“Uh-huh.” “Partly for my own curiosity,” said Illya, “and partly on the grounds that knowledge is more useful than ignorance, what can you tell us about Harry’s condition? You mentioned he’d signal you when he got the gamma laser —how does he do this?”

“He calls my home phone, and rings once ”

A pair of electronic bird calls sounded softly, and Napoleon said, “I’ll get it.” He unclipped what looked like a fat silver ballpoint pen from inside his coat, twisted one end to extend a short antenna, and reversed the point to reveal the microphone/speaker. “Solo and Kuryakin here.”

“As soon as you have finished your briefing, please report back to the local office. This is of overriding priority.”

“I —ah —think we’re just about done here,” said Napoleon reluctantly.

“Is this new development going to supersede our present assignment?”

“We don’t know yet. Apparently it1s much bigger. Mr. Waverly is on his was from New York right now by courier jet; if you can manage to get here by six you can meet him and get right to business.”

“Good. Should we arrange to have dinner sent in?”

“We’ll take care of that. Off the record, I haven’t the least idea what this could be —but the tone of his voice sounded as if you could be at this all night once you got started.,”

“Thanks. We’ll check in by six. Solo out.”

Little Sirrocco finished sorting her hair. mist-green eyes darting back and forth from her own reflection to Solo’s and Illya’s as she tucked it through a band and tossed it over her shoulder.

“I gather they may have to send in the second team,” she said. “Good luck, fellas, but I guess that’s war.”

“We may still be here to handle the pick-up.” said Illya. “If the drop is on for tonight. you’ll still check in and they’ll have to send someone.

We might be out in time, and I would like very much to observe this progralTTT1ing in operation.”

“Okay.” she said. standing and slinging a rough leather bag over her shoulder. “If I see you again. that’s cool. and if I don1t. hang in there.”

She fumbled in the bag until she found a pair of opaque plastic glasses, and gestured with them towards the door. “I have to head home now to wait for a phone call.As she locked the dressing room behind her she called up the corridor.

“Hey. Spiros!”

A faint -Yeah?” came from beyond the stage wall.

“I’m checking out —see you about eight. These two guys are leaving with me.”

“Okay,” answered the distant voice. “Why don’t you use the call box?

All the money I paid to put it in and you gotta yell!”

“I already locked my door. G’bye,” she called, and pushed the panic bar of the fire exit, opening into an airshaft with golden afternoon sunlight spilling in at the top and filtering down over trash cans and sooty brick walls.

“You parked off Grant? Go out that way. I catch a cable at the top of the hill.”

“Can we give you ”

“Thanks, no. You go check in. I get around okay on my own.” And with a swirl of her hair and a flicker of hip, she was gone.

“Miss Sirrocco needn’t have heard about this,” said Mr. Waverly, “but no harm is done. You will not be abandoning your assignment immediately at any rate —for that matter, the entire operation centered around Stevens may shortly become obsolete.”

“You mean he may be relieved - or he may be killed?”

“Not precisely. He may be out of a job. For that matter. we all may have things a bit easier in the near future.”

They looked at him, then at each other. “I beg your pardon?”

Mr. Waverly smiled. “I believe it would not be too rash to say that we are now preparing to strike the most damaging blow ever delivered to the very heart of Thrush. If you fulfill your duties well in the next few weeks, we may have an opportunity to cripple the organi5ation —if not to destroy it completely.”

They stared.

“A long-range project was begun some three years ago,” he continued.

reaching for his humidor. “while you were short-circuiting a nasty situation in the Middle East. I’m sure you remember that week.”

“Clearly,” said Illya.

“You went there from England after meeting that Rainbow chap.”

“That business about the robbery was never settled either, was it?” said Napoleon. “That whole affair seemed unresolved. I always felt, we were off our stride.”

“We did well enough in the war afterwards. I thought.” said Illya.

“Your work there was most satisfactory,” their commander said. “But your final report from London, filed between assignments. included information which correlated with some anomalous data we’d received from other sources and made me willing to invest some effort to take advantage of the revealed situation.” His pipe now packed. he searched for a match. “If you have nothing pressing. I would like to explain at length.

“Here we have Thrush Central. housing the Ultimate Computer and in constant communication by remote terminal with every Satrap in the world.

And over here, several thousand miles away. is a complete duplicate set of hardware, with most of the files copied on its tapes, warmed up and waiting with a staff of forty or fifty sitting around playing cards. And thirdly, yet another full set of staff and equipment is en route from one location to another. where they will re-assemble and activate their own Thrush Central, with consideration of several constantly changing factors, probably including a random variable generated within the Computer itself, on a given signal.

everyone in the second, or standby, Central assumes their stations and all availab1e communications channels are utilized at high speed to transfer every remaining bit of information from the first set of machinery into the second.

Simultaneously, all functioning channels are switched to the second site, which then becomes Thrush Central, and the third unit goes to standby status.

“This accomplished, the first group packs up everything —Section Three tells me ail their equipment is modularized and containerized. loathsome neologisms.” He sucked at his pipe and sweet blue clouds rose around him.

“They load into trucks, onto railroad cars, aircraft or boats like a traveling theatrical troupe and are carried to another location, also chosen by the Computer, where they set up, realign and test the entire system, and signal that they are ready to assume standby status.

“Sometime after this, the active Central transfers control to the third full unit, which went on standby when the second took over. At this point the first would become the standby unit while the second broke down and moved to another location. Do you follow me so far?”

“This is more or less what Johnnie Rainbow outlined to us, sir.” said Napoleon.

“With the omission of the fact that the second unit already has all basic data and programs, copied into its storage banks when it went to standby,” Illya added. “Takes much less time to update, since they only have to copy the active files.”

“Our best estimates are that Central can perform a complete transferal without dropping a decimal in well under sixty seconds in an emergency situation.

Since any of the three units is capable of carrying the full operating load of Thrush indefinitely, it can sustain activities until the one in transit is ready to resume standby operation. Presumably, if a unit were actually discovered and destroyed, it would take some time to replace the staff and hardware, but they could easily field a new functional unit within two or three weeks.”

-Because all we can capture is the physical machinery which houses the information and the programs,N said Illya. “The software can skip to anywhere in the world at the speed of light and leave us with blank iron oxide for all our trouble..