Flash Gordon 4 - The Time Trap of Ming XIII (13 page)

“Just reset the blaster and finish the job.”

Zarkov nodded grimly. “Of course.” He struggled with the force-adjuster lever on the side of the weapon.

“Well?” Sari asked.

“The damned thing is jammed,” Zarkov bellowed, banging the blaster pistol against the trunk of the nearest tree. “Would you look at that? It’s on STUN! I can’t get it to move to KILL!”

Sari glanced at the two unconscious blue men. “Let’s get out of here, Dr. Zarkov. If they’re going to come to, we would be wise to get out of the vicinity.”

“I won’t leave until I get this weapon fixed,” Zarkov muttered darkly. “It must have been damaged when Brod kicked it out of my hand.”

Sari looked around at the woods. “Quickly, Dr. Zarkov. We’ll have to take our chances with them. I want to be far away when they revive.”

Zarkov threw the blaster pistol to the ground and stalked off. “The hell with it!” he bellowed. “These inferior materials they have on Mongo! That would never happen on Earth with real steel. Damned inefficient miracle-makers in Arboria. Everything has to be made out of reconstituted wood. No wonder the damned blaster doesn’t work.”

Sari watched Zarkov stomp away and leaned quickly over to pick up the abandoned blaster pistol. She tucked it into her stretch waistband and hastened to catch up with Zarkov. She glanced back once. Neither Slan nor Brod stirred.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

T
he tiny inn nestled under an enormous stand of giant bear’s-paw fern. In front a sign depicting a large stag hung from the gable of a small shingled structure. Below it appeared the words:

THE STAG’S HORN

As Zarkov and Sari approached from the shelter of the ferns, they heard the sound of laughter.

They entered a small but cheery interior. At one end of the room a plank bar stretched across the wall. Square tables were spaced out in the center of the main room, with booths to one side. The floor was strewn with sawdust.

A group of men in leather tunics and homespun doublets underneath were seated at the largest table, drinking mugs of mead. They were big men with ruddy faces and huge, scarred hands, obviously woodsmen who held the fern concession to Prince Barin’s Palace Wood Preserve.

They fell silent as Zarkov and Sari entered.

A big man, almost as wide as he was tall, stumbled out from behind the bar, wearing a sleeveless doublet with a soiled apron tied around his ample waist. He wore soft ankle boots. He had red hair and blue eyes and a round, laughing face.

“Welcome!” he cried. “Welcome to The Stag’s Horn!”

Zarkov waved his hand. “Greetings.”

“Sit ye down,” the innkeeper said, waving to a corner table.

Sari and Zarkov sat down quietly. “Mead,” Zarkov said. “Mead,” Sari said. They waited while the innkeeper drew the mead from a barrel behind the bar and brought the two mugs over to them. The woodsmen at the next table were silent, two of them staring at Sari with puzzled eyes. Finally they began a low-voiced conversation, and turned from both Zarkov and Sari.

“Do you have a laserphone?” Sari asked the fat man.

“Aye,” he said. “In me back room. Where be ye calling?”

Sari looked at Zarkov. Then she said, “The capital.”

“Arboria?” He nodded. “Certainly. The laser rod is clear. Somebody called through yesterday.”

Sari rose. “May I use it?”

“Aye,” said the innkeeper. “I’ll charge ye for the call. Have the operator put Innkeeper Gumm on the tab, if ye will.”

Sari nodded. She walked off with Gumm and went through a plank door into another room.

Zarkov glanced around the interior of the inn. As he sat there drinking, he looked up to see one of the woodsmen detach himself from the table nearby and move quickly over to him. Looking around furtively, the woodsman, a youngster in his early twenties, sat down next to Zarkov and leaned toward him.

“Zarkov, isn’t it?”

Zarkov’s eyes widened. “Maybe.”

“Maybe, nothing! You’re Zarkov.” The forester did not have a forest accent.

“And you?”

“Pabl.”

“Okay. So?”

“They don’t know I’m on patrol. I told them I thought you were my uncle. If any of them asks, remember.” Pabl’s eyes were hard. He was a lean-faced youth with dark eyes and dark hair that reached to his shoulders. He had a handsome, smooth-complexioned face with a very light mustache.

“All right,” Zarkov said.

“You’ve come from the capital?”

“Yes.”

“Going back?”

“Trying to.”

“Good. We’re working a big fern preserve not far from here. I can’t leave the gang. And I can’t use the laserphone without raising their suspicions. It would blow my cover. I need a courier to the capital.”

Zarkov was amused. “You’re
an
agent?”

“Yes. Prince Barin’s intelligence. You know the prince. Of course you do, you’re Zarkov. Now, listen carefully, there’s a great deal to tell.”

Zarkov nodded. “You recognize me. That’s obvious. You seem authentic. I can only say I’ll carry on your information if I know it’s valid.”

Pabl frowned. “It’s a wild story, but it has to be told. Prince Barin must know. There’s a secret army in the woods on its way to overthrow the capital.”

Zarkov started. He thought of the blue men. He thought of what Sari had said about the secret army of Ming’s they were looking for. He decided to play it dumb and see what Pabl had to say. “Who’s behind it?”

“Ming,” Pabl said. “At least, that’s what I think. It’s not at all clear exactly who is running it.”

“So?”

Pabl glanced over his shoulder at his companions. One of them waved a hand at him and grinned, flicking mead foam from his mustache. Pabl laughed and waved back.

“I was topping a giant sword fern three days ago out of sight of the others,” Pabl said in a low voice. “I finished the work and climbed down on my safety belt and jumped to the ground. As I walked over to the piece of downed timber to mark it for stripping, I suddenly saw that the fern fronds had fallen on something that was still alive.”

“Something?” Zarkov frowned.

“It looked like a man,” Pabl confessed. “I crawled under the fern fronds—those giant ferns are huge and extremely heavy—and pulled out a man. He was unconscious, but not dead. However, he was bleeding badly and had a broken arm.”

“What was he doing there?” Zarkov asked, trying to keep his voice low.

“It wasn’t so much what he was doing there, it was what he was,” Pabl said softly.

“What was he?” Zarkov’s voice was loud.

Pabl glanced at the other table and smiled. Several of the woodsmen had glanced up, but then they all turned away and began talking again amongst themselves.

“He was human,” said Pabl, “but like nothing I’ve ever seen before. His skin was blue, bright blue, and he had scales on his skin. His eyes were yellow. Cat’s eyes!” Pabl stared into Zarkov’s face. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“No, but—” Pabl paused. “I never told the others,” he whispered. “Not because they wouldn’t believe me, but because of what the man said.”

“What did he say?”

“I tried to put the arm in a splint, but I apparently was too rough on him. Anyway, I didn’t know then that he was more badly injured than I had supposed.”

“Where is he now?”

Pabl ignored the question. “He told me the damdest story I’ve ever heard.”

“Well?”

“The blue man told me that he was trying to escape and he begged me to hide him from his own people.”

“His own people? Who are they? Where do they come from?”

“He said Cerulea. I never heard of the place. According to him, it’s on Mongo somewhere. I couldn’t get the details out of him. He was too badly hurt. And he said he and the others in Cerulea were all under the strict control of Ming the Merciless.”

Zarkov nodded. “I know him. He’s bad people.”

“He said the other blue men were all just like him. It’s some kind of secret army, raised by Emperor Ming to mount an attack on the capital and overthrow Prince Barin.”

“What else did he say?”

“He told me about the blue men.” Pabl glanced across the room, but no one paid any attention to them. “Some scientists of Ming’s had been working for years on selective breeding. You know, chromosome matching and all that kind of thing.”

“I know,” Zarkov snapped. “What is this all about?”

“Well, the scientists had worked out a method of selective breeding years back, and had been applying it to a race of super warriors. Anyway, that was what the blue man called it. Incidentally, his name was Klab. Klab said that he was brought up in a secret colony called Cerulea, not far from Mingo, which had been isolated entirely from the rest of Mongo for many years. There scientists continue to work on selective breeding and utopian societies. A lot of the work is done by computers, Klab said.”

“Go on. What about the blue men?”

“Well, the blue men are a genetically selected breed of men who are completely engineered for fighting.”

“But why the blue color?”

Pabl’s face lighted up. “You do believe me, then?”

“I’m simply listening to your story and judging,” Zarkov replied, his voice rising. “Now get along with it.”

“The indigo tint was selected for night forays. Tests show that such a skin color cannot be seen in the darkness of Mongo, particularly in the fifth moon of Mongo with its orange sheen.”

Zarkov nodded. “I see. The blue skin and the cat’s eyes.”

“Right. The cat’s eyes were especially selected since they could see in the dark as well as in the light. Klab had huge canines, too, and pointed molars, I forgot to tell you that.”

“I see.”

“Well, this experiment was kept entirely secret by Ming’s scientists. For thirty years they continued and finally a large enough army was gathered together in the secret colony of Cerulea to try to mount an attack on Ming’s traditional enemy—Arboria and the forest kingdom.”

“And none of this leaked out?”

“No,” Pabl said. “I never heard of it. And Klab said it was kept strictly confidential.”

“You mean, Klab was brought up with these other warriors since birth to fight?”

“Right. These blue men have been bred to take orders, to carry them out, and to kill their enemies.”

“What weapons do they use?”

“That’s another thing,” Pabl said. “They don’t need weapons. They’re born with weapons. Their fingernails.”

“Fingernails!” Zarkov cried.

“Right. The hands seem completely normal. But when Klab unsheathed his nails, they became long talons exactly like those of a cat. And they can rip and tear exactly like a cat’s claws.”

Zarkov moistened his lips. He and Sari had been very lucky not to go up against the two of them without the blaster pistol.

Zarkov moistened his lips. “So they don’t need weapons.”

“Right,” said Pabl. “They’re led by a fiendish general who is directly responsible only to Ming the Merciless. He’s in complete charge of the operation. Each man has been bred and programmed for life to obey him and to do his bidding. The operation can only succeed, Zarkov. Believe me.”

“What made this Klab turn against them?”

“Well, that’s exactly it. You see, he was trying to escape from them when he was caught under the trees I was topping.”

“What made him turn against them?” Zarkov repeated.

“He said that even though he had been bred and brainwashed throughout his youth, he and some of the others had managed to sneak in reading material from the outside world—which would be the rest of Mongo—and they had hungered to find out about the other life, where there were women living freely.”

“Women?” Zarkov remembered Captain Slan’s morbid interest in Sari.

“Yes, These are normal men, you see. But having been brought up in a military atmosphere all their lives, they had met only women sent from the Palace of Ming, castoff harem girls sent out on order to be their temporary companions. They had never known any family life of any kind. No mother. No father. Just the test tube.”

“I see.”

“And so when they finally were sent on their mission—this was only a week ago—some of them had tried to test their freedom by escaping. But their leaders rounded them all up and killed them.”

Zarkov sighed. “It’s a grim story. Where is the defector now?”

Pabl sighed. “Klab? Klab is dead.”

“Dead?” Zarkov blinked.

“I didn’t know it, but he had internal injuries. When I tried to help him to his feet, he collapsed, and then hemorrhaged until he was dead. I could do nothing for him. He wanted to come over to our side and warn our people,” Pabl said softly.

Zarkov nodded. “What did you do with the body?”

“I buried him so the blue men wouldn’t find him.”

“Good thinking,” Zarkov said, slapping him on the back.

“I’ve got to get back to my companions,” Pabl said worriedly. “Will you carry the news to the capital?”

“I will,” Zarkov said, and Pabl got up.

A piercing scream sounded from the other room, Zarkov recognized the sound of Sari’s voice. He rose quickly, knocking the square table over, dashing the mugs of mead to the floor where they shattered.

“Help me!” Sari screamed.

Zarkov hurried across the room to the plank door, where Sari had left with the innkeeper. He tugged at the leather thongs. The door was blocked somehow.

“Sari! Are you in there?” he bellowed.

The woodsmen at the table were all staring toward him.

“Sari!” he boomed out.

He yanked on the thongs and the door jiggled in the frame. Suddenly Zarkov moved back, raised his booted foot, and smashed at the door. It splintered.

He ran into the other room quickly, the door sagging on its leather hinges behind him. The fat innkeeper was standing in the middle of the room, his hands tied in front of his fat belly, his face white with fear.

Sari was sagging against a tall man who held her tightly in his arms, looking at Zarkov over her shoulder. Her stretch blouse had been ripped at the shoulder. Blood seeped from a long wound there. The wound resembled a scratch from an enormous cat.

Lieutenant Brod grinned at Zarkov, with his hand at Sari’s throat, ready to rip out her jugular with the bright-yellow hooked claws which Zarkov could now see unsheathed and in plain sight.