The two guards were having an argument about the comparative merits of American and South American women. It was a heated discussion, and they did not hear the faint noise made by Solo and Illya as the two agents prepared the tiny buttons in their hands.

"Now," Illya hissed softly.

Both agents pinched the inch of thread that protruded from the buttons, and tossed the tiny pellets out into the room. The guards heard them, turned, their Thrush rifles raised and pointed. That was the last thing they ever did.

Illya and Solo dashed back into the corridor and fell flat.

Two shattering explosions ripped the steel room.

The guards screamed once and were hurled against the steel walls. The table in the room smashed into pieces. The chairs hurled into the air.

Illya and Solo leaped up and ran back into the room. They looked at the dead guards and at their weapons. Both rifles were twisted shards of metal.

There were no other guns in the room. The outside door, blown open by the explosions, hung crazily from shattered hinges.

"No time!" Illya cried. "We'll have to run for it! No weapons!"

Already voices were shouting somewhere.

"Let's go! " Solo cried.

The two agents ran out of the steel room and into the open area beneath the high camouflage. Alarm bells had begun to ring. Far off, near the building where they had been caught, they saw the tiny, fat figure of the cherubic Doctor Guerre. The little round man was bawling orders.

Black-suited guards ran all across the area beneath the camouflage.

In the distance there was a whine, incredibly high, and then the roaring of a motor. The roaring came closer. Illya pointed far down the runway.

A black craft, long, tubular and with stubby black wings, hurtled down the runway, a long tail of vapor jetting out behind.

At this instant, the agents were seen.

"Get them!"

From all sides the black-garbed guards converged toward Illya and Solo—from all sides but one.

No guards came at them across the runway where the nuclear-powered aircraft was hurtling forward.

"Quick!" Illya cried.

The small Russian led Napoleon Solo across the runway directly into the path of the onrushing nuclear craft. They crossed in front and fell to the ground.

The plane hurled past them.

The force of its passage picked them up and threw them across the runway like tumbleweed blown on a high desert wind. They held their heads in their arms, taking the bruising buffeting until they at last lay still.

Solo was up first, a deep gash on his face where a rock had cut.

"Let's move!" Solo cried.

Illya Kuryakin staggered up. The small Russian's ear was torn, his face bruised, but there was no time to assess damage. Black-suited guards were running across the runway through the cloud of dense vapor left by the nuclear craft that was now airborne.

"I'm right with you," Illya shouted.

The passage of the nuclear craft, and the dense cloud of vapor, had given them a head start and a clear field ahead. They ran.

When they reached the edge of the high camouflage, they ran on out into the sunlight and up the arroyo they had crept down earlier that morning. They did not move carefully now to avoid the electronic sensors.

Behind them more alarm bells began to ring as they kicked the sensors.

"The car is on the other side!" Solo shouted. "If we can reach it."

"If they've left it!" Illya shouted back. "I suggest we try to lose our friends first!"

The blazing earth burned their bare feet cruelly. Behind them the guards were still coming, threading their way up the arroyo.

Solo and Illya reached the crest and looked down. Solo's rented car was gone. The two agents crouched low and looked back. The guards were scrambling up behind them.

Solo went to work removing four more buttons from his suit coat. He tied them together with the last explosive threads from his trousers. The four buttons were the last tiny bombs.

He handed one small bomb to Illya.

They waited.

The black-suited guards came closer. They were bunched up, the guards, like amateurs. Far down at the foot of the arroyo, the fat figure of Dr. Guerre still shouted orders. The guards reached no more than forty feet from Illya and Solo.

"Now," Solo said once more.

The two agents stood, lobbed the tiny bombs stiff-armed, like hurling grenades. The two tiny pellets arched through the hot sunlight and fell into the bunched crowd of pursuing guards.

The explosions shook the arroyo.

Rocks hurled, and arms and legs fell mangled across the hot land. There was a silence. Then the groans began.

They lay all across the arid and sun-baked dirt. They groaned and screamed in their agony. None had been left untouched in the first bunched group, and farther down the arroyo the rest of the guards huddled out of range and stared up at the crest.

Behind them Dr. Guerre was swearing, urging them on. But the guards were wary now. Two men they had thought unarmed had proved to have sharp teeth after all.

It was then that the helicopter appeared.

Over the desert from the west, flying low and rising up over the crest of the hill. A hand waved down at Solo and Illya, then the helicopter roared on over and down the hill toward the packed guards.

A sub-machine gun began to chatter from the helicopter.

The guards stared. Two of them fell. The rest broke and ran. They ran down the hill, all the fight gone out of them by the unexpected danger they had found in two defenseless enemies.

At the foot of the arroyo Dr. Guerre rallied his men. Some of them began to take cover and fire at the helicopter. The helicopter came down on the fiat top on the crest of the hill. A man leaned out.

"Hurry!" the man called. "They'll get their guts back soon."

Illya and Solo needed no urging. They sprinted for the helicopter. Already Guerre had rallied his men down at the bottom of the arroyo. In a moment, they would be starting up again.

The two agents scrambled into the helicopter. At the bottom of the arroyo Dr. Guerre stood and watched it lift off. Inside, Solo armed himself and handed an U.N.C.L.E. special to Illya.

"How did you find us?" Solo said to the pilot.

"Waverly," the pilot said. "He had your radio transmissions monitored. When you didn't report in all day, he alerted us and sent us here."

"It's good to have a smart chief," Solo said.

"Where to? Santa Fe?" the pilot said.

"No, not Santa Fe," Illya said. "Back to the Thrush project after dark. As soon as it's dark, we have to go back. There's a girl there we have to help."

"Back?" the pilot said.

"Back," Solo said.

"Back," the pilot said. "After dark. Where now?"

"Just set it down near my car," Illya said.

They waited the few hours before the sun would set again over the baked land of the Navaho Reservation. Just before the sun was at the crest of the hills on its way down, as Illya and Solo checked their weapons, the roaring began.

An endless roaring sound like a thousand engines warming up.

Illya and Solo looked at each other.

The roaring seemed to shake the land. It came from behind the line of low hills, down where the camouflaged valley was.

"I think," Illya said, "we will be saved the trouble of going back."

The first black nuclear craft suddenly appeared in the sky, roared over, glowing red from the heat of its incredible speed, and was gone.

Six in all screamed over and vanished into the darkening sky.

The pilot looked toward the hills through his binoculars.