Flash Gordon

by Arthur Byron Cover

  He approached, striving to remain perfectly silent as he stepped on the silk sheets. His efforts partially successful, he knelt and touched her.

  Startled, the woman moaned and looked up at him.

  Ming exclaimed, “By the hands of the gods, I’ve been foiled by a mere Earthling!”

  For the woman in white was a slave girl!

  Wearing the shimmering gold gown she had procured from the slave girl, Dale Arden tiptoed down a corridor. Her exhilaration at having escaped Ming’s clammy clutches, for however long, threatened to make her light-headed, and she concentrated on listening for evidence of pursuit. Holding the slave girl’s high heels by their straps, she was thankful the silken material provided her with ample freedom of movement, that Ming’s women did not wear tightly fitting dresses or some other equally inconvenient fashion.

  Dale placed her hand over her heart and ceased breathing as she heard the approach of a red-robed guard, clothed like the leader of the squad which had brought her and her friends to the castle.

  She set down the shoes near a partition, one of several which had been placed in the intersection of hallways for no reason she could discern. Nevertheless, she was thankful for the partition’s existence. For she circled about it while the guard stared at her shoes and then glanced about, in search of the owner, with a robotic demeanor.

  “Hey!” Dale shouted.

  Hefting his weapon, the guard walked beside the partition. Before he saw her, before he made his turn, Dale stuck out her foot and tripped him.

  The guard landed heavily, with an outburst of escaping breath and the clanging of metal parts. Dale knelt and performed a brutal karate chop on the nape of his neck. Thankful that the guard had slumped into unconsciousness (and that she had not broken her hand on a steel plate), she picked up his weapon and glanced around the partition.

  Two more red-robed guards approached.

  Forced to reveal herself, Dale moved away from concealment and fired a laser blast at the second guard. Sparks flew and yellow smoke erupted from his red robe; he staggered backward and collapsed against the wall.

  Meanwhile, as she was considering whether she should be shocked or elated at her violent victory, the foremost guard shot her weapon from her hand. She realized instantly that her only hope lay in retrieving the weapon of the man she had felled. As the guard fired a series of blasts at her, she turned a cartwheel in the direction toward her salvation. A blast passed between her legs during the instant she stood upright on her hands.

  Dale grabbed the weapon and fired pointblank at the guard. Blood and metal shavings spilled from the opening in his stomach.

  Another guard, his presence given away by noises which may have indicated he was thinking, approached.

  They played a game of hide-and-seek around the partition, a game which abruptly ended as Dale struck the guard on the upper spine with the butt of her weapon. Gears shifted unmercifully, their screeching noises muffled by his body. Stepping around him, Dale struck him in the stomach. He fell as if he had dropped ten stories.

  Sickened, resisting the urge to vomit in reaction to the suffering she had wrought, Dale retrieved the slave girl’s shoes and ran away from the intersection.

  Though Klytus’s twelve monitors were equipped with skin, digestive systems, respiratory systems, and all the other details normally associated with humanity, they were identical; each round, hairless head lacking a characteristic enabling the casual onlooker to distinguish one from the. rest. Each monitor had a flabby torso and skinny legs. Wearing black uniforms and thick black ocular devices over their eyes, they worked quickly, methodically, never varying their mutual rhythm. They constantly murmured their reports, describing their actions as they performed them. They sat on both sides of a long console, equipped with screens that received the images from the ocular devices, which in their turn were hooked up to all the bugs in the castle and city, including communicators transplanted into the brains of spies.

  His sheathed hands behind his back, Klytus paced back and forth behind the monitors, as was ever his habit when the prey had aroused Ming’s personal interest. He halted and spun on his heels, clenching his fist, as a monitor finally said, “Sire, this unworthy slug desires to please you through his tidings.”

  Klytus did not listen to the monitor’s words. He watched an image of Dale moving aimlessly through the corridors. She paused to slip on her shoes. “What sector did you say?” Klytus asked.

  “Section 409 Beta.”

  Kala emerged from the shadowed corner. During the search she had withdrawn into the background, forcing Klytus to assume the tedious responsibilities of its operation; now that a satisfactory report to Ming was imminent, she would stand by his side. She slapped her whip on her thigh. “Shall we send a globe after Arden?” she asked briskly, deflecting Klytus’s attention to the affairs of state before he devoted a moment to their personal rivalries. (In truth, this strategy had been effective for so many years Klytus had ceased to notice it.)

  Rubbing his fingers together as if his metal gloves had become as comfortable to him as a luxurious fiber, Klytus replied, “No, my dear, His Majesty has commanded us to curtail expenditures in order to reduce the staggering inflation stagnating the economy. Our Emperor does not like for his children to be unhappy. So, instead, I propose another measure,” he continued, his tone subtly altering as only Kala could know, as if he was offering her a chalice of white wine. “Merely that we should send guards after her. We should always withhold the use of machinery whenever possible; men are so much cheaper.”

  “Might I suggest only one agent then, one whom she would gladly follow . . . to wherever he might lead her?”

  “I understand,” said Klytus. “You have just slashed this operation’s budget by a third.” He turned to a monitor. “Activate Agent Zarkov.”

  Kala pursed her lips so she would not smile. She would make certain Ming knew who thought of that little idea.

  As Dale ran through a narrow corridor with dimly lit portions spaced between long blocks of pitch darkness, she fought off the sensation that, instead of running (aimlessly) toward an exit, she was somehow traveling deeper into the castle. She recalled its size. During her flight she had passed many doors, sometimes heard voices, but she saw no one. She imagined whole families, their lines stretching back through the centuries, spending their entire histories within this labyrinth. Once she laughed at herself, thinking once again of her father’s pulp stories, wherein men in machines bore through the ground until they reached the prehistoric center of the Earth, inhabitated by cavemen, mammoths, and dinosaurs. What would she find when she reached the core of the castle?

  She approached an intersection cautiously. When she saw someone around a corner, she became too frozen with fear to turn and run. The same kind of fear had beset her when Flash first communicated with her via telepathy. However, the man’s relaxed posture and friendly smile convinced her. She ran to him. She embraced him. “Zarkov! I never thought I’d say this, but you’re a sight for sore eyes, you zany altruist!”

  “Easy, girl. Rest a minute.”

  Moving away from him due to his sexist remark, Dale observed him with suspicion. There was a glassiness in his eyes, as if something important had been snuffed out. “We can’t rest,” she said, anticipating his expression when she told him the astounding news. “We’ve got to get out of here and join up with Flash!”

  Zarkov blinked several times, then his eyes expanded wide open as if he was emerging from an opium dream. “Flash is alive?” he asked hoarsely. His eyes darted about with a quickness that filled Dale with relief. “That’s incredible! Almost . . . unbelievable!” He roughly grabbed her arm. “How do you know? You must tell me!”

  Wrenching herself from his grip, she nevertheless forgave him his understandable enthusiasm. “I talked to him through a telepathic communicator of some kind. He’s on his way to the moon of Arboria to get some help.”

  Zarkov rubbed his beard. He shook his head. “
Just incredible,” he whispered.

  “If we stay in these corridors much longer, we’re certain to be captured! What will we do?”

  Zarkov placed his forefinger on his pursed lips. “Let me think a moment,” he mumbled, and scowled.

  Dale wondered if Zarkov was applying all his mental capacities to the problem of their escape or if he was only pretending he was. From her previous experiences with men of extraordinary intellectual achievements, she knew it was sometimes impossible to tell. Especially in a domestic situation!

  Zarkov abruptly raised his eyebrows. “Follow me. I think I can find a safe way out.”

  She looked away from him and became dizzy, putting her hand on his shoulder only because he was the nearest support. She feared she lacked the courage to play the game.

  Actually, she had no choice.

  “Which way?” she asked, hoping to draw him out. “I’ve been all over this frigging place . . . !”

  “Congratulations, my girl,” he said tensely, with genuine respect. “You curse with the self-assurance of a man, an attribute I guarantee you’ll appreciate as life relentlessly marches on. No questions, dear; there’s no time. Just—follow me!”

  As he led her by the hand through the maze of corridors, she became increasingly astounded at how they had managed to avoid the castle’s teeming population. They didn’t even see a servant. Dale wondered just who Zarkov had managed to fool. Had he fooled his brainwashers? Or was he fooling her, leading her into the worst trap of all?

  Klytus and Kala saw none of Ming’s surroundings as they viewed him in the screen above them. The communicator was propped at an angle that required them to be constantly looking up at him. They dared not look away or relax their necks. They would not commit such a grievous—hence, deadly—insult.

  “I have located Dale Arden, Your Majesty,” said Klytus. “She is under the guidance of Agent Zarkov.”

  Ming raised his eyebrow; he caressed his mouth, his long fingernails brushing his mustache. “Zarkov, eh?” His smile revealed a rare glimpse of genuine merriment. “A masterstroke! We recognize the hand of Kala in this.” The serpentine eyes peered down at her.

  Kala nodded and smiled . . . just a little.

  “Klytus, your subordinate has pleased Us. We are correct, are We not, in assuming it was her suggestion?”

  “Of course, you are correct, Sire,” said Klytus without the faintest trace of rancor. “I thought it a bold, daring maneuver, certain to become a high point of the historical records of your august reign, regardless of the story’s ending, whether it be gay—or tragic. Do you not agree, Most Celestial One?”

  With an effort, Kala refrained from biting her lower lip. Klytus had thrust the entire responsibility onto her shoulders. She smiled weakly. “I confess, Sire, my only intent was to save expense . . .”

  “Of course, of course, my dear,” said Ming, chiding her good-naturedly. “You must understand, We truly admire an underling who freely risks so much for the good of the realm.”

  So the matter being thus settled, Klytus boldly interrupted Ming. “I must also report that Flash Gordon is still alive!”

  Ming could not have been more startled if Klytus had slapped him with a dead lizard. All his façades dropped at once, exposing a seething morass of anger. Now Klytus and Kala were faced with a mutual task: deflecting the ruthless temper of Ming the Merciless.

  Kala spoke up. “Gordon was revived by a traitor who spirited him from the city. We know this much from the Earth woman.”

  Ming snarled from the screen. “Who was the traitor?”

  “I have my suspicions,” said Klytus; his subtle lightness of tone was as daring as it was confident. “We request authority to pursue them in our own way.”

  “Stop at nothing.”

  “Regardless of the expense?”

  “Of course, you sniveling imbecile!”

  “No matter to whom the trail leads?” asked Klytus with a blandness so rife with connotations that it frightened Kala.

  “Stop at nothing!”

  Flash and Aura climbed the vines holding the flier until they reached the branch from which the vines hung. Climbing the branch was more difficult; its diameter was forty yards. However, the hardship was mitigated by the ample holds provided by chips of bark. Breathless and weary, still stunned by the crash, they began making their way toward Prince Barin’s forest. Aura immediately relieved Flash of his worst fears when she stated she was familiar with the area. His mind on other matters, Flash only gradually assimilated information on the new environment. Throughout the day he had acted, but had not thought, immersing his soul into his corporal self to a degree he had not attained since his boyhood hours spent throwing a football through a tire. Despite the harrowing stakes of the game, he had never felt so whole.

  Then, as his motions became mechanical and he had no choice but to leave the trailblazing to Aura, he suffered selfdoubts, and he wondered if the day’s events were a hallucination. The only mind-expanding drug Flash had ever taken was the peyote he had eaten during a winter spent as the disciple of an Amerind medicine man, but the visions had never been anything like this. He had fallen hopelessly in love, been condemned to death by a mad monarch, and escaped execution through fortunate circumstances—all in one day! Not to mention that he had traveled an incalculable number of miles across the cosmos. And that the existence of Earth was in jeopardy. Absorbing all this in twelve hours required a definite effort on Flash’s part.

  Now he had to adjust to the sight of Arboria.

  The trees were miles high; Flash and Aura walked on branches two miles from the ground. Save for white patches of light, the dense foliage shut out the visual evidence of the cosmic whirlpool. Flash felt like he had plummeted into a tableau in close contact with the essence of the life-giving forces. Dense green fog concealed the ground; green droplets formed on the tremendous leaves. The forest was a wet and steamy closed system. It was quiet, motionless. The struggle for life and death among the plants was prolonged and resolute. From what Flash had seen of Barin and his people, he was certain that beneath the peaceful tableau, the struggle was quick and final.

  Flash’s musings had taken him to grimmer, more forebidding spheres when the sullen silence was broken by a dimly heard chant. The music totally mystified him; it sounded like a combination of reggae and a Bach cantata, with just a touch of soul rock. As Flash and Aura altered direction by crossing upward at intersecting branches, the chant became louder; the drums and other percussive instruments became more frenzied; the singers clapped their hands at a counterpointing rhythm, thus adding another layer of sound to the sparse, repetitious arrangement. Flash assumed some sort of ceremony was transpiring. He disliked Aura’s wide smile and her twitching lip. He wanted to ignore her completely, following her lead as if she was no more than a guide. But the brief glimpses of her beautiful face mesmerized him. Her smile bordered on childhood innocence.

  As they broke through a thick shaft of blinding light descending from the foliage, they saw a wooden bridge, which looked to have been constructed by master craftsmen using sophisticated tools, meeting their walkway (which soon ended against a gigantic trunk). The bridge met another, and another, and soon they walked through a small village comprised of several boardwalks and treehouses, using the forest itself as a base. The boardwalks were empty. No one peered through the treehouse openings. They reached the underdeveloped village borders, where the trunks were thinnest, arriving at a treehouse built upon four intersecting boardwalks. A tree grew through the shack’s roof. By now Flash had wondered about the absence of female singers; spying a group of green-clad Tree Men through an opening, he suspected that women were not permitted within a designated radius while this very private, masculine ceremony was being performed. The Tree Men’s eyes were closed and their heads bobbed to the beat; they were intensely involved.

  “It’s their sacred temple,” Aura volunteered. “A young man is being initiated.” Her anticipation was keen.


  “What do I do?” asked an awed Flash.

  “We must hide outside until it’s over, but in the meantime, let’s climb on that branch over there and watch!”

  In the center of the temple, a hollow stump protruded through the floor. Standing about it were an aged priest in green robes, a young Tree Man, and Prince Barin. The blond, gaunt-faced youth facing the priest had just reached the latter teen years. The chanting suddenly dropped, becoming less frenzied and more solemn, and the youth said, “I am of age now, Green Father. I ask for the test of manhood.”

  The old priest croaked, “Choose your passage into this world—or the next! May Arbor guide you!” He coughed and tapped his fist on his chest. The chanting ceased. The priest stuck his staff deep into the stump, briskly stabbing and poking. A muffled roar, followed by a high-pitched hissing, resounded from the interior; the stump vibrated slightly from the shiftings and onslaughts of the creature within.

  The youth brought up his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow; he then thought better of it, rubbing his chin to conceal the motion’s original intent. Trembling, he held his fist over an open stub of the stump.

  He thrust his arm in it up to the shoulder.

  He held his arm inside. He bit his upper lip. The youth twice belatedly stifled outcries of fear. But no man in the temple, not even Barin or the priest, shook his head to express shame over the youth’s behavior. Their faces were, instead, grim and concerned. They considered his courage admirable merely for performing the deed, though they obviously expected it of him.

  The youth tentatively smiled and began to remove his arm. He felt that he had survived the danger, that the worst of his fear was over with. The creature roared and hissed. The youth uttered a sharp cry and yanked out his arm. Holding his hand tightly about the wrist, he stared disbelieving at the green pus seeping into his wound, pus that had overspilled from the creature’s stinger.