by Alex Raymond
“Hearsay,” said Zarkov, tugging at his beard.
The robot dogs were nearing the cabinet Flash had stepped into to hide.
“We have much more to go on than that,” added Inspector Carr. “The minister’s security system filmed the whole incident. I am in a position to tell you, Dr. Zarkov, that I have viewed the films myself. They dearly show, beyond any possibility of doubt, Flash Gordon enter the house, walk down the hallway, and into the study.” He tapped his green finger beneath his left eye. “I saw Flash Gordon gun down Minister Minnig.”
“Trick photography,” said the doctor.
The first mechanical hound hesitated before the cabinet door, then moved on. His partner trotted after him.
“The films have not been tampered with in any way,” the inspector assured Zarkov.
Constable Briney began chuckling. “We also have a trump card,” he said. “We have Mr. Flash Gordon’s fingerprints on the weapon.”
“It’s a big universe,” bellowed Dr. Zarkov. “It’s possible for two men to have the same prints.”
“Possible, but highly unlikely.” Inspector Carr shrugged. I’m afraid we have an airtight case against Gordon. The only thing which puzzles me is—why? What was his motive?”
“Strain,” suggested the constable. “All this limelight, being what you might call a celebrity. It’s a strain on a man. I recall a few years back we had a vice president who . . .”
“Baloney,” said Zarkov.
Briney blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t quite comprehend your meaning.”
“I refrain from using a more explicit term.”
“Our trackers seem to wish to go into your laboratory for a look around,” noticed the inspector.
“All right, they can go in there. Just so they don’t chew anything up, or lift their legs.”
“They’re not programmed to do anything like that,” said Briney, trotting over to let the mechanical dogs into the lab.
Inspector Carr resumed his walk around the hangar. He halted in front of the cabinet door. “Constable Briney has a bit more faith in those things than I do,” he said. “I always prefer to poke about a good deal myself.” He took hold of the handle and tugged the door open.
The cabinet was empty.
CHAPTER 6
Zarkov watched the police vanish in the fog, robot dogs at their heels. He stepped back, allowed the hangar doors to close themselves. Then he returned to the cabinet and pulled open the door. He pressed a spot on the floor, which caused a part of the rear wall to slide aside. “Damn good thing I had the foresight to make some improvements in this barn,” he said.
Flash stepped out of the hidden compartment. “This trip to Pandor was supposed to be a vacation,” be said. “Now I’m a fugitive from justice.”
“Baloney, as I pointed out to the constable,” said the bearded doctor. “I know you didn’t murder anybody. Did you?”
Laughing, Flash answered, “No, Doc.”
“Was Minister Minnig alive when you got there?”
“Yes, and when I left,” said Flash. “I don’t know why his daughter didn’t tell the police that.”
Zarkov’s bristly black eyebrows shot up. “What daughter?”
“Minnig’s daughter, pretty girl with platinum-colored hair.”
“Minnig’s a bachelor,” Zarkov told him.
“That wouldn’t necessarily rule out his having a daughter,” said Flash. “And she certainly introduced herself as such, so did he.”
The doctor poked a booted foot at the floor. “That stuff I sprayed around on the flooring really kept those tin-can robot dogs from smelling you out. “I’ll have to remember to patent it in this planet system.” He walked over to the aircruiser, began absently buffing the fuselage. “We’ll forget about this daughter for a minute. Let’s try to figure how they got pictures of you doing the old boy in.”
“Somebody made up to look like me?”
“Damn good makeup job then,” bellowed Zarkov. “He even has your fingerprints.”
“Those could be faked.”
Zarkov bit his thick lower lip. Then he said, “Well, what in the hell was it Minnig had to tell you anyway? Maybe we’ll get some clue out of that.”
Flash shook his head. “Minnig went around in circles, something about not being sure any more. He didn’t tell me anything at all.”
“I’m sure he had something important to pass on,” said Dr. Zarkov. “I’m seldom wrong in judging people. I wonder what made Minnig change his mind.”
Frowning, Flash suggested, “Maybe it wasn’t Mining.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t have anything concrete to go on, Doc. Still I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right. The whole interview with him seemed a little cockeyed.”
“A fake Flash Gordon, and a fake Minnig.” mused Zarkov. “That implies an ambitious plot.”
“Whoever’s behind this wave of destruction must be someone pretty ambitious,” said Flash. “Suppose Minnig really did have a good lead to give. They kill him, frame me. It takes the pressure off for a while.”
“They’re underestimating Zarkov if they think that.” He gave the ship a resounding pat. “This baby’s about ready to go tracking the source of the sound plague.”
“I can still handle that end of things.”
“Yes, I’m counting on you,” said Zarkov. “You go hunting in the hinterlands. I’ll clear up things on this end.”
“When will the aircruiser be ready to go?”
“Before sunup.”
“So soon?”
“Soon? I’ve been working on the damn thing for a week, haven’t I? If it hadn’t been for these nitwit meetings with the president and his cabinet, I’d have been finished two or three days ago.”
“The police will be watching our little villa, too,” said Flash. “I won’t be able to say good-bye to Dale.”
“She’ll understand,” said Zarkov. “She can lend me a hand with my detective work here in the capital.”
“You think someone here in Estampa is behind this business?”
Zarkov rested his wide shoulders against the side of the airship. “Someone had to work out this cute trick of making it look like you knocked off Minister Minnig,” he said to Flash. “But I know for a fact the sound waves aren’t originating in this territory. You heard me explain all that at President Bentancourt’s gathering yesterday. Our sound man obviously has his equipment shielded in some way, but even so, I could have located it if it were in Estampa.”
Opening the door of the aircruiser, Flash looked into the control room. “I’m glad you left me a place to sit.”
“That’s the most compact collection of gear you’re likely to find,” boomed the scientist. “If any of your local technicians tried to equip a ship as thoroughly as I have, they’d have to hitch a trailer behind.” He moved to Flash’s side. “You’re familiar with most of the basic tracking equipment, but I’ll go over the whole lot of it with you before you take off.”
“Which way do I head once I do take off?”
“Let the ship worry about that. I’ve linked the detecting gear with an automatic pilot and given the thing an initial flight pattern,” explained Zarkov. “Everything you and the ship find out in the wilds will get back here to me telemetrically. Once we locate the source, then you’ll have something to do.”
“All I really have to do then is turn around and come back,” said Flash. “The ship will have told you what we found out. Then we can send in a task force to take care of things.”
“It may not be that simple,” said Zarkov. “When you find them, they may not let you come back.”
CHAPTER 7
The light of oncoming dawn showed at the small one-way window above his head. Flash sat up on the air-filled floating cot. He swung his legs over the side and dropped to the floor of the small storeroom. He dressed quickly and went out to the hangar.
Dr. Zarkov was making a slow circuit of the aircruiser, a soy donut in one
hand. Noticing Flash, he raised his other hand in greeting. “I’ve exceeded even my own high standards,” he boomed.
“When do I take off?”
“In a few more minutes.” Zarkov brushed soy crumbs out of his shaggy beard. “We went over all the equipment last night, but you may want a second briefing this morning.”
Flash grinned. “Not unless you added something new, Doc. I memorized everything the first time around.”
“Well, I did toss in a hamperful of kelp sandwiches and fig tea, but you probably know how to handle that,” said the doctor. “Remember, Flash, this ship is completely soundproof, which may take a little getting used to.” Wiping his fingers on the leg of his work coverall, he reached up to open the door of the cabin. “You should be able to track down the source of these freak vibrations without any trouble.”
Stepping around the doctor, Flash climbed into the ship. “You’ve got it set for the course we discussed last night?”
Zarkov, following his friend inside the aircruiser, said, “Yes, you’ll check out the territories to the south first. There’s more wilderness over that way, more unsettled areas. I think our sound man is more likely to be operating from an out-of-the way spot. Politics being what it is, especially on Pandor, you couldn’t do what this guy’s been doing from a big city and not have somebody start talking about it.”
Flash sat on the edge of his pilot’s seat. “I wish I could see Dale before I go.”
“Impossible.” said Dr. Zarkov. “Even someone as clever as Zarkov can’t sneak you into that villa without some cop or other noticing it.”
“You talked to her on the pixphone?”
“Yes, and they’ve got a bug on it,” replied Zarkov. “I managed, being gifted with considerable subtlety, to convey to her that you were safe and not to worry.”
“I’ll miss not seeing her since we don’t know how long this little jaunt is going to take.”
“You’ve got enough fuel for a week out and a week back,” bellowed the doctor. “If this crate works as well as it should, though, you’ll find our sound man in a lot less time than a week.”
Ten minutes later, Flash’s ship was shooting away from the capital, heading south through the new morning.
The trouble didn’t start for several hours.
And even when it did, Flash wasn’t immediately aware of it.
His olive-green aircruiser was passing over a vast stretch of thick jungle country. It was midday. Flash ate a sandwich as he scanned the complexity of dials which surrounded him.
“Nothing so far,” he said to himself, chewing and swallowing. “Of course, he may have better shielding than Doc gives him credit for.”
He then noticed something he wasn’t expecting at all on the dials immediately in front of him. He was losing altitude.
He dropped into the pilot seat, attempting to take over the piloting of the ship.
“Lever’s jammed,” he said aloud. “Controls are frozen.”
Something was definitely wrong. It felt to Flash, as he fought to pull the ship up, as though some force was pulling him down toward the jungle.
He made a swift check of all the pertinent equipment. There was no indication anything was wrong with the aircruiser. Yet the ship continued to drop, heading nearer and nearer to the jungle below.
Flash tried once more to free the controls; the ship kept plummeting downward.
“Zarkov may hate me for abandoning his pet ship,” he said as he grabbed up a flying belt. “But I think she’s going to crash. I’d rather not be inside when she does.”
He reached for his radio mike. “I’ll let Doc know what I’m doing.” He flipped the talk toggle—nothing happened: “Hello, hello.” His radio was dead.
Flash picked up an emergency backpack of food and equipment. Strapping that on, he sprinted to the escape hatch. “Well, let’s hope Zarkov is reading about my troubles on his gadgets back in the lab.”
He fitted himself into position in the hatch alcove and activated the escape lever.
The mechanism ejected him from the aircruiser. He began to drift down, with the aid of his flying belt, toward the green tangle of jungle.
CHAPTER 8
Zarkov was in the laboratory heating himself a cup of fig tea when Flash lost control of the aircruiser. Thus he didn’t immediately know it had happened. He’d been at his telemetric equipment all morning. This was his first break. He took a sip of the hot tea and tugged at his beard.
A red ball of light began flashing over the outer door of the lab. “A young woman on the steps,” said the voice of the lab computer out of a ceiling speaker. “Judging by information stored in our memory files, she might be . . .”
“I know who she is, nitwit,” said the scientist. Dale’s picture showed on the viewscreen suspended next to the flashing light.
“Shall I let her in?”
“No, I’ll do it.” Zarkov strode across the lab, tea sloshing out of his cup, and pulled the door open himself. “How are you, Dale?”
The girl didn’t return his smile. “I’m not sure,” she said as she entered. “Anyway, I got hold of this just in time.” She thrust a cartridge of videotape into his hand.
Pushing the door to the street shut, Dr. Zarkov asked, “What do you mean just in time?”
“Well, you asked me to bring whatever film our house security cameras had on the aircar that picked up Flash last night. How is he?”
“Doing fine the last time I checked. Now what about the film?”
“When I went down to the house control room to get this, there was a man there,” said Dale. “He claimed to be a representative of General Yeat. He said he’d come to take all the film for the past day.”
“You obviously didn’t comply.”
“No, I asked to see his authorization,” answered Dale. “He said that wasn’t necessary. Then I told him I’d put in a call to President Bentancourt’s office to find out what this was all about. That caused him to leave without taking anything.”
“He didn’t try to hurt you, force you to give him the tapes?”
“No, he was relatively polite,” said the girl. “Even though he had a head shaped like a gherkin.”
“Huh.” Zarkov took another slurping sip of his tea. “Yate’s with the intelligence wing of the military. Maybe they’re looking into the Minnig murder, too.”
“But isn’t Yate rumored to be against the president?”
“That’s another possibility,” said Zarkov. “Yate could be out to throw a spanner into the works.”
“You think you’ll be able to find out who sent that aircar for Flash?”
“A moderately bright robot dog could do that,” he told her. “The tough part’s going to be getting from the underlings to the big cheese.” He set his cup down on a table, tossed the film cartridge high in the air and caught it. “We’ll look at this, then I can get started tracking down the car.”
“I’ll be glad to—oh, you have a call.”
A globe of blue light over the other door was blinking on and off. Zarkov went into the next room. He picked up the speaker of the wall pixphone. “Zarkov here,” he boomed into the instrument.
On the rectangular phone screen appeared the image of the rumpled, amiable Dr. Nazzaro. “Good afternoon, Doctor,” he said. “I know this probably isn’t any business of the Department of Health, but I did want to call and tell you I don’t believe Gordon can have had anything to do with the murder of poor Minnig.”
“That makes two of us.”
Dale came into the room, standing to the rear of the doctor.
“Good afternoon, Miss Arden,” said Nazzaro. “I can just see you at the edge of my viewing screen here.”
“Hello,” said the girl as she moved out of range.
Zarkov dropped the cartridge of videotape to a shelf beneath the wall phone. “I appreciate your confidence, Dr. Nazzaro. Now I must go.”
“Yes, certainly. You have a good deal to do, a good deal on your mind,” said N
azzaro. “I simply wanted to let you know you can count on me for any assistance I can give. Good-bye for now.”
Turning away from the blank screen, Dr. Zarkov said, “Well meaning, but there are very few things Zarkov can’t take care of single-handedly.”
“Still it doesn’t hurt to have another ally in the president’s camp,” said Dale, “especially if General Yate is going to try to interfere in things.”
Zarkov scowled at the wall clock. “Later than I thought,” he said. “Better make another check of Flash’s ship before we screen this film.”
“Would it be all right,” asked Dale, “if I talked to him?”
The doctor put his arm around her slim shoulders as they moved into the round room where Zarkov had his monitoring equipment. “Sure, I know he’ll want to hear from you.”
“I miss him,” she said. “If this murder—”
“Hey!” bellowed Zarkov. He bounded across the room, slamming the heel of his hand against a bank of dials and gauges.
“What’s wrong?”
Zarkov, muttering, flipped a row of switches. He grabbed up a hand mike, made a spitting sound into it, and said, “Flash—Flash Gordon—can you hear me?”
There was no response.
Dale ran to join Zarkov. “What is it?”
“Flash, come in,” Zarkov boomed into the mike. “Flash, do you hear me?”
After a moment he shook his head and set the mike down. He took a step back, hands on hips, and scanned the dials in front of him.
“Why doesn’t he answer?”
“I don’t know, Dale,” said Zarkov. “At this point, I don’t know anything. I’ve lost contact with the ship completely.”
CHAPTER 9
Flash dropped down through the tree branches. Large, brightly colored birds squawked, flapping off their perches. Silver monkeys went scurrying and chattering away.