Flash Gordon 5 - The Witch Queen of Mongo (12 page)

The vegetation changed, and the dense jungle below vanished to be replaced by a forest of very large and sturdy coniferous trees.

“Arboria,” Vogl said briefly.

They continued for some fifteen minutes, and then the craft began to lose altitude.

“We’re beginning our approach to the city,” Vogl explained.

“Arboria,” Zarkov said to Dale. “I remember it well.”

They descended until they were on the tops of the dense trees, with the bottom of the heliocab skimming the branches, and then suddenly there was an opening in the trees ahead. A kind of widened runway extended up through the forest, supported at a level by the trees on its borders.

The heliocab settled onto the runway with a soft snick of plyofoam and the heliocab was no longer airborne, but rolled along on conventional wheels toward Arboria.

Captain Vogl zoomed upward with his squad of Hawkmen, waving at Zarkov and Dale in the heliocab.

“We’ll be going back now to our zone. Good luck, Dr. Zarkov, Miss Arden.”

Zarkov and Dale nodded and waved in return.

The heliocab zoomed down the runway, which then converted into a regular roadway as it descended to the trunks of the trees. Then suddenly in the distance ahead they both saw the capital city of Arboria, a gleaming collection of towers and spires in the middle of the thick vegetation.

The heliocab slowed down; they maneuvered several intricate turns, and then they were going through a tunnel hollowed in an enormous tree from some earlier age. Finally, they were out on the palace grounds with the palace rising before them high in the trees.

The heliocab pulled up in a slot that had been made for it in the palace parking lot, and the driver turned.

“We’re at the palace, Dr. Zarkov,” he said respectfully.

“Thanks,” said Zarkov. “Can we get out now?”

The driver rose and unfastened the bubbletop and let the two of them out.

Guards had appeared at the gateway to the palace in the distance.

One of them rushed up. “Dr. Zarkov?” he asked breathlessly. “Good! We’ve been expecting you.”

Zarkov took Dale’s arm and helped her down from the heliocab.

“They’ve been expecting us,” Zarkov said, grinning at Dale.

The guards hurried ahead of them, opened the door, and Zarkov and Dale stepped into the outside garden of the palace. A long, wide flight of stairs rose in front of them, and at the top of it, waiting with a smile on his face, stood Prince Barin.

“Prince!” yelled Zarkov. “I haven’t seen you in years. How are you?”

Zarkov bounded up the stairs with Dale after him.

Prince Barin reached out and embraced Zarkov in a big bear hug, his handsome face wreathed in smiles, and his black crew-cut hair now showing a spot or two of gray.

“And Dale,” cried Prince Barin, reaching out to embrace and kiss her on the cheek. “Where’s Flash?”

Zarkov stared. “They didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what? We got a vidflash that you were on the Great Mongo Desert—I assumed because your rocket had crash-landed, as usual—and I sent out the heliocab to bring you all in.”

Zarkov turned to Dale, his face flushed. “I should have been more specific. Flash was captured by Queen Azura’s agents, we think,” Zarkov said. “We came down right next to the mouth of the Caverna Gigantea.”

“But why didn’t you come in at the Arboria Jetport?”

“It’s a long story,” growled Zarkov. “Meanwhile, we’ve got to get Flash away from Azura.”

Prince Barin took a deep breath. “That won’t be easy.”

“Sure, it will: We just mount a force and wipe them out. You’ve got the manpower in the Free Council. If you want me to lead them—”

“No way!” Prince Barin said grimly. “I don’t think you understand. We’ve got reports that Azura is joining forces with some secret army to overthrow the whole Free Council of Mongo. And we’re not able to do anything about it.”

Zarkov stared in stunned astonishment.

Dale stepped forward. “But you’ve got to save Flash.”

Prince Barin’s face fell. “I wish we could,” he whispered. “But I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

I
n a remote room in the communications tower of Queen Azura’s palace sat a bearded young man staring in shock at the vidphone screen in front of him. The image of Azura, the Queen of the Kingdom of Blue Magic, confronted him. He had seen the queen once on the street during a parade, but he had never before been face to face with her, even by remote control.

“You are Jado?” Queen Azura asked brusquely.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” She was as beautiful as the legends about her, he decided. But she seemed somewhat older than he had thought. Perhaps the legends exaggerated her youth, if they did not exaggerate her beauty.

“I have a mission for you,” she said firmly. “You have been recommended by the minister of communications.”

Jado bowed at the torso. “Thank you, Your Majesty, for your trust in me.”

“It is a most important mission, Jado—and a dangerous one. Do you think you can handle it?”

Jado stared at the queen’s image. Dangerous? Free translation: suicide mission. Jado felt tingles run up and down his backbone. But he did not let his fear show; he had had long training in that. As a courier, he had many times been on impossible missions which depended on bluff and quick wits for survival.

“Absolutely, oh, Your Highness,” he said.

“Then come immediately to my chambers; I have a message for you to deliver.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Jado said, bowing once again from the torso.

When he straightened, he saw that the queen’s visage had faded from the screen. It was instantly replaced by the frowning face of the minister of communications, an older man named Fraj who thought Jado an upstart and a fool. Jado in turn considered him to be obsolete and senile.

“I’ve recommended you for a special assignment,” Fraj growled at Jado. “I presume the queen has been on the vidphone to you?”

“Yes, sire,” said Jado, his lips curling in a mixture of the obsequious and the sardonic. “Thank you, sire.”

“Don’t thank me,” the minister said brusquely. “It’s a difficult job. I wish you—uh—godspeed.”

“I’m sure you do,” Jado said sarcastically, trying to veil his irony.

Minister Fraj did not seem to catch his underling’s true meaning, and nodded. “I’ll send in a replacement. As soon as he comes, get along to the queen’s chambers.”

“Thank you,” Jado said again, with a wry smile.

The minister faded from the vidscreen and Jado stood up, stroking his beard thoughtfully. He was a young man, in the prime of life, and he was being ordered to do some obviously hazardous deed. He wondered what it was.

Then, chiding himself for his suspicions, he said aloud, “Oh, perhaps it’s some personal note to the Free Council of Mongo. In that case, I’ll be sent in under the protection of a truce flag. It won’t be so bad.”

He debated calling his mistress and telling her that he was off on a special mission, but then decided against it. It was strictly forbidden, of course, but all the couriers usually told their wives or mistresses where they would be to avoid personal problems.

Jado stretched and gazed into the mirror, tugging at his beard, and arranging his eyebrows carefully. He was a handsome young man, destined for great things in the hierarchy of the ministry of communications. This might indeed be the mission that could secure him a hold on a higher rung in the ladder of advancement.

He strutted about, waiting for his replacement.

With a hard, strong fist, Jado rapped at the door to the queen’s chamber.

“Who is it?” a high-pitched voice cried out. Jado recognized that twisted dwarf’s voice—Qilp, wasn’t that his name?

“Jado, from the ministry of communications.”

“The courier,” snapped Qilp, and the door opened immediately. “Hurry up, come on in.”

Jado nodded and entered the queen’s chamber, looking about him in awe. He took in the long tables, the stairway leading into the upper reaches of the queen’s apartment, the slashed remains of the enormous drape that had been cut, for some reason, high at the top of the stairs, and the sight of Queen Azura herself.

Jado bowed sweepingly. “Your Majesty,” he said with just the proper deference.

Qilp slammed the door shut and pushed Jado toward the queen, who sat in a comfortable chair not far from the door. She was watching him languorously.

“Come over here, Jado,” she said, beckoning with her gloved arm. Jado approached, his eyes gleaming at the sight of her in the tight-fitting sheathlike costume.

Jado stood in front of her. In that position he could see that there were two other men in the chamber. One sat on a large thronelike chair at the side of the room, smiling down at the second man, stripped to the waist, who seemed to be polishing his boots.

An odd scene, Jado thought.

“I have a note for you to deliver, as I said on the vidphone,” she told him. Her eyes appraised him shrewdly. “You seem to be a good choice.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” he said.

“Qilp,” snapped the queen, “get me the envelope.”

“Right,” Qilp said, giggling, and ran over to a trestle table nearby. He returned immediately with a sealed envelope and handed it to the queen.

Azura took the envelope and tapped it thoughtfully against a fingernail as she continued to study Jado.

“This is an extremely important message,” she told him slowly. “It must be delivered in person to the man to whom it is addressed.”

“I understand,” Jado said.

“Not really,” the queen contradicted him.

Jado waited.

“The message must be delivered and read by the person to whom it is addressed.”

“I see. And the person?”

“The addressee is Prince Barin,” Queen Azura said softly, “the head of the Free Council of Mongo. He is the ruler of Arboria.” A smile tugged at the corners of the queen’s beautiful mouth. “It will not be easy to deliver the message, but it must be done.”

Jado stared at the queen. “We are not on diplomatic terms with Arboria.”

“No, Jado,” the queen said.

“I will be seized.”

The queen nodded. “Perhaps, yes. If so, we will do everything in our power to have you released, Jado.”

Jado sighed. No wonder the minister of communications had selected him: it was a suicide mission.

“I appreciate that, Your Majesty,” Jado said wryly.

“I know you do, Jado,” Queen Azura responded graciously.

“How can I be sure of even getting to the palace of Prince Barin?” Jado asked.

“That is for you to work out yourself, Jado,” the Queen said, her voice hardening. “How you do it is of no concern of mine.”

Jado nodded.

She handed the message to him. “Here—take it. No one is to read it but Prince Barin.”

Jado bowed. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“I’m sure,” Queen Azura retorted, amused. “Now leave me, please.”

Jado turned and hurried to the door. Qilp was there ahead of him, opening it, grinning up with his bright little eyes at Jado.

As Jado left the queen’s chambers, he turned in time to see the big man in the chair, whom he thought resembled Ming the Merciless, lean over to slap the face of the blond muscular type man who was polishing the big man’s boots.

It was a bad scene, Jado thought, and turned to run down the corridor the moment the door slammed in his face.

What kind of a mission was this?

In his own private rooms, Jado hurriedly unsealed the message with a chemical he kept hidden in his dresser drawer, and opened the sheet of paper.

His face paled.

He would be put to death when this message was read by Prince Barin.

It was a ransom note for the life of Flash Gordon! And the ransom was Prince Barin!

Instantly Jado put two and two together, and realized that the blond man polishing the boots of that look-alike for Ming the Merciless was Flash Gordon, the legendary Earthman who had helped Prince Barin consolidate the nations of Mongo against the Kingdom of Blue Magic.

Prince Barin would hold Jado hostage—or kill him the moment he fell into their hands.

There had to be someway to deliver the note without putting his own life in jeopardy. He stared out the window a moment, thinking hard.

The gravity sled carried him swiftly through the caverns of the underground world he was familiar with. Jado leaned back and waited for the craft to wind its way through the long tunnels, which had been dug into the lodes of oceanite and which extended through the xanthillium mines even past the boundaries of the Kingdom of Blue Magic into the land claimed by the Kingdom of Arboria.

He glanced down at his attire. He had fitted himself out in the classic uniform of a guard of the forestry security force. As such, he would be able to pass through the cordon of troops surrounding the palace of Prince Barin.

Jado removed the long-handled sharp-bladed knife which he had fitted into his belt. He had been trained in blade-handling during his military days and knew how to use the knife to good effect.

It was fitting that Queen Azura had not told him of the desperate nature of his mission, but had only hinted. She did not want to give specific orders on how to deliver the ransom note. She wanted him to work that out, and he had—in his mind.

She had meant for him to be sacrificed, but he did not intend to be sacrificed. And he would come out of this alive. Was he not Jado, one of the shrewdest in the communications department?

He smiled to himself.

The Azuria miners had penetrated for many hundreds of miles beneath the Great Mongo Desert and beyond the border of Arboria.

Hours after he had started, Jado reached a final mineshaft marker: “Arboria minus one,” it said. He stopped the craft and climbed off into the narrow tunnel that was dimly lighted by converted solar energy.

He walked to the end of the corridor, where stairs ascended in a spiraling corkscrew toward the planet’s surface. Jado climbed for some minutes, and finally reached the end of the stairs.

The miners had fashioned exits from the mine that led out through the giant trees that grew above in the forest of Arboria. A wooden ladder had been fastened to the inside of a hollowed-out tree trunk.