug’s influence.”
“I’ve got the girl, now -” Napoleon began.
“THRUSH has an exterminator crew after us, Napoleon!” Illya broke in. “I heard them coming and got the fire doors closed in the hall. It won’t stop them for long. I heard one of them shout for the other to go get a wrecking bar.”
“Can you stop them until I can talk some sense into the addled head of this silly woman?” Solo asked.
“I got my bare hands,” Illya said. “I’ll do what I can.”
“We have her gun. It’s the one she took from Griffis. It can’t have more than a couple of shots left in it. That’s no help either.”
He was deathly tired. His body had taken constant punishment since the beginning of this miserable affair. His face was drawn and haggard. His eyes were bloodshot. Every line of his sagging body betrayed his near exhaustion. Illya Kuryakin was in no better shape.
“What are we going to do?” Illya asked.
“Fight!” Solo snapped. “That’s all that’s left for us to do.”
“Then lead on, MacDuff!” Illya said. “If we get out of this mess alive, I’ll never, never doubt us again. We can do anything!”
“We’re not going to get out alive unless I can knock some sense into this idiot’s head,” he said savagely, glaring at Marsha Mallon.
The girl glared back, equally ferocious and equally stubborn.
“Listen to me,” Napoleon Solo said, his voice shaking with earnestness. “There is only one way to smash THRUSH’S transmitter. We have to have an army to do it. We have an army - an army of teenage monsters! There’s one of the portable transmitters on the desk at your elbow. It’s broken. Even if it wasn’t, I don’t know how to use it. If you can repair the thing and send out the impulses to activate that Sunset Strip gang, we’re in! They can be made to storm this place. If they do half as much damage as they did on Sunset Boulevard, they’ll put the THRUSH transmitter out of commission.”
“I can’t trust you,” Marsha mumbled. Her pretty face was flushed and set in stubborn lines.
“Then damn it, don’t trust us!” Solo cried.
He jerked the gun from his coat pocket and shoved it across the desk to her.
“There’s at least two shots left in that thing,” he snapped. “We’ll stand on the opposite side of the room from you. Get that damned transmitter working and zombie those kids into tearing this place down! Then if you think we’re trying to put anything over on you, you can pull the trigger of that gun with it pointed straight at my heart! What else must I do to convince you that the only stake Illya and I have in this mess is to try and save a lot of lives - including, in case it never occurred to you, yours and ours as well!”
A wave of uncertainty spread across Marsha’s face. She picked up the gun. A quick glance showed her it was loaded. She looked at Napoleon Solo with a tired, almost vacant stare.
Then she said slowly, “I - I don’t know -”
She got up and backed across the room, putting as much space between herself and the men from U.N.C.L.E. as she could.
From down the hall came the sound of heavy battering.
“They are attacking the door!” Illya said. “There’s no way out for us. This place has no windows and no back door. You had better do something quickly, Miss Mallon, or we’re all dead!”
“Pick up the transmitter,” she said in a defeated voice.
Solo grabbed it up from the desk.
“Open the back,” Marsha Mallon said.
Solo opened the back of the camera-appearing device. He saw a jungle of wires, transistors and coils. At her order he set a tiny switch.
“Do any of the five crystals in the center of the circuit glow?” she asked.
“Three,” he replied.
“Then all that happened when Griffis broke the transmitter was that the wires to the capacitor snapped. Cut off the circuit. That thing works like a car’s coil to store up energy for a step-up in voltage. It’s off? Then push the red wires back in place.”
Solo found the break and repaired it quickly.
“They’re breaking the door in, Napoleon!” Illya yelled from the hall.
“Hold them back!” Solo snapped. “We’ve got to have a little more time.”