"We were called in at United Command," Alexander Waverly had told Illya and Solo in the command room three days earlier, "when world-wide panic might ensue if more publicized agencies were at work. We here at the command have determined to make up an exact duplicate of the vanished Chieftain down to the special sleeper in which Harrison Howell rode."
Now, Illya watched the night world skim past in darkness and sudden, quickly lost lights. The duplicate Chieftain had been altered in only one way. Illya himself had installed the United Command bleep-signal which would emanate from the train no matter where it went. These bleeps were being monitored on special receivers in United Network's command room.
Illya smiled. It was as if the entire evil-fighting organization rode this train with him.
Yet why did the hackles rise at the nape of his neck? Why couldn't he escape the sense of an impending wrong so incredible that even the full forces of United Command might be helpless against it?
"These thoughts don't make sense," Illya told himself aloud. "It's just another assignment, like returning a book to the library. And you can handle it."
Nevertheless, the slowing of the train went through him like a sudden electric shock and he lunged for the desk, grabbing up the phone, signaling the engineer.
"Engineer."
"What's wrong?" Illya asked. "Why are you slowing?"
"Just a water stop, Mr. Kuryakin," the engineer said.
"Why didn't you let me know?"
The engineer's voice sharpened. "You'll find the stop listed, Mr. Kuryakin, if you'd bothered to check the trip pattern."
"How long will we be stopped here?" Illya said.
But there was no answer. The engineer had replaced his receiver.
Abruptly, the train shook like a wet dog, the metal parts grinding and squealing in protest.
The lights flashed out, but came on again immediately.
The train was sinking, straight downward. It was not as if it were entering a tunnel, but as if the fifteen cars were being lowered via some kind of elevator!
Illya rushed to the door. He grabbed the knob, turning it. The door was locked.
Illya did not even bother checking it; the door was somehow electronically sealed, as if the door were frozen into its framing.
Heeling around, Illya caught up the nearest heavy object and ran to the windows with it.
He stopped, holding the bar aloft, useless. It was heavy enough to break the thick glass, but beyond them were walls of solid rock like close-pressed subway tunneling.
The train continued to plunge straight downward toward the center of the earth.
Illya jerked the sender-receiver from his jacket pocket. He pressed the button. "Uncle Charley, come in. Mayday. Come in, Uncle Charley. Acknowledge please. Over."
There was no sound. The instrument was dead metal in his hand. He loosed his fingers, letting the small sender slip from his grip to the floor.
The lights flared up and then were doused, putting the car into stygian darkness, a pall of gloom that pressed in hot and thick and suffocating.
THREE
Napoleon Solo stood in the United Network Command Room and stared at the blank screen of the instant-bulletin set.
A kind of creeping helplessness immobilized him.
Other men, of every age and nationality, moved around him, each wearing the same electronic identification badge that he wore, all of them vitally concerned in this latest unnerving disorder that left the world-wide organization impotent and disabled.
Though the others acted, trying to find ways around the crippled machinery, Solo remained staring at that silent screen, as if paralyzed by its sudden failure.
Slender, of medium height, Solo was a warmly handsome young man who might have been a doctor, lawyer, advertising executive, accountant—anything except what he was: a highly-rated precision-trained enforcement agent for what had become the most important secret service agency in the world, the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.
Solo pulled his gaze from the lifeless screen, forcing his mind away from the moment when every sound from the Chieftain ceased.
"They reached the water stop," Waverly was saying, reconstructing the final moments of communication. "We lost contact. However, the bleep-signal remained clear for—for how long, Mr. Solo?"
Solo looked up, his face drawn. "The bleep stopped three minutes after the train slowed for the water stop, sir."
"Have they been able to pick it up again?" Waverly asked.
Solo shook his head. "Negative, sir. We have agents on the spot. They report no trace of the train. It did not stop for water, by the way."
Waverly shifted papers on his desk. He scowled, studying the men ringed before him. Slowly, the machines and computers came to life on the walls around him. New coded messages were place before him.
He said, "There must be no panic. We have had a moment of complete breakdown here. But it is only momentary. There is some logical explanation for this, for all of this. Our communications cannot fail like this, not without some detectable cause. Two fifteen-car streamliner trains cannot vanish off their rails without logical explanation."
Waverly pushed his graying hair back from his lined forehead. No one in United Command knew Waverly's exact age. Solo wondered wryly if even the computers could give such information. Contrary to popular belief, the computers were not infallible. Lord help anybody programming Alexander Waverly's age into any United Command machinery!
Waverly's brilliant record in military and intelligence dated back to the first world war. He was one of the five men—of different nations—heading the far-flung operations of United Command. Age was his enemy—and so far Alexander Waverly had been able to walk on its face.
Solo said, "I'm ready to fly out immediately, sir."
Waverly's gaze fixed on him from beneath bushy brows. "Fly out, Mr. Solo? Where?"
Solo glanced at the silent screen of the instant-bulletin. It was his last contact with Illya Kuryakin, somehow seemed his final hope for finding him. "I imagined you'd want me to go out to the place where the second train disappeared, sir."
Waverly shook his head. "Negative."
Solo scowled. "But, sir. Illya was on that train—" He saw the older man's face and stopped.
Waverly nodded. "I assure you, Mr. Solo, we will make every effort to locate Mr. Kuryakin, as well as the two trains which somehow seem to have dissolved into thin air."
"Isn't the place where the train disappeared the place to start looking for Illya?"
"It might seem to be—"
"Before something happens to him."
Waverly's head jerked up. "Just a moment, Mr. Solo. We cannot let emotionalism enter into this, no matter how we might feel about Mr. Kuryakin. Surely I don't have to remind a professional such as you that there are larger issues at jeopardy here."
Solo exhaled heavily. "I'm sorry, sir."
Waverly's voice was flat. "As you yourself stated a few moments ago, we have U.N.C.L.E. agents on the scene where the train was last heard from. None has reported any trace of the lost streamliner. I am aware of the great personal peril Mr. Kuryakin faces at this moment, but these are risks we take—that all of us must be prepared to take.
I'm sorry, but perhaps the scene of the calamity might not be the best place to begin our search—for either Illya Kuryakin, or the missing trains."
Solo frowned, waiting. He could no longer oppose anything Waverly ordered. He had the same pride and faith in Waverly that he had in the United Command itself.