by Alex Raymond
“Take cover!” he cried to Dale. “We’re—we’re—” His eye caught a flash of light off in the forest nearby. He could not distinguish exactly what caused it, but the resonance seemed to emanate from that point.
“We’re under attack, Dale! Get behind the jetcar—hurry!”
The air suddenly blossomed into liquid flame and the magnetic force of a beam projected toward Flash knocked him backward into a giant fern stalk. He crawled around and crouched behind it to get out of the direct line of the ray.
And then, suddenly, everything was very quiet once again.
CHAPTER 3
Cautiously, Flash emerged from behind the fern. Dale still hid behind the jetcar, where it lay canted slightly on a tangle of forest roots and dead branches.
The air about them was very calm now, as if it had never been touched by the heat and power of the strange ray.
“Dale,” he called to her, “are you all right?”
“Yes,” she answered, raising her head. “Is it safe to come out?”
“Strange,” Flash mused, without answering her. “That ray simply stunned me for a moment.”
“I’m not hurt, either.” Dale walked around the rear of the jetcar and joined Flash in the clearing.
“Probably the same ray disintegrated the metal in the jetcar’s suspension system. But if it did that, why didn’t it hurt us?”
Dale shook her head, glancing around at the forest with puzzled apprehension.
Flash pointed his gloved hand toward a heavy curtain of foliage. “It came from that direction, wouldn’t you say?” The dense duster of vegetation lay not far from the superway as it curved and dipped through a formation of light-purple Klang outcropping. Klang resembled Earth’s granite rock, except that it was purple with brown specks.
“I saw a flash of light,” said Dale, “and then the air seemed to resonate.”
Flash began walking toward the dense undergrowth. “Let’s go see if we can find the machine that projected the ray. I assume, at least, that it was a ray of some kind.”
Dale stopped dead in her tracks. “Look!”
“Two men,” muttered Flash. His hand immediately sought the blaster pistol in the leather holster at his belt.
The two men stood some distance from them, but it was easy to see them, even in the thick wooded growth of the forest surrounding them. One was tall and slim, the other short and fat.
They wore paramilitary uniforms. Flash distinguished sleeves that fastened in tightly at the wrists, military trousers that bagged at the knees and ankles, and then disappeared into shiny boots. The uniforms were chartreuse, but the texture of the material was not identifiable at a distance.
What appeared to be ammo belts with pouches spaced at intervals were fastened around their waists. Their heads were bare. Flash did not recognize the uniform and knew that it came from no known combat unit in the galaxy and allied systems.
Although the men’s faces were not close enough to distinguish clearly, Flash got the impression that they both had mustaches. Their flesh seemed to resemble the chartreuse attire, being of a kind of yellowish tone.
“They did it,” said Dale positively.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get them!” Flash said, starting through the undergrowth. “They can’t get away with this!”
“They’re armed!” cried Dale. “Don’t let them hurt you.”
“I won’t,” Flash promised. He pushed aside branches and vines. A hollow ravine separated him from the cleared flatland upon which the two strangers stood. Flash plunged down a slope and made his way through crimson-and-gold bushes.
He came up the other side of the draw and saw the two men more clearly now. They were standing exactly where they had been a moment before. Behind him, Flash saw Dale standing on the other side of the ravine, looking at the two uniformed men.
“Hey!” called Flash. “Are you the two men who wrecked our car?”
There was no response.
“Well?” Flash called out, making his way toward them through the thick undergrowth.
The two men conferred briefly. Then, with the quickness of a magician’s illusion, they vanished into thin air!
Flash halted, staring. He passed his gloved hand over his eyes and blinked rapidly. Then he stared into the forest and saw that the two men had indeed disappeared from sight.
Stunned, Flash turned to Dale. “Did you see that?”
Dale’s face was perplexed. “I saw it. I was looking at the two of them and they simply went up in a puff.”
“An optical illusion?” Flash pondered. “I want to check.”
Dale ran through the undergrowth after him. “I’m coming with you.”
Flash waited for her to join him and then the two of them proceeded through the tangled brush until they came to the spot where the two men had stood.
It was a small clearing in the middle of thick and twisted combinations of ferns, vines, scrub brush, and tall slender umbrella-topped minitrees that thrust briefly into the air. The lavenders, oranges, and crimson colors dazzled the eye.
“They could have run into the cover of the trees,” Dale said thoughtfully.
“No way.” Flash shook his head. “I was looking right at them. They simply vanished.”
“I saw them go, too.” Dale sighed. “It was just an idea.”
“Perhaps they weren’t really here,” Flash said. “I mean—mirrors? Video projection? A holograph?”
Dale walked about the clearing, her eyes on the ground. “Here,” she exclaimed.
Flash watched her as she knelt down and touched a small tuft of mongospike, a type of forest grass that grew only on the planet of Mongo.
“What are you talking about?”
“Broken,” she said, pointing to the sheathed and jointed sections of the spiked purple grass. “Somebody was standing here very recently.”
Flash picked up the tuft of mongospike and studied it. Then he searched the area with his eyes until he came to a stretch of Mongo’s puce-colored soil. There was a footprint there, made by the shape of a military boot.
“There was a man here—one of the men I saw. And here’s another print. They both wore boots.”
Dale nodded.
Flash searched the humus more thoroughly, examining the tufts of mongospike. “The prints are isolated right here,” he said. “There are no tracks leading away from the spot where we saw them.”
He stood up, stretching his muscles.
“Well, what do we do now?” Dale asked. “If they mean us no harm . . .” She let her voice drop.
Flash looked into her eyes. “How can we be sure of that? Just because that ray they projected at us was a stunner and not a destroyer, how can we be sure the next one won’t burn us the way the first one burned the metal of the zarcar?”
Dale shook her head in dismay. “We can’t be sure, Flash.”
The sight of the superway in the forest caught Flash’s eye in the distance. He watched the point a moment longer, then grabbed Dale’s arm.
“You see?” He pointed at the curtain of foliage.
“What?”
“From here it’s a straight line to the jetcar. See the hood? All right. Let your eye travel beyond that point. Straight ahead, in a direct line. What do you see?”
Dale let her eye move along the same plane. “Why, it’s a curve in the superway, Flash.”
“Exactly. Right where we began to have trouble with the zarcar.”
Dale turned to stare at him.
“That means they stood here, aiming the ray at us through the trees! They watched us crash. And then they stunned us. Why didn’t they kill us?”
“I don’t mind admitting it, Flash,” said Dale in a tremulous voice. “I’m scared!”
CHAPTER 4
The two men in the iridescent chartreuse uniforms stood for a moment under an enormous fern tree, catching their breaths. They had been running through the forest. The purples and reds shimmered in the light of Mongo’s seventh sun.
“Kial,” said the fat one, gasping. “Why did we have to run through the forest in such a huge circle?”
The tall slender one stared at his companion as if he were a fool. “Dummy,” he said. “To throw Flash Gordon off the trail!”
“But he couldn’t see us when we pushed the button on our time belts.”
“No,” said Kial impatiently.
The fat one smiled. “Anyway, he didn’t catch us.”
Kial chuckled craftily. “And he won’t stumble onto the Tempendulum, either. Right, Lari?”
Lari blinked in surprise. “I see. You thought maybe he would follow us to the Tempendulum.”
“Your marvelous intellect constantly amazes me, Lari! Simply amazes me.”
Lari smiled. His curling mustaches twitched and big dimples spread over his sallow complexion. “But, Kial, if he couldn’t see us, how could he follow us?”
“Dummy! If he’d tried to follow us, he’d have gone right past where we were and he’d have stumbled onto the Tempendulum.”
“Yeah,” said Lari, light dawning.
“Now, come on,” snapped Kial. “We’ve got to get back and report in!”
Lari’s face fell. Two tears squeezed out of his little black eyes. “I’m afraid, Kial.”
“What’s to be afraid of?”
“The emperor,” cried Lari. “When he finds out we haven’t delayed Flash Gordon for good—”
“Let me handle this,” said Kial, throwing out his chest and starting to walk through the forest. “The emperor is a hard man, but a just man.”
Lari trotted through the undergrowth after Kial, having a hard time keeping up. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?” Kial repeated with annoyance.
“Yeah. A just man.”
Kial growled in his throat. “That’s what we’ve been taught to say, anyway.” He let a sly smile cross his face, tilting his mustaches up.
“He’s going to disintegrate us when he finds out we’ve let Flash Gordon get away!” sobbed Lari.
Kial frowned and slowed to a walk. “It would be nice if we could stay here, wouldn’t it?” he asked, looking around at the giant plants of the forest.
In silence, the two of them continued onward, more and more slowly.
Finally, they stopped and gazed through a gap in the undergrowth.
“There it is,” said Lari sadly.
“Right where we left it,” Kial agreed.
Hidden in the thick and high-topped trees was a hemispherical structure the size of an ordinary two-story building. It was built of metal alloy, surfaced with a bright sheen that caught the stray rays of Mongo’s seventh sun filtering down through the leaves and sent them flashing into the trees in rainbow-hued arcs.
Sharp metallic vanes partitioned the hemispheroid, running from the zenith all the way down to the equator, where the structure joined the earth. There were twelve vanes, all joining at the top of the sphere. A cone extended straight from the joint into the sky.
Entry into the hemispheroid was afforded by a porthole that could be seen at the bottom of the metallic covering.
“If only we could use it now to get back to the future,” Lari mused, staring at the metal demiglobe.
“That’s traitorous talk!” snapped Kial. “We must stay in this historical era until we make sure Flash Gordon does not get to Arboria.”
Lari’s eyes narrowed. “A minute ago you spoke as if you’d like to stay here forever.”
Kial scoffed harshly. “Don’t remind me of that, Lari.”
“All right.” Lari sighed. “Let’s get into the Tempendulum and report to the emperor.” He wiped the perspiration off his face.
Kial walked through the mongospike to the metallic hemispheroid and climbed through the porthole, with Lari following. Inside the hollow dome, a subdued purplish light glowed from a large instrument console set up at one end of the circular room.
Hanging from the ceiling at the top of the dome was a large pendulumlike metal rod extending down almost to floor level, ending in a heart-shaped metal weight. The pendulum was still.
Floating in the air somewhere between their heads and the top of the dome was a large, oval miniglobe of impenetrable shiny black, inside of which could be heard a slight hissing. A glow seemed to emanate from the globe, as if it contained millions of volts of electromagnetic energy, or the power of thousands of light rays of heat.
Kial moved quickly to the console and studied the dials and digital readout ports. A purple glow shimmered behind the dials and numbers in the ports. Mounted at one side of the console was a large vidscreen, which was dark now. Dials and a complex system of computer connections fed into it.
Near the pendulum were two astro-seats tilted at rest position. Shiny straps dangled from the arms of the seats.
Lari strolled over and sank into one of them, closing his eyes as he wiggled his toes inside his boots.
“Okay,” Kial said importantly. “I’ve got the perichron laservid connected. I want you—” he turned and saw Lari lazing in the astro-seat—“Dummy. Get up here. We’ve got work to do.”
Lari jumped to his feet. “Sure, Kial! Anything you say.” The astro-seat rocked slowly as he hurried across the surface of the dome’s metallic flooring.
“Come on!” Kial’s face was flushed. “I want you to make our report to the emperor.”
Lari paled as he stood next to Kial. “You always get the easy work and I get stuck with the hard jobs.”
“That’s because you’re much more able to cope with them than me, Lari” responded Kial, a malicious twinkle In his eye. “Now sit down and report!”
Kial stood and pushed Lari down into the seat in front of the screen of the laservid.
Lari picked up the solid-state microphone and spoke Into it “Calling Ming XIII. Calling Ming XIII. Time probe aye dash seven, reporting in. Time probe aye, dash seven, from aye dash seven dee one two aitch, minus three aught one wye, three one seven dee, eighteen aitch, three seven em, one one ess.”
Kial grinned. “Very good.”
The laservid screen glowed a dull lavender. Then a face appeared in the lines of the screen. Lari cringed. It was a thin, ascetic, pinched face with a narrow jaw, a wide forehead, a widow’s-peak skullcap, and slanted, piercing black eyes. The nose was thin and as vicious as a knife blade. A Mandarin-style mustache flowed down over the edges of the mouth, with an odd double-pointed Mephistophelian beard extended on past the trowel chin.
“Your Highness,” Lari began stiffly, “we arrived here as scheduled in Time zone minus three aught one wye, three one seven—”
“I know all that, you idiot!” snapped a high-pitched voice on the laservid. “What happened?” The laservid audio began to whine.
“Your faithful agents, sire, immediately ascertained the presence of Flash Gordon on the superway to Arboria, as reported in the annals. Directing the antimatter neutralizer ray onto the suspension system of the jetcar he was driving, we blew it off the roadway.”
“Get on with it!” screeched the face in the screen.
“However, sire, before we could tune our antimatter neutralizer force field to the special bone structure of Flash Gordon and the woman, he got out of—”
“In short, you bungling idiots, you’ve ruined everything, haven’t you?” the sarcastic voice whined in the laservid audio.
Lari quailed. The purple face in the vidscreen seemed outraged.
“Do I have to tell you how to do everything?” Ming XIII asked ironically.
“Yes, Your Highness.” Lari cringed. “I mean, no, Your Highness.”
The face receded as Ming XIII seemed to back off a moment to think. Then the face appeared again.
“It’s very simple. You’ve lost him now, but all you have to do is use your time belts!”
“Our time belts?” Lari’s voice quavered.
“Yes, your time belts!” The face grew in size and the eyes seemed to pierce Lari’s. “Set the digital chronometers back a few hours. The
n all you have to do is steal Flash Gordon’s weapons before you attack him.”
“But Your Highness—how?”
“Get into that jetcar before he does! It’s so simple, a moron could reason it out!”
Kial pushed Lari aside. “I understand, sire. We’re to move back in time, steal Flash Gordon’s weapons from the jetcar. Then he won’t be able to come after us with his own—how was it described in the Annals of Time—oh, yes, blaster pistol.”
“Right,” said Ming XIII.
“But sire,” Lari began in a trembling voice.
“What is it?” Ming XIII asked crisply, his burning eyes filling the screen.
“Where can we find the jetcar?”
Ming XIII’s eyes narrowed. He turned and consulted a long strip of readout paper next to him. “Umm, yes. Here we are. Flash Gordon and Dale Arden arrived from Earth system at the spaceport in the forest the previous midnight. That’s where they picked up the jetcar and that’s where you’re to steal those weapons!”
“Yes, Your Highness,” said Kial, bowing before the vid-screen. “We’ll fix him!”
“You’d better. Now get to it! You’re wasting time.”
Kial stared. “Well, sire, we can always retrieve lost time with our time belts, can’t we?” He smiled.
“Idiot! Get moving, you two. You’re not coming back here until you fix Flash Gordon, or I’ll have you both met by the armed forces special squadron in Mingo Square. A fine pair of royal secret police you are!”
“Your Highness!”
“Bah!”
The screen went blank.
Kial turned and saw Lari looking at him, perspiration pouring down his face.
“All right, dummy,” snapped Kial. “Let’s get moving. You heard the emperor.”
CHAPTER 5
In the special projects chamber of the Royal Palace of Mingo, the tall, gaunt, caped figure of Ming XIII paced back and forth over the royal carpet of synthofur. His thin saffron features were distinct in the brightly lighted laboratory; his black eyes glistened like ripe olives. His beard and mustache were stiffened by wax from the honeycombs of the forest kingdom’s wild sassafras bees—which delicacy had been smuggled in over the borders by Ming’s agents.