by Alex Raymond
“He said Cerulea. I never heard of the place. According to him, it’s on Mongo somewhere. I couldn’t get the details out of him. He was too badly hurt. And he said he and the others in Cerulea were all under the strict control of Ming the Merciless.”
Zarkov nodded. “I know him. He’s bad people.”
“He said the other blue men were all just like him. It’s some kind of secret army, raised by Emperor Ming to mount an attack on the capital and overthrow Prince Barin.”
“What else did he say?”
“He told me about the blue men.” Pabl glanced across the room, but no one paid any attention to them. “Some scientists of Ming’s had been working for years on selective breeding. You know, chromosome matching and all that kind of thing.”
“I know,” Zarkov snapped. “What is this all about?”
“Well, the scientists had worked out a method of selective breeding years back, and had been applying it to a race of super warriors. Anyway, that was what the blue man called it. Incidentally, his name was Klab. Klab said that he was brought up in a secret colony called Cerulea, not far from Mingo, which had been isolated entirely from the rest of Mongo for many years. There scientists continue to work on selective breeding and utopian societies. A lot of the work is done by computers, Klab said.”
“Go on. What about the blue men?”
“Well, the blue men are a genetically selected breed of men who are completely engineered for fighting.”
“But why the blue color?”
Pabl’s face lighted up. “You do believe me, then?”
“I’m simply listening to your story and judging,” Zarkov replied, his voice rising. “Now get along with it.”
“The indigo tint was selected for night forays. Tests show that such a skin color cannot be seen in the darkness of Mongo, particularly in the fifth moon of Mongo with its orange sheen.”
Zarkov nodded. “I see. The blue skin and the cat’s eyes.”
“Right. The cat’s eyes were especially selected since they could see in the dark as well as in the light. Klab had huge canines, too, and pointed molars, I forgot to tell you that.”
“I see.”
“Well, this experiment was kept entirely secret by Ming’s scientists. For thirty years they continued and finally a large enough army was gathered together in the secret colony of Cerulea to try to mount an attack on Ming’s traditional enemy—Arboria and the forest kingdom.”
“And none of this leaked out?”
“No,” Pabl said. “I never heard of it. And Klab said it was kept strictly confidential.”
“You mean, Klab was brought up with these other warriors since birth to fight?”
“Right. These blue men have been bred to take orders, to carry them out, and to kill their enemies.”
“What weapons do they use?”
“That’s another thing,” Pabl said. “They don’t need weapons. They’re born with weapons. Their fingernails.”
“Fingernails!” Zarkov cried.
“Right. The hands seem completely normal. But when Klab unsheathed his nails, they became long talons exactly like those of a cat. And they can rip and tear exactly like a cat’s claws.”
Zarkov moistened his lips. He and Sari had been very lucky not to go up against the two of them without the blaster pistol.
Zarkov moistened his lips. “So they don’t need weapons.”
“Right,” said Pabl. “They’re led by a fiendish general who is directly responsible only to Ming the Merciless. He’s in complete charge of the operation. Each man has been bred and programmed for life to obey him and to do his bidding. The operation can only succeed, Zarkov. Believe me.”
“What made this Klab turn against them?”
“Well, that’s exactly it. You see, he was trying to escape from them when he was caught under the trees I was topping.”
“What made him turn against them?” Zarkov repeated.
“He said that even though he had been bred and brainwashed throughout his youth, he and some of the others had managed to sneak in reading material from the outside world—which would be the rest of Mongo—and they had hungered to find out about the other life, where there were women living freely.”
“Women?” Zarkov remembered Captain Slan’s morbid interest in Sari.
“Yes, These are normal men, you see. But having been brought up in a military atmosphere all their lives, they had met only women sent from the Palace of Ming, castoff harem girls sent out on order to be their temporary companions. They had never known any family life of any kind. No mother. No father. Just the test tube.”
“I see.”
“And so when they finally were sent on their mission—this was only a week ago—some of them had tried to test their freedom by escaping. But their leaders rounded them all up and killed them.”
Zarkov sighed. “It’s a grim story. Where is the defector now?”
Pabl sighed. “Klab? Klab is dead.”
“Dead?” Zarkov blinked.
“I didn’t know it, but he had internal injuries. When I tried to help him to his feet, he collapsed, and then hemorrhaged until he was dead. I could do nothing for him. He wanted to come over to our side and warn our people,” Pabl said softly.
Zarkov nodded. “What did you do with the body?”
“I buried him so the blue men wouldn’t find him.”
“Good thinking,” Zarkov said, slapping him on the back.
“I’ve got to get back to my companions,” Pabl said worriedly. “Will you carry the news to the capital?”
“I will,” Zarkov said, and Pabl got up.
A piercing scream sounded from the other room, Zarkov recognized the sound of Sari’s voice. He rose quickly, knocking the square table over, dashing the mugs of mead to the floor where they shattered.
“Help me!” Sari screamed.
Zarkov hurried across the room to the plank door, where Sari had left with the innkeeper. He tugged at the leather thongs. The door was blocked somehow.
“Sari! Are you in there?” he bellowed.
The woodsmen at the table were all staring toward him.
“Sari!” he boomed out.
He yanked on the thongs and the door jiggled in the frame. Suddenly Zarkov moved back, raised his booted foot, and smashed at the door. It splintered.
He ran into the other room quickly, the door sagging on its leather hinges behind him. The fat innkeeper was standing in the middle of the room, his hands tied in front of his fat belly, his face white with fear.
Sari was sagging against a tall man who held her tightly in his arms, looking at Zarkov over her shoulder. Her stretch blouse had been ripped at the shoulder. Blood seeped from a long wound there. The wound resembled a scratch from an enormous cat.
Lieutenant Brod grinned at Zarkov, with his hand at Sari’s throat, ready to rip out her jugular with the bright-yellow hooked claws which Zarkov could now see unsheathed and in plain sight.
“Well, Zarkov?” Brod gurgled in that strange way of his.
Zarkov grabbed for his blaster pistol. He remembered only at that moment that he had thrown it down in the forest. He remembered seeing Sari go back and pick it up. He wondered why she had not been able to use it on Lieutenant Brod.
A hand shot out of the darkness at his side, gripping his upper arm tightly. Zarkov turned, startled. He found himself face to face with Captain Slan, whose yellow eyes gleamed with mirth.
“We meet again, Dr. Zarkov. You’ll kindly refrain from any token opposition, if you please. Nothing will avail your succor this time.” Slan chuckled. “Make up your mind, Dr. Zarkov, that you’re going to come along with us to our detention chambers while the attack on the forest-kingdom’s capital gets under way.” Slan’s yellow eyes gleamed. “Oh, as for that blaster pistol you seem so fond of, your shapely young friend has turned it over to us in mint condition.” Slan reached in his cloak and drew it out, showing it to Zarkov with a sadistic leer. “Now, if you’ll just come along
with us.”
“Hands off me, you miserable mutant!” Zarkov growled in his throat.
The sharp claws stabbed painfully into Zarkov’s wrist. Blood seeped out onto his skin.
Captain Slan threw back his head and roared with laughter. Zarkov was aware of the yellow tongue flicking saliva off the blue lips.
Sari screamed again and Zarkov watched Slan thrust his blaster pistol negligently into the gilded belt around his yellow-and-orange doublet.
CHAPTER 20
For a moment, Kial stared in disbelief through the magniscopic sights of the laser-rod antimatter ray gun. He could not believe the superway was once again empty.
“Where did they go?” he howled.
Lari looked startled. “Where did who go?”
“Gordon and Arden,” Kial snapped. “Look for yourself. They aren’t there any more.”
Lari put his eye to the magniscopic sights and adjusted the focus. “There’s nobody there.”
“Well, they were there a minute ago,” Kial said angrily. “Now you’ve lost them again.”
“I haven’t lost them,” Lari protested. “You’ve lost them.”
“I can’t understand it,” Kial shouted, putting his eye again to the eyepiece and fiddling with the focusing lever. “You’ve got it all out of focus, dummy.”
Lari stood with his hands on his hips. He stared through the wooded growth between the ray gun and the superway. “Well, I can’t see them from here, either,” he said at last. “They’ve gone, Kial. You were looking through the magniscope. Where did they go?”
“I don’t know!” Kial screamed. “This mission is cursed, Lari. It’s bewitched.”
“Maybe they took a walk into the woods.”
“That’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, even from you.”
“To look at the ferns, maybe. The forest is a beautiful sight, you know. Or maybe they wanted to watch the birds.”
Kial spat in his anger. “Watch the birds! Come on, dummy. We’ve got to find them. Heap those branches over the ray gun. We can’t take it with us and we don’t want them finding it.”
Lari sighed. “Yes, Kial.” He looked up after he had thrown an armload of fern fronds on the laser gun. “Where are we going to look for them?”
Kial’s eyes gleamed. “We’ll use a little hunting savvy, Lari. Spoors.”
“Spoors?” Lari repeated. “Oh. Footprints, you mean?”
“Or other tracks,” Kial said. “Come on.”
They picked up tile prints alongside the superway where Flash and Dale had gone to look at the milestone. Lari spotted the milestone and walked around it to read the writing on the other side.
“Hey, Kial, look. It says, ‘Flash and Dale—the answer is this way.’ ”
Kial stared at the message. “Who wrote that?” he asked in astonishment.
“I don’t know.”
Kial stared at the arrow and then followed the arrow through the forest growth. “Lari,” Kial whispered, his face paling. “Do you know where that arrow is pointing?”
“Sure. To the answer. It says so here.”
“Dummy! I mean it points right to the Tempendulum. That’s where it points.”
“The Tempendulum!” Lari repeated, his eyes fearful. “You mean they’re going to find the Tempendulum?”
“Yes, dummy, unless we stop them,” Kial yelled. “Now, come on, let’s get moving. We haven’t a moment to lose.”
At the edge of the clearing where the Tempendulum had been built, Kial and Lari paused and crouched in the foliage, peering through the fern fronds at the big metallic dome.
“They’re inside,” Kial said mournfully. “They’ll guess what it is. What are we going to do now?”
Lari jumped up and started across the clearing.
“Stop, dummy!” Kial yelped, reaching out and grabbing Lari by the belt. “Come back here, you moron. They’ll see you.”
“But—”
Kial drew him back into the shelter of the giant ferns. They both crouched there, peering out at the clearing.
“Well, now,” said Kial. “We’ve got to figure out something. Gordon has discovered the Tempendulum and it won’t take him long to do something about it.”
“Then what?”
Kial’s eyes lighted up. “Of course! We knock him out, and put him and Dale into the astro-seats, and pull the master switch on the Tempendulum. That throws them out into open time and they’re lost forever in eternity!”
“Huh?” Lari said.
“I said—” Kial stopped and glared at Lari. “Oh, shut up and let me think.”
“Look,” Lari whispered after a moment.
Kial peered over Lari’s fat shoulder. He saw Flash Gordon and Dale Arden inside the Tempendulum, moving back and forth and examining the instrumentation and the pendulum hanging from the ceiling of the time dome. Once Kial thought he saw Flash Gordon look out the port directly toward them.
They heard the two Earthlings talking.
“It looks like some kind of pendulum to me, Flash,” the girl’s voice said.
“Quiet!” Kial whispered. “Listen. We can hear what they say.”
Flash Gordon’s voice said, “Pendulum. An old-fashioned pendulum, the kind of swinging weight that used, to make grandfather clocks go before digital readouts and solid-state transistor packs. Dale, do you suppose—?”
“What, Flash?”
“Do you suppose this thing has anything to do with time-travel?”
Kial stared at Lari in horror. “He’s guessed!” Kial hissed in despair.
“It might have, Flash,” the girl said. “Look. If you read those letters on the console dials, it might mean Time Control. But I don’t know what V.E. stands for. Or E.T.Z.”
“Son of a gun!” Flash cried. “I think you’re right. And if that’s the case, what is that floating globe of heat and light?”
“I have no idea, Flash. But I’ll bet . . .” Dale’s voice faded out.
“Wait a minute!” Flash said loudly. “Time-control! Of course! That refers to those belts Lari and Kial used. If those were time-travel belts, the two of them would vanish before our eyes if they traveled either forward or backward in time, wouldn’t they?”
“Yes!” Dale exclaimed.
“And Arboria would vanish if it were made to travel in time, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Flash.”
“Maybe not,” Flash admitted. “It’s a kind of farfetched idea. Still, perhaps there is some connection we can’t see just now.”
“What’s that floating globe?”
“No idea. Something to do with light and energy, I suppose it’s connected in some way to the pendulum.”
Dale shrugged.
“Look at this, Dale. These dials are calibrated in years, decades, centuries. Obviously, the pendulum has something to do with the speed of time or of time itself. And those two people came to us—” Flash hesitated. “This metallic alloy, Dale, no wonder I’ve never seen it before. It’s something from the future. Don’t you see? Just like our two friends with the ray gun are from the future!”
“Of course,” Dale replied.
“Look. I’m going to see if I can dismantle this pendulum. I think it must have something to do with the instrumentation on the console.”
“Be careful, Flash,” Dale said warningly.
“You stay over there,” Flash instructed her. “Keep out of the way. I don’t want anything to happen to you. On second thought, maybe you’d better get out of the dome while I work on that pendulum.”
“I don’t think you should, Flash.”
“Nonsense. Don’t worry about me. Now you get out of here and I’ll take the pendulum apart.”
Kial saw Dale Arden step out through the port into the sunshine. He motioned to Lari for silence; Dale did not look into the woods at all. She kept her eyes on Flash, working inside the hemispheroid.
“What’s going to happen when he takes that pendulum apart?” Lari asked in a hu
shed voice.
“I don’t know, but I’ve got a good idea what to do to the girl,” Kial whispered back. “We’ll sneak up on her, grab her, and hold her. When Gordon comes to the port. I’ll knock him out and then we’ll have him!”
“Kill him?” Lari asked.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Kial said. “We’ll do what we said before. We’ll put him away for good. In time!”
Dale did not hear the two of them sneak up on her. When Kial reached out and caught her throat in the crook of his elbow, she was too startled to even cry out. She struggled for a moment, kicking back at him with her heels. But Kial did not let her go. With Lari’s help, he pulled her away from the Tempendulum port and carried her into the woods.
“Flash!” Dale screamed, trying to attract his attention. But her voice was so stifled by Kial’s grip on her throat that she could not be heard.
Lari gagged her with a handkerchief, which he drew from his pocket, and quickly bound her hands behind her with a piece of duraflex cord. Then he tied her ankles and threw her down on the ground.
Kial tiptoed over to the Tempendulum and looked inside through the port. He could see Flash at work on the heart-shaped weight at the bottom of the pendulum. He now held it in his hands and was examining it carefully.
“Doesn’t seem to be anything here, Dale,” he said thoughtfully, turning his head.
“That’s your tough luck, Gordon.” Kial grinned, stepping over the sill of the port and advancing on Flash. Quickly, Flash stood up and tossed the heavy weight directly at Kial.
“If it’s yours, take it!”
Kial tried to duck, but the heavy weight caught him in the stomach and knocked him down. He saw stars for a moment. He pushed aside the weight and got to his knees, waiting for Flash to attack.
Flash came at him, his hands extended in stiff karate fashion, moving up and down and measuring Kial’s neck. Kial slowly came to his feet and leaped at Flash. Flash danced aside and gave him a stiff chop on the temple.
Quickly Kial pulled back, grabbing Flash’s two wrists, and pulled him down to the floor of the dome, where he went back on his shoulders, and flipped completely over, sending Flash hurtling through the air over his head to slide on the floor toward the wall.
