The technician said, "General? The aircraft -"

"Yes, I'll be on my way. Good day to all of you. Dr. Dargon, Major Otako, I leave our guests to your tender ministrations."

And, with a potentate's magnificence, General Weng lifted his chin and marched toward the ramp.

Solo sidled near Illya. He hoped to whisper a code word. He had to alert Illya to what he was planning. A desperate course, naturally.

General Weng had already reached the base of the ramp. THRUSH functionaries followed him, one carrying the decal-decorated suitcase, the other pushing the trunk. Each wore a holstered pistol.

The light above the ramp doors changed from red to amber. Then it showed green and stopped blinking. Solo inched closer to Illya.

Major Otako whacked Illya viciously on the right wrist with his swagger stick. "Keep a suitable distance between you!"

Solo would never have a chance to communicate with Illya now. From the corner of an eye he observed the TV monitor scanning the hangar. The screen showed a sleek, unmarked four-engine THRUSH turbo-jet taxiing forward. Solo took the action the moment required.

He spun on the ball of his foot, catching a last glimpse of the monitor camera as it panned to follow the turbo-jet out to the loading ramp.

"Stand still!" Major Otako shouted as Solo moved.

The U.N.C.L.E. agent spun, yanked the swagger stick from the hand of the astonished officer, and bashed him over the nose. Blood spurted. Otako howled and reeled backwards. Solo shoved his hand into the voluminous folds of his holy robe.

The THRUSH searchers had not been quite thorough enough. A couple of items had gone undetected. Solo pulled out one of those now, thumbing the clip on the combination ball point pen and anti-personnel weapon.

A deadly lime-colored cloud of 14-4 tranquilizer gas sprayed over the THRUSH soldiers and technicians who were charging him from the left.

"Down, Illya!" Solo shouted. The younger agent flattened, dragging Ah Lan and Mei with him. Solo kept spinning like a top. The swath of greenish gas trailed around him in a circle.

One THRUSH minion leveled his machine pistol at Solo's neck. He caught a whiff of the gas. He grinned foolishly and fainted away.

Alarm sirens warbled. Scarlet lights danced on the console boards. The huge iron doors to the ramp where the prisoners had entered clanged open. Fresh THRUSH reinforcements charged in, bumbling against one another in their eagerness to be the first to shoot. But the greenish gas had made vision difficult. Solo seized Illya's shoulder.

"We've got to stop that plane! Follow me!"

Quickly Illya helped Mei and a struggling Ah Lan to their feet. He threw his woolly-robed arm across his mouth and nose by way of demonstration. "Cover your faces when we go out through the ring of gas. Now run!" And he followed Solo, who was already charging toward the ramp.

The guards at the head of the ramp sighted their rifles at him. Solo wrestled with the folds of his robe. He had to hold his skirts up with one hand and hunt for what he wanted with the other.

He found it. The rifles of the guards crashed. A bullet whizzed past his head, tugging at the earflap of his hat. Solo flung the globular pellet he had taken from a concealed pocket in his robe.

The pellet went pong on the iron doors. Then the ramp heated up to an unbearable temperature. Solo ran straight ahead into the billowing, steamy clouds. Sweat popped out on his face. His cheeks felt parboiled. But in seconds the effect diminished.

Solo pulled up short in front of the doors. They had melted in their frames and now resembled puddles of metal margarine. Both THRUSH guards were dead, boiled alive by the thermal device. One had stood a bit too close. The white bone of his skull leered.

Beyond the doors the corridor ran on to an elevator. General Weng was struggling with his wheeled steamer trunk and his valise. Finally he crammed them inside. A moment later the doors snapped shut.

Nearer to Solo, the two THRUSH functionaries who had been assisting Weng had turned back. They each went to one knee, sighting their pistols. Solo tossed his second and last thermal pill. Heat and steam vapor and shrieks of agony filled the corridor.

About to jump over the superheated metal of the melted doors, Solo jerked up short. He whirled.

"Illya?" The shout of alarm was out before he saw what had happened.

On this side of the chamber, the only threats had been the door guards. On the other side, the THRUSH reinforcements were advancing warily toward the greenish fumes which hung like a mammoth smoke ring in the air. Charging through that smoke, Ah Lan had evidently been overcome despite the precaution of holding his arm across his face. He had fallen. In the thick of the smoke Illya and Mei were bending over the prostrate old man.

They were inhaling too much of the gas. Illya staggered. He wigwagged his arm vaguely in Solo's direction.

"Go - on, Napoleon. Can't make it. The old man is -" Illya corkscrewed to the floor, his humanitarian efforts having undone him. Mei collapsed on top of him. The THRUSH soldiers across the room let out a bay of triumph.

Solo remained at the top of the ramp for one tortured moment. In that moment his emotions rebelled against his training. Of necessity, training won. With a choked curse he turned his back on the control chamber and ran.

He tried to wipe the sight of Illya's stricken face from his mind as he pounded up the corridor to the elevator. The sirens wailed insanely.

How much time had passed? Was the plane already taking off? Solo hit the elevator's call switch, waited, prayed.

The THRUSH officers yelled as they charged through the tranquilizing gas, uniform sleeves covering their mouths and eyes. Solo wanted to go back to the chamber, fight and die in the attempt to rescue Illya. Yet he knew that he had no choice but to go the other way. Should General Weng reach Hong Kong with the storm generator, war would be unleashed. Solo had a higher allegiance than that which he owed to Illya. The name of it was U.N.C.L.E.

Machine pistols began to stutter. Solo ducked, dived, dodged. The elevator doors opened. He leaped inside. Bullets stitched a pattern up and down the rear wall of the cage as the doors banged shut.

Panting, Solo leaned against the side of the elevator. His heart thudded hard in his chest. The elevator rose steadily, humming. Solo worried that THRUSH would cut off the power and trap him inside. But evidently his break had thrown the base into confusion. Sirens still wailed tinnily through speakers in the elevator's ceiling. But the sensation of upward movement did not stop.

Solo tried to organize his thoughts. He had no weapons left. He had to find one, so that he would be armed when he got aboard the plane - if he got aboard.

The elevator stopped. The doors rolled back and sinister sundown light flooded in. Dead ahead Solo saw the turbo-jet on the concrete ready line.

A controller stood on the tarmac near the black-painted nose, wigwagging with lighted batons. The main door of the fuselage was open. The elephantine General Weng was struggling up a baggage ramp with his suitcase and steamer trunk. The turbo-jet's engines screamed at full rev. Weng's suit flapped like laundry in the prop wash.

All this registered on Solo in an instant. So did the two THRUSH soldiers turning to charge him, bayonets fixed.

Solo sidestepped at the last second. He kicked the soldier nearest him in the backside. The man hit his head on the black concrete wall of the building. Solo seized the man's rifle, spun around and thought of Illya and rammed the bayonet to its hilt in the stomach of the THRUSH soldier still on his feet.

The man wasn't on his feet for long. Solo wrenched the bayonet free. He knocked it off its mount and left it behind, checking the rifle mechanism as he ran toward the aircraft.