Solo shrugged. "We'll try to get in from here. Good luck."
Illya nodded and bounded up the steep ledge like a mountain goat. Solo watched him a moment; then he nodded at Bikini. "Stay close behind me."
She caught his belt in her fingers and he moved into the mouth of the canyon. Inside these rocks they were attacked by an incessant buzzing sound. Smile, Solo thought, you're on candid radar.
There was no sense turning back. He kept as close to the rocky wall as possible, slithering forward in the darkness. The buzzing sound grew louder. Far ahead he saw the brighter illumination of the lab around the sharp twists in the dry river bed.
The new sound was like a fist striking against a hand, swiftly, repeatedly.
Solo paused, listening. Bikini pressed close against his back.
He recognized the sound; it was that of men running in some sort of padded shoes.
Two armed guards came running around a sharp bend. They wore green fatigues, green caps with small, brilliant lights attached above the visors. The lights played across the ground ahead of them, illuminating the narrow canyon floor and the mountain wails.
Solo pressed hard against the rocks, pressing Bikini behind him.
The first guard ran past, his light touching at their feet until he was almost past. Then the glow illumined their faces.
The first guard didn't see them, but the second did. The first continued running.
As the second guard stopped, bringing up his gun, Solo chopped with the side of his hand across the man's throat. The guard slumped with a faint outcry.
It was enough to stop the man ahead. He turned around, his light raking across Bikini's stricken face.
Solo caught up the fallen guard's gun in one hand and threw it at the man running toward him.
The gun caught the guard across the chest, slowing him. Solo sprang toward him, tackling him and carrying him down to the ground under him.
The guard lost his hat. It fell to the ground and as the man rose, Solo saw his eyes were flat, did not focus, the face expressionless.
He remembered Bikini's saying that the man who had delivered the "summons to death" to her father had looked like a mindless robot.
Mindless or not, the man bad been programmed to fight furiously and to kill.
He brought his knee up, sending Solo sprawling beyond him.
Then he stalked Napoleon, gun hefted like a club.
Solo retreated, going into a side turn off the main artery of the canyon. This seemed to be what the guard wanted. He lunged at Solo, swung the rifle, and Napoleon Solo leaped back into the darkness to safety.
He swung again and Solo backed away again. Suddenly though, instinct and the abrupt chill cry of wind warned Solo that he was being driven toward a brink.
Solo flung himself against a boulder, stayed there, timing himself. The guard swung the rifle. At the last instant Solo ducked and the rifle smashed.
Solo sprang upward, catching the guard around the knees, taking him down. They fought on the floor of the narrow gorge, rolling almost to the edge.
Solo caught his breath. The pit yawned, bottomless, narrow, a fault in the rocks. A man's body would stay there forever.
The guard's cold hands closed on Solo's throat. Solo's head hung out over the chasm.
Solo set himself, trying to lever the guard over his head. It was impossible, the silent man was possessed of superhuman strength.
Solo forgot trying to throw the man and concentrated upon staying alive.
Those hands tightened. Solo felt the canyon and the sky changing places. Red stars wheeled and skidded before him.
He swung his legs up as high as he could, caught his shoe. The fingers closed on his throat. He felt consciousness slipping away, felt his body being pressed closer to the precipice edge.
He slipped the shoe off, gripping it with all his strength. He struck the guard across the nose with it. He did it again and again.
Nothing changed. In horror he began to be afraid that the man was incapable of feeling pain. The fingers closed and he felt the last oxygen burning in his lungs.
In desperation because there was nothing else to do, Solo kept striking the guard across the nose, knowing each time he struck the blows were weaker.
Suddenly the guard whimpered, as if the battering had broken whatever mind-binding spell he was under. The hands loosened. Solo didn't delay hoping for more. Gasping in a deep, sobbing breath, he fought upward, rolling over with the guard, pulling himself back to safety.
The guard went on fighting, striking, choking, pounding. But there was a difference and Solo felt it. Now he was fighting an ordinary man of ordinary strength, no longer driven by some outside will.
Solo's fist caught the guard on the jaw. The guard slumped, then grabbed Solo's body, rolling with him toward the side of the bottomless chasm.
Solo fought wildly, realizing that the guard had been programed to kill, even if he died, too. This much remained to drive him.
Solo caught at the jutting rocks, fighting free of the guard's grasp. He thrust the heel of his hand against the man's jaw and thrust with all his strength.
The guard loosened his grip on Solo, gasping. Then Solo thrust out one more time and the guard fell away, slipping in terrible slow motion over the side of the cliff. His fingers grasped at jutting rocks, held.
Solo sank for a moment against the mountain wall, panting. He took up his shoe, stared at the man's hands gripping those rocks. Then he slipped the shoe on his foot and stood up. He exhaled heavily, speaking over the side of the cliff, "You will hang on, won't you?"
He ran around the curve in the canyon.
SIX
BIKINI WAS crouched in the shadows where he'd left her. In the light from the guard's cap he read the terror in her face. He wondered if she began to see just some of the peril into which she'd walked.
Her lips parted and she almost cried out her shock and relief at the sight of him.
He shook his head, warning her against speaking. She nodded and reached out her hand to him. Her fingers were icy.
He nodded, motioning her to follow him again. One thing he was sure of, even the lab radar would show only two of them. It was unlikely that it could reveal their identity. Two guards had come running out. Two people were returning. Perhaps they had bought a few moments of safety.
He decided to use it to the best advantage. Holding Bikini's hand tightly, he ran along the narrow gorge between the high dark canyon walls.
Suddenly the illumination was like the sun at noon. Solo paused at the turn in the rocks. Leaving Bikini pressed into the darkness, he inched forward, peered around the corner.
He caught his breath. He had seen this lab on the long-range scanner, but he'd had no idea of its immensity or complexity.
The floor of the canyon widened abruptly to a width of a hundred yards around this turn. Hundreds of feet above, the crest of the mountains closed to a few inches.
In this gorge the laboratory had been set up, and everything depended on its own artificial lighting and heating. A green haze seemed to envelope the glass walled building, but only because everywhere strange tropical plants grew lush and deeply green under this strange light. A kind of buffalo grass had sprouted wild on the bare canyon flooring under this light, growing almost to the narrowing turn.