THE LIGHT-KILL AFFAIR
by ROBERT HART DAVIS
Deep in an uncharted jungle, Solo and Illya come to death grips with THRUSH's new, most lethal weapon, a madness-spawned, all powerful cannibal plant which feeds only on one kind of food—human flesh!
ACT I—INCIDENT OF THE PETRIFIED JUNGLE
THE TWO MEN crept through the jungle quiet, slowing involuntarily, puzzled and infected by the poison of unexplained dread.
Actually, silence is even stranger in a Central American jungle than in noonday Manhattan. The deeper they penetrated this unearthly stillness the more they suffered from the unrelenting intense humidity.
"Something's fouled up, Diego," Don Sayres whispered, feeling as if his voice carried like the crack of a rifle.
"I'm afraid we're lost, Senor Sayres," Diego said.
"Something more significant than that. Where are the monkeys? Where are the birds? This place is deadly quiet."
Sayres stopped walking, held up his hand. A blue-green haze hung over the rotted swamp growth. Distantly above them through a tight-woven vine canopy the sun glittered.
"What sort of compass reading you get, Diego? I have no idea where we are."
"The needle whirls," Diego said. "Only this has not changed in the last hour."
"Okay. Forget the compass." Sayres' handsome young face was masked with sweat and anxiety narrowed his eyes. He turned all the way around, not afraid, but deeply concerned. No matter where he looked, there was only matted swamp life, and his own breathing was the loudest sound.
"Look for some kind of high ground. We'll setup."
Diego nodded and hacked his way through ferns, vines and wild lilies with his machete. Finding even a knoll open to the sky was a matter of an hour's search. Diego shinnied up a cabbage palm, searched with his hand shielding his eyes. He found something to his liking and leaped to the muck, nodding.
On a grassy island in the tangled swamp Sayres opened the small kit he'd carried strapped to his back.
Diego Viero watched, awed, as the kit offered up electronic gear like a conjurer's bag.
"It's been a long time I've been away from headquarters," he said. "U.N.C.L.E. had no such gear the last time I was there."
Sayres was too intent upon his work to reply. What unfolded to look like a small radar skeletal proved to be a long range viewer with a breathtaking difference. Sayres adjusted it and when he and Diego studied it the small dial was homed in on a distant area as clearly as across an open plain.
Sayres explained quickly the operation of this viewer to Diego.
"What I want you to do," he said, "is to turn this knob, which moves the scanner on a three-hundred-sixty-degree area. At each turn, fine-tune with this knob, which will home in on given distances as if there were no trees or jungle in the way. Move it s1owly. Check it from zero to its ultimate reach; then move on to the next setting."
Diego nodded. "You mind saying what I'm looking for, Senor Sayres?"
Sayres was already setting up a two-way radio transmitter in a pack no larger than the palm of his hand.
"I wish I could tell you," he said. "I think you'll recognize it as quickly as I would. We want to pick up anything that doesn't belong in this jungle, man, woman, building or child. If Dr. Ivey Nesbitt is down here—and I no longer think he is—we'll find him out here, or we won't find him at all. And my bet is we won't find him at all."
"Why have you come so deep in this place if you feel our search is doomed to fail?"
Sayres gave the Spanish-born agent a faint grin. "You have been a long time away from headquarters, Diego. Ours is not to question why. Waverly says a man named Ivey Nesbitt has disappeared. The U.N.C.L.E. computers churn, the facts are sifted, and Waverly tells Solo to assign a man to find Nesbitt and bring him back home. So here we are."
Diego started to speak, but Sayres lifted his hand, silencing him.
He spoke into the miniature microphone. "Open channel six, please. This is Equator
by ROBERT HART DAVIS
Deep in an uncharted jungle, Solo and Illya come to death grips with THRUSH's new, most lethal weapon, a madness-spawned, all powerful cannibal plant which feeds only on one kind of food—human flesh!
ACT I—INCIDENT OF THE PETRIFIED JUNGLE
THE TWO MEN crept through the jungle quiet, slowing involuntarily, puzzled and infected by the poison of unexplained dread.
Actually, silence is even stranger in a Central American jungle than in noonday Manhattan. The deeper they penetrated this unearthly stillness the more they suffered from the unrelenting intense humidity.
"Something's fouled up, Diego," Don Sayres whispered, feeling as if his voice carried like the crack of a rifle.
"I'm afraid we're lost, Senor Sayres," Diego said.
"Something more significant than that. Where are the monkeys? Where are the birds? This place is deadly quiet."
Sayres stopped walking, held up his hand. A blue-green haze hung over the rotted swamp growth. Distantly above them through a tight-woven vine canopy the sun glittered.
"What sort of compass reading you get, Diego? I have no idea where we are."
"The needle whirls," Diego said. "Only this has not changed in the last hour."
"Okay. Forget the compass." Sayres' handsome young face was masked with sweat and anxiety narrowed his eyes. He turned all the way around, not afraid, but deeply concerned. No matter where he looked, there was only matted swamp life, and his own breathing was the loudest sound.
"Look for some kind of high ground. We'll setup."
Diego nodded and hacked his way through ferns, vines and wild lilies with his machete. Finding even a knoll open to the sky was a matter of an hour's search. Diego shinnied up a cabbage palm, searched with his hand shielding his eyes. He found something to his liking and leaped to the muck, nodding.
On a grassy island in the tangled swamp Sayres opened the small kit he'd carried strapped to his back.
Diego Viero watched, awed, as the kit offered up electronic gear like a conjurer's bag.
"It's been a long time I've been away from headquarters," he said. "U.N.C.L.E. had no such gear the last time I was there."
Sayres was too intent upon his work to reply. What unfolded to look like a small radar skeletal proved to be a long range viewer with a breathtaking difference. Sayres adjusted it and when he and Diego studied it the small dial was homed in on a distant area as clearly as across an open plain.
Sayres explained quickly the operation of this viewer to Diego.
"What I want you to do," he said, "is to turn this knob, which moves the scanner on a three-hundred-sixty-degree area. At each turn, fine-tune with this knob, which will home in on given distances as if there were no trees or jungle in the way. Move it s1owly. Check it from zero to its ultimate reach; then move on to the next setting."
Diego nodded. "You mind saying what I'm looking for, Senor Sayres?"
Sayres was already setting up a two-way radio transmitter in a pack no larger than the palm of his hand.
"I wish I could tell you," he said. "I think you'll recognize it as quickly as I would. We want to pick up anything that doesn't belong in this jungle, man, woman, building or child. If Dr. Ivey Nesbitt is down here—and I no longer think he is—we'll find him out here, or we won't find him at all. And my bet is we won't find him at all."
"Why have you come so deep in this place if you feel our search is doomed to fail?"
Sayres gave the Spanish-born agent a faint grin. "You have been a long time away from headquarters, Diego. Ours is not to question why. Waverly says a man named Ivey Nesbitt has disappeared. The U.N.C.L.E. computers churn, the facts are sifted, and Waverly tells Solo to assign a man to find Nesbitt and bring him back home. So here we are."
Diego started to speak, but Sayres lifted his hand, silencing him.
He spoke into the miniature microphone. "Open channel six, please. This is Equator
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