Flash Gordon 4 - The Time Trap of Ming XIII (3 page)

Dale let her eye move along the same plane. “Why, it’s a curve in the superway, Flash.”

“Exactly. Right where we began to have trouble with the zarcar.”

Dale turned to stare at him.

“That means they stood here, aiming the ray at us through the trees! They watched us crash. And then they stunned us. Why didn’t they kill us?”

“I don’t mind admitting it, Flash,” said Dale in a tremulous voice. “I’m scared!”

T
he two men in the iridescent chartreuse uniforms stood for a moment under an enormous fern tree, catching their breaths. They had been running through the forest. The purples and reds shimmered in the light of Mongo’s seventh sun.

“Kial,” said the fat one, gasping. “Why did we have to run through the forest in such a huge circle?”

The tall slender one stared at his companion as if he were a fool. “Dummy,” he said. “To throw Flash Gordon off the trail!”

“But he couldn’t see us when we pushed the button on our time belts.”

“No,” said Kial impatiently.

The fat one smiled. “Anyway, he didn’t catch us.”

Kial chuckled craftily. “And he won’t stumble onto the Tempendulum, either. Right, Lari?”

Lari blinked in surprise. “I see. You thought maybe he would follow us to the Tempendulum.”

“Your marvelous intellect constantly amazes me, Lari! Simply amazes me.”

Lari smiled. His curling mustaches twitched and big dimples spread over his sallow complexion. “But, Kial, if he couldn’t see us, how could he follow us?”

“Dummy! If he’d tried to follow us, he’d have gone right past where we were and he’d have stumbled onto the Tempendulum.”

“Yeah,” said Lari, light dawning.

“Now, come on,” snapped Kial. “We’ve got to get back and report in!”

Lari’s face fell. Two tears squeezed out of his little black eyes. “I’m afraid, Kial.”

“What’s to be afraid of?”

“The emperor,” cried Lari. “When he finds out we haven’t delayed Flash Gordon for good—”

“Let me handle this,” said Kial, throwing out his chest and starting to walk through the forest. “The emperor is a hard man, but a just man.”

Lari trotted through the undergrowth after Kial, having a hard time keeping up. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?” Kial repeated with annoyance.

“Yeah. A just man.”

Kial growled in his throat. “That’s what we’ve been taught to say, anyway.” He let a sly smile cross his face, tilting his mustaches up.

“He’s going to disintegrate us when he finds out we’ve let Flash Gordon get away!” sobbed Lari.

Kial frowned and slowed to a walk. “It would be nice if we could stay here, wouldn’t it?” he asked, looking around at the giant plants of the forest.

In silence, the two of them continued onward, more and more slowly.

Finally, they stopped and gazed through a gap in the undergrowth.

“There it is,” said Lari sadly.

“Right where we left it,” Kial agreed.

Hidden in the thick and high-topped trees was a hemispherical structure the size of an ordinary two-story building. It was built of metal alloy, surfaced with a bright sheen that caught the stray rays of Mongo’s seventh sun filtering down through the leaves and sent them flashing into the trees in rainbow-hued arcs.

Sharp metallic vanes partitioned the hemispheroid, running from the zenith all the way down to the equator, where the structure joined the earth. There were twelve vanes, all joining at the top of the sphere. A cone extended straight from the joint into the sky.

Entry into the hemispheroid was afforded by a porthole that could be seen at the bottom of the metallic covering.

“If only we could use it now to get back to the future,” Lari mused, staring at the metal demiglobe.

“That’s traitorous talk!” snapped Kial. “We must stay in this historical era until we make sure Flash Gordon does not get to Arboria.”

Lari’s eyes narrowed. “A minute ago you spoke as if you’d like to stay here forever.”

Kial scoffed harshly. “Don’t remind me of that, Lari.”

“All right.” Lari sighed. “Let’s get into the Tempendulum and report to the emperor.” He wiped the perspiration off his face.

Kial walked through the mongospike to the metallic hemispheroid and climbed through the porthole, with Lari following. Inside the hollow dome, a subdued purplish light glowed from a large instrument console set up at one end of the circular room.

Hanging from the ceiling at the top of the dome was a large pendulumlike metal rod extending down almost to floor level, ending in a heart-shaped metal weight. The pendulum was still.

Floating in the air somewhere between their heads and the top of the dome was a large, oval miniglobe of impenetrable shiny black, inside of which could be heard a slight hissing. A glow seemed to emanate from the globe, as if it contained millions of volts of electromagnetic energy, or the power of thousands of light rays of heat.

Kial moved quickly to the console and studied the dials and digital readout ports. A purple glow shimmered behind the dials and numbers in the ports. Mounted at one side of the console was a large vidscreen, which was dark now. Dials and a complex system of computer connections fed into it.

Near the pendulum were two astro-seats tilted at rest position. Shiny straps dangled from the arms of the seats.

Lari strolled over and sank into one of them, closing his eyes as he wiggled his toes inside his boots.

“Okay,” Kial said importantly. “I’ve got the perichron laservid connected. I want you—” he turned and saw Lari lazing in the astro-seat—“Dummy. Get up here. We’ve got work to do.”

Lari jumped to his feet. “Sure, Kial! Anything you say.” The astro-seat rocked slowly as he hurried across the surface of the dome’s metallic flooring.

“Come on!” Kial’s face was flushed. “I want you to make our report to the emperor.”

Lari paled as he stood next to Kial. “You always get the easy work and I get stuck with the hard jobs.”

“That’s because you’re much more able to cope with them than me, Lari” responded Kial, a malicious twinkle In his eye. “Now sit down and report!”

Kial stood and pushed Lari down into the seat in front of the screen of the laservid.

Lari picked up the solid-state microphone and spoke Into it “Calling Ming XIII. Calling Ming XIII. Time probe aye dash seven, reporting in. Time probe aye, dash seven, from aye dash seven dee one two aitch, minus three aught one wye, three one seven dee, eighteen aitch, three seven em, one one ess.”

Kial grinned. “Very good.”

The laservid screen glowed a dull lavender. Then a face appeared in the lines of the screen. Lari cringed. It was a thin, ascetic, pinched face with a narrow jaw, a wide forehead, a widow’s-peak skullcap, and slanted, piercing black eyes. The nose was thin and as vicious as a knife blade. A Mandarin-style mustache flowed down over the edges of the mouth, with an odd double-pointed Mephistophelian beard extended on past the trowel chin.

“Your Highness,” Lari began stiffly, “we arrived here as scheduled in Time zone minus three aught one wye, three one seven—”

“I know all that, you idiot!” snapped a high-pitched voice on the laservid. “What happened?” The laservid audio began to whine.

“Your faithful agents, sire, immediately ascertained the presence of Flash Gordon on the superway to Arboria, as reported in the annals. Directing the antimatter neutralizer ray onto the suspension system of the jetcar he was driving, we blew it off the roadway.”

“Get on with it!” screeched the face in the screen.

“However, sire, before we could tune our antimatter neutralizer force field to the special bone structure of Flash Gordon and the woman, he got out of—”

“In short, you bungling idiots, you’ve ruined everything, haven’t you?” the sarcastic voice whined in the laservid audio.

Lari quailed. The purple face in the vidscreen seemed outraged.

“Do I have to tell you how to do everything?” Ming XIII asked ironically.

“Yes, Your Highness.” Lari cringed. “I mean, no, Your Highness.”

The face receded as Ming XIII seemed to back off a moment to think. Then the face appeared again.

“It’s very simple. You’ve lost him now, but all you have to do is use your time belts!”

“Our time belts?” Lari’s voice quavered.

“Yes, your time belts!” The face grew in size and the eyes seemed to pierce Lari’s. “Set the digital chronometers back a few hours. Then all you have to do is steal Flash Gordon’s weapons before you attack him.”

“But Your Highness—how?”

“Get into that jetcar before he does! It’s so simple, a moron could reason it out!”

Kial pushed Lari aside. “I understand, sire. We’re to move back in time, steal Flash Gordon’s weapons from the jetcar. Then he won’t be able to come after us with his own—how was it described in the Annals of Time—oh, yes, blaster pistol.”

“Right,” said Ming XIII.

“But sire,” Lari began in a trembling voice.

“What is it?” Ming XIII asked crisply, his burning eyes filling the screen.

“Where can we find the jetcar?”

Ming XIII’s eyes narrowed. He turned and consulted a long strip of readout paper next to him. “Umm, yes. Here we are. Flash Gordon and Dale Arden arrived from Earth system at the spaceport in the forest the previous midnight. That’s where they picked up the jetcar and that’s where you’re to steal those weapons!”

“Yes, Your Highness,” said Kial, bowing before the vid-screen. “We’ll fix him!”

“You’d better. Now get to it! You’re wasting time.”

Kial stared. “Well, sire, we can always retrieve lost time with our time belts, can’t we?” He smiled.

“Idiot! Get moving, you two. You’re not coming back here until you fix Flash Gordon, or I’ll have you both met by the armed forces special squadron in Mingo Square. A fine pair of royal secret police you are!”

“Your Highness!”

“Bah!”

The screen went blank.

Kial turned and saw Lari looking at him, perspiration pouring down his face.

“All right, dummy,” snapped Kial. “Let’s get moving. You heard the emperor.”

I
n the special projects chamber of the Royal Palace of Mingo, the tall, gaunt, caped figure of Ming XIII paced back and forth over the royal carpet of synthofur. His thin saffron features were distinct in the brightly lighted laboratory; his black eyes glistened like ripe olives. His beard and mustache were stiffened by wax from the honeycombs of the forest kingdom’s wild sassafras bees—which delicacy had been smuggled in over the borders by Ming’s agents.

Emperor Ming paced to the window and gazed out onto the public square. Groups of royal police and palace courtiers mingled in small groups. The thrusting spires of the city of Mingo lay beyond, interlaced with the multi-tiered streets crawling with atom-powered mobiles and flight-belted pedestrians.

Ming smashed his right fist into his left palm and mouthed an oath. “Those stupid dolts! I’m surrounded by idiots and clods! How can we fight that rabble of the forest kingdom with only third-rate intellects and slaves programmed to stupidity?”

The door to the special projects chamber opened. Ming wheeled about quickly.

“Gorp!” he exclaimed. “Get over here instantly. I’ve got another report from the special agents on border patrol.”

War Minister Gorp bowed and smiled sardonically. He was as slick and fleshy as Ming was gaunt and boned. His eyes were violet, a curious mutant strain caused by the blending of earthling blue and mongolite black. His hair was fair and worn long, in contrast to Ming’s skullcap that made him appear completely bald. Gorp’s long golden hair was tied in a purple bow in the back, a good twelve inches hanging down his back in piratical fashion.

He wore balloon sleeves, comparable to the military costume of Dynasty XIII, and balloon trousers tucked into crimson boots made of synthahide.

“Yes, sire,” Gorp said as he came to stand by Ming. His violet eyes twinkled with some inner amusement.

Ming was annoyed. “You always remind me of a cat that’s just finished off the cream jug. Will you go over to the battle board and look at it? You’re war minister, not me, and if Arboria’s troops wipe out our force at the border, I’ll have your head mounted in Mingo Square!”

Gorp sauntered over to the battle table, a long trestle affair that ran half the length of the room. Over it was suspended a transparent sheet of old-fashioned plexiglass, interlined with a map of Mongo. Red circles and black circles had been affixed to the surface with quick-stick. “What is it that’s disturbing you, sire?” Gorp asked in his liquid, half-laughing voice.

“I’ve got news from the borderl” snapped Ming. “President Barin’s troops are massing near Trento, a small river town. If the news is true, we’re liable to be overrun and the main road to Mingo threatened!”

Gorp tapped his two front upper teeth with his forefinger as he considered.

“Are these agents your usual breed of liars and cheats, Emperor?” he asked.

Ming smashed his fist down on the battle board, making the pile of maps jump. “Don’t you criticize my spies, Gorp! Your army-intelligence agents are no better! Riffraff, river rats, scavengers!”

“I’m certainly not criticizing,” Gorp said mildly. “I am hoping only for a straight answer.”

“They may be exaggerating,” Ming admitted, “but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

“An amusing comment,” Gorp said. “It contains a grain of truth, like all clichés.”

“What shall we do?” cried Ming.

Gorp stared closely at the transparent map. He traced with a finger the great river, then the roadway between Arboria and the spaceport, and then over to Mingo City.

“The time-probe teams,” Gorp murmured, “have they been successful?”

Ming’s features twitched. “Partially.”

“Partially?” Gorp repeated, his violet eyes afire with laughter. “Did all three fail?”

“Nothing failed yet!” snapped Ming defensively. “The primary probe team is standing by for the right moment to act. The secondary probe team is still on patrol, trying to carry out their objective.”

“Which is?” Gorp prompted.

“It’s Gordon,” said Ming savagely. “Gordon and Arden! Our royal police can’t seem to divert them.”