by Alex Raymond
“What are you trying to say?”
Flash had wandered over to the console where the digital readouts were assembled on a wide board.
“And look at these instruments,” he said, pointing to the console.
Dale studied them. “What are they?”
“I have no idea,” said Flash. “The readout numbers are familiar. But the initials don’t make sense. T.C. V.R. E.T.Z.” Flash shook his head. “It makes no sense to me. The dome is immobile. It’s not going anywhere. Then why the travel instruments?”
Dale leaned over and studied the face of a dial where a golden needle wavered over a series of strange cabalistic signs.
“What language is that?” she asked hopelessly.
Flash shook his head. “It’s not English, and it’s not Mongo, or any of its variants. That’s for sure.”
Dale turned and stared at the large opaque black globe that floated in the center of the dome.
“Flash! Look at that globe, would you? It’s almost as if it contained thousands and thousands of watts of pure light and energy. You can see how it almost shines through the black opaque shell.”
Flash blinked. “It’s almost like an adaptation of the old light box—the camera obscura—but it doesn’t let in light, it holds in light!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He smiled faintly. “Wish we had Zarkov here. He’d tell us.”
“Or make a good stab at it,” said Dale.
The black opaque globe suddenly trembled in the air, where it hung suspended as if by levitation. Then it sizzled, as if the light inside were performing some delicately assigned task.
Simultaneously there was a sound in the woods outside the dome.
Flash rushed to the porthole of the strange hemispheroid.
Someone stood just inside the darkness of the forest surrounding the clearing.
Then, quite quickly, whoever it was vanished into thin air.
The floating light trap sizzled and moved toward the large pendulum that hung from the apex of the dome.
The pendulum glowed and gave off a brief but staggering amount of heat.
Dale fell back, stunned.
Flash grabbed at her.
And the strange metallic floor under their feet moved.
CHAPTER 18
With his hands hidden between his back and the trunk of the tree, Zarkov twisted and turned until he had wrested one hand free. The pliable cord dropped to the ground. Zarkov eyeballed the needle-covered earth near the trunk of the tree until he found the gleam of his blaster pistol lying in a tangle of pine cones and pebbles.
Captain Slan’s attention was focused on Sar as he tore the plyoweave stretchsuit away from her throat. Lieutenant Brod’s eyes gleamed and his mouth hung open in lugubrious anticipation. Sar twisted her head back and saw Zarkov move from the tree trunk. Instantly, she understood what he was doing.
She screamed loudly, flailing her arms to make sure neither Slan nor Brod saw Zarkov. Slan drew back, cursing. Brod grabbed for the girl’s arms and pushed her against the tree.
“Hold her there,” Captain Slan snarled. “She’s a hellcat for sure.” His blue face glistened with perspiration. “But a pretty one, at that.”
Lieutenant Brod giggled and thrust Sar hard against the tree trunk while Slan lifted his hand once again to demolish her plyoweave stretchblouse. Sar screamed dutifully.
Zarkov held the blaster pistol in his right hand, moving around to the side where he had a perfect angle of fire on Captain Slan.
“Get away from her, Slan, if that’s your name!” Zarkov boomed commandingly.
Slan whirled, his face frozen, his yellow eyes wide and startled in his indigo face. His mouth opened in surprise, revealing bright-yellow teeth the same color as his eyes. The molars were pointed, the canines twice as long as the molars.
“Up on top of your head with your hands—both of you,” Zarkov ordered.
Slowly they complied.
“Brod, you fool,” muttered Slan, watching Zarkov with his big cat’s eyes. “You’ve done it again.”
Brod gurgled in his throat. “Captain Slan,” he whined. “I swear to you, he was thoroughly secured when I left him.”
“You, too, Brod,” bellowed Zarkov, waving the blaster pistol at him. “Get away from her and stand out over there.” He indicated a clear place in the wooded terrain. “Hands up!” he snapped as Slan began to ease his hands downward from his head.
“You’re making a mistake,” snapped Slan as he moved away from the tree trunk where Sar now leaned in exhaustion and relief. “We’ve got you surrounded here.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Zarkov saw Brod make a sudden movement toward his own back. Instantly Zarkov whirled and fired the blaster pistol. Brod stiffened and toppled over backward on the forest turf.
Slan’s yellow eyes narrowed. They seemed to be burning in his head. His tongue flicked out briefly and licked his upper lip. The tongue was almost as yellow as the teeth, Zarkov noticed in disgust. Slan smiled and nodded agreeably at Zarkov.
“It’s an amazingly precise weapon,” he said in the same gurgling voice Brod had used. “How is it energized?”
Zarkov smiled. “It’s a complicated mechanism, blue man, and quite probably well beyond your limited intelligence to comprehend.”
“Of course,” Slan said with a wide grin. Zarkov was unable to look at the yellow teeth and the flick of the yellow tongue. “Of course, but one always loves to learn. Tell me, is it one of Prince Barin’s mechanisms?”
“Earth,” said Zarkov negligently.
“Ah. That other solar system not far from ours.” He smiled gently. He moved imperceptibly nearer Zarkov, his hands still over his head where the bright red skullcap was affixed to his blue bones. “You Earth people have brought great treasures of commerce and science to the backwoods people of the forest kingdom,” he said purringly.
He looked, for all the world, like a large blue cat, Zarkov thought suddenly. He laughed. “Indeed we have. And they’re all the better for it, I can tell you that.”
“Yes,” Slan whispered, nodding.
Zarkov’s eyes were riveted to Slan’s yellow ones. He felt as if he did not want to move ever again. Suddenly, he heard Sar’s frightened scream.
“Look out, Zarkov! He’s hypnotizing you. He’s going to take your weapon.”
Zarkov could feel himself growing nerveless, and with the last vestiges of his willpower, he squeezed on the hand grip of the blaster pistol. The great blue body stiffened under the sizzling impact of the weapon’s force and then keeled over backward, the yellow eyes rolling up into the blue head. With a crash, the body hit the pine needles.
Sar ran over to Zarkov, looking up at him with her big brown eyes.
“Thanks, Sar,” Zarkov said loudly. “I guess he was playing me for a sucker, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Sar, leaning down over the blue body. “But you got him before he could put you under.”
“Must be some kind of hypnosis, as you said,” Zarkov responded, stroking his wiry beard with a frown. “Those yellow eyes.” He shuddered. “They’re enough to do anyone in.”
Sar shook her head. “I don’t recognize this breed. Blue men. We haven’t run across that combination in the chromosome charts of Mongo. Must be some mutant from the unexplored portions of the planet. The Boiling Desert. Or the Ultimate Icepack.”
Zarkov knelt beside Sar. He touched the blue skin. “Flesh and bone structure exactly like ours. But that blue color! And those yellow eyes and teeth!” Zarkov shuddered. “And did you see that tongue?”
Sar swallowed hard. “There’s a reptilian scaliness to the man’s flesh. Do you note that? Perhaps it’s a throwback to an earlier era.”
“Could be,” murmured Zarkov. “No one would breed selectively for those characteristics, would they?”
Sar stood up. “I’ve got to report in to Prince Barin. This is very important news. You heard what he said—that we are surrounded.”<
br />
“May be a bluff,” Zarkov growled, standing beside her. “It could just be a clever ploy to scare us.”
Sar turned to Zarkov. “I’m sorry I had to play games with you, Dr. Zarkov. My name isn’t Sar. It’s Sari. And I’ve found it much better to stake out in the forest kingdom as a man than as a wench.” She smiled faintly. “It’s much less tempting to the vagrants and outlaws in the woods around here. Forgive me?”
Zarkov boomed out a loud laugh. “Forgiven.”
“Also, I was out here to gather specific information. We’ve known for a long time that some new contingent of undesirables was invading the border areas. Because we didn’t know the leader’s name, we couldn’t decide exactly which division of Ming’s army was being utilized. This looks like an entirely new operation—a new mutant breed of fighters out of Ming’s laboratories.”
Zarkov shivered. “They certainly scare me.”
“I’ve got to get back as soon as I can and report in to Minister Hamf.”
Zarkov pondered. “Shall we split up? Or go on together?”
“Together,” Sari said decisively. “There’s an inn near the pine forest. I’ll call into Arboria on the laserphone there.”
“If you’re sure I won’t hinder you,” Zarkov said with a toothy smile.
“Not at all.” Sari studied the blaster pistol which Zarkov still held in his hand. “That’s a beautiful weapon.”
Zarkov nodded. “I’ve added a few nuances of my own to it,” he said in satisfaction. “But it’s a standard Earth neutralizer. Nitrogen-operated. Standard feedback mechanism. I’ve made my own variable controls. Freezes. Stuns. Impedes. Smashes. Repels. Flattens. Kills. Immolates. Hydrogenates. Aerates. Obliterates.”
“All with that one weapon?”
“It’s just something I’ve added to the standard specs. Here, I’ll show you.” Zarkov held out the blaster pistol to Sari. “You see it’s on KILL now.” Zarkov blinked, and shook the weapon hard. “Damn! Now it isn’t on KILL at all. I had it on STUN, the next-to-least powerful position,” Zarkov turned to stare at Slan. “We can’t have that! I thought I’d killed him! Stun? He’ll come to in a half hour.”
“Just reset the blaster and finish the job.”
Zarkov nodded grimly. “Of course.” He struggled with the force-adjuster lever on the side of the weapon.
“Well?” Sari asked.
“The damned thing is jammed,” Zarkov bellowed, banging the blaster pistol against the trunk of the nearest tree. “Would you look at that? It’s on STUN! I can’t get it to move to KILL!”
Sari glanced at the two unconscious blue men. “Let’s get out of here, Dr. Zarkov. If they’re going to come to, we would be wise to get out of the vicinity.”
“I won’t leave until I get this weapon fixed,” Zarkov muttered darkly. “It must have been damaged when Brod kicked it out of my hand.”
Sari looked around at the woods. “Quickly, Dr. Zarkov. We’ll have to take our chances with them. I want to be far away when they revive.”
Zarkov threw the blaster pistol to the ground and stalked off. “The hell with it!” he bellowed. “These inferior materials they have on Mongo! That would never happen on Earth with real steel. Damned inefficient miracle-makers in Arboria. Everything has to be made out of reconstituted wood. No wonder the damned blaster doesn’t work.”
Sari watched Zarkov stomp away and leaned quickly over to pick up the abandoned blaster pistol. She tucked it into her stretch waistband and hastened to catch up with Zarkov. She glanced back once. Neither Slan nor Brod stirred.
She breathed a sigh of relief.
CHAPTER 19
The tiny inn nestled under an enormous stand of giant bear’s-paw fern. In front a sign depicting a large stag hung from the gable of a small shingled structure. Below it appeared the words:
THE STAG’S HORN
As Zarkov and Sari approached from the shelter of the ferns, they heard the sound of laughter.
They entered a small but cheery interior. At one end of the room a plank bar stretched across the wall. Square tables were spaced out in the center of the main room, with booths to one side. The floor was strewn with sawdust.
A group of men in leather tunics and homespun doublets underneath were seated at the largest table, drinking mugs of mead. They were big men with ruddy faces and huge, scarred hands, obviously woodsmen who held the fern concession to Prince Barin’s Palace Wood Preserve.
They fell silent as Zarkov and Sari entered.
A big man, almost as wide as he was tall, stumbled out from behind the bar, wearing a sleeveless doublet with a soiled apron tied around his ample waist. He wore soft ankle boots. He had red hair and blue eyes and a round, laughing face.
“Welcome!” he cried. “Welcome to The Stag’s Horn!”
Zarkov waved his hand. “Greetings.”
“Sit ye down,” the innkeeper said, waving to a corner table.
Sari and Zarkov sat down quietly. “Mead,” Zarkov said. “Mead,” Sari said. They waited while the innkeeper drew the mead from a barrel behind the bar and brought the two mugs over to them. The woodsmen at the next table were silent, two of them staring at Sari with puzzled eyes. Finally they began a low-voiced conversation, and turned from both Zarkov and Sari.
“Do you have a laserphone?” Sari asked the fat man.
“Aye,” he said. “In me back room. Where be ye calling?”
Sari looked at Zarkov. Then she said, “The capital.”
“Arboria?” He nodded. “Certainly. The laser rod is clear. Somebody called through yesterday.”
Sari rose. “May I use it?”
“Aye,” said the innkeeper. “I’ll charge ye for the call. Have the operator put Innkeeper Gumm on the tab, if ye will.”
Sari nodded. She walked off with Gumm and went through a plank door into another room.
Zarkov glanced around the interior of the inn. As he sat there drinking, he looked up to see one of the woodsmen detach himself from the table nearby and move quickly over to him. Looking around furtively, the woodsman, a youngster in his early twenties, sat down next to Zarkov and leaned toward him.
“Zarkov, isn’t it?”
Zarkov’s eyes widened. “Maybe.”
“Maybe, nothing! You’re Zarkov.” The forester did not have a forest accent.
“And you?”
“Pabl.”
“Okay. So?”
“They don’t know I’m on patrol. I told them I thought you were my uncle. If any of them asks, remember.” Pabl’s eyes were hard. He was a lean-faced youth with dark eyes and dark hair that reached to his shoulders. He had a handsome, smooth-complexioned face with a very light mustache.
“All right,” Zarkov said.
“You’ve come from the capital?”
“Yes.”
“Going back?”
“Trying to.”
“Good. We’re working a big fern preserve not far from here. I can’t leave the gang. And I can’t use the laserphone without raising their suspicions. It would blow my cover. I need a courier to the capital.”
Zarkov was amused. “You’re an agent?”
“Yes. Prince Barin’s intelligence. You know the prince. Of course you do, you’re Zarkov. Now, listen carefully, there’s a great deal to tell.”
Zarkov nodded. “You recognize me. That’s obvious. You seem authentic. I can only say I’ll carry on your information if I know it’s valid.”
Pabl frowned. “It’s a wild story, but it has to be told. Prince Barin must know. There’s a secret army in the woods on its way to overthrow the capital.”
Zarkov started. He thought of the blue men. He thought of what Sari had said about the secret army of Ming’s they were looking for. He decided to play it dumb and see what Pabl had to say. “Who’s behind it?”
“Ming,” Pabl said. “At least, that’s what I think. It’s not at all clear exactly who is running it.”
“So?”
Pabl glanced over his shoulder
at his companions. One of them waved a hand at him and grinned, flicking mead foam from his mustache. Pabl laughed and waved back.
“I was topping a giant sword fern three days ago out of sight of the others,” Pabl said in a low voice. “I finished the work and climbed down on my safety belt and jumped to the ground. As I walked over to the piece of downed timber to mark it for stripping, I suddenly saw that the fern fronds had fallen on something that was still alive.”
“Something?” Zarkov frowned.
“It looked like a man,” Pabl confessed. “I crawled under the fern fronds—those giant ferns are huge and extremely heavy—and pulled out a man. He was unconscious, but not dead. However, he was bleeding badly and had a broken arm.”
“What was he doing there?” Zarkov asked, trying to keep his voice low.
“It wasn’t so much what he was doing there, it was what he was,” Pabl said softly.
“What was he?” Zarkov’s voice was loud.
Pabl glanced at the other table and smiled. Several of the woodsmen had glanced up, but then they all turned away and began talking again amongst themselves.
“He was human,” said Pabl, “but like nothing I’ve ever seen before. His skin was blue, bright blue, and he had scales on his skin. His eyes were yellow. Cat’s eyes!” Pabl stared into Zarkov’s face. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I didn’t say that, did I?”
“No, but—” Pabl paused. “I never told the others,” he whispered. “Not because they wouldn’t believe me, but because of what the man said.”
“What did he say?”
“I tried to put the arm in a splint, but I apparently was too rough on him. Anyway, I didn’t know then that he was more badly injured than I had supposed.”
“Where is he now?”
Pabl ignored the question. “He told me the damdest story I’ve ever heard.”
“Well?”
“The blue man told me that he was trying to escape and he begged me to hide him from his own people.”
“His own people? Who are they? Where do they come from?”
