Flash Gordon 4 - The Time Trap of Ming XIII (2 page)

Flash tore at the wheel frantically. The jetcar did not respond.

He could hear the cacophony of tortured metal, then the smash of plyoglass, the burning of plyolact left on the copoly-petrol surface, and the wrenching screech of impact as they hit.

The giant forest plants above them wavered. The plyoglass windscreen seemed to melt like ice sheets in a nuclear blast. The zarcar turned over on the forest growth and came to a shuddering, jolting halt.

“Flash!” screamed Dale.

Then there was absolute silence.

I
n the measureless dimension of the primeval forest there was almost complete quiescence. Flash opened his eyes and found himself staring into Mongo’s yellowish clay-colored sky. The branches of the giant plants waved in a sudden movement of air over the surface of the planet.

Instantly he recalled the crash of the jetcar and Dale’s cry. Shaking his head to rid it of the brief pain he had suffered, he sat up. Dale was slumped against the plyoform-cushioned interior. Her eyes were closed. Flash could not see any wounds on her skin.

“Dale,” he called anxiously.

His voice seemed to hang in the air. The sound reverberated and echoed for a moment, repeating itself again and again. Then it faded away.

Flash raised his head and looked around.

The plyoglass conetop of the zarcar had been thrown aside by the shock of its impact with an enormous fern stalk a good eight feet across. The jetcar’s chassis was lying on its side, wedged between two upthrusts of a shalelike rock that was probably drogue ore, the type of mineral Mongo’s scientific fraternity used to formulate drogiron, a kind of annealed steel.

“Dale!”

She stirred and opened her eyes. “Flash!”

“Are you all right?” Flash asked anxiously, shaking her by the arm.

“Yes.” She blinked. “I seem to be alive. That’s the main thing.” She glanced around. “What happened?”

“I lost control,” said Flash ruefully. “The jetcar just went off the superway.”

Dale raised her head and tried to look out through the windscreen. “It’s so quiet out there,” she murmured.

“I’m going to get out of the car and see if I can find out what went wrong. Are you all right now?”

“Yes, yes,” said Dale impatiently. “Don’t worry about me.”

Flash reached toward the doorhandle and tugged at it. The jetcar had landed half on its side and half on its frame. It lay at a forty-five-degree angle. The sudden redistribution of Flash’s weight when he moved caused the hulk to creak and groan and settle to the left. The frame crashed down onto the forest surface with a heavy thump and a sigh. Dust motes boiled up.

Flash unbuttoned the doorpack and pulled out a handkerchief. He held it over his nose for protection.

“Dusty,” he said.

Flash opened the driver’s door and climbed out of the jetcar, glancing up and down the length of the forest as he did so. Birds, beasts—every live thing had been frightened away by the noise of the crash. In the distance an alardactyl wheeled in a silvery arc, catching the glint of Mongo’s mustard sun at zenith, and plunged into the lavender foliage.

Dale sat up and began patting her hair back into place. She called out, “I’ll try to use the laserphone to contact Arboria.”

“Right,” said Flash.

He slammed the driver’s door shut and stood by the side of the zarcar, looking down at the wheels in amazement. Or rather he found himself looking down at the portion of the jetcar where the wheels were supposed to be.

There were none there!

Flash straightened and glanced about him in dismay. The wheels had apparently been torn off by the crash. He frowned and walked around the jetcar to view the other side. There he stood in perplexity.

“What is it, Flash?” Dale asked. She was looking out through her window at him in surprise.

“The wheels were torn off—actually torn off!”

“Torn off?” Dale repeated. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It certainly doesn’t.” The dust that boiled up around the car had settled now. Flash went down on his knees to examine a small pile of it that lay near the off-rear-wheel vent.

He picked up a handful of the very fine dust and held it in his palm. With his left forefinger and thumb he pinched a bit of it and rubbed it between his fingertips. He could feel its strange consistency—not sand, not dirt. Nor was it actually dust.

It was pulverized—finely pulverized—metal of some kind!

“Dale!” Flash cried. “The dust we saw. It isn’t dust at all. It’s some kind of metallic powder.”

“Metallic powder?”

Flash got down on his stomach and peered in at the bottom of the jetcar’s frame. And instantly he knew what had happened.

“I can’t believe it! The whole suspension system of the car—the shocks, the axles, the springs, everything under the car—is gone!”

Dale leaned out the window and stared at the ground where the pile of dust lay. “Maybe that’s what the dust is.”

Flash rose, his eyes narrowed. “That’s what I’m thinking too. Sure. Powdered metal. The entire suspension system has been turned to dust!” He stood there, looking back down the superway from where they had come. He could see one of the wheels made of zarplast—a special plastic Zarkov had formulated out of Mongo’s minerals—lying in the middle of the roadway with its plyolact tire intact “But look! The tire is perfectly all right.”

Dale climbed out. The jetcar rocked slightly as she jumped to the ground and came over to stand by Flash.

“Maybe that was what we smelled—the metal turning to dust. And that high-pitched inaudible sound may have been what caused it to disintegrate.”

Flash nodded. “It’s a logical assumption. Did you get anyone on the laserphone?”

“It’s gone dead.”

“The laser rod is mounted to the frame of the jetcar,” said Flash musingly. “I suppose the rod was pulverized, too.”

Dale lifted her head. “Sh!” She was poised alertly, frowning. “Did you hear that?”

“I heard nothing,” said Flash, staring at the mound of dust in his hand. “Look. If this is metal fatigue, it is the tiredest metal I’ve ever seen. Frankly, I’m stumped. The entire suspension system, everything made out of metal, has simply disintegrated into dust. What happened to it? Is there some poisonous effluvia in the air? Did that resonating sound we heard affect the metal? What turned it to dust? A laser ray? An antimatter beam?”

“Well, we’ll have to ask Dr. Zarkov when we see him,” Dale said brightly. “I’m sure he’d love to tell us.”

Flash brooded at the wrecked car. “Maybe his design had a few flaws in it.”

“This isn’t getting us any nearer to Arboria. If we’re going to have to walk, we’d better start. It’s a long way.”

Flash rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We didn’t meet anyone on the superway, did we? I mean there’s not much hope of getting a lift, is there?”

Dale shook her head.

“Then let’s get going.”

“Flash! Look out!” screamed Dale.

Flash pivoted quickly. He saw nothing, but suddenly he sensed a high-pitched resonance in the air similar to the vibrations he and Dale had felt when the jetcar had bucked. Instinctively he clapped his hands to his ears. His head felt as if it were being pressed between two boulders.

“Take cover!” he cried to Dale. “We’re—we’re—” His eye caught a flash of light off in the forest nearby. He could not distinguish exactly what caused it, but the resonance seemed to emanate from that point.

“We’re under attack, Dale! Get behind the jetcar—hurry!”

The air suddenly blossomed into liquid flame and the magnetic force of a beam projected toward Flash knocked him backward into a giant fern stalk. He crawled around and crouched behind it to get out of the direct line of the ray.

And then, suddenly, everything was very quiet once again.

C
autiously, Flash emerged from behind the fern. Dale still hid behind the jetcar, where it lay canted slightly on a tangle of forest roots and dead branches.

The air about them was very calm now, as if it had never been touched by the heat and power of the strange ray.

“Dale,” he called to her, “are you all right?”

“Yes,” she answered, raising her head. “Is it safe to come out?”

“Strange,” Flash mused, without answering her. “That ray simply stunned me for a moment.”

“I’m not hurt, either.” Dale walked around the rear of the jetcar and joined Flash in the clearing.

“Probably the same ray disintegrated the metal in the jetcar’s suspension system. But if it did that, why didn’t it hurt us?”

Dale shook her head, glancing around at the forest with puzzled apprehension.

Flash pointed his gloved hand toward a heavy curtain of foliage. “It came from that direction, wouldn’t you say?” The dense duster of vegetation lay not far from the superway as it curved and dipped through a formation of light-purple Klang outcropping. Klang resembled Earth’s granite rock, except that it was purple with brown specks.

“I saw a flash of light,” said Dale, “and then the air seemed to resonate.”

Flash began walking toward the dense undergrowth. “Let’s go see if we can find the machine that projected the ray. I assume, at least, that it was a ray of some kind.”

Dale stopped dead in her tracks. “Look!”

“Two men,” muttered Flash. His hand immediately sought the blaster pistol in the leather holster at his belt.

The two men stood some distance from them, but it was easy to see them, even in the thick wooded growth of the forest surrounding them. One was tall and slim, the other short and fat.

They wore paramilitary uniforms. Flash distinguished sleeves that fastened in tightly at the wrists, military trousers that bagged at the knees and ankles, and then disappeared into shiny boots. The uniforms were chartreuse, but the texture of the material was not identifiable at a distance.

What appeared to be ammo belts with pouches spaced at intervals were fastened around their waists. Their heads were bare. Flash did not recognize the uniform and knew that it came from no known combat unit in the galaxy and allied systems.

Although the men’s faces were not close enough to distinguish clearly, Flash got the impression that they both had mustaches. Their flesh seemed to resemble the chartreuse attire, being of a kind of yellowish tone.

“They did it,” said Dale positively.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get them!” Flash said, starting through the undergrowth. “They can’t get away with this!”

“They’re armed!” cried Dale. “Don’t let them hurt you.”

“I won’t,” Flash promised. He pushed aside branches and vines. A hollow ravine separated him from the cleared flatland upon which the two strangers stood. Flash plunged down a slope and made his way through crimson-and-gold bushes.

He came up the other side of the draw and saw the two men more clearly now. They were standing exactly where they had been a moment before. Behind him, Flash saw Dale standing on the other side of the ravine, looking at the two uniformed men.

“Hey!” called Flash. “Are you the two men who wrecked our car?”

There was no response.

“Well?” Flash called out, making his way toward them through the thick undergrowth.

The two men conferred briefly. Then, with the quickness of a magician’s illusion, they vanished into thin air!

Flash halted, staring. He passed his gloved hand over his eyes and blinked rapidly. Then he stared into the forest and saw that the two men had indeed disappeared from sight.

Stunned, Flash turned to Dale. “Did you see that?”

Dale’s face was perplexed. “I saw it. I was looking at the two of them and they simply went up in a puff.”

“An optical illusion?” Flash pondered. “I want to check.”

Dale ran through the undergrowth after him. “I’m coming with you.”

Flash waited for her to join him and then the two of them proceeded through the tangled brush until they came to the spot where the two men had stood.

It was a small clearing in the middle of thick and twisted combinations of ferns, vines, scrub brush, and tall slender umbrella-topped minitrees that thrust briefly into the air. The lavenders, oranges, and crimson colors dazzled the eye.

“They could have run into the cover of the trees,” Dale said thoughtfully.

“No way.” Flash shook his head. “I was looking right at them. They simply vanished.”

“I saw them go, too.” Dale sighed. “It was just an idea.”

“Perhaps they weren’t really here,” Flash said. “I mean—mirrors? Video projection? A holograph?”

Dale walked about the clearing, her eyes on the ground. “Here,” she exclaimed.

Flash watched her as she knelt down and touched a small tuft of mongospike, a type of forest grass that grew only on the planet of Mongo.

“What are you talking about?”

“Broken,” she said, pointing to the sheathed and jointed sections of the spiked purple grass. “Somebody was standing here very recently.”

Flash picked up the tuft of mongospike and studied it. Then he searched the area with his eyes until he came to a stretch of Mongo’s puce-colored soil. There was a footprint there, made by the shape of a military boot.

“There was a man here—one of the men I saw. And here’s another print. They both wore boots.”

Dale nodded.

Flash searched the humus more thoroughly, examining the tufts of mongospike. “The prints are isolated right here,” he said. “There are no tracks leading away from the spot where we saw them.”

He stood up, stretching his muscles.

“Well, what do we do now?” Dale asked. “If they mean us no harm . . .” She let her voice drop.

Flash looked into her eyes. “How can we be sure of that? Just because that ray they projected at us was a stunner and not a destroyer, how can we be sure the next one won’t burn us the way the first one burned the metal of the zarcar?”

Dale shook her head in dismay. “We can’t be sure, Flash.”

The sight of the superway in the forest caught Flash’s eye in the distance. He watched the point a moment longer, then grabbed Dale’s arm.

“You see?” He pointed at the curtain of foliage.

“What?”

“From here it’s a straight line to the jetcar. See the hood? All right. Let your eye travel beyond that point. Straight ahead, in a direct line. What do you see?”