Flash Gordon 3 - The Space Circus (14 page)

“Trouble ahead,” said the old man.

Hopp, who was at the head of the procession, stopped abruptly. “Scatter,” he warned. “Something’s coming this way.”

Taking hold of Narla’s arm, Flash pulled her down with him into the brush. He could hear it now, too. A thrashing sound up ahead of them. Something was coming through the thick jungle in their direction.

“What is it, do you think?” whispered Narla close to his ear.

“Not sure. It could be the militia.”

“Move a little faster, you nitwit gadget,” boomed a familiar voice. “I keep stepping on that tin tail of yours.”

Flash waited a few more seconds, then stood up and called out, “Doc!”

Dale answered first. “Flash, are you all right?”

“Don’t nip at my leg, you fool engine,” Zarkov was rumbling. “I’m not your quarry.”

Dale came running up to Flash. She put her arms around him, hugging him tight.

He kissed her, then said, “I was going to say this is a surprise. But that’s an understatement. How did you get here?”

“Well, from Earth in a new ship Dr. Zarkov conceived,” said the dark-haired girl. “And from the landing spot in the jungle to here we just walked.”

Zarkov thrust out a big hand and shook Flash’s. “I only had to make a few simple adjustments in these robot dogs and then I could use them for my purposes. Zarkov doesn’t usually like to rely on gadgets, but since we were in a slight rush—but tell me about what’s been happening to you.”

“That gigantic devil moves even faster than I do,” roared Mallox as he came puffing onto the scene. “Ah, you’ve found Narla.”

Dale noticed the blonde girl now. Narla had been standing a few feet away from them, watching the reunion with a glum expression on her face.

“We feared,” said Jape to the strongman, “that you’d all been caught by the militia.”

“A dozen of those little blue devils were no match for us,” said Mallox. He gave Zarkov a friendly punch on the shoulder.

“We stumbled onto the fracas,” said Zarkov. “And I took a hand. Using my native cunning, plus a few tricks I learned when I was in the commando reserves in my youth, we outfoxed the militia. Got them all stunned, then trussed them up.”

Her eyes still on Narla, Dale took hold of Flash’s arm. “We learned from Huk, who recognized Doc, what you were doing, Flash.”

“He’s okay? And Sixy?”

“We left them guarding our ship,” said Zarkov in his booming voice. “And our prisoners. I figured I could find you more efficiently on foot and using these tracking gizmos. As usual, I was absolutely right.”

“Well,” said Jape, “if you have a spacecraft, Doctor, then that solves all our problems. Once we get together with all our friends we can leave Mesmo forever.”

Dr. Zarkov twisted his beard around his finger. “I’m afraid it’s not going to be that simple,” he said. “The ship is only big enough to carry four people off the planet.”

T
he spacecraft dropped down through the night. It came in low over the treetops, skimming the high metal wall which circled the small spaceport at the forest’s edge.

The cabin door opened and a blue man dropped down to the surface of the field.

There was another larger ship nearby, sitting on a launching area. Further off was a hangar which held two other spaceships.

Two blue men in white cloaks came running out of a lighted office, carrying electric hand lanterns.

“What’s the meaning of this?” one of them asked the blue pilot.

The man spread his hands wide. “It’s an emergency.”

“You’re not authorized to use this field,” the other port official told him. “And if you had an emergency situation why didn’t you radio us?”

“The radio’s not functioning,” thought the blue man. “If you’ll take a look inside the cabin, you’ll understand why I did what I did.”

“We’ve no time for that. You’ll have to get off the field at once.”

“I can’t. I don’t think the ship will take off anyway,” he said. “But look for yourselves and you’ll see why.”

One of the men thought, “Very well.” He pulled himself up into the ship. “I don’t see any—”

He was grabbed from behind by powerful hands; his helmet was ripped off.

Down on the ground, his partner thought, “What’s the trouble up there?”

He got no answer.

“Better look for yourself,” suggested the blue man who was pretending to be the pilot.

The official drew out his shockstick. “That I will.” He went up into the cabin.

His stick was chopped from his hand with one sharp blow. Before he could even turn, he was caught around the neck. His helmet was pulled free from his round head. Dizzy, he went stumbling across the cabin to land in a heap atop his partner.

“So far so good,” said Zarkov in a subdued boom.

“We’ve got six more men to take care of,” said Flash, “if Hopp’s figures are correct.”

Zarkov used a stungun on the second man before he could untangle himself. “Let’s proceed,” he said.

Flash stripped the official’s white cloak from him, then patted his remaining clothes until he found a ring of keys. He dropped those down to the blue man waiting on the ground.

Then Flash searched the other stunned man, taking his key ring and cloak. He wrapped the cloak around his own shoulders. “Stand by here, Doc, in case our bluff doesn’t continue to work.”

Flash leaped down into the darkness. He sprinted across the field to the lighted office from which the two blue men had come.

There was a third man standing in the doorway.

“No, I guess the cloak doesn’t fool you,” said Flash.

The man, mouth gaping, was reaching for a pistol.

Flash’s stungun sounded first.

He ran on to the office, shoved the frozen man aside, and entered. “Well, Hopp’s right so far. Three men stationed here.”

Flash located the radio set against the far wall. He deftly removed a few essential parts. Then he left.

Across the dark field, a blaster rifle crackled. It lit up the wall of the barracks, turning it a bright yellow for a second.

In that second, Flash saw that Hopp was using the rifle, that the red-headed man had wounded one of the other field staff men.

By the time Flash reached the area of the blast, there was no more fighting.

Mallox came out of the barracks doorway rubbing his big hands together. “Knocked out three of those little blue devils with one hand,” he announced.

Sixy came out after him. “We’ve taken care of everyone.”

Dr. Zarkov materialized out of the darkness now. “Jape, you said you know how to pilot one of these space-warp jobs.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Let’s take a look at the baby that’s ready to launch,” said Zarkov. “I’ll fill you in on anything that may be puzzling to you.”

The two men jogged away toward the launching area.

Through the open gate in the metal fence, which had been opened by Hopp’s man in his official disguise, now came Booker. “We did it,” he said. “I knew we could.”

Dale and Narla followed him.

Huk came out of the barracks and joined the rest of them. “The entire staff is safely stunned,” he announced.

“Zarkov is going over the ship on the launching area with Jape,” Flash told him. “If everything is okay, you can take off pretty soon.”

Huk said, looking around at all of them, “I’m anxious to get back to Mongo. And yet, well, I’ll miss all of you.”

“Oh, we can keep in touch,” said Sixy. “Maybe once a year we can have a reunion. You know, pick some planet that’s convenient to all and . . .” He let the words trail off. “No, I guess we won’t do that, will we?”

“No,” said Narla, “we won’t be seeing each other again.”

“Still,” said Sixy, brightening, “we’ll probably be seeing Flash again. He travels all over the universe.”

Flash grinned. “Yes, I’m sure we’ll all see each other again.”

“I doubt it,” said Narla. She turned away and walked off across the dark field toward the launching area.

Dale watched her for a few seconds. “I think she likes you, Flash,” she said.

Flash didn’t reply to that. To Huk, he said, “That ship is big enough to carry most of you. I’ll travel with Zarkov and Dale.”

“It’s not going to be an express, though,” said Sixy. “We’ll be making a lot of local stops, dropping each of us off on his home planet.”

“I don’t see why I have to go with them,” said Booker. “I mean, I’m from Mars. I want to go back there. That’s in the solar system, Flash. I ought to go with you.”

“But we’d miss you, Booker,” said Sixy. “And there are several places I’d like to drop you. I have a nice roomy asteroid especially in mind.”

“This isn’t no time for kidding around,” said Booker. “I really don’t see any reason why I—”

“Okay,” Flash told him. “We’ll take you along.” He took a few steps toward Hopp. “What about you? Ready to leave Mesmo?”

“We’ve been talking about what you’re going to do next, Flash,” said the red-bearded man. “When you get home and alert the various interplanetary peace-keeping outfits, they’ll be sending a task force out here to Mesmo to rescue all the rest of the slaves and convince the locals to stop the slaving business.”

“Yes, Mesmo won’t be a slave-market planet much longer.”

“So I think I’ll hang around until that happens.” He held out his hand. “But I hope we’ll run into each other again sometime, somewhere.” After they shook hands, he and his blue associate left the field, returning to the forest beyond.

Mallox watched them go. “It might be fun to stay on in the jungle,” he mused, “and have a go at more of these little blue devils myself.”

“I thought you were homesick,” said Sixy.

The strongman said, “That’s true. And yet—but, no, I’ll go home now. There’ll be plenty of fights to be had on my own planet.”

Across the field, Jape emerged from the large spacecraft. He held a lantern in one hand and was waving the other three hands. “Just about ready to go,” he called.

The group began to walk, somewhat slowly, toward the launching area.

“I don’t foresee any problems,” Jape said to Flash as he approached.

Dr. Zarkov dropped down out of the ship. “Childishly simple to operate,” he bellowed. “Somewhat clumsy construction, but there’s no time to modify. You’ve got it all straight in your mind, Jape?”

“Yes, Doctor.” The four-armed man held out a hand to Zarkov and one to Flash. “I won’t forget my stay on Mesmo. And I won’t forget our time together, Flash.”

“All this talking is okay,” said Booker. “But some more of those blue guys are liable to show up any minute. And I ain’t in the mood to get captured again.”

“You can go over and get in our ship,” Flash told him.

As Booker went to do that, Zarkov asked, “We’re taking him with us?”

“Seemed like the safest thing to do,” said Flash, grinning. “I have the feeling Sixy would leave him in the middle of space somewhere.”

“On a very comfortable asteroid,” said Sixy. He glanced around. “What’s become of Narla?”

Jape replied, “Already in the ship.”

Flash left Dale’s side and climbed up inside the Mesmen craft. He saw the blonde girl sitting on the floor against the cabin wall. “I wanted to say good-bye to you, Narla.”

“Goodbye,” she said.

“And I wanted to wish—”

“Are you and that girl—Dale, is it?—well, I don’t know what the custom is on your planet. Are you engaged or promised to each other or espoused or anything like that?”

“I guess you’d say we’re informally engaged.”

The blonde stood up. “Well, that doesn’t sound very serious.” She walked over to him, put one hand on each of his shoulders. She kissed him once. “Good-bye, Flash.”

“T
his ain’t my idea of fast,” said Booker. He was sitting beside Flash in the cabin of Zarkov’s ship, “Seems like we’ve been traveling for hours.”

“We’ll be making our final space-time jump any minute now,” said Flash. “Then we’ll be back in the solar system.”

“Where you going first?” Booker asked. “You going to stop off at Mars first?”

“We most certainly are,” boomed Zarkov from the control seat. “The sooner the better.”

“Because I don’t see any sense going all the way to Earth with all of you and then having to catch a shuttle back out to Mars. I been wasting enough of my time.”

“I’ve got,” said Zarkov in an especially loud voice, “this crate set to pop back into the solar system relatively close to Mars.”

“That’s good.” Booker leaned back some in his chair. “You really think you’re going to get the planets in our system to do anything about Mesmo?” he asked Flash.

“Yes, I’m sure we will,” said Flash. “The Earth Interstellar Intelligence people will do something. And so will the United Planets. That’s part of their charter.”

“Charter is just a piece of paper,” said Booker. “You figure they’re going to send ships and men way out to Mesmo.”

“Sure,” answered Flash.

“Going to be—”

The ship crossed over at that moment, making a great leap through time and space. The side effects of that kept Booker silent for the next several thousand miles.

Z
arkov paced in front of the view window of his living room. Twilight was coming on, the light of the day was rolling away across the flat dry desert. “I was absolutely right,” he said.

Flash had just entered the big room. “About what, Doc?”

“Does it matter?” said Dale from the pseudo-leather couch. “He’s absolutely right about everything.”

“The last time we were all gathered here,” continued the bearded scientist, “I told you both that there was no such thing as an unidentified flying object. And I was correct, one hundred percent correct.”

“Yeah,” agreed Flash, “we sure identified those flying objects all right.”

“Granted,” said Zarkov, “that it was a little rough on you, Flash.”

“Not that rough,” Flash said with a grin. “And I met quite a few interesting people.”

“Especially that interesting blonde girl,” said Dale.

“You still haven’t told me all about your life in that circus,” boomed Dr. Zarkov into the silence which followed. “I want to hear everything.”

The squat, square, robot bar in the corner of the living room made an odd noise.