Flash Gordon 4 - The Time Trap of Ming XIII (14 page)

“Well, Zarkov?” Brod gurgled in that strange way of his.

Zarkov grabbed for his blaster pistol. He remembered only at that moment that he had thrown it down in the forest. He remembered seeing Sari go back and pick it up. He wondered why she had not been able to use it on Lieutenant Brod.

A hand shot out of the darkness at his side, gripping his upper arm tightly. Zarkov turned, startled. He found himself face to face with Captain Slan, whose yellow eyes gleamed with mirth.

“We meet again, Dr. Zarkov. You’ll kindly refrain from any token opposition, if you please. Nothing will avail your succor this time.” Slan chuckled. “Make up your mind, Dr. Zarkov, that you’re going to come along with us to our detention chambers while the attack on the forest-kingdom’s capital gets under way.” Slan’s yellow eyes gleamed. “Oh, as for that blaster pistol you seem so fond of, your shapely young friend has turned it over to us in mint condition.” Slan reached in his cloak and drew it out, showing it to Zarkov with a sadistic leer. “Now, if you’ll just come along with us.”

“Hands off me, you miserable mutant!” Zarkov growled in his throat.

The sharp claws stabbed painfully into Zarkov’s wrist. Blood seeped out onto his skin.

Captain Slan threw back his head and roared with laughter. Zarkov was aware of the yellow tongue flicking saliva off the blue lips.

Sari screamed again and Zarkov watched Slan thrust his blaster pistol negligently into the gilded belt around his yellow-and-orange doublet.

F
or a moment, Kial stared in disbelief through the magniscopic sights of the laser-rod antimatter ray gun. He could not believe the superway was once again empty.

“Where did they go?” he howled.

Lari looked startled. “Where did who go?”

“Gordon and Arden,” Kial snapped. “Look for yourself. They aren’t there any more.”

Lari put his eye to the magniscopic sights and adjusted the focus. “There’s nobody there.”

“Well, they were there a minute ago,” Kial said angrily. “Now you’ve lost them again.”

“I haven’t lost them,” Lari protested. “You’ve lost them.”

“I can’t understand it,” Kial shouted, putting his eye again to the eyepiece and fiddling with the focusing lever. “You’ve got it all out of focus, dummy.”

Lari stood with his hands on his hips. He stared through the wooded growth between the ray gun and the superway. “Well, I can’t see them from here, either,” he said at last. “They’ve gone, Kial. You were looking through the magniscope. Where did they go?”

“I don’t know!” Kial screamed. “This mission is cursed, Lari. It’s bewitched.”

“Maybe they took a walk into the woods.”

“That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, even from you.”

“To look at the ferns, maybe. The forest is a beautiful sight, you know. Or maybe they wanted to watch the birds.”

Kial spat in his anger. “Watch the birds! Come on, dummy. We’ve got to find them. Heap those branches over the ray gun. We can’t take it with us and we don’t want them finding it.”

Lari sighed. “Yes, Kial.” He looked up after he had thrown an armload of fern fronds on the laser gun. “Where are we going to look for them?”

Kial’s eyes gleamed. “We’ll use a little hunting savvy, Lari. Spoors.”

“Spoors?” Lari repeated. “Oh. Footprints, you mean?”

“Or other tracks,” Kial said. “Come on.”

They picked up tile prints alongside the superway where Flash and Dale had gone to look at the milestone. Lari spotted the milestone and walked around it to read the writing on the other side.

“Hey, Kial, look. It says, ‘Flash and Dale—the answer is this way.’ ”

Kial stared at the message. “Who wrote that?” he asked in astonishment.

“I don’t know.”

Kial stared at the arrow and then followed the arrow through the forest growth. “Lari,” Kial whispered, his face paling. “Do you know where that arrow is pointing?”

“Sure. To the answer. It says so here.”

“Dummy! I mean it points right to the Tempendulum. That’s where it points.”

“The Tempendulum!” Lari repeated, his eyes fearful. “You mean they’re going to find the Tempendulum?”

“Yes, dummy, unless we stop them,” Kial yelled. “Now, come on, let’s get moving. We haven’t a moment to lose.”

At the edge of the clearing where the Tempendulum had been built, Kial and Lari paused and crouched in the foliage, peering through the fern fronds at the big metallic dome.

“They’re inside,” Kial said mournfully. “They’ll guess what it is. What are we going to do now?”

Lari jumped up and started across the clearing.

“Stop, dummy!” Kial yelped, reaching out and grabbing Lari by the belt. “Come back here, you moron. They’ll see you.”

“But—”

Kial drew him back into the shelter of the giant ferns. They both crouched there, peering out at the clearing.

“Well, now,” said Kial. “We’ve got to figure out something. Gordon has discovered the Tempendulum and it won’t take him long to do something about it.”

“Then what?”

Kial’s eyes lighted up. “Of course! We knock him out, and put him and Dale into the astro-seats, and pull the master switch on the Tempendulum. That throws them out into open time and they’re lost forever in eternity!”

“Huh?” Lari said.

“I said—” Kial stopped and glared at Lari. “Oh, shut up and let me think.”

“Look,” Lari whispered after a moment.

Kial peered over Lari’s fat shoulder. He saw Flash Gordon and Dale Arden inside the Tempendulum, moving back and forth and examining the instrumentation and the pendulum hanging from the ceiling of the time dome. Once Kial thought he saw Flash Gordon look out the port directly toward them.

They heard the two Earthlings talking.

“It looks like some kind of pendulum to me, Flash,” the girl’s voice said.

“Quiet!” Kial whispered. “Listen. We can hear what they say.”

Flash Gordon’s voice said, “Pendulum. An old-fashioned pendulum, the kind of swinging weight that used, to make grandfather clocks go before digital readouts and solid-state transistor packs. Dale, do you suppose—?”

“What, Flash?”

“Do you suppose this thing has anything to do with time-travel?”

Kial stared at Lari in horror. “He’s guessed!” Kial hissed in despair.

“It might have, Flash,” the girl said. “Look. If you read those letters on the console dials, it might mean Time Control. But I don’t know what V.E. stands for. Or E.T.Z.”

“Son of a gun!” Flash cried. “I think you’re right. And if that’s the case, what is that floating globe of heat and light?”

“I have no idea, Flash. But I’ll bet . . .” Dale’s voice faded out.

“Wait a minute!” Flash said loudly. “Time-control! Of course! That refers to those belts Lari and Kial used. If those were time-travel belts, the two of them would vanish before our eyes if they traveled either forward or backward in time, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes!” Dale exclaimed.

“And Arboria would vanish if it were made to travel in time, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Flash.”

“Maybe not,” Flash admitted. “It’s a kind of farfetched idea. Still, perhaps there is some connection we can’t see just now.”

“What’s that floating globe?”

“No idea. Something to do with light and energy, I suppose it’s connected in some way to the pendulum.”

Dale shrugged.

“Look at this, Dale. These dials are calibrated in years, decades, centuries. Obviously, the pendulum has something to do with the speed of time or of time itself. And those two people came to us—” Flash hesitated. “This metallic alloy, Dale, no wonder I’ve never seen it before. It’s something from the future. Don’t you see? Just like our two friends with the ray gun are from the future!”

“Of course,” Dale replied.

“Look. I’m going to see if I can dismantle this pendulum. I think it must have something to do with the instrumentation on the console.”

“Be careful, Flash,” Dale said warningly.

“You stay over there,” Flash instructed her. “Keep out of the way. I don’t want anything to happen to you. On second thought, maybe you’d better get out of the dome while I work on that pendulum.”

“I don’t think you should, Flash.”

“Nonsense. Don’t worry about me. Now you get out of here and I’ll take the pendulum apart.”

Kial saw Dale Arden step out through the port into the sunshine. He motioned to Lari for silence; Dale did not look into the woods at all. She kept her eyes on Flash, working inside the hemispheroid.

“What’s going to happen when he takes that pendulum apart?” Lari asked in a hushed voice.

“I don’t know, but I’ve got a good idea what to do to the girl,” Kial whispered back. “We’ll sneak up on her, grab her, and hold her. When Gordon comes to the port. I’ll knock him out and then we’ll have him!”

“Kill him?” Lari asked.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Kial said. “We’ll do what we said before. We’ll put him away for good. In time!”

Dale did not hear the two of them sneak up on her. When Kial reached out and caught her throat in the crook of his elbow, she was too startled to even cry out. She struggled for a moment, kicking back at him with her heels. But Kial did not let her go. With Lari’s help, he pulled her away from the Tempendulum port and carried her into the woods.

“Flash!” Dale screamed, trying to attract his attention. But her voice was so stifled by Kial’s grip on her throat that she could not be heard.

Lari gagged her with a handkerchief, which he drew from his pocket, and quickly bound her hands behind her with a piece of duraflex cord. Then he tied her ankles and threw her down on the ground.

Kial tiptoed over to the Tempendulum and looked inside through the port. He could see Flash at work on the heart-shaped weight at the bottom of the pendulum. He now held it in his hands and was examining it carefully.

“Doesn’t seem to be anything here, Dale,” he said thoughtfully, turning his head.

“That’s your tough luck, Gordon.” Kial grinned, stepping over the sill of the port and advancing on Flash. Quickly, Flash stood up and tossed the heavy weight directly at Kial.

“If it’s yours, take it!”

Kial tried to duck, but the heavy weight caught him in the stomach and knocked him down. He saw stars for a moment. He pushed aside the weight and got to his knees, waiting for Flash to attack.

Flash came at him, his hands extended in stiff karate fashion, moving up and down and measuring Kial’s neck. Kial slowly came to his feet and leaped at Flash. Flash danced aside and gave him a stiff chop on the temple.

Quickly Kial pulled back, grabbing Flash’s two wrists, and pulled him down to the floor of the dome, where he went back on his shoulders, and flipped completely over, sending Flash hurtling through the air over his head to slide on the floor toward the wall.

Flash leaped up and ran back to grab Kial’s shoulders and pull him off the floor, jabbing him in the stomach with his knee at the same time.

“Oof!” Kial groaned.

Quickly, Flash chopped with his left fist at Kial’s chin, jerking his head back hard. Following that with a right uppercut, Flash then pounded his left fist into Kial’s stomach, then his right, and then his left again.

Kial dropped like a dead fish.

Pain started at Flash’s neck and spread all through him.

He went down next to Kial.

He did not even see Lari behind him drop the tree branch onto the floor. He had used it to club Flash on the skull.

Flash tried to get up, but could not. He hung there, staring at the floor, remembering that it was made from some strange metal alloy he had never seen before. He thought of time and the pendulum and he was suddenly floating in a void.

F
lash Gordon was seated in the astro-chair. He could see the hemispheroidal structure all around him. A queer violet light suffused the atmosphere. A high-pitched whining made the air shimmer everywhere. Tremendous surges of energy and power seemed to penetrate the atmosphere and enter his body.

He was unable to move.

Through the violet haze that grew all around him, he could see the fat man, Lari, seated at the console nearby. Lari glanced back over his shoulder at Flash, grinning an inane smile. With his hands he manipulated dials and levers on the console, all the while watching the astro-seat on which Flash was sprawled.

Now Flash saw that the heavy weight of the pendulum was deposited in his lap. It was tied to his body with some kind of strap. Another one of the substances that had come from the future? Obviously, yes.

Where was Dale?

Now, out of the corner of his eye, Flash saw Kial rise slowly from the floor of the hemispheroidal chamber to stare bleakly at him. He opened his mouth to speak, but the hum of the energy hurtling through the air about him made it impossible to hear what was being said.

Then Flash saw the floating ovate globe move over his own head. It seemed to be the source of the humming and trembling.

“I got him in the astro-seat,” Lari said proudly from the console. Flash knew he was talking to Kial.

“Good, good,” Kial said. “Pull the master switch and send him into eternity.”

“Exactly what I was going to do, Kial,” Lari chortled, and reached out his hand to pull the largest of the switches in front of him.

The noise in the air increased around Flash. He felt the heart-shaped weight tied to his stomach suddenly move against his flesh. The hollow globe in the air spun erratically. Then the violet haze all around him turned to a kind of rainbow kaleidoscope of colors flashing from one end of the dome to the other and back again.

“Dale!” Flash cried. “Where are you?”

There was no answer.

Lari laughed through the hazy rainbowlike obscurity, but Flash could no longer see him, “He thinks she’s with him.”

“Maybe we should have sent her with him to—”

That was all Flash heard. It was Kial’s voice, but it suddenly faded away.

The rainbow colors grew in intensity until Flash saw nothing else. Then the light seemed to speed up, and it was as if he were captured in the light itself and hurtled through the air and into space.