"Why not?" said Illya. "It's your idea—you go first."
"You've got the light."
"You don't need it now."
Napoleon proceeded, hand on his pistol.
The light did indeed grow stronger—the blue-green of fluorescent tubes somewhere. Then there was a corner in front of them. Both stopped, and Napoleon, who was still in the lead, extended an eye around the end of the wall.
There was a double-width steel door some ten feet farther down to the right of their passage, with eye-level glass panels in each half. Only light could be seen through them. The passage ended there.
He drew back and motioned Illya forward. "We're here," he said. "Take a look."
His partner did, and nodded, then moved cautiously around the corner. A moment later the two agents were looking through the glass panels of the doors into a steel-walled corridor, painted a soft green, lined with single doors, and apparently deserted. The corridor ended at a crossing passage about a hundred feet away.
Very gently, Illya tried the door. It remained closed. Napoleon raised one fist and pantomimed knocking. Illya shook his head, and began looking around the walls. Napoleon knew what he was thinking—that stale air had been blowing from somewhere.
They found the opening almost immediately—no great feat, since it was three feet square and set in the ceiling a few feet above their heads just at the corner of the tunnel.
It was the work of a few moments to undo the bolts at the four corners and lower the grille gently to the floor. Then Napoleon boosted Illya up into the hole overhead, tied a length of nylon rope from his pack around a corner of the grille and handed it up to his partner, who tucked the end in his teeth, leaving both hands free to pull him up into the air duct.
Together they hauled the grille back up from the floor, and used short lengths of rope to fasten it in place. A cursory examination from below would spot the change, but few people normally look over their heads, especially when bad air is blowing down upon them. Adding to this the dialogue they had heard outside, indicating that use of this passage was fairly uncommon, they felt reasonably secure in their jury-rigged arrangement.
Air-conditioning ducts are one of the most popular literary devices to enable the passage of persons, things and sounds from one point to another within a building, and as such have practically replaced the secret passages popular with another generation of novelists. But in actual practice, their very popularity has tended to defeat them. Most modern buildings include in their ventilating designs long verticals, baffles, internal grilles and occasional driving fans, all of which present moderate to severe problems for the casual tourist.
It was therefore a stroke of fortune that this particular installation had none of these internal protective devices. Napoleon didn't think to comment on it, feeling that his partner would share his conclusion that under the circumstances it was probably the Thrush builders had gone for efficiency rather than absolute safety. The island itself was certainly well enough protected, and the intake of the system was probably hidden quite well high above them on the mountainside. So there should have been no need for the usual security measures. And this was only reasonable—they couldn't have foreseen the positive brilliance of the U.N.C.L.E. technical staff and agents that had not only found the secret island base, but managed to evade all the other protective devices and carry the conflict home to the enemy.
Napoleon Solo was feeling perhaps a little too confident as he crept along the metal tunnel. There was a constant humming, a deep-pitched vibration that came to them through the steel walls and shook the air around them so gently it had to be listened for consciously. Somewhere machinery was working—probably an electrical generating plant.
Small grilles opened occasionally beside them, and smaller side passages branched off. But there was no secondary tunnel, and they stayed with the main route. Each grille had to be checked carefully—if anyone happened to be looking at it as they went by, he might justifiably become curious.
The first two dozen rooms they looked into were empty. They appeared to be private quarters—small rooms, with a desk, a bed and a washstand, like a college dorm or the cheaper rooms at a YMCA. A small loudspeaker on the wall above the bed was the only standard decoration, but some of the rooms exhibited prints of widely varied types. Some sported pinups of assorted nationalities, some favored abstracts, and some preferred subject matter of a more technical nature. Three walls carried large representations of a von Braun-type space station, reinforcing the theory that the Monster Wheel had indeed been launched from this site. But only residential areas passed the view of the two U.N.C.L.E. agents.
Finally the duct branched and they stopped. "Now where?" asked Illya. Their choices angled vertically—one up and one down.
"Down, I think," said Napoleon. "The laboratories will probably be the deepest level, for security reasons, as well as protection of delicate gear against blast-off vibration and possible explosions."
"A properly-regulated launching site wouldn't have any explosions," said the Russian, as they started down the tube on hands and knees.
It was a long time before a duct opened into a room on either side of them. But when at last a square of light showed in the darkness, it proved to have been worth waiting for. Below them were rows of drafting tables, with work still in progress taped neatly to the slanting boards and T-squares hanging ready at their sides for the next day's work. Only a few lights were on here—presumably a skeleton staff might appear, or occasional guards wandered through.
Illya, straining his vision through the wire mesh, could make out electronic circuitry on some of the drawing boards and construction designs on some others. He set about removing the screen.
At length both of them dropped lightly to the poured concrete floor, landing with flexed knees and falling into crouches behind the newest tables. They waited thus for a minute or more, expecting the sounds of alarm to warn them of some detection system tripped or guard alerted by their presence. But silence remained about them.
As they waited, Illya's trained eyes scanned the walls and ceiling in his range of vision for concealed television lenses and found none. Napoleon, on the other side of the same table, examined his half of the room—standard procedure when breaking and entering an area as dangerous as a major Thrush base.
Finally, feeling as safe as they could in such a position, they stood up and set to work. Illya, the technician, produced a tiny camera and began snapping photographs of each drawing board, working methodically up one row and down the next. Napoleon, the instinctive hunter, began going through drawers.
Pencils, rulers, stacks of paper, jars of ink—nothing of value was to be found in that particular room. With a signal to Illya, he went to the door.
It was not locked, and the corridor was deserted. So far they had not seen a sign of any personnel since the two truant smokers had disappeared from the entrance to the tunnel. Either the place was severely understaffed, or everyone was attending compulsory lectures in the main hall. Or had been ordered to stay out of the area where two intruders were known to be....
Nevertheless he took the chance and stepped out into the corridor. It looked like the one they had peeked into upstairs—apple-green, long, and lined with doors. But these doors had signs on them. Polylingual signs, with English on the second line. Napoleon's eye unconsciously selected his native language from the set and read it automatically.