Flash Gordon 3 - The Space Circus (12 page)

Narla said nothing.

Zarle bent to pick up the lantern the captain had left behind. “It’s quite late, miss,” he said to her. “I advise you to get some sleep. It would be nice if you looked fresh and rested when we arrive at the slave market.” He continued to grin and left her there in the misty darkness.

T
hey were moving through the infinite silence of space. Dr. Zarkov was muttering an old New England sea chanty under his breath as he sat hunched over the controls of the spacecraft. Somehow space travel always put him in a nautical mood.

“We’re nearing the transfer point,” said Dale, her eyes on the array of dials before her.

“Okay, get ready for jump number two,” boomed Zarkov.

He gave his beard a final tug, then poked, jabbed, and pulled at the control panel. Switches were thrown, toggles flicked, buttons pressed.

Sitting tensely in the pilot chair, Zarkov gave a shake of his hips. “Here we go.”

The ship quivered slightly. It executed a spatial-temporal jump and they were in the planet system of the planet Mesmo.

Dale ran her tongue over her lips. She felt slightly dizzy, and her stomach was acting as though she’d just dropped a hundred stories in an elevator. “It works,” she said faintly.

“Of course it works,” bellowed Zarkov, slapping the control panel proudly. “Most things Zarkov comes up with work. And you don’t even feel anything on the transition. Not like the clumsy system they’re still using back home.”

“I felt something,” said Dale.

“You’ve got butterflies in your stomach from worrying about Flash,” he told her. “That’s all you’re feeling, Dale.” He took a few hearty tugs of his beard, then punched out a flight pattern on the control board. “Now we can relax until we land on Mesmo.”

“It’s a big planet,” said Dale.

“Got an equatorial diameter of seventy-five hundred miles,” said Zarkov as he slouched back in his seat. “Which means it’s nearly as large as Earth.”

Dale activated a row of dials and switches. “We better start collecting information about her.”

“You think of Mesmo as a her?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Probably because you feel she’s taken Flash away from you,” said the doctor. “A jealousy reaction.”

“It’s not something to make jokes about.”

Zarkov glanced over at the sad-eyed girl. “I’m as anxious about Flash as you are, Dale,” he said in a softer tone. “I wouldn’t have batted out this crate if I wasn’t.”

She reached over and touched his arm. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Most people like my jokes,” said Zarkov. “I’m in great demand at scientific conventions and dinners all over the universe. And talk shows. Why the last time I was on Jupiter, I sat in on at least . . .”

“Forest below us,” announced Dale after consulting a scanner screen.

“Good,” said Dr. Zarkov. “I’d rather not land in the middle of Main Street.”

“You can’t land this ship on the treetops.”

“In my youth, I would have tried,” boomed Zarkov. “But the mellowing effect of time has given me a little more sense. So we’ll find a clearing, set her down, and then conceal her.”

“You called the ship her,” pointed out the girl.

“It’s an old naval custom,” answered the doctor. “Means nothing.”

“Quite an impressive jungle,” said Dale, looking again at the pictures their infrared cameras were taking of the sight forest below. “Clearing coming up.”

Zarkov gritted his teeth and began the braking operations.

The ship slowed and slowed.

Zarkov switched to manual controls, putting the craft into a wide circling pattern. “Now have the scanners tell the landing mechanism where that clearing is,” he told Dale.

“Okay, done.”

“It’s a shame we can’t arrive a little more openly,” said Zarkov. “Not that I’m especially vain, but I must say I do enjoy arriving at a spaceport and having the local officials rush out to greet us. I like parades, too. Except on some of the more backward planets where they still go in for open landcars. You have to watch out for flying eggs and fruit then. It’s amazing that even a scientist with my reputation in so many of the known planet systems occasionally gets a ripe tomato tossed at him.”

“We’ve landed,” Dale said.

“So we have.” Zarkov checked over everything on the control panel. Then he unfastened himself from the pilot seat.

“Do you have any idea what kind of people the Mesmen might be?” Dale joined him at the egress chamber door in the floor of the ship.

“Nasty rascals,” replied Zarkov. He strapped a backpack on, thrust a pistol into the belt of his work-suit, and grabbed a blaster rifle from the wall rack. “Any people who’d go in for the kind of galactic kidnapping they apparently do can’t be too lovable.”

“We haven’t seen any of them yet,” said Dale. “As a scientist, you ought to keep an open mind.”

“I’ve got an open mind,” said Zarkov in his booming voice. “But I know a nasty rascal when I encounter one. There’s nothing that says you have to be so detached as to be a nitwit.”

He opened the door in the floor and slid down out of the ship.

“A
t least you could give me some dry clothes or something,” Booker said.

The big blond man pulled his long hair back and tied it with a leather cord. “Shut up,” he told Booker.

“I can no way get all this muck off me,” said Booker. He was sitting close to the newly built campfire, scraping mud and slime off himself with a sharp stick and handfuls of leaves. “And even if I could do it, I’m still going to be wet. So I’ll probably get a headache and a bad cold. I always do when I get really wet.”

“I’ll throw you back in if you don’t shut up,” said the yellow-haired slaver.

“That’s gratitude for you,” said Booker as he flicked a gob of muck away. “Here I help you get a whole bunch of new merchandise and you—”

“Whoa there,” said Sixy. “You told us you were forced into baiting that trap there, Booker.” Sixy was sitting with his back against a tree, his hands tied behind him.

“Well, I was. But that don’t mean they have to let me sit around and catch a cold or worse.”

“Perhaps you’ve learned a lesson,” said Huk. The hawkman was bound and lying on his side a small distance from the crackling fire. “Don’t trust anyone.”

The yellow-haired man laughed. He had started roasting the wing of a wild bird over the fire. He withdrew the spit now, examined the meat, and held it over the flames again.

“Don’t even give us nothing much to eat,” said Booker. “Ain’t nobody going to buy skinny old slaves.”

“We’re a good week’s march from the market I have in mind for you,” said the yellow-haired man. “We’ll fatten you up before then.”

“You could start now,” said Sixy.

The slaver laughed again, shaking his head at his two blue associates who sat across the fire from him. “I’d almost like to keep you around for myself,” he said to Sixy. “You’re an amusing fellow.”

“Untie me and I’ll juggle for you,” said Sixy.

“They say that’s Bentan’s only fault,” said the yellow-haired slaver, “my sense of humor. I truly do love a joke.”

“That’s your name—Bentan?” asked Huk.

“Yes, bird man,” answered the slaver. “I’m known throughout this jungle. You’re lucky you fell into my hands and not those of some other slaver. I’m as kindly as your old maiden aunt compared to some of the devils you might have run into.”

“Mallox might not agree with you,” said Sixy, nodding at the unconscious giant.

The two blue men had dragged the strongman here and propped his stiffened body against a tree trunk. Small mosquitoes were circling him.

“That one,” said Bentan, laughing. “He’s all bluff and wind. To hear him tell it, there’s no beating him.”

“He did toss you in the pit,” Sixy pointed out.

The yellow-haired man scowled for an instant, then laughed again. “An accident, that was. I lost my footing.”

“I can understand that,” said Sixy, wiggling his toes. “A punch on the jaw like he gave you would make anybody lose his footing.”

“You’re an interesting little fellow,” said Bentan. “You enjoy twitting me even when you know I could kill you in a minute.”

“A good many things could kill me,” answered Sixy. “If I worried about them all I’d never have time for anything else.”

“You got dry clothes in one of those sacks,” said Booker, pointing to a knapsack next to one of the blue men. “Even a pair of trousers would help.”

Huk tried, and finally succeeded in, getting into a somewhat more comfortable position. “This market you’re taking us to,” he said. “Who are its customers?”

Bentan took his fowl wing away from the fire. It was burned. “Just the way I like it.” He detached the spit and threw it over to one of the blue men. After taking several huge bits of the sooty meat, he said, “They’re not so high-class as your former masters, I’ll wager. Across the jungle there are a number of farmers. They practice what we call slash-and-burn farming.” He took a few more bites, laughing as be chewed. “A slash-and-burn farmer, he cuts away the trees and burns away the rest of the underbrush in a patch of jungle. Then he’s got himself some acres for growing.”

“Not very good land, is it?” asked Huk.

“Not as good as that the gentry own, no,” answered the yellow-haired man. “But good enough for a few years of crops. Then the farmer finds himself another patch of jungle to slash and burn.”

“That’s where we come in,” said Sixy.

“Yes, you’ll be farm lads.”

“They can’t pay much,” said Sixy. He began to rub his toes over his injured ankle. He wanted to keep the slaver and the two blue minions distracted. Because he’d noticed, which they hadn’t yet, that Mallox was regaining consciousness.

“I’ll make about fifty harlans on each of you,” said Bentan. “Plenty of money for the kind of life we lead.”

“We could arrange for you to get more than that,” said Huk.

“Oh, so?” The slaver laughed.

Sixy casually glanced at the yellow-haired man, noticing that the man’s rifle was on the moss a few feet from him and that his pistol was snapped inside its holster. “Our other friends have money,” he said.

“Indeed? I have never heard of a slave with a bank account before.”

“When the train was wrecked,” continued Sixy, “we salvaged a good deal of money from the dead passengers, also from our guards and from the circus people.”

“It amounts to several hundred harlans,” added Huk.

“I think I’ll settle for the two hundred harlans I’ll make by selling you to the farmers.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Booker, who was shivering. “You’re not supposed to sell me like that. That was part of our deal.”

Mallox jumped straight for the seated slaver at that instant. “Now, you yellow-haired devil!” he roared.

The strongman yanked the slaver upright, lifted him high over his head, and tossed him across the fire.

The man’s big body bowled over the two blue men.

With a triumphant growl, Mallox leaped the flames. He snatched up both of the Mesmen, banged their heads together several times, then dropped them, dazed, to the ground.

He dived for Bentan.

The slaver doubled up, twisted around, and brought his feet up into the giant’s chest.

It didn’t phase Mallox, He threw three tremendous blows into Bentan’s face.

The slaver groaned and fell. He rolled over once, gave a great sigh, and was still.

“Ha,” said Mallox, “I knew I could beat that devil in a fair fight.”

“Good work,” said Huk.

“Now, I’ll cut you loose and—”

Something was rattling in the brush off in the darkness beyond the circle of light the fire produced.

They all turned to look in that direction.

A dog emerged, snarling. It was a robot tracking dog and it had found them.

“W
e must be near some form of humanity,” said Dr. Zarkov in a subdued voice. “I hear gunfire.”

Dale held back, catching hold of his arm. “Hadn’t we better avoid them, then? We’re here to find Flash, not get ourselves shot.”

They’d been moving across mossy ground, surrounded by the huge high trees of the jungle. “I want to make contact with someone relatively soon,” said the doctor. “We need a little more information about this planet. Once I get myself oriented, learn the language and the customs, we can track down Flash.”

“I know you’re a very gifted man,” said Dale, “but to do all that may take weeks.”

“Nonsense,” he responded. “Zarkov can usually pick up a local language in a matter of hours. Customs, I admit, take a bit longer.” He took hold of her hand. “Now let’s get closer to this fracas.”

“All right, but don’t go barging into someone else’s fight.”

The bearded doctor bounded silently ahead, Dale following. “You can learn a good deal about people by watching them fight,” he told her.

The crackle of blasters grew louder as did the whir of stunguns and some kind of electrical crackle Zarkov couldn’t quite identify.

Dr. Zarkov motioned Dale to halt beside him. He jabbed a thumb at the darkness above. Through the tree branches and leaves penetrated a few glowing yellow lights. “Some kind of aircraft.”

“Aircraft and guns,” said the girl. “An advanced civilization for sure.”

Zarkov made a slight tangent on the course they’d been following.

About a quarter mile up ahead through the maze of trees someone screamed.

Crouched low, moving without any sound, the doctor and the girl made their way forward.

“No need to stun me or kill me or anything,” someone shouted. “I surrender. See, my hands are up. I quit, you understand.”

Zarkov dropped to his knees. Dale followed suit “Look at those nitwit things there,” he whispered. “Some kind of mechanical dogs, probably used in hunting people down.”

“We may be walking Into an action by the local police,” said Dale.

Still on his knees Zarkov inched ahead. “Look at that fellow there, with the wings,” he said. “That’s a hawkman from Mongo.”

“Yes” agreed Dale, “it is. These might be escaped captives then, do you think?”

“If we can scare off those blue guys we can ask the hawkman,” said Zarkov.