Flash Gordon 2 - The Plague of Sound (5 page)

He reached into his backpack and drew out a small but powerful hand radio. “Let’s see if I can contact Zarkov with this.”

But the instrument did not work. He pried off the backside of it. The two tiny batteries appeared to have exploded. “And me without a spare.” Flash closed up the radio and dropped it into the pack again.

Shielding his eyes with one hand, he gazed upward through the fronds and vines at the hazy afternoon sky. “Zarkov must know somethings gone wrong by now,” he said. “So the best thing to do is make myself comfortable someplace nearby and wait for him to come and find me. If he doesn’t show by dawn tomorrow, I can start trekking south to that nearest settlement.”

Surveying his surroundings, Flash noticed a small clearing through the trees. It was about a quarter of a mile away. He started walking toward it.

The jungle grew quieter as he came closer to the clear place. There were no birds around, no monkeys. The huge palm fronds above didn’t rustle at all.

Flash was nearly at the clearing when he saw the bones.

Some looked dry and old; some were still fresh and white. They were the bones of animals, half a dozen skulls.

Flash halted. “This doesn’t look like a very good place to wait for Doc after all.”

He pivoted to walk away.

Something caught his ankle. Looking down, he saw a slithering coil of some silky substance winding around his leg.

He reached for his holster, unsnapped it.

Before he could get his hand on his blaster pistol, he was yanked off his feet. He went crashing through the brush, thorns ripping at his clothes, branches snapping at his face. He was pulled up completely off the ground, left dangling upside down several feet above the sprawled bones.

Again, Flash reached for his gun. But it had fallen out while he was being dragged. “Still got a knife,” he said. Twisting, he reached around and opened his backpack. Containers of food came tumbling out. The ruined little radio fell, landing on the skull of a monkey and cracking it. But Flash got the knife.

He strained, did a sort of midair situp. He thrust the blade into the stuff which was wound round and round his legs. It was tough and sticky. The knife did nothing against it.

The silky cord spun around his wrist next, binding his hand against his ankle.

Flash struggled, swinging like a pendulum, trying to wrench his hand free. He was caught tight.

He could see up into the trees now. He got his first look at what it was that had him.

Silting up there was a black spider. A giant black spider the size of a leopard. It had caught Flash and was patiently spinning a web around him.

The aircruiser did not crash.

It continued to descend after Flash ejected. Soon it was skimming over the treetops, pulled by some invisible force.

The trees parted, the ship heading straight for the ground.

But before it hit, two large sections of earth, opened, like enormous cellar doors, and the aircruiser kept going down.

The earthern doors closed tight on the ship.

This was not a cavern beneath the ground. It was a large city.

There were at least fifty people in and around that square when the aircruiser landed. Not one of them looked at it for more than a second; no one approached it.

The citizens of this underground city went on about their business as though nothing had happened. They were young, most of them, all dressed in simple pale-yellow tunics. All of them, men and women, wore helmets of some soft leatherlike material. Each face had a similar expression, a sort of bland, contented smile.

It was very quiet in this city. The loudest sound, now that the aircruiser had landed, was the sound of footfalls on the smooth white streets.

Presently three men approached the ship. They wore helmets similar to those of everyone else, but their tunics were black. They stood looking at the aircruiser for several minutes. Then one of them laughed.

“N
o, Dale,” said Dr. Zarkov, shaking his head. “That’s not the wisest course of action.”

They were standing in the middle of the now empty hangar. “All right, it may not be wise,” the girl said, “but it’s what I feel we have to do.”

“Listen to me,” he said to her. “I rebuilt that aircruiser myself, checked it out thoroughly myself. I guarantee you nothing can have gone wrong with it.”

“But something did,” said Dale.

“Someone made it malfunction,” Zarkov said. “It couldn’t have on its own.”

“I’m not going to let your vanity risk Flash’s life.”

“Vanity?” boomed the bearded doctor. “I don’t have any vanity, Dale. What I have, unlike most men, is a very clear and accurate idea of my own capabilities. When I tell you that the ship was foolproof it isn’t a boast—it’s a statement of fact.”

“Yes, but—”

“Since I know what the facts are,” Zarkov continued, “I have to conclude some outside force caused us to lose contact with Flash.”

“He’s crashed,” insisted Dale. “Crashed out there in the wilds of Mazda Territory someplace.” She pointed one slender hand in the direction she felt Mazda to be. “We have to go and find him.”

“If they can make his ship go down,” said Zarkov, “then they can do the same to us.”

“I’ve never known you to be afraid before.”

“And I’ve never known you to underestimate Flash,” he said. “Whatever’s happened, I’m confident he can handle his end of it.”

“What do you intend to do then?”

Zarkov was holding the cartridge of videotape in his hand again. “I’m going to, as I promised Flash, follow up this end of the problem,” he replied. “I think I can get to our sound man much quicker this way. Once we learn who and where he is, then we can rescue Flash. That is, if he needs rescuing.”

Dale turned her back on him. “It doesn’t seem right.” Slowly she walked toward the door of the hangar.

Zarkov watched her for a few seconds before going back into his lab.

He heard the hangar door open, then close.

The doctor frowned, giving his beard a few thoughtful yanks.

He shrugged and fitted the cartridge into a viewing unit.

The office was full of robots. They were a glistening copper in color, matching the uncluttered desks they sat behind. There were seven of them in all, each looking very busy and efficient.

Zarkov stood just inside the door of the transport rental office, scowling. When he bellowed, “Who’s running this place?” his breath came out in a foggy cloud.

The nearest robot turned his round ball of a head toward Zarkov. “Were all equal here, sir. What sort of transportation do you require? Landcar, aircar, landtruck, airtruck?”

“Information is what I crave,” Dr. Zarkov said. He watched his expelled breath condense around some motes of dust. “You’ve got all your air conditioners on too high, by the way.”

“Too high for humans,” admitted the robot. “Here, I’ll remedy that.” He reached a metal hand under the metal desk.

“I want to find out about an aircar you rented yesterday,” said the doctor. “I’ve tracked the damn thing this far. Now I’d—”

“We can’t give out that type of information, sir, unless you happen to be a policeman, a military intelligence agent, a credit investigator, a bank official, or an officer of the federal or municipal court. Are you?”

“I’m Dr. Zarkov,” he boomed. “And what I want to know is who rented this aircar from you nitwits.” He waved a memo with numbers scribbled on it.

“I take it then you are not a policeman, a military intelligence agent, a credit investigator, a banker, or an officer of the federal or municipal court?”

The first part of the doctor’s reply was a chesty growl. Before any words emerged, a door at the rear of the office whirred to one side.

“Why, you’re even handsomer than you look on the TV wall, Doctor,” said the huge green woman in the doorway. She wore an orange wig, a white vinyl jumpsuit. She was smoking a pink cigar. “And your beard is much fuller. Come in, come in.”

Zarkov blinked once before wending his way through the sitting robot rental agents. “And you are, madam?”

“Granola Ben-Sen.” She smiled. “I own and operate this little establishment. I’ve been the sole owner since my late husband, Norge, totaled a skycycle last winter. Rest his soul. How may I help you, Dr. Zarkov?”

“It’s important, Mrs. Ben-Sen, that I find out who rented this particular aircruiser from you yesterday.” He handed her the memo slip.

“These contact lenses of mine are lousy,” she said as she brought the slip close to her broad flat green nose.

“License number MOT-263-Y,” supplied Zarkov. “Registration number 544-8313, air permit PRAX-4809.”

“Ah, yes, I remember that one,” said Mrs. Ben-Sen. “Come into my little parlor,. Dr. Zarkov, and I’ll trace this down for you.”

Everything in the back room was pink: the floor, the walls, the metal desks, and the two floating rockers. Zarkov seated himself in the darker pink one. “I appreciate your co-operation, madam.”

“You’re a real personage to me, Dr. Zarkov.” She stood smiling across at him, the memo rubbing against her chin. “Great men, even in this wide universe of ours, are rare. So most of us, we everyday people, must content ourselves with viewing greatness at a distance. You can imagine, then, the thrill of excitement which coursed through me when I heard you shouting your name in that deep manly voice of yours.”

“Mrs. Ben-Sen, there’s some urgency connected with this inquiry.”

“Of course, I can well imagine.” She went to a pink portable computer against one wall. Hesitating, studying the memo slip and then the keyboard, she finally punched out some questions.

The pink mechanism began making huffing, grinding noises. A tiny bell tinkled inside it. A strip of paper unfurled out a slot.

“Do you think perhaps I’m not oiling my computer enough, Dr. Zarkov?” She approached him with a strip of paper the computer had produced. “It often makes strange noises.”

“That’s an inferior Plutonian make of computer, madam. They all make strange noises.” He bounced up out of his chair to take the information slip. “John J. Connigton, 260 Stockbridge Road, this city. Rented the aircar at 6:01 last night, returned it at 11:07. Huh.”

“Do you need this information for some scientific project, Dr. Zarkov?” asked the green woman. “Perhaps you’re only an inch from solving the problem of this horrible sound plague.”

Zarkov said, “Thank you, madam.”

“I wonder, Dr. Zarkov, if you would indulge a long-time admirer of yours by giving me your autograph?”

“Certainly, madam.”

Smiling, Mrs. Ben-Sen began looking around. “Now, let me see, what’s something appropriate for a man of your standing to sign?”

Zarkov whipped out an electric marker from the breast pocket of his worksuit. “This will do,” he boomed.

While the large green woman was still feeling around the top of her desk, Dr. Zarkov wrote his name in foot-high letters on one of the pale-pink walls.

“Thank you again, madam,” he said, and departed.

T
he enormous spider continued to spin its web.

Both Flash’s legs were bound tightly together. With his only free hand, he attempted to tear some of the webbing off himself.

“Stop struggling a minute, will you?”

Flash twisted around, looking toward the ground. He didn’t see anyone.

“Relax.” It was a young girl’s voice. “Get ready to hit the ground. We don’t want to mess up that pretty golden hair of yours.”

“Who are you?” began the dangling Flash.

A blaster rifle sizzled.

The image of the spider held for another instant, then it disintegrated, collapsed into sooty dust.

Flash dropped.

He hit the dry grass on his right shoulder. He pushed out with his left hand until he was sitting up on the ground.

“Break anything?”

Flash saw her now. A tall girl of twenty or so with long red hair, wearing a tunic of jungle colors. She carried a rifle under her arm, a pistol and a knife at her wide belt. “I don’t think so,” he answered. “How do you get this stuff off?”

“It’ll dry in a while, then we can break it off,” the girl said as she came closer. “I’ll help you.” She sat on a fallen log, watching him. “You don’t know your way around jungles too well, do you?”

“I’ve been in a lot of them,” said Flash. “I shouldn’t have let that spider get the drop on me.”

“Were you in that big airship that went roaring over a while ago?”

“Yes. It looked like it was heading for a crash, so I jumped.”

“Where were you going?”

“Wherever the aircruiser took me,” he told her, “You don’t happen to know where she crashed?”

“It didn’t crash,” said the red-haired girl.

Flash glanced skyward. “It’s not still flying around up there somewhere?”

“No,” she said. “I imagine they’ve got it at Perfect City by this time.”

“Perfect City?”

“There are lots of things you don’t know about this part of the world,” the girl observed. “You stick with me, and don’t get eaten by spiders or anything, and you’ll learn.”

Z
arkov pulled his dark pseudowool cloak tighter around him, tugged the knit seaman’s cap down nearer his ears. The door of the waterfront saloon swung inward as he approached it out of the night fog.

“Welcome to the Song of the Blue Whale,” rasped a grizzled waiter. His right arm had been replaced by a bright metal one. “Allow me to show you to a table.”

“I’ve no need for a table,” said Zarkov. “The bar will suit me fine.”

“Right over there, where those three gruff whalers are punching the cod fisherman,” said the waiter, pointing with his metal arm. “I see you’re admiring my artificial arm.”

“Noticing it’s several inches longer than your other arm.

“Aye, and why not, says I? I figured as long as I had to have one, I might as well get one which would add a little something to my reach. It’s made of a marvelous substance they call aluminum.”

“That’s tin.” Zarkov went stalking off toward the bar at the far end of the room. At the bar, he pounded his fist on the nearwood counter, demanding, “A mug of grog and be quick about it.”