by Alex Raymond
Shaking his hand and grinning, Flash asked, “How is it you know my name?”
Tomo smiled. “You don’t yet realize you’ve become something of a celebrity on Mongo,” he said. “For though Ming has severely curtailed our use of the more advanced methods of communication, still there are many old and sure ways for news to travel. We have heard that you acquitted yourself well in the arena.”
Flash said, “Yes, Tun and I managed to beat whatever they tried to match us with.”
“He was magnificent,” said Aura.
Tomo looked at her. “Is she your prisoner, Flash Gordon? I just now realized this is Princess Aura.”
“No longer princess,” the girl said.
“Aura helped us escape from Ming’s dungeons,” said Flash. “She is on our side.”
“Perhaps this is an omen,” said Tomo. “Now that the lion men have agreed to fight with us against Ming, I think the tide will turn.”
“It’s possible,” said Flash, “that Ming is dead.”
Tomo’s eyes went wide. “What’s this you say, man? Ming the Merciless dead?”
Quickly, taking him away from the others, Flash told Tomo of his fight with the emperor.
“I must communicate this news to Prince Barin,” said Tomo, much excited.
“Remember,” cautioned Flash, “Ming may not be dead. And even if he is, his high command may not admit it.”
“Yes, I realize that.” He was watching Aura a few yards away. “Are you certain the princess is to be trusted, Flash?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Very well, I’ll accept your judgment.” Rubbing at his chin, Tomo said, “We have four aircruisers with us and tomorrow we will be returning to Arboria with the signed agreements which have been executed this day with the lion men. Will you come with us, Flash? Prince Barin will, I know, be most happy to meet you.”
“I’d like to meet him,” replied Flash. “Tell me, Tomo, since you have airships, do you also have technical facilities, labs and factories?”
“Ming has tried to keep all who oppose him in as non-industrial a state as possible,” said Tomo. “Fortunately we have been able to set up a good number of plants and factories in the Forest Kingdom.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Is there some way we can aid you?”
“As you may have heard, we come from another planet,” said Flash. “Our only chance of returning to our home is to reach our lab which is orbiting Mongo right now. Our survey ship crashed in the jungle.”
“Yes, we were aware you had come to us from a far way off,” said Tomo. “We should be able to help you repair your ship after bringing it back from the jungle.”
Tun came bouncing up to Flash’s side. He reached across him to shake Tomo’s hand. “I am most happy that in my absence my people have had the sense to become your allies,” he said. “I feel that all Mongo will soon be free.”
“Yes,” said Tomo. “Though it may require a long hard fight.”
“Lion men like nothing better than a fight.” Tun put an arm around Flash’s shoulders. “Perhaps we can persuade Flash to fight along with us.”
“We’ll see,” said Flash.
Tun looked approvingly at the feast tables. “The famine has so far spared us,” he said. “So, by the six bleary orbs of the god of play, let us enjoy ourselves.”
CHAPTER 31
The air cruisers were large, forest-colored ships.
Tail switching and fists on hips, Tun was admiring the ship Flash would be traveling in. “Aye, it looks a sturdy craft.”
“A match for anything the forces of Ming can put in the air,” Tomo assured him.
It was midmorning. The plain on which the four Arborian aircruisers sat was hot and dry. A warm wind blew across it, rattling the naked limbs of the few dry trees. About fifty lion people had come out here from the nearby village to witness the departure.
Tun moved to Flash’s side. “I feel I must remain here with my people for the nonce,” he said. “There is much planning to be done, many details to be worked out. We shall meet again, though, of that you may be sure.”
“I know we will,” said Flash.
“Tell me, my friend, have you decided to remain on Mongo for a while?”
“I have to stay long enough to find Zarkov,” said Flash. “After that, I don’t know.”
The other Arborians, in their woodland-green attire, were boarding the aircruisers. When the other three ships were loaded, Tomo said, “Come aboard, Flash, and we’ll be taking off.”
When Flash turned to give a hand to Dale, he noticed the princess was not there. “Where’s Aura?”
“In one of the other ships,” replied Dale.
“Why’s that?”
“She’s feeling gloomy this morning, wanted to be by herself for a while.”
“Perhaps a visit to our kingdom will cheer her up,” said Tomo. “She and Barin knew each other as children. Those were happier days, before Ming seized power.”
Flash guided Dale up the boarding ramp into the big cruiser. He gave Tun a farewell grin and followed the girl inside.
The midday sky grew suddenly dark.
“Trouble ahead,” shouted the pilot of their aircruiser.
An enormously loud flapping sound surrounded them. Tomo leaped from his chair in the passenger compartment and ran to a window. “A great flock of them, swooping down on us.”
Flash and Dale hurried to join him.
“What are those things?” asked Dale.
“They’re called harpibats,” said Tomo as he watched the huge flying reptiles swarming outside. “One of the oldest surviving life forms on Mongo.”
“Somewhat like the long extinct pterodactyls of our home planet,” said Flash. “Only a good deal larger.”
“They infest some of the remoter parts of the Forest Kingdom,” said Tomo. “Now and again the notion strikes them to attack our ships.”
The harpibats hooted and screeched as they circled the aircruiser, coming within inches of the wings.
Tomo had crossed to a communication panel and was giving out instructions. “Start firing at them,” he ordered.
Through the open door of the front cabin, the pilot called, “Shall I take her down some?”
The blaster beams began to sizzle and crackle. A giant harpibat who had been diving toward their window was hit. His sharp green head turned to dust. Then another was blasted to soot as it swooped toward one of the wings.
“Prepare to land,” Tomo told the pilot. “We’re fairly close to Arboria.”
“Flash, look!” said Dale, pointing.
A cluster of giant harpibats, their leathery wings flapping wildly, had circled another of the aircruisers. Two of the big flying reptiles dived straight into the piloting cabin of the ship. The cabin window exploded. The ship began to stagger, swinging in wild zigzags down through the sky.
“They’ve forced down one of our ships,” said Flash to the preoccupied Tomo.
“I just called Arboria for some help,” said the blond, moustached young man.
“Flash, I’m sure that’s the aircruiser Aura is aboard,” said Dale.
The injured ship was far below, out of control, heading for the treetops and interlocking branches which marked the edge of the Forest Kingdom.
Flash’s ship was successfully holding off the shrieking harpibats. More and more of them were being destroyed. Their aircruiser had dropped a thousand feet.
“Clearing up ahead,” the pilot informed Tomo.
“Yes, use it for a landing,” he said. “We’ll work our way back on foot and give them a hand.”
“It’s gone down,” said Dale, watching the aircruiser in which Aura was traveling drop into the tangle of great trees. It crackled and smashed down through the foliage.
A few seconds later, it disappeared in the green cover of branches.
With one screwdriver held in his teeth and another in his right hand, Dr. Zarkov stood beside the aircruiser. He had been
working on the blaster cannon in the ship’s nose since a few minutes after dawn. There was a welter of tools spread out all around him on the hangar floor, very sophisticated tools and very simple ones. It was nearly midday now, and through the half-open door of the hangar, the trunks of the huge trees of Arboria shone a bright gold in the sunlight.
Zarkov made a ‘huh’ sound deep in his broad chest, then ducked beneath the airship nose. “There,” he said, after making a final adjustment.
“Repast, repast, repast,” announced a familiar tinny voice.
Coming through the door of the hangar was the copper robot. He held a tray aloft in one metallic hand. The tray was laden with dishes of food and a tankard of ale.
“Time for your midday repast,” said the robot.
Zarkov dropped the screwdrivers to go running toward the mechanical man. “Ten to one he drops this, too,” he muttered.
The robot’s foot caught in a cable which wound across the floor. “Oops, oops, oops.”
With a spurt of energy Zarkov reached him, grabbing the tray just before the robot hit the floor, face first, with a resounding clang.
“Ale, bread, some sort of cheese,” recited Zarkov as he investigated the contents of the tray with his nose. “Meat—could be a hybrid beef—and these blue things must be tomatoes. What’s this under the silver lid?”
“A helping hand would be appreciated,” said the fallen mechanical man.
Setting his lunch tray aside, the doctor grabbed the robot by the armpits and pulled him to a standing position. “There you go.”
“Thanks, thanks.”
“Since I’ve finished my work,” Zarkov told him, “I think I will stop for lunch.” He carried the tray over to the threshold of the hangar and sat down in the sunlight with the tray on his lap. He commenced eating. He’d just started in on his second blue tomato when an elevator door in a nearby tree opened and Brother Anmar came jogging toward him.
“Trouble?” asked Zarkov.
“What progress have you made?”
“All fixed,” said Zarkov. “Haven’t tested the damn thing yet, but I guarantee this blaster cannon will work several hundred times better than anything you boys have at the moment.”
“Very good,” said Anmar. “We’ve had word about your friends, Flash Gordon and Dale Arden.”
Zarkov got out from under the tray and shot to his feet. “Where are they?”
“Heading for Arboria,” said Anmar. “They escaped from Ming and were picked up by some of our people.”
Zarkov eyed him. “But something’s gone wrong?”
“The aircruisers in which they are all traveling are being attacked by a swarm of gigantic flying reptiles.”
“That doesn’t sound so good.”
“We are sending a fleet of ships to aid them,” said Anmar. “You believe this aircruiser is ready to do battle?”
“I guarantee it,” boomed Zarkov in his loudest voice. “So let’s get going.”
CHAPTER 32
Everything was upside down.
Aura was tumbled into a corner of the overturned ship. She rocked slowly from side to side as she tried to recover from the impact of the crash.
Up above her, the cabin seats hung down from the ceiling. The girl brushed aside her long hair. There seemed to be a faint haze around everything.
On hands and knees she moved across the floor, avoiding the light fixtures.
“Perhaps,” she murmured, “if I get some fresh air I’ll . . . feel better.”
The glass of the compartment had popped out when the aircruiser had jammed down amongst the giant tree branches.
Aura pulled herself up by grasping the frame of the empty window.
Then she screamed.
A great scaly harpibat flapped at her.
The girl let go the frame, feeling dizzy. She fell—not back into the upside down cabin, but out.
She fell four feet, hit a thick branch, rolled off that, and careened down through thorny vines for another ten feet.
The sharp thorns slashed at her, tearing at her cloak, at the gown beneath.
She tried to stop her fall by catching hold of something. The thorns ripped at her palms and she had to let go and keep falling.
She fell further, slammed into a twisted lumpy branch, then over against the tree’s rough trunk.
When Aura at last hit the ground and came to rest on a bed of immense dry leaves, she was again unconscious.
The harpibats still circled far above, screaming and crying, but they couldn’t get down through the intricacy of branches and vines the girl had plummeted through. She was safe from them.
As she lay there on the brown and gold leaves with her cheek resting on her elbow, she looked like a sleeping child.
Then something stirred a few yards from her.
It was the large tendril of a huge spike-leaved plant. The tendril began snaking over the leaves toward the fallen Aura. Its underside was covered with purplish suction cups.
The tall, wide-shouldered young man in the forest green hunting suit drew an arrow from the quiver on his back. He was about to fit the shaft to his bow when a young man, cloak streaming out behind him, came running along the broad flat tree branch he was standing on.
“A message from Tomo,” said the young man, panting.
Prince Barin lowered his bow. “Something urgent?”
“Aye, it is.” The young man halted a few feet from the prince and his cloak settled around him. “Tomo just radioed to the palace. They relayed the message out here to our field radio.”
“And what is the message, Harl?”
The boy took a deep breath before saying, “Their aircruisers were attacked at the crossover point between lion man territory and the Forest Kingdom. Attacked by a great horde of harpibats, one of the ships went down.”
“Have defense ships been dispatched to aid them?”
“Aye, they are enroute at this very moment.”
Barin nodded. “This will be a good opportunity to test that new blaster cannon the sorcerers have come up with.”
“The ship carrying it is indeed among those speeding to Tomo’s aid.”
The prince said, “This hunting trip has brought us fairly close to the place where that air cruiser must have crashed, Harl.”
The boy blinked. “Do you think it safe to attempt to reach them from here on foot?”
“Many places in the Forest Kingdom are not safe,” said Barin, smiling. “Such considerations needn’t hinder us.” He signaled to the half-dozen men in his hunting party. “Come, men, we have a bit of work to undertake.”
CHAPTER 33
Aura saw it a moment before it reached her.
On waking, she first heard it. Slithering slowly across the dry leaves.
The girl raised her head and saw the enormous tendril of the flesh-eating plant coming for her.
She sat up, pushed her palms hard against the ground so she’d be able to stand.
The tendril kept coming, its purple-tinged suction pads making tiny puckering sounds.
When she got to her feet, she discovered she couldn’t walk. Her right ankle had been sprained in the fall through the branches. If it had been only a question of the pain she could have made herself walk to get away from the carnivorous plant. But she had no control over her leg at all. She tried to take a step and fell to her knees.
The tip of the tendril touched her then, brushing at her leg.
Screaming, the girl struggled to pull herself out of its reach.
The tendril caught hold of her leg, pulling her back across the crisp dry cleaves. It wound itself round her leg and then her waist.
The girl cried out again, not with any hope of being saved, simply because she didn’t know what else to do. Dressed as she was and traveling as a not-completely-trusted guest of the Arborians, she had carried no weapons.
She twisted as the tendril dragged her closer to the huge center of the plant itself. She made fists of her hands, hitting at the thic
k tendril.
Aura didn’t hear the footsteps at first.
The first indication she had of someone’s being there was the smoke.
“Right into its maw,” directed Prince Barin. “Thrust the torch in there. And hurry, light another one.”
She saw the young Barin run by her with a blaster pistol in his hand. Beside him were two other green-clad men with torches. While the prince turned his pistol on the base of the grasping tendril, the men approached the body of the plant and stuck first one torch and then the other down into the large flowerlike mouth.
A grating shriek issued from the plant. Then it began to shrivel, collapse on itself. The tendril went slack.
Barin came to Aura’s side to help her up. “Your ankle’s hurt?”
“Yes, I sprained it, I think.” She held onto his arm, studying his face. “You’re Prince Barin, aren’t you?”
“I am. And you must be Princess Aura. We’ve come a long way since those days in the palace nursery.”
“Yes, it was your palace then and my father and I were only occasional guests.”
“And now,” asked Barin, “are you and I enemies, Aura?”
“No,” she answered. “I don’t want to be Princess Aura any longer or sit on a throne.”
He said, “You are welcome to be my guest again, Aura. We all live quite well in the Forest Kingdom despite . . .” He left the sentence unfinished.
“Despite my father,” she concluded for him.
A clattering sounded up above. Barin looked up, pistol ready. “Ah, here comes someone to rescue you.”
Climbing down from the crashed aircruiser above were two of Aura’s fellow passengers. Apparently, they had only now come to and realized she was gone.
Aura asked Barin, “How did you happen to be so near?”
He smiled at her. “Perhaps it was fate,” he answered.
Tomo jabbed a finger skyward. “Look at that, Flash!” he exclaimed, “Have you ever seen the likes of that?”