Flash Gordon

by Arthur Byron Cover

  The chute took him to a dock. Holding onto the sill he had grabbed to break his fall, Flash realized he was seeing a rocket cycle, probably used by friendly visitors of the Hawk Man Kingdom. He had never before seen this invention, and consequently he had no idea how to fly it. But he thanked the Fates he was a fast learner.

  Maintaining his balance with difficulty as he crossed the floor, he straddled the cycle, supporting himself by leaning against a metal bar. He gunned the engine. The force of the cycle’s kick, combined with the violent lurching of the palace, sent him flying against the wall. He pulled himself back onto the cycle and gunned it again, this time prepared for its kick. Exhaling bolts of flame so hot their color was pink, the cycle slid down its short track.

  Unnoticed by all, Flash was a kilometer away from the Sky Palace when it exploded.

  Sitting on a limb on the forest moon of Arboria, Luro the Hawk Man picked an insect off his chest. “They were brave creatures, Vultan. With respect, the man who rid us of Klytus shouldn’t be deserted.”

  Vultan winced. It was bad enough he was feeling claustrophobic beneath the canopy of foliage, but Luro had spoken loud enough for several of his other Hawk Men perched in the trees to hear. “Will you shut up? So maybe I’d do it differently if I could. But there’s no way I can help a man who’s dead!”

  “Perhaps . . .”

  “Yes?” said Vultan eagerly.

  “No. Forget it. I was going to say that you could ensure that Flash Gordon didn’t give his life in vain, but it’s too ridiculous to even contemplate.”

  Vultan pursed his lips and nodded. “True, true. Still, it’s too bad.” Resting his elbows on his knees, he placed his large fists beneath his bearded chin.

  Suddenly, static drowned the murmurings of the Hawk Men. A familiar voice manifested itself. “Flash Gordon to Vultan; do you read me? Mayday! Mayday!”

  The Prince of the Hawk Men looked about. Like many of his kind, he believed in reincarnation, but this development was unprecedented. Then he smiled with relief. He spoke into a wrist communicator. “This is Vultan. I read you! Where are you?”

  “Flying blind on a rocket cycle.”

  “We’re in Arboria. I’ll send you a homing beam.”

  “Thank you, Vultan.” A pause. “For what it’s worth, Ming’s got Dale, Zarkov, and Barin.”

  “I see,” the Prince said heavily. “My thanks to you.”

  “Yeah? What for?”

  “Oh, for giving a dumb old bird a second chance. After all, the worth of a man’s life can only be judged by the droppings he leaves behind him. Over to homing beam!”

  Vultan suppressed a thrill of pleasure, for he knew he had committed himself and his subjects to a harrowing enterprise which would possibly result in the death or total subjugation of all. Nevertheless, he did not doubt his subjects would accept the risk. Some, such as Biro and Luro, would welcome it.

  A certain blond Earthling also welcomed it. While flying a rocket cycle through green and blue skies he let out whoops and hollers and other Alabama war cries.

  Dale Arden, on the other hand, experienced no exhilaration, no hope, no sensation, only an overpowering numbness and weariness that caused her every movement to be the result of a tremendous effort. Sitting on a bed of pillows, surrounded by unfortunate harem women who reveled in their exploitation, Dale resisted the comfort offered by the more hedonistic women who liked to keep in practice. Under different circumstances, her pink and blue gown would have inspired a number of sensual fantasies in her subconscious; its touch was soft, like the caress of a tender man. And knowing the caresses she would soon be subjected to, like any woman who permitted powerful men to use her body in any fashion they deemed fit (without regard for the spirit residing inside), she felt like a traitor to everything she had believed in, not to mention everything Flash would have wished for her. The fact that she had no choice but to surrender was not comforting, not in the least.

  The doors to the chamber opened. Two red-robed guards threw Aura, daughter of Ming the Merciless, onto the bed of pillows.

  Suddenly, the weariness left Dale. She felt alive again. But she was more like an animal than a thinking creature as she bore upon Aura and slapped her with all her might, sending her flying across the bed.

  “Are you mad? Stop!” exclaimed Aura. “I’m a prisoner too!”

  “You damned Mongoperson!” said Dale, ruthlessly and repeatedly striking Aura with a pillow, then wading in with her tiny fists. “You couldn’t tell the truth to save your life!”

  Aura warded off the blows, only to find herself speaking to a wrestling opponent. “Dale, stop! I’m going to be exiled to Frigia in the morning!”

  “Liar!” Rolling onto her back, Dale threw Aura across the bed for the second time. Her knee gave Ming’s daughter extra impetus.

  Before Dale could renew the onslaught, Aura rushed toward the door, which opened automatically. However, the two guards threw her back into the room. On their knees, Dale and Aura faced each other across the pillows.

  The savage rage was beginning to leave the Earthling now, but her hatred remained at a constant level. “It’s a trick,” she said woodenly.

  “Is this a trick? Could tears come from my eyes if my heart hadn’t changed?”

  Dale leaned over and touched the liquid flowing down Aura’s cheeks.

  “I’ve been such a spoiled fool, Dale. I never knew what my father was until he let Klytus put the Bore Worms on me.” She shrugged. “I confess that at first the pain was rather interesting, but as the little creatures made progress, the pain became out of control, utterly unbearable.”

  “I believe you, Aura, but I don’t trust you. You have Ming’s blood in your veins. You’ll be cozying up with him again in the morning.”

  “Not if you give him this.” She pulled a black compact from the depths of her flimsy pink gown. “It’s a deadly poison. Unless his passions have gained complete control of him, my father drinks a Power Potion before he makes love. Drop this into his chalice!”

  Dale stared at the compact for several moments, contemplating and discarding several courses of action. Then she shook her head. “I can’t, Aura. Not after I gave your father my word of honor.”

  “What word?”

  “To try to be a good wife if he’d spare Doctor Zarkov and Barin. He vowed he would.”

  “My father has never kept a vow in his life!”

  Dale appeared crestfallen. “Oh? And he seemed so sincere. Well, isn’t that just like a man? But I can’t help it. Keeping our word, or at least trying to, is one of the things that make us Earthlings better than you Mongopeople.”

  Aura’s reaction was destined never to be revealed. For at that moment the door opened again. Flanked by two guards, Hedonia entered, wearing an ornate green gown that, Dale noticed with some satisfaction, exposed a bit too much of her tummy for her own good.

  “Follow us,” Hedonia said to Dale. “It is time to prepare you for the bliss which is to come.”

  Her lower lip trembling, Dale grabbed Aura’s wrist. “I’m lost. Nothing can save me now!”

  A rocket cycle tore through the shimmering veils and swirling colors of the Mongian sky. Flash Gordon maneuvered it through the winds. He felt merged with the megaunits of power expended by the cycle; his muscles flexed with pleasure whenever he manipulated the steering controls. He zoomed over the peasants laboring in the mines, the vast forest of pale crystals, the charred remnants of Ming’s personal firing range, and finally, into the valleys and crevices carved into the barren land about the Mongian city. Flash felt an exhilaration he had never imagined possible as he swooped into an especially large crevice and saw the red and yellow city before him, at this distance an insect in his path, fated to be crushed and then forgotten. As it loomed, he gained more respect for it, but it was still a thing to be conquered, and he experienced a fraction of the pleasure Ming knew every day of his life. He permitted himself a moment of philosophical speculation, thanking the Fates he had a
lways possessed a firm set of principles guarding him from the darker side of human nature, a luxury Ming had never enjoyed. And with that moment acknowledging the common spiritual bond between them, Flash divested himself of all feelings of nebulous kinship with Ming. The Ruler of the Universe was his foe. For the first time in his life, Flash was prepared to cast his principles into the void. After all, the hand of Dale Arden, not to mention the fate of Earth, was at stake.

  He accelerated the rocket cycle. It shot forward dangerously, but he held the controls securely.

  General Kala sauntered up and down the rows of monitors with an intense air. She could not have been happier if Ming had granted her a kingdom. The sudden loss of Klytus was an unexpected reprieve from a symbolic term of confinement.

  Consequently, she became extremely deflated when the colonel from Battle Control appeared on her telescreen and said, “General Kala, Flash Gordon is approaching!”

  “What?” she exclaimed.

  “Yes, on a Hawk Man rocket cycle. Shall I inform His Majesty?”

  “Imbecile. The Emperor would shoot you for interrupting his wedding with this news. Fire when Gordon’s in range. Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to bring back his body.”

  Flash swung around the rocket cycle as lasers, fired by cannons, bolted about him. Their heat seemed to singe the atmosphere itself. Unable to resist a grin, Flash prayed the Mongians’ communication devices were unable to transmit a close-up of him. His grin widened when he looked over and glimpsed the battleship slowly following him, like an obese carnivore suddenly granted the power of flight.

  Aura rode upward in an elevator with a red guard. Her lower lip protruded more than usual, but otherwise she concealed her agitation admirably. She thought of the life she would lead on Frigia. It wasn’t the coldness she minded so much, but the inadequate men of the icy moon. The ever present subzero temperatures had a definite detrimental effect on some of her favorite pastimes.

  She wore a golden headdress, a pink gown, and a complimentary wrap that hung from her shoulders like a cape. She unloosed the wrap and let it drop.

  “Pick that up, would you?” she asked the guard in a commanding tone.

  The guard obeyed instantly.

  Just as his fingers touched the wrap and were beginning to tighten about it, Aura withdrew two long pins from her belt. Gritting her teeth (she had never personally killed before), she buried the pins deep in the guard’s back.

  She appreciated the satisfied thrill that ignited her heart as she listened to the discordant noises of the guard’s mechanical parts breaking down.

  Dale Arden felt like a poison was seeping into her pores; the sensation of her glittering black gown was abhorrent. Her life stretched before her like a dreary monologue in purgatory, and she foresaw an existence without joy and without pleasure. Already the thought of her limbs intertwined with those of the debased murderer filled her with a revulsion unparalleled in her memory. The more intimate details of their marriage—well, she wondered why he found it necessary to marry her at all, if that was what he wanted. She sensed more than she knew the answer; he had to marry her if the consummation of his lust was to defeat her totally. If he took her without their mutual vows, she would still be free in her heart, regardless of the debaucheries he committed on her body.

  Boy, I haven’t slept with anybody like that since I was in high school, she thought.

  As she walked down the seemingly endless hallways, escorted by two silent guards, she heard the voice of General Kala over the public address system:

  “Attention, all wedding guests. While you await the ceremony, all palace screens will display for your viewing entertainment the executions of the traitors Barin and Zarkov.”

  This news so numbed Dale that the guards held her arms and forced her to walk onward. Her only thought was a recurring chorus of That heel, that heel.

  A weight within her crushed her organs. She had never before felt so alone.

  “Tell me more about this man Houdini,” said Prince Barin to Doctor Zarkov. His interest was genuine, for they both were blindfolded and chained against a dungeon wall. They conversed to pass the time, to share their mutually incomprehensible dreams, to forge a bond of friendship.

  For despite their widely divergent backgrounds, they shared a longing for freedom and spiritual wholeness. Both desires had been suppressed in Barin’s breast, and he envied Zarkov his control over many factors of his personal destiny. Barin instinctively grasped that until he had decided to fight with Flash and not against him, his life had been fashioned totally by naturalistic forces. Zarkov, however, had undergone heady moments of well-being and good wishes toward the universe, moments when the entire history of Earth seemed to swell in his breast and enlarge his sense of personal identity. How sad that their lives were to end so soon, when this scientist could have taught him the nuances of living he fervently desired to learn.

  Zarkov, too, found Barin interesting, particularly as a subject frequently in touch with the right hemisphere of his brain. He regretted (what he considered to be) the myriad failures of his own life, especially the lonely days spent without the warm, passionate, hot, burning touch of a woman.

  They tensed as they heard the dungeon doors opening.

  A laser fired twice. Something shattered and fizzled.

  “Oh my God! Barin!” exclaimed Zarkov, suddenly buried beneath a crippling sorrow for his departed, barbaric friend.

  Another burst.

  Miraculously, Zarkov found himself dropping. He nearly collapsed when he landed. He pulled off his blindfold to see Aura speaking into a communicating device in the wall.

  “Scanner malfunction, Area Seven Seven Delta. Under repair . . .”

  The Earth scientist and the Mongian Prince had not been prepared for hope. Looking into one another’s eyes, they repressed their laughter until Aura released the communicator controls. When they saw that an unknown insurrectionist had painted “Long Live Flash!” on the wall between their places of bondage, they shook hands and embraced like brothers.

  Flash flew the rocket cycle on a zig-zag path toward a red-tinged cloud hanging in a yellow sky. Laser beams flew past him, and he knew it was a matter of time before one struck him or his vessel. However, as he disappeared into the cloud, the warship ran out of time. He was nowhere to be detected.

  The ornate behemoth hung in front of and below the cloud. Though it waited patiently, the captain inside was anything but patient. He paced about the command console; his men silently awaited his orders while he merely waited.

  The captain could not know (and he was not clever enough to suspect) that Flash had emerged above the cloud to greet an army of hovering Hawk Men, spread out across the sky in a magnificent formation. They were armed with swords and Mongian explosives and lasers and clubs and with courage.

  Vultan grinned, baring nearly all his white teeth, as Flash halted the rocket cycle beside him. He was proud of the Earthling, who had learned the subtleties of the vessel well under his tutorship.

  “Our trap play worked well, Vultan,” said Flash.

  “Excellent!” replied the Hawk Man Prince vigorously, his stiff wings flapping; he hovered like a somnambulistic hummingbird. “Now they’ll electrify the cloud.”

  Indeed, at that very moment the captain gave the order: “Charge capacitators to electrify the cloud. Prepare sky nets to catch Gordon’s body.”

  The red cloud crackled with white bolts that not only embraced it, but crisscrossed through it so closely together that not even a bird could have survived the vicious onslaught. After a few moments, the captain ordered the electrical barrage to be halted. And waited.

  As the cloud began its gradual dissipation, Vultan ordered the first wave of Hawk Men to attack. The majority remained where they were . . . and waited.

  Flash watched the first wave disappear into the cloud, and he wondered about the texture of their lives; he prayed for them. He knew that in war men were fodder for the generals and little else, fodder wh
ich had to be conserved because supplies were limited, but he also knew that each Hawk Man possessed his hopes, dreams, and desires, the intangible objects that granted life its meaning. He trusted that each man who died today died willingly, for a cause he fervently believed in.

  As the first wave of Hawk Men descended upon the war rocket, Ming’s minions burst from the open hatches and onto the railways and fins with a thundering roar. Lasers singed the atmosphere. Hawk Men struck soldiers with clubs, stabbed them with broadswords, sent them falling from the ship. But the soldiers possessed superior weaponry, and many a Hawk Man fell from the sky as his body bled and his wings burned due to the scorching heat of the laser blasts. Soon the battle area was filled with the screams of the dying; the ship was stained with the colorful Mongian blood; and bodies of both sides regularly plummeted.

  Watching the scene from above, Flash hardened himself against his more compassionate emotions as the battle progressed and the cloud dissipated. The Hawk Men were taking a terrible beating, but that was part of the plan. Flash spied old, irascible Biro, who radiated the vitality of twenty younger men, who had insisted so stubbornly on performing his appointed task that not even Vultan could overrule him; Biro crawled along the fin of the warship, carrying the explosive device which would blow up the bulkhead and allow the Hawk Men easy access inside. Biro crawled through the smoke of charred skin and overheated engines; he warded off several attackers; he planted the device (the bottom of which was a suction cup) and pulled out the antenna that would receive the detonation signal. Then he cried out; he grasped his side, nearly rolling off the fin.

  “Biro’s been hit!” exclaimed Flash. “I’m going in!” And he promptly suited his actions to his words, revving up the cycle and bolting through the remaining wisps of red cloud.