He stayed a moment in that rigid position as if instantly petrified by that incredible heat. He tottered slightly, and then did not move again. He was dead.

TWO

NAPOLEON SOLO faced the four people about the conference table.

"And that's it," Solo said, scowling. "Sayres' report ends there, abruptly."

Solo was medium tall, slender, with dark brown hair, now mussed. He could have been, at first glance, a doctor, lawyer, advertising man. Despite the conservative cut of his business suit, he didn't belong to the ordinary career world. He was skilled in the strange art of super-spying.

"I believe the outcry came from the young Spanish agent," Alexander Waverly said.

Of an age known only to himself and U.N.C.L.E. computers, neither of which were at all communicative on the subject, Waverly was the veteran of two world wars, several police engagements, and a dedicated referee in a continuing cold war.

"He must have died first," Waverly said. "What was his name? Oh, yes. Diego. A good man. He'd been down in Central America for some years. Due a transfer. It was his report that first confirmed my suspicions that perhaps Dr. Ivey Nesbitt was down there."

"Sayres must be presumed dead, too," Solo said. Death was a part of his daily life in the United Net work Command for Law and Enforcement, but each loss of one of his men diminished him by that much, struck him with an anguish he carefully concealed.

"Then the next move is up to us," Illya Kuryakin said. "Some body killed Don."

Illya stood up. Slender, youthful appearing, with a Slavic face testifying to his ancestry and unruly blond hair showing him too concerned with the business of life and death to care much for grooming. "Don was a personal friend of mine. I'd like the assignment."

"I should have the assignment," April Dancer protested. She had the kind of loveliness that in a less taut moment made business difficult of transacting. You never observed her once without looking back again in pleasure and disbelief. Admiring April was like taking one of those quickie European tours; there wasn't time to appreciate the view.

"If you'll remember, Napoleon," she said, "it was my assignment in the first place. At the last minute Don replaced me."

"There must have been a good reason why you were replaced, April," Mark Slate said in his perfect English diction. He pushed his hand through his matted light-brown hair. "The jungle is no place for a woman, especially when we don't even know what killed those two men. I think I—"

"And I think I've heard enough!" Waverly stood up suddenly. The command room rang with the sound of his voice. "Is this a quiet Monday in some small town fire station? I understand that each of you feels deeply the loss of a man like Sayres. I am not unmindful of the sadness of this situation for all of you. But you are all professional people. You've been here long enough to know assignments are never made on basis of personal involvement."

April, Mark and Illya glanced ruefully at each other.

Waverly said, "Now, if we may get on with the pertinent aspects of this case. Our report pins down the precise location where Sayres set up the scanner and met his death. He reports a large laboratory and gives us its exact location in relation to his position. This is our last contact with Sayres.

"But it gives us a great deal to work on, more than we have bad. And the fact that a jungle laboratory has been so handsomely equipped convinces me that Dr. Ivey Nesbitt is down there. Is that you conclusion, Mr. Solo?"

Solo nodded. "It's worth further investigation. I believe this lab is part of some plan of THRUSH, and I believe that if Dr. Nesbitt is down there that he has gone over to THRUSH."

"We don't know how Diego and Sayres met their death," Waverly mused. "But it is clear that they were being as closely watched as possible. Even when Sayres set up the scanner, the people must have known it through some detection system unknown to us yet."

"I can't understand why Sayres failed to activate his plastic shield," Illya said. He placed a small vial on the table before him. This matched the sprayer Sayres had brought from his pocket in the jungle at the instant be was killed.

Illya touched the nozzle. A faint mist appeared and hardened instantly into an almost invisible shield of plastic.

"Looks like death was instantaneous," Mark Slate said. "We know he had the warning of Diego's outcry. That's there clearly on the tape."

"Exactly," Waverly agreed. "For that reason, Mr. Solo, I suggest you follow up this investigation personally. However, I suggest you make no contacts, even with our own people, except to hire a guide when you reach San Miguel. And I'm sure I hardly need urge you to travel incognito."

THREE

THE SLIGHTLY stooped man who disembarked from the banana boat in the port city of San Miguel bore no resemblance to Napoleon Solo.

He wore a shapeless panama hat, wrinkled white coat and creased white pants. His string tie was awry at the collar of his sweated shirt. He stared at the world over the tops of rimless glasses.

He carried a small pack, a straw suitcase and an oversized butterfly net. He drank anejo on the rocks in a waterfront bodega and asked for a guide who might lead him far into the jungles.

The bartender smiled at his other patrons. "And what would a man like you be looking for in that jungle—armed with just a net?"

"I am a hunter of rare species of butterflies and other lepidopterous specimen," Solo said. "I believe the rarest species of all are to be found in your inner jungle regions."

"That's a big net for butterflies," the bartender said.

"I don't want to hurt them."

The bartender grinned slyly. "It's beeg enough to catch girls, Professor."

"I don't want to hurt them, either," Solo said.

The, bartender laughed. "You're all right, old fellow. But I don't think you'll find a guide to take you into the jungle. Only recently two men went from this town into the jungle and have not returned. The guides don't even like to go in there now with game hunters. I know they won't want to go with nothing more to protect them than a butterfly net."

"I'm sure that's all the protection we'll need."

"One goes into the jungle, he finds trouble," the bartender said, shaking his head.

Solo shook his grey head and gave him a bland smile. "Perhaps this is true for those who seek trouble, sir. But trouble is the last thing I am looking for."

The bartender's words followed him into the dusty street. "Just pray that trouble isn't the first thing you find, senor, no matter what you are looking for."

Solo walked down the dirt road and stopped before the man sitting in front of the adobe house. The man's name was Carrero and he lived in the house with ball a dozen small children and a slovenly half- breed wife underfoot. He shook his head. "I no go in jungle. Something very bad happen."

"I am sure this is just superstition," Solo said.

"Death comes quiet. Silent. Quicker than the strike of a snake. The jungle is burned dry by the touch of this death."

"Butterflies," Solo persisted with that bland smile.

He kept smiling and placing money in a small green stack before the widening eyes of Carrero and family until the anguished man could no longer resist what looked to him like a fortune.

Senora Carrero wept and the children ran out in the potted road, clinging to Carrero's tattered pant legs.