There was no sign of Illya Kuryakin in the corridor. Solo felt ill, searching for him.

Strength had returned to his legs and arms by the time the guards led him inside Nesbitt's white-walled office.

Bikini jumped up and ran to him.

She pressed herself against him. Solo gritted his teeth to keep from falling under the pressure of her weight.

"Oh, Solo. He won't look at me," Bikini said. "He won't listen to me. He acts as if I don't exist."

"I don't think any of us exist for him very much, Bikini," Solo said.

"But he's known me since I was a baby. He's my godfather. He was at my house all the time."

"I don't think he cares to re member that." Solo looked up at Nesbitt behind his desk. He spoke over the top of Bikini's dark hair, "Where is Illya, Doctor?"

Nesbitt smiled blandly. "You'll join him soon enough, Mr. Solo. Need I say any more than that?"

Bikini turned, but remained in side the circle of Solo's arms. She stared up at Nesbitt. "Please, where is my father?"

Solo stared up at Nesbitt, waiting for him to answer. But Nesbitt merely shrugged.

Solo knew he owed Bikini the truth about her father. But the truth was too brutal for her at this moment.

Just now he could not bring himself to say the words, your father is dead, Bikini.

He stood, watching Nesbitt.

The doctor's good eye gazed at him unblinkingly, the smile set. "I'm afraid my plans for you have been altered—by your own actions. I'd hoped to be able to allow the three of you to leave this place after undergoing a series of minor treatments for the removal of recent memory."

He shook his head. "I can't do that now. I'm sorry. The risk is too great."

Solo spoke coldly to Bikini. "What Dr. Nesbitt means is that Illya and I know your father is dead, and how he was killed—and that 'memory' removal is too risky because it doesn't work, but death does."

"My father," Bikini whispered. She pressed her face hard upon Napoleon's shoulder.

He touched her hair, gently, holding her. He felt her heated tears against his shoulder. Somehow it gave the world a sense of sanity that a girl could still cry for her father in this place.

It seemed less a nightmare.

Nesbitt's voice cut across Solo's thoughts. "Death. Yes, death works. Death is useful here, too, Solo. Professor Connor's death was useful—"

"You told us you didn't know about his death," Solo raged.

Dr. Nesbitt shrugged as if reminding him that nothing could matter less than what he said to them, or to anyone from the world of his past.

"He was sentenced to death by our highest court," Nesbitt said. "There was nothing I could do except see that he was executed in the way that would be most useful to us. Yes, even death must be useful."

Solo shook his head, hearing the doctor's words, but unable to believe a man could have so far receded from any human feelings of remorse, guilt, love or regret.

Dr. Nesbitt regretted nothing except time lost from his experiments.

"I'm sure our deaths will serve you in some useful purpose," Solo said bitterly.

"When the time comes. Meantime, you and Mr. Kuryakin will work for us as mindless slaves—made mindless by light, Mr. Solo. And as for Miss Connors, I can use her body in my experiments with my plants—"

"Dr. Nesbitt. Ivey!" Bikini cried out, tormented. "What's happened to you? Once you loved my father and me."

"It's no good, Bikini," Scio said. "He's gone crackers—"

"You think I'm insane, Solo?" Dr. Nesbitt raged.

Solo shrugged. "I suspected it all along. I'm convinced, now that you've decided to use a body like hers as plant food—"

"Mr. Solo, I assure you that only the plants are important here. They are mutations, grown from the most ordinary jungle carnivorous species, from those pitcher plants devouring flies and insects to what you saw in that hothouse—"

"Oh, Ivey," Bikini wailed. "Once you were the most beloved man in—"

"A fool girl like that, what does she know?" Dr. Nesbitt said to Solo, still refusing to speak directly to the daughter of his old associate. "Does she know of the horror of being stared at like a freak because of my disfigured face?"

"That's not true!" Bikini cried. "Nobody ever—"

"What does she know of the way I lived, dreading the way people cringed at the sight of my face? They wouldn't even let me work in peace until I came here.

"My plants don't cringe from me. My mindless slaves neither see nor react to my face. I don't have to watch people turn away."

"You're buried here," Solo said. "Worse than buried."

"That's where you're so wrong. Solo. Perhaps I shall yet control the world." Nesbitt looked around him now as though he wished to talk more fully about himself and his work.

"I shall set the world free by the use of light, Mr. Solo. I'm sure you've heard the theory that all light rays enter the eyes of animals and people, directly influencing the pituitary gland.

"In the same general way light radically affects the growth of plants. Scientists have exposed young rats to the rays of television rays and they die of severe brain damage within twelve days. By my own application of this theory I have made my slaves mindless.

"And I use the same X-ray light that comes from TV tubes, many times intensified. My jungle plants exposed to this X-ray light grow at phenomenal speed and to unheard of sizes.

"Light, Mr. Solo. Light to control. Light to kill. Light to grow. Everything subject to the intensity of my X-ray light. From a glow soft enough to be harmless to strength to register wildly on a Geiger counter. With light I shall control the world."

"Sure. And THRUSH lets you believe that you will. In exchange for what? For those plants which will grow and multiply and kill?"

Nesbitt smiled. "That is part of my experiment."

He shook his head and lowered his voice to that reasonable tone so characteristic of the deranged, "So you can see why I cannot permit you people to leave here—to spread the word of my work?"

THREE

ILLYA FELT himself being lifted up from the corridor floor where he'd crumpled like a bug when stunned by the light beam.

The men lifting him carried him loosely between them. They did not speak to each other, moving like robots.

Double doors swung open in the corridor walls ahead of them and Illya saw he was being carried into a room of dark chocolate walls with hundreds of small lights set under the ceiling, across it, and along the sills.

The guards placed him in an ordinary appearing chair which lighted up under his weight.

When he attempted to stand, Illya found he was helpless to move. The action of the light was like a terrible magnet holding him pinned to the chair.

There was no pain of any kind. It was simply impossible to break the pull of the light-magnets which secured him in the strange chair.

After a moment Kuryakin stopped fighting. He felt the strength return to his arms and legs. He still had a sense of being dizzy, but even this lessened after a few moments. He examined the chair as the guards backed out of the room.

The doors closed and locked, Illya supposed. He looked around, finding the room extremely dark and himself seated in the lighted chair like an illumined island.

He shifted his weight, attempted to raise his arms from the chair.

He could not move. The darkness seemed to press in upon him, and he had the eerie sense that unseen eyes probed at him from the walls.