Connors lay twisted on the floor, limp as a sawdust doll. He looked as if he had been crushed by a boa constrictor. All the bones in his body had been smashed.

"Solo!" Illya Kuryakin yelled again.

Solo jumped up, bringing his gaze from the shattered body on the floor.

Illya had tried to follow him through the growth of jungle plants, but had not made it. A green tentacle, larger than a fire hose had constricted about his throat and head.

Illya fought at it helplessly.

Solo looked around, feeling panic, sweated and almost drowned in the now wailing rustle of the plants all around them.

He caught up a pruning shears near the door and leaped toward the plant where Illya was trapped.

He drove the shears into the soft green texture of the constricting limb. Sap spurted out, sap that was pouring pinkly, almost like very anemic human blood.

ACT III—INCIDENT OF THE KILLER PLANTS

DR. IVEY NESBITT strode along the corridor and entered his office. Neither side of his face betrayed any emotion at seeing that Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo were gone.

He was immediately followed by his white-smocked assistant, a sullen, unsmiling man clearly of Indian ancestry.

At a short distance behind the assistant, two staring-eyed guards came, half-dragging Bikini Connors.

They led her into the office, deposited her in the chair in which Illya had sat. They stood at attention on each side of her then, gazing emptily ahead.

"Please, Dr. Nesbitt," Bikini begged. "Where is my father?"

At his desk, the tall scientist ignored her. He didn't look her way or appear to have heard her voice.

He glanced at the guards testily, as he might have gazed once at recalcitrant students in his class rooms. "What is the meaning of deserting your posts, letting our two prisoners run free?"

"Professor," the assistant said gently, "they don't hear you. Even if they do, they are unmoved by criticism or praise."

The doctor waved his arm. "Of course. One forgets one is dealing here with mindless animals, eh, Joe?"

"It's safest that way, Doctor," was all the Indian assistant said.

Nesbitt nodded, dismissing the subject.

Bikini spoke to him again, but it was as if he could not be reached by anyone from the outside world, from his past.

He turned his back, went to a bank of closed-circuit television screens. All glittered blackly, powered, waiting to be activated.

Nesbitt pressed buttons, opening the channel for each screen in turn, the walled yard, smaller labs, shipping areas, the hothouses, the corridors.

A hothouse camera swung across the long arena of tropical growth. Catching his breath, Nesbitt pressed a button, holding the camera in its position.

It was fixed on Solo, Kuryakin and a crushed body crumpled on the hothouse floor. The body the doctor ignored as if it did not exist for him, had never existed.

For a few moments, almost as if entranced by what he saw, Nesbitt watched Solo slashing at the huge arm of the writhing plant.

But as Napoleon Solo hacked the limb loose, the bloody sap spurting and oozing everywhere, Nesbitt's face darkened.

He pressed a button, spoke into a microphone at his side. Intercoms throughout the laboratory carried his voice. "There are two intruders in Hothouse One. Bring them to me."

Nesbitt's voice rattled through the humid greenhouse as Solo pulled Illya Kuryakin from the grasping tentacles of the plant.

For one moment Illya stared down in horror at Sam Connor's crushed body, and thought, "But for the grace of God and Solo using pruning shears, that could be me—"

All doors of the hothouse were thrust open and armed guards appeared in each of them.

Illya and Solo stepped in close to the doors as they were thrust open near them. With all their strength they slammed the doors shut behind the guards.

As the robot-men turned, both Illya and Solo lunged at them, thrusting them stumbling over Connor's body.

The men threw their arms up as they went sprawling into the tangled green plants.

Obviously following all this on his closed-circuit TV, Nesbitt shouted, his voice crackling over the intercom: "Door Six, Hot house One. Stop those men."

But Illya and Solo were already going out of the door. Solo glanced back, watching the two guards trying to fight free of the grasping limbs, the rustling growing to a keening pitch.

For that instant the incredibly long corridor was empty. It was brightly lighted with what seemed half a hundred doors along it.

Solo waved his arm in the direction of the distant white-doored exit.

They ran together.

Nesbitt's laughter sounded chilled and sardonic from the intercom speakers around them. It was nightmarish, as if laughter battered them from everywhere.

"He's watching us on TV," Illya gasped.

"Run," Solo said. He stayed close to the wall, sprinting toward that white-doored exit which seemed to recede the way it might in a bad dream.

"Run faster, gentlemen." Nesbitt's voice mocked them. "A little exercise, and then I shall stop you as I wish."

"Stay close to the wall," Solo warned Illya.

Illya nodded and sidestepped, but he was already too late.

They both heard the rising hiss. It was as if Illya had run into an invisible wall. The beam struck him and he stopped running, slowing, taking long steps and then halting as if paralyzed.

Solo leaped into the inset door nearest him as the hiss rose, approaching like an angry wasp.

The beam lashed at him and Solo put all his weight against the door, thrusting his way into it.

He toppled into a brightly lighted room and the door swung shut behind him.

He landed hard on his knees, and lifted his head slowly at the old chattering sound that over whelmed him.

His eyes widened at the sight of the set faces, the empty eyes, the meaningless chatter. The people sat at long tables suspended from the ceiling. They didn't look at each other, or at anything. They chattered, but it was less meaningful than squealing monkey noises in a tree.

Solo got to his feet, repelled and shaken by the sight of these mindless creatures.

He shook his head, retreated toward the door.

Faces turned his way, but not one pair of eyes actually focused on him. The eyes were like milky marbles and light reflected from them.

Solo wheeled around and grabbed at the door. Again there was no inside handle, and the door was locked securely.

Solo stared around helplessly. There was no other exit from this dormitory of the mindless. The only windows were set high in the walls.

Solo sagged against the door. The chattering went on, but he no longer listened.

From the intercom, Dr. Nesbitt's voice mocked him. "I expected you and Mr. Kuryakin to join our mindless ones eventually, Mr. Solo, but not so quickly. What's wrong, my dear fellow? You don't look overjoyed."

Exhaling heavily, Solo sagged against the barred door.

The voices rose chattering, excited, wildly agitated by the sound of the doctor's voice on the intercom.

Napoleon Solo did not look at them.

TWO

SOLO FELT the door shiver. He recognized the sound: an electric impulse had activated the lock. He stepped away and the padded door was shoved open.

Two expressionless guards stepped into the room. They were armed with a gun that had a base like a small cannon, but which was obviously aluminum light. The barrel of the gun tapered to the mouth, which suddenly lighted up.

Solo toppled back, thinking they had subdued him with a portable light gun.

The chattering raged, but none of the people at the tables moved. The guards lifted Napoleon Solo, half-carrying him through the corridor toward Nesbitt's office.