Flash Gordon 4 - The Time Trap of Ming XIII (12 page)

“What shall we do?” Dale asked softly.

“Is someone trying to play an elaborate joke on us?” Flash wondered.

“No one would joke with us,” said Dale. Her eyes lighted up. “Except Dr. Zarkov!”

“But this doesn’t seem like a Zarkov jest. This seems—” Flash stopped after a moment and stood, thinking.

“Seems what?” Dale prompted him.

“I don’t really know,” Flash admitted ruefully.

Dale stared at the writing. “Look,” she said impulsively. “I know who wrote that.”

Flash frowned. “Who?”

Dale looked into Flash’s eyes. “You.”

“Come on, now!” snorted Flash.

“But it’s your handwriting. I could tell it anywhere.”

Flash peered more closely. It did look like his handwriting, at that. Especially the fancy flourish on the capital F at the beginning of his name. It was his writing. But how?

“How could I have written it?” he scoffed. “You were with me. How could I have gotten ahead of you in the road?”

“I don’t know.” Dale considered. “Maybe you did it a long time ago. Last year, maybe.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Flash. He glanced around. “Look, I think we’d better take a chance. Do you want to?”

“Follow the arrow?” Dale asked.

“Yes.”

She nodded. “I was going to suggest that, anyway.”

Flash said, “It points right into the thickest part of the woods. Are you game?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s go.”

They stumbled at first, going through the rocks and clods next to the superway, but finally the footing improved. By that time they were walking through thick forest, their path a winding needle-covered way between the towering trees.

It was suddenly very quiet.

Dale took hold of Flash’s arm. “I’m scared.”

“If we don’t find anything in a minute, we’ll go back,” Flash assured her.

The woods ended abruptly.

They stood at the edge of the forest, looking across a small clearing surrounded by enormous conifers.

In the center of the clearing, there was a large structure built in the shape of a hemisphere.

It was the Tempendulum, although they did not know it by that name.

Flash stared. “What is it?”

Dale shook her head. “It looks like some kind of greenhouse. You know, where they grow plants.”

Flash patted her hand. “I’m going over to it.”

“Be careful,” Dale said.

“You stay here. If anything happens to me, get out of here quick.”

“All right.” Dale felt herself trembling.

Flash strode out into the open, glancing up at the big yellow sun of Mongo. It was Mongo’s seventh sun, in many ways the longest-lived and the best. The other six suns had burned out millions of years ago, according to Mongo’s history.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the heat of the sun felt good on Flash’s back.

He glanced quickly around as he proceeded through the low brush. It resembled chaparrall back on Earth. The growth was mixed in with wild mongospike. As he neared the gleaming metallic hemisphere, Flash found a small porthole in one of the segments of the structure.

Inside he could see a spacious emptiness that seemed laced with flickering vibrations of light.

He looked back at Dale. She stood, watching him with fear in her eyes.

Flash walked up to the hemispheroid and reached out to touch it. It was warm metal, heated by the rays of the sun.

Nothing happened.

He climbed the steps and peered in through the porthole of the big dome.

He saw an instrument console at one end of the entryway, and a long pendulum that hung down from the apex of the dome. Several astro-seats, resembling those used by astronauts in weightless environmental rockets, were spaced out near the pendulum. Loose straps dangled from their arms.

In the middle of the dome, a globe with a slightly oblate shape floated in the air. It was opaque, jet black, and it seemed sharply alive somehow.

Flash turned and waved to Dale.

“Come on. It’s some kind of experimental laboratory.”

Dale hurried breathlessly through the underbrush.

“Maybe it is Dr. Zarkov’s toy. Maybe he was playing some elaborate joke on us.”

Flash jumped down onto the floor of the dome. As he did so, he knelt and tentatively touched the surface with his palm.

“What’s the matter?” Dale asked.

Flash stood, his eyes clouded. “Dale, look at the metal. What is it?”

“Oh, some kind of rolled sheet steel, perhaps?”

Flash shook his head. He looked at Dale, puzzled. “It’s nothing like that. I don’t even recognize the element it’s made of, Dale!”

“What are you trying to say?”

Flash had wandered over to the console where the digital readouts were assembled on a wide board.

“And look at these instruments,” he said, pointing to the console.

Dale studied them. “What are they?”

“I have no idea,” said Flash. “The readout numbers are familiar. But the initials don’t make sense. T.C. V.R. E.T.Z.” Flash shook his head. “It makes no sense to me. The dome is immobile. It’s not going anywhere. Then why the travel instruments?”

Dale leaned over and studied the face of a dial where a golden needle wavered over a series of strange cabalistic signs.

“What language is that?” she asked hopelessly.

Flash shook his head. “It’s not English, and it’s not Mongo, or any of its variants. That’s for sure.”

Dale turned and stared at the large opaque black globe that floated in the center of the dome.

“Flash! Look at that globe, would you? It’s almost as if it contained thousands and thousands of watts of pure light and energy. You can see how it almost shines through the black opaque shell.”

Flash blinked. “It’s almost like an adaptation of the old light box—the camera obscura—but it doesn’t let in light, it holds in light!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” He smiled faintly. “Wish we had Zarkov here. He’d tell us.”

“Or make a good stab at it,” said Dale.

The black opaque globe suddenly trembled in the air, where it hung suspended as if by levitation. Then it sizzled, as if the light inside were performing some delicately assigned task.

Simultaneously there was a sound in the woods outside the dome.

Flash rushed to the porthole of the strange hemispheroid.

Someone stood just inside the darkness of the forest surrounding the clearing.

Then, quite quickly, whoever it was vanished into thin air.

The floating light trap sizzled and moved toward the large pendulum that hung from the apex of the dome.

The pendulum glowed and gave off a brief but staggering amount of heat.

Dale fell back, stunned.

Flash grabbed at her.

And the strange metallic floor under their feet moved.

W
ith his hands hidden between his back and the trunk of the tree, Zarkov twisted and turned until he had wrested one hand free. The pliable cord dropped to the ground. Zarkov eyeballed the needle-covered earth near the trunk of the tree until he found the gleam of his blaster pistol lying in a tangle of pine cones and pebbles.

Captain Slan’s attention was focused on Sar as he tore the plyoweave stretchsuit away from her throat. Lieutenant Brod’s eyes gleamed and his mouth hung open in lugubrious anticipation. Sar twisted her head back and saw Zarkov move from the tree trunk. Instantly, she understood what he was doing.

She screamed loudly, flailing her arms to make sure neither Slan nor Brod saw Zarkov. Slan drew back, cursing. Brod grabbed for the girl’s arms and pushed her against the tree.

“Hold her there,” Captain Slan snarled. “She’s a hellcat for sure.” His blue face glistened with perspiration. “But a pretty one, at that.”

Lieutenant Brod giggled and thrust Sar hard against the tree trunk while Slan lifted his hand once again to demolish her plyoweave stretchblouse. Sar screamed dutifully.

Zarkov held the blaster pistol in his right hand, moving around to the side where he had a perfect angle of fire on Captain Slan.

“Get away from her, Slan, if that’s your name!” Zarkov boomed commandingly.

Slan whirled, his face frozen, his yellow eyes wide and startled in his indigo face. His mouth opened in surprise, revealing bright-yellow teeth the same color as his eyes. The molars were pointed, the canines twice as long as the molars.

“Up on top of your head with your hands—both of you,” Zarkov ordered.

Slowly they complied.

“Brod, you fool,” muttered Slan, watching Zarkov with his big cat’s eyes. “You’ve done it again.”

Brod gurgled in his throat. “Captain Slan,” he whined. “I swear to you, he was thoroughly secured when I left him.”

“You, too, Brod,” bellowed Zarkov, waving the blaster pistol at him. “Get away from her and stand out over there.” He indicated a clear place in the wooded terrain. “Hands up!” he snapped as Slan began to ease his hands downward from his head.

“You’re making a mistake,” snapped Slan as he moved away from the tree trunk where Sar now leaned in exhaustion and relief. “We’ve got you surrounded here.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Zarkov saw Brod make a sudden movement toward his own back. Instantly Zarkov whirled and fired the blaster pistol. Brod stiffened and toppled over backward on the forest turf.

Slan’s yellow eyes narrowed. They seemed to be burning in his head. His tongue flicked out briefly and licked his upper lip. The tongue was almost as yellow as the teeth, Zarkov noticed in disgust. Slan smiled and nodded agreeably at Zarkov.

“It’s an amazingly precise weapon,” he said in the same gurgling voice Brod had used. “How is it energized?”

Zarkov smiled. “It’s a complicated mechanism, blue man, and quite probably well beyond your limited intelligence to comprehend.”

“Of course,” Slan said with a wide grin. Zarkov was unable to look at the yellow teeth and the flick of the yellow tongue. “Of course, but one always loves to learn. Tell me, is it one of Prince Barin’s mechanisms?”

“Earth,” said Zarkov negligently.

“Ah. That other solar system not far from ours.” He smiled gently. He moved imperceptibly nearer Zarkov, his hands still over his head where the bright red skullcap was affixed to his blue bones. “You Earth people have brought great treasures of commerce and science to the backwoods people of the forest kingdom,” he said purringly.

He looked, for all the world, like a large blue cat, Zarkov thought suddenly. He laughed. “Indeed we have. And they’re all the better for it, I can tell you that.”

“Yes,” Slan whispered, nodding.

Zarkov’s eyes were riveted to Slan’s yellow ones. He felt as if he did not want to move ever again. Suddenly, he heard Sar’s frightened scream.

“Look out, Zarkov! He’s hypnotizing you. He’s going to take your weapon.”

Zarkov could feel himself growing nerveless, and with the last vestiges of his willpower, he squeezed on the hand grip of the blaster pistol. The great blue body stiffened under the sizzling impact of the weapon’s force and then keeled over backward, the yellow eyes rolling up into the blue head. With a crash, the body hit the pine needles.

Sar ran over to Zarkov, looking up at him with her big brown eyes.

“Thanks, Sar,” Zarkov said loudly. “I guess he was playing me for a sucker, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” said Sar, leaning down over the blue body. “But you got him before he could put you under.”

“Must be some kind of hypnosis, as you said,” Zarkov responded, stroking his wiry beard with a frown. “Those yellow eyes.” He shuddered. “They’re enough to do anyone in.”

Sar shook her head. “I don’t recognize this breed. Blue men. We haven’t run across that combination in the chromosome charts of Mongo. Must be some mutant from the unexplored portions of the planet. The Boiling Desert. Or the Ultimate Icepack.”

Zarkov knelt beside Sar. He touched the blue skin. “Flesh and bone structure exactly like ours. But that blue color! And those yellow eyes and teeth!” Zarkov shuddered. “And did you see that tongue?”

Sar swallowed hard. “There’s a reptilian scaliness to the man’s flesh. Do you note that? Perhaps it’s a throwback to an earlier era.”

“Could be,” murmured Zarkov. “No one would breed selectively for those characteristics, would they?”

Sar stood up. “I’ve got to report in to Prince Barin. This is very important news. You heard what he said—that we are surrounded.”

“May be a bluff,” Zarkov growled, standing beside her. “It could just be a clever ploy to scare us.”

Sar turned to Zarkov. “I’m sorry I had to play games with you, Dr. Zarkov. My name isn’t Sar. It’s Sari. And I’ve found it much better to stake out in the forest kingdom as a man than as a wench.” She smiled faintly. “It’s much less tempting to the vagrants and outlaws in the woods around here. Forgive me?”

Zarkov boomed out a loud laugh. “Forgiven.”

“Also, I was out here to gather specific information. We’ve known for a long time that some new contingent of undesirables was invading the border areas. Because we didn’t know the leader’s name, we couldn’t decide exactly which division of Ming’s army was being utilized. This looks like an entirely new operation—a new mutant breed of fighters out of Ming’s laboratories.”

Zarkov shivered. “They certainly scare me.”

“I’ve got to get back as soon as I can and report in to Minister Hamf.”

Zarkov pondered. “Shall we split up? Or go on together?”

“Together,” Sari said decisively. “There’s an inn near the pine forest. I’ll call into Arboria on the laserphone there.”

“If you’re sure I won’t hinder you,” Zarkov said with a toothy smile.

“Not at all.” Sari studied the blaster pistol which Zarkov still held in his hand. “That’s a beautiful weapon.”

Zarkov nodded. “I’ve added a few nuances of my own to it,” he said in satisfaction. “But it’s a standard Earth neutralizer. Nitrogen-operated. Standard feedback mechanism. I’ve made my own variable controls. Freezes. Stuns. Impedes. Smashes. Repels. Flattens. Kills. Immolates. Hydrogenates. Aerates. Obliterates.”

“All with that one weapon?”

“It’s just something I’ve added to the standard specs. Here, I’ll show you.” Zarkov held out the blaster pistol to Sari. “You see it’s on KILL now.” Zarkov blinked, and shook the weapon hard. “Damn! Now it isn’t on KILL at all. I had it on STUN, the next-to-least powerful position,” Zarkov turned to stare at Slan. “We can’t have that! I thought I’d killed him! Stun? He’ll come to in a half hour.”