Solo hit the ground hard, looking around for a target. Piebr crouched in against the car, gun ready.

Above them, Aly David sank to his knee, gun against his shoulder.

Bullets screamed like raging hornets past them. Frun fired once, and there were dozens of answering shots, the bullets ripping into the car.

Suddenly a woman's voice broke across the sound of gun fire via a public address system. The guns were quieted, waiting.

"Solo," the voice said. "Tell the deluded men with you to lay down their arms, or they will be slain along with you. We have guns fixed on you from the darkness, and from all the windows on the lower floor behind you."

Solo glanced up at the lighted windows, saw the dark forms in them, guns held ready.

"Ordwell," the voice said. "Are you there?"

Solo watched the stocky man pull himself from the car. He managed to stand up, the effects of the neuroquixonal fading swiftly as he moved around.

"I'm here," Ordwell called.

"Then disarm them," the woman's voice ordered. "All of them. Then march them into the house." Her voice took on an air of contempt. "THRUSH hopes you can accomplish this."

Solo heard Orwell gasp in rage, but he made no reply. He moved, from Piebr to Aly David to Frun, gathering the weapons. A man appeared from the darkness and collected them. Then Ordwell came close to Solo.

"Your gun, Mr. Solo," he said.

Solo heard Piebr's sharp intake of breath. He did not glance toward the young detective.

Ordwell took the gun, barrel first, closed his fist over it and coldly back-handed Solo across the head with it.

Solo staggered to his knees, feeling the blood trickling from the cut down the inside of the plastic mask. For a moment all the date palms were strung with glittering stars of a million hues, and then darkness settled. He gritted his teeth, managed to hang on to consciousness.

He heard Ordwell snarling at him. "On your feet. Move, Solo. Or I'll kill you, just as I killed that fool ambassador in the airport terminal."

Solo managed to pull himself up slowly. Illya came out of the car, supported him. And after a moment, Piebr stepped close to him, lending the strength of his arm, Solo was thankful Piebr finally knew the truth about the senseless slaying of his father.

Piebr whispered savagely, "Somehow, by the grace of Allah, we will get out of this. I know now they slew not only my good and faithful father, but also the protector of my country, the real Kiell."

"Shut up!" Ordwell said. "Get him inside the house. Move. All of you."

They were herded into a living room, shut off from other rooms by silken draperies of bright colors. Solo staggered slightly as he walked. He would have fallen except that Piebr and Illya supported him. Objects and people in the room wavered before his eyes.

They stood some moments in this room, alone. Even Ordwell grew restive. He glared around at the silken draperies. "Well, what's wrong now? Here they are. THRUSH wanted Solo and Kuryakin delivered as hostages. Here they are!"

Ordwell Slybrough laughed in triumph. He gripped the plastic mask over Solo's face, slipped a knife blade under it and cut it away.

He jerked it off Solo's head. He stared a moment in sadistic satisfaction at the cut across Solo's temple, the blood streaming along his cheek.

"Here he is!" he shouted.

The silken drapes parted and Pretty Wilde came through them, followed by two scowling native gunmen.

Solo stared at her, the gash in his temple for the moment forgotten, or supplanted by a more poignant agony. Pretty Wilde was lovelier than ever in black blouse and black stretch pants which seemed annealed to her stockpiled elegance.

Even Illya Kuryakin whistled faintly between his teeth.

She smiled at Solo. "Well, Tiger. Here we are. We meet again."

Solo stared at her. "A THRUSH agent," he said.

"That's right, Tiger." She laughed. "I told you I was—Pretty Wilde."

"You really are," Solo said.

ACT IV

INCIDENT OF THE VOLATILE AGENT

AT GUNPOINT, Pretty Wilde and her silent executioners ushered Solo and Kuryakin through silken drapes into a smaller room, completely remodeled in electronic modern.

The men from U.N.C.L.E. stared in astonishment at this chamber banked with the sort of broadcasting and receiving equipment one might expect to find in the home plant of RCA.

Three men with headphones sat in chairs that glided silently on casters from one machine to the next. Bright eyes of varying colors flashed across the faces of the sets.

One of the technicians gave all of his attention to a complex rectangular box topped with a seventeen-inch television tube set at an angle. The metal machine hummed to life; the black eye of the screen lightened, brightened, and then held, as if waiting.

"All of this just for us, Pretty?" Solo said.

Pretty glanced at him along the nose of her gun. "You might say that. It offers you your only chance to leave here alive."

"I for one am almost morbidly interested in this idea," Solo said.

"And I," Kuryakin agreed.

"As you see, it's a suggestion that's caught right on with both of us," Solo said. "Please tell us more."

"It's very simple. One of our scientists, Dr. Polar Fuch, on the verge of a breakdown and suffering delusions, managed to steal a vital machine from us."

"Ah, yes. The atom separator," Solo said, recalling Waverly's demonstrating this weapon to him in United Network headquarters. "A machine that Dr. Fuch invented."

"A non-essential detail, since he was working for us, and all of his creations automatically became—"

"A machine he planned for peaceful analysis, which is not the use THRUSH planned for it," Solo persisted.

"Another quibbling detail," Pretty said, shrugging. "The important fact to us, and you two, is that the machine is ours, and we want it back. Now. We're willing to make a trade with United Net work Command. Your lives, and the bonus life of that girl in there, in exchange for our machine."

Solo shrugged. "We haven't the authority to—"

"Of course you haven't! But we can talk to Alexander Waverly via this sender-receiver. Give us the channel, and we'll discuss the trade with Waverly. If he agrees to deliver the machine to an address we'll give him in Manhattan, we will escort you safely to the air terminal at Kurbot."

"We couldn't do that," Solo said. "Breach of security."

"I forgot to tell you. You have five minutes to make up your minds."

"If you kill us, you won't have much bargaining power, will you?" Solo said.

Pretty Wilde gave him a twisted smile. "We'll keep the two of you alive only long enough to exhaust all means of making a trade. But that girl in there—the other people with you—they are expendable. They mean nothing to us. We will systematically kill them, starting with the girl, beginning in just five minutes."

Solo winced, glancing at Illya.

Pretty Wilde said, "Have you the authority to sentence that girl to certain death in—four and one––half minutes?"

"Time," Illya said, lifting his hand. "Maybe it's became I've been so close to death these past weeks. I think we ought to cooperate, Solo. Give them the channel. As soon as they contact Waverly this once, technicians will scramble the signals in that channel, change the wave-length. What can we lose, except our lives?"

After a second Napoleon Solo merely nodded, and Illya Kuryakin said smiling into Pretty Wilde's sardonic face: "Channel D, my pretty little cobra. And hurry, will you?"