This was the answer. He saw clearly now how this nerve gas had made it possible to move one thousand head of cattle as if they vanished without leaving a trace. No traces would be seen by men who were brainwashed.
Those two cowpunchers had believed anything suggested to them, while they lay unconscious from the first effects of the gas. Suggestion! While they were unconscious, Marty had believed that he'd grown disgusted with tracking and spent three days drinking in Cripple Bend. Pete believed he had fallen from his horse and had lain unconscious.
This meant there was not only strong currents of nerve gas from storage tanks up here, there were men, hidden like vultures—not ghosts, or ghost riders, but men executing some plan of unspeakable evil.
Had those men been here while he lay unconscious? What suggestions had been planted in his mind—and Mabel's?
Would he be able to think clearly because he had taken a nerve gas antidote? Or would he see what some unseen men had suggested he would see once he could move and walk again?
He pushed up to his knees, and then stopped, shaking his head incredulously.
At first, Solo was afraid to believe his eyes, fearful suddenly that he was experiencing visions as after effects of the nerve gas.
A ninety-foot slate wall in the face of the mountain near them moved slowly like a sliding panel.
Shaking his head, Solo remained on his knees, staring. The opening in the mountain was hangar-sized, and the lighted cavern beyond it was huge, shadowed—a place to swallow a thousand cattle easily.
His heart battered at this rib cage. Whether he lived to tell it or not, he'd solved the riddle of how those cattle had vanished and why the searchers found no traces left behind them.
A dozen men rushed through the opening in the side of the mountain.
They took a few steps, then slowed, paused, stopped for an instant.
Watching them, Solo wondered if they'd banged into the invisible wall of gas.
They inched forward, and he saw they were almost bat blind in the natural light of the outside world!
They chattered at each other. Solo could not understand what they said, only that they seemed to be encouraging their fellows to move forward in this strange environment.
Unsure whether they were real or hallucination, Solo watched them move toward him.
All wore identical dun colored coveralls, tightly zipped to their throats. Their heads and faces were encased in plastic masks, transparent and worn over heavy rimmed glasses and inhalers covering their noses and mouths. Narrow slits across their lenses kept out as much painful surface glare as possible.
Still they were almost blinded in the lowering darkness of the mountainside.
They faltered painfully forward, almost like men on tightropes, feeling their way.
They surrounded Solo and Mabel on the rock shelf.
One of the men said, "Drag those horses inside the cavern—we're to leave no traces of these people."
A group of the men turned their attention to the horses, and the animals were carted on small wheeled flat cars through the doors.
Solo was lifted, placed on a canvas stretcher. He lay still, keeping his eyes barely opened as he was borne across the lava beds toward the cavern.
He saw that two of the men bore Mabel on a litter beside his.
Eyes almost closed, Solo stared at Mabel's face. She appeared to be unconscious. She had not moved since she'd fallen from her horse. He watched her, puzzled.
When they had been moved inside the cavern, the slate walls were closed, sliding back into place.
At a double-timed pace, once they were inside the artificially lighted cavern, the men carried the two litters to an elevator set in an inner wall. This lift was huge, large enough to handle trucks, train cars, even transport planes.
Solo scowled, understanding suddenly how a great many unexplained disappearances—of people, planes, material—had been accomplished over the past years.
Winches, cables, ratchets wailed, protesting, as the lift was activated, plummeting breathtakingly downward toward the core of the earth.
Lying on the litter, Solo tried to reckon the depth of the descent, but it was impossible. One mile? Two? Three? He could not say.
The rounded, dun-clad men removed their masks, stood at attention. Solo realized they stared at him and he lay still, seeing that they might kill him if they found that he was conscious.
Just when Solo decided the elevator would never stop its plunging toward the center of the earth, it slammed to a soul-shaking stop.
One of the men shouted, "All right. Quickly. Get them out of here!"
"To the chamber of zombies?" one of the men at the litters asked.
"Of course," the group leader answered. "Where else? The master will send for them if he wants to see them."
The elevator doors parted, sliding back smoothly. Solo was impressed by the smooth operation, and he wondered if there was perhaps some more sophisticated power than electricity generated above ground?
The litter men took up the two stretchers, running in that odd, double-time gait.
In stunned amazement, Solo saw they'd emerged into a huge underground metropolis, miles below the earth's surface!
The sprawling city's main arteries, Solo saw, were not paved streets, but instead were gleaming rails of tracks, laced out in every direction. Trains thundered along them, coming and going through a labyrinth of hundred-foot tunnels, larger than anything Solo had encountered in the world famed caverns he'd visited.
There were no buildings as such along these caverns, and milk-white fluorescent tubings stretched throughout the length of every tunnel.
Caves had been gouged as houses in the tunnel walls, and each of these were constantly illumined by these lighting tubes in unbroken links.
A door in a stone wall slid open. The litter bearers carried the two stretchers inside the chamber the size of Grand Central Station, and like it, built on many levels.
The huge central room where Mabel and Solo were placed on their litters was crowded with humanity.
The men set the litters down, went out of the door, which closed silently.
Solo sat up, looked around in this chamber continuously illumined by the tubing of lights.
Hundreds of people crouched on the stone flooring. There were more of them on the several levels that opened out above this main floor. These people neither moved nor spoke.
Gradually Solo became aware of a steady buzzing sound. It seemed to have begun when he entered the chamber of zombies, and it neither grew louder nor diminished.
He could not find the cause of the sound, or its source.
He saw that these people were, like Mabel and him, recent underworld arrivals. Were these human beings part of those thousands who had vanished from home, jobs, friends—without a trace?
The incessant buzzing continued.
Solo glanced at Mabel. She appeared to be sleeping deeply. She remained unmoving.
The buzzing increased, tormenting him. He stood up and looked around. No one else seemed aware of this steady clatter. He moved slowly, trying to locate the source of the sound.
No matter where he walked in the huge chamber, the sound remained constant, unchanging.
He stopped, suddenly realizing what the sound was, where it was coming from.
He shoved his hand into his jacket pocket, brought out a small pen-sized receiver. The bleeps were louder now, they came from his signal receiver—a wave-length set up to pick out the bleeps sent from a lapel-set worn by Illya Kuryakin!