"Speaking of pleasures, Su Yan. There's one of your pleasures I'd like to inquire about."

Su Yan shrugged. "Ask me anything."

"Where is Barbry? What kind of sadism are you practicing on her?"

Su Yan gave him a baleful look of mock hurt. "How you wrong me, Solo."

"Where is she?"

Su Yan laughed and shrugged. "I said I wanted you comfortable and this would include peace of mind, would it not?" His mouth pulled in an enigmatic smile. "I wouldn't want you fretting over little Esther Kapp-myer."

He shook a small two-inch microphone from his cuff into his palm, and spoke into it.

Barbry was brought in almost at once by a white-smocked nurse. Solo studied the girl closely. She looked tired, and there was a resigned slump to her shoulders, to her whole body. Her eyes held that empty glaze he had seen in them when he had returned to his room in the St. Francis Hotel. She remained in whatever trance it pleased Su Yan to hold her in. She was like a robot. Solo saw he would be unable to reach her consciousness either by speaking to her or touching her.

"Are you all right, Barbry?" he said with no hope that she would even look at him.

She sat on the edge of the round, king-sized bed where the nurse had led her. She stared straight ahead of her.

"Of course she's all right," Su Yan said impatiently. "Why shouldn't she be? She'll live in elegance here that, believe me, she was entirely unaccustomed to outside." Su Yan glanced about the room, at the dining alcove, the impressive fireplace, the sitting room, the bath, the second bathroom. He nodded, pleased. "Very cozy. How-ever, I think I can give you an even happier group—by adding a member."

His face was twisted with chilled smiling as he spoke commands a second time into the hand microphone.

Solo tensed, watching him. He stood unmoving as the suite doors were pushed open again. His eyes widened, and illness spread in the pit of his stomach, compounded of outrage and futility.

Two white-suited orderlies, bulkily-made, their faces gleaming with their sweated, almost cattle-like stupidity, their muscles thick and corded, entered. Between them walked Illya Kuryakin. His slender face was .pale, his fair eyes fixed on nothingness. The difference in the way he moved, and Barbry, was that she was like a robot, mechanical, awaiting commands. Illya looked mindless, not like a robot at all, but like a zombie.

Solo stiffened, hearing Su Yan's blandly mocking voice: "So you see, Solo, no matter how rugged things may look to you, you are much better off than many others, aren't you?"

III

Solo held his breath at the sight of the two mindless bodies left with him inside this smartly furnished suite for the insane. The indirect lighting reflected itself in the flat surfaces of their eyes.

He lifted Illya's arm, tested his pulse, finding the merest trace. On the other extreme was Barbry's racing pulses, the swirling shadows in her eyes.

He looked at them, thinking they would stay seated as they were until the world ended—which might not be the too distant future unless he was able to find some way out of here, for all of them or for himself alone.

He gently pushed Barbry back on the bed, so that she at least looked comfortable to him. He supposed in her state, she rested as well sitting up. She lay down obediently for him, upon her back. She did not close her eyes. She lay staring through the ceiling, through the dome of the sky, through the roof of heaven…

He winced, thinking that he might find a way out alone. He hated the thought of leaving them behind, and yet all he needed was the chance to get word to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters—as quickly as that, the balance would shift to their side. But if they found him gone, how long would Illya or Barbry live? If he stayed, how long would the world itself last?

Solo smiled wryly. Here he was considering the possibility of his escaping from what must be an improbable fortress.

He prowled the room, unable to sit still. Not even the complicated puzzle of the dismantled component parts from his attack and survival case could keep him at a chair. He needed something to make, something that would aid him somehow. There seemed a million unrelated parts spread out there, waiting, challenging. If only he knew what to do with them…

The steady hum he had noticed from the depths of this building—somewhere under him, and there were no windows that looked from this room upon anything except stone foundation, which meant this suite was below ground—the unceasing sound continued.

He found the steel bars at the windows were sunk deeply in the concrete, defying even a heat bomb. Besides, the window led nowhere. Set high in the walls were the grates of the air conditioning complex. The fireplace had once been a working one, apparently, but now it was strictly ornamental. A heavy steel plate barred the chimney opening. The doors of the room were flat-surfaced inside, with a small peep-hole, covered on the outer facing—the kind of sighting-opening in any insane asylum. The doors swung inward easily, but there seemed no way to force them open from within.

He exhaled heavily, sweated, prowling all the rooms of the suite like a caged animal, despairing, but not tired.

Lunch came. Solo abandoned his fruitless searching of the suite and sat at the linen covered table in the alcove. He ate alone. Orderlies attempted to rouse Illya and Barbry to the food, quickly dismissed the idea. As he ate, he stared at Illya and the girl, trying to think how he might lift them from this artificially imposed lethargy. The food—a roast chicken, with tiny green peas, feathery-light mashed potatoes, a tossed salad, wine and coffee—was served by a tan-suited waiter who was obsequiously polite, but watchful. The service was perfect, but the man neither asked questions nor answered them.

And then when the lunch was cleared away, Solo was left alone in the suite with the silent Illya and Barbry. He forced himself to draw a chair to the table where Su Yan had emptied the dismantled gadgets from his attache case. Somehow he felt he was doing exactly what Su Yan wanted him to, that anything he could do would only play into his hands, or at the very best would be useless.

He refused to become enmeshed in this negative thinking. The wires, metal, batteries, plastics, all so meaningful when assembled, were like the parts of some fantastic jigsaw puzzle. He went on sitting there, refusing to permit his mind to wander from the immediate task he set for himself: he sorted all the pieces, painstakingly, with infinite patience. Perhaps if he saw what he held, he might see where he could go. Or maybe it ground down to what Su Yan had said: it passed the time.

He gazed with pride at the small stacks, piles, sets, pyramids, assortments. Plastics, wires, batteries, minute aluminum cones, empty pellets, even a communication ear-plug had been dismantled.

Solo's concentration was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter with his dinner. He was startled to look up and know that six hours at least had passed since he'd eaten his lunch. Nothing else seemed altered much. Illya remained where he was and Barbry lay unmoving on the bed. The busy hum of motors continued from deep within the earth.

"How are things in the outside world?" Solo inquired.

"It's raining, sir," the waiter answered before he thought. Solo saw the man's face go gray, as if he were frightened because he had spoken to him.

"Don't worry; I won't tell a soul," Solo said.

He ate the small filet mignon, drank his wine and coffee, poked at his salad, pushed the rest of it away. Alone again, he returned to his hopeless, thankless task as if his life depended on it. He was still at it when the engines ceased grumbling beneath him, when silence seeped down from the chateau above.