Flash Gordon 3 - The Space Circus

by Alex Raymond

  Thelon had a scarlet circle on the left sleeve. “I notice, Ern, the creature has refused to eat thus far.” He and the other blue man communicated not by actual speech, but through thoughts transmitted from mind to mind.

  “Most animals are restless when first caught,” reminded Ern. “They think more of escape than of food.”

  Thelon smiled, a thin smile with his lips pressed tightly together. “He’d do better to think about eating,” he said. “Since he’ll never escape from the planet of Mesmo.”

  “Each creature we capture reacts differently.” Ern stood with hands behind his back, watching the electronic images of Flash. “Some can be tamed at once; others require a long time, and much effort.”

  “This one,” observed Thelon, “seems quite willing to obey orders.”

  Ern’s round blue face frowned in concentration. “I’m not certain.” He tapped absently at the earpiece of his helmet. “He may give more trouble than you expect.”

  “You can’t read his thoughts, can you?”

  “Obviously not,” replied Ern. “That portion of his brain is, as in all other lower animals, not developed. Which is why he howls and makes noises when he wishes to communicate.”

  Thelon folded his blue hands over his stomach, which was as round and melonlike as his head. “He’ll fetch a good price at the bazaar, at any rate. That’s all I’m really concerned about.”

  “We’ll be landing on Mesmo very shortly,” said Ern. “All in all, we’ve done very well these past few days of hunting on Earth.”

  “Time to move on to another planet. Want to try Jupiter next?”

  “The pickings on Jupiter are never very good.” Ern rubbed again at the earpiece. “Besides, Thelon, the solar system tends to bore me. It’s very annoying as well—so much noise and hardly anyone capable of communicating directly.”

  Thelon took another look at the image of the caged Flash. “Yes, we should get a handsome price for this one.”

  “And yet,” reflected Ern, “I can’t help feeling he’s going to bring considerable trouble to whoever buys him.”

  CHAPTER 5

  His cage was put on a wheeled platform and Flash got his first look at the capital city of the planet Mesmo and at his captors. It was midday, bright but hazy, as the two small blue men supervised the trundling of the cage from the spacefield and through the redstone streets of the city.

  “I could just as easily walk to wherever we’re going,” he suggested to one of the blue men.

  The man frowned. He thrust a shockstick at Flash, who was holding onto the bars of the rolling cage.

  The electric jolt was sufficient to make Flash let go, grit his teeth, and double up.

  “Okay, I’ll ride,” he said when he could stand upright again.

  The other blue man, who had been walking in front of the land truck that was pulling the cage, came back to squint in at Flash. He then scowled at his partner and moved away.

  He knew his sidekick gave me that jolt, mused Flash. How’d he see that from where he was?

  The streets of the city were narrow, twisting and turning in every direction. The buildings were low, topped by round turrets, painted in soft pastel shades. There were few windows at ground level, and what windows there were at all were small, round, and composed of jigsaw fragments of tinted nearglass. There was a tropical feel to the city.

  Don’t think I’ve been on this one before, Flash thought. Must be a planet system remote from any of the systems I’m familiar with. I’m pretty sure these fellows took us through a space warp, so there’s no way of telling where I am. I’ll need more bearings and facts to find out.

  There were signs on some of the buildings; they apparently used some complex cuneiform system of writing here. Flash was unable to read it. The narrow streets were more crowded in the part of the town they were now rolling through. All the people, male and female, were of the same type as his captors—small, round-headed, blue-skinned.

  Looks like they’re only outside visitors, thought Flash, come in cages. I don’t see any strangers or any tourists from other planets.

  The citizens noticed him, too. They waved, smiled, and some of the younger ones made faces. But it was all silent. No sound of talk or laughter reached him.

  “I wish Dr. Zarkov hadn’t set aside that thought-reading gadget he was working on a couple years back,” Flash muttered. “I’m starting to get the impression that my hosts may communicate telepathically. Either that or they’re extremely taciturn.”

  The cage, pulled by the landtruck, rumbled on through the redstone streets.

  Flash wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. He was perspiring freely in the muggy heat.

  Then he began to hear something: it was speech, human speech, from ahead somewhere. Someone was shouting.

  His cage went rattling around a corner, heading for an arched doorway set in a pale-blue wall.

  Flash could make out words.

  Someone was yelling. “I haven’t done anything to you guys. Come on, please. Let me go. Let me out of this thing.”

  The cage entered a vast circular room. The air in there was cool and clear. The illumination came from light beaming down from the ceiling. Each beam formed a circle of pale-yellow light around a cage and there were twenty or more cages in the huge room. Everything else was in darkness.

  At least fifty blue men were roaming the room, many of them wearing embroidered cloaks of what looked to Flash like genuine silk.

  Flash’s cage was rolled into a stall next to that of the shouting man.

  “Please give me a break,” the man was pleading, “Let me out of here. Maybe we can make some kind of deal.” He was a black man, in his early thirties, dressed in a one-piece worksuit.

  The roaming men noticed Flash’s arrival. Many of them came over to gaze at him appraisingly.

  The black man in the next cage turned to get a look at Flash. “You from Mars?” he called in his unhappy voice.

  “Earth,” answered Flash.

  “Well, at least you talk my language. I can’t get a word out of these guys.”

  “They probably communicate telepathically,” Flash told him.

  “Think so?” The black man rubbed a knuckle over his stubbled chin. “I thought maybe they were snubbing me. I’ve been here since last night. You got any idea what planet we’re on?”

  “We’re a long way from Earth and Mars.”

  Blue men were crowding close to Flash’s cage, smiling and nodding approvingly.

  “They feed you?” the black man asked him.

  “I was tossed some raw meat. I suppose it was meant to be food.”

  “That’s all they’ve given me. My name’s Booker, Philip K. Booker.”

  “I’m Flash Gordon.”

  “Hey, I’ve heard of you,” said Booker. “You’re a celebrity on Mars.” He rubbed at his chin. “I didn’t figure they’d be able to keep a guy like Flash Gordon in a cage.”

  “They won’t,” answered Flash.

  CHAPTER 6

  “This is the place,” said Zarkov. He hunched in the pilot seat, punching out landing instructions on the control panel.

  The ship descended slowly and landed beside the straight, black, desert road.

  “Do you think we’ll find some trace of Flash?” asked Dale anxiously.

  “Sure, we’ll find a trace,” answered Zarkov in his booming voice. “But that doesn’t mean we’ll find Flash himself.”

  “I can’t understand what could have happened.”

  The bearded scientist hopped from the ship. In a rucksack strapped to his wide back was an assortment of instruments and devices, some standard and some of his own invention. He trotted around the aircruiser to help the girl alight. “We’ll find out what happened,” he told her. “I guarantee it.”

  “There are the tracks of a car going off the roadway,” said Dale, pointing. There was enough moonlight to illuminate the marks left by the landcar.

  Zarkov fished a small ba
ll-shaped robot camera out of his pack. He set it on the desert ground and gave it a pat on its black metal backside. “Get me pictures of those car tracks,” he instructed the camera.

  The mechanism rose a few inches into the air, and started clicking off pictures of the car’s trail.

  “It’s Flash’s car sure enough.” Zarkov knelt carefully beside one of the tread patterns. “And he didn’t skid.”

  “There’s no sign of any other car being involved.”

  “Nope,” agreed the doctor as he stood upright. “Seems like Flash went off the road voluntarily.”

  “But why?”

  “Well, either he saw something in the desert here that he wanted to investigate,” said Zarkov, “or something was chasing him.”

  “There are no tracks to indicate that.”

  Dr. Zarkov jerked a thumb up at the chilled black night. “Something might have come at him from above.” He started walking along the ground parallel to the tracks Flash’s car had left.

  “One of those mysterious objects Agent Cox was talking about?”

  “Possibly.” He stopped for a moment, scanning the prints of the tire tracks which stretched ahead of him. “It does look as though Flash was trying to outmaneuver something.”

  The ball-shaped camera floated by, clicking off more shots. It traveled ten yards beyond Zarkov and stopped.

  “No more tracks.” Zarkov moved on until he came to the spot where the robot camera was waiting. “They’re wider here at the end, blurred.”

  “What would cause that?”

  Zarkov, yanking hard at his beard, frowned at the tread marks and then up into the black night. “Something grabbed him from above and lifted him into the air.”

  Dale put her hand against the doctor’s arm. “Some spacecraft from lord knows where.” She shook her head, looking up at all the distant stars above them. “He could be anywhere. They could have taken Flash anywhere.”

  Dr. Zarkov took two small boxes, each the size of his palm, out of his rucksack. He adjusted a series of dials on each, then released them. One drifted to the ground and the other rose into the air. “We should be able to narrow that down some, Dale,” he said. “Whatever it was that grabbed him should have left some clues behind.”

  “Will you find enough to help us get Flash back?”

  “Trust me,” said Zarkov.

  CHAPTER 7

  The auction began an hour after Flash arrived.

  At first, since the blue men communicated by thoughts and not words, Flash wasn’t sure what was going on. An elderly blue man, wrapped in a sea-green silk cloak, had begun to move from cage to cage. He would point at one and the crowd would press closer to that particular cage. A few silent minutes would pass. Then the elderly man would continue on to the next cage. Soon the cage he’d been in front of would be hauled away with its occupant.

  As Flash studied his surroundings, his captors, and the prisoners in the other cages, he decided the blue men must have been carrying on hunting expeditions, similar to the one which caught him, all through the universe. He noticed a caged lizard man who was probably a native of Jupiter, several bird men from the planet of Gamaliel, a lion man from Mongo. Besides a dozen or so caged men there were at least ten captive animals. These too, Flash recognized as coming from several different planets.

  “What’s that old guy up to?” Booker wanted to know.

  “I’d say,” said Flash, “he’s probably holding some kind of auction. Judging by the expressions on their faces and by what happens to the people in the cages, I figure they’re bidding on us.”

  “They can’t do that. I’m not going to be anybody’s slave.”

  “We don’t have much to say about it,” Flash reminded Booker. “And we don’t even know if it’s slavery they have in mind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know anything about this planet,” said Flash. “It could be they eat outsiders.”

  Booker shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t thought of that.”

  “We’ll find out soon. They’re coming to my cage,” said Flash. “Can you tell me what’s going on?” he asked the bent old man who stopped in front of his cage.

  The auctioneer ignored Flash and, with his back to the cage, began gesturing at the silent audience.

  There was considerable interest in Flash. Nearly all the bidders pushed in close to his cage. One blue man came forward hesitantly, and started to reach through the bars to touch Flash. Thinking better of it, he hopped back.

  Flash watched the faces of the blue men watching him. He could tell who was bidding on him by their expressions of interest and cunning and sudden anger. A few of them also gestured with their hands while putting forth a bid. Flash noticed one man who gestured considerably. He was a good deal heavier than most of the others and had a full red mustache. His crimson-silk cloak was trimmed with gold.

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” Booker asked Flash.

  “What I’m going to do,” replied Flash, “is wait and see what happens.”

  “Yeah, but suppose you’re right? Suppose these guys are cannibals, or even something worse?”

  Flash grinned. “I’m not in the cooking pot yet.”

  A few low moans rose from the crowd of bidders. They shuffled, then moved over to stare into Booker’s cage. The fat blue man with the red mustache remained in front of Flash, his plump hands locked behind his back. In a moment, a landtruck was again hooked to the cage.

  Flash was carried away, out into the hazy afternoon.

  The fat blue man remained, hands behind his back, in the huge auction hall. When the cage holding Flash was gone, he turned to inspect Booker.

  “A fine specimen,” the bent old auctioneer was saying, his thought traveling into the minds of all of the blue men watching him. “Captured, after a ferocious struggle, on the distant planet of Mars. He’d make an excellent addition to your enterprise, Barko.”

  Barko, the fat man, drummed his plump fingers on the earpiece of his helmet. “He seems surly, likely to be uncooperative.”

  “He’s nearly as strong as the one you’ve just purchased.”

  Barko studied the protesting Booker. “Perhaps we could use him. Not as a major attraction, however. Most certainly not at the price I was forced to pay for the other one.”

  “Shall we start the bidding at five hundred harlans, gentlemen?” asked the old man.

  Barko smiled. “I bid four hundred.”

  “Four hundred? How often does one have the opportunity of bidding on a remarkable Martian specimen such as this?”

  “Why are you all staring at me?” shouted Booker. “Let me out of this damn thing!”

  “Four hundred twenty-five,” offered another of the blue men.

  “Four hundred fifty,” countered Barko.

  “Surely he is worth much more than four hundred fifty harlans, gentlemen.”

  “Four hundred seventy-five.”

  “Five hundred.”

  “Ah, we have arrived at the price I originally suggested. Much too low at that.”

  “Five hundred twenty-five.”

  “Six hundred,” bid Barko.

  “Ah, so you do wish him as an attraction, Barko. I thought as much,” said the auctioneer, a smile revealing yet more wrinkles on his wrinkled blue face. “Are there any further bids?”

  There were none.

  “Sold for six hundred harlans to Barko’s Interplanetary Circus.”

  CHAPTER 8

  A shimmering glare filled the amphitheater. The place was as large as any outdoor stadium Flash had ever seen. Several thousand round-headed blue people sat on the stone benches that ringed the oval field. The field itself was covered with a soft flaky substance that reflected the harsh light of the afternoon sun.

  Flash surveyed the place as his cage was rolled out of an entry tunnel. That stuff must be the local version of sawdust, he decided. And, I’m willing to bet, this is a circus of some kind.

  A number of t
hings were happening in the arena. A green man was walking a high wire stretched between golden poles. A blonde-haired girl was galloping around a circular enclosure on a huge shaggy mount which vaguely resembled a horse. A half-dozen elephants, lumbering and swaying, paraded around the field. There was a four-armed juggler; a hawkman flew high overhead, a fine silver chain anchoring him to the ground. Giant scaly lizards, almost as large as the marching elephants, were being forced to leap through hoops of fire. And there were clowns, at least ten of them—somersaulting, cartwheeling, pummeling each other.

  “There are always clowns,” observed Flash to no one in particular, “no matter where you go.”

  The barred door of his cage grated open. A shockstick was thrust in at Flash.

  Guess this is my stop, he thought. He avoided the blue man who was attempting to prod him and leaped out of the cage and onto the glistening turf.

  Two other blue men approached him. They wore black-silk cloaks and carried silver shocksticks.

  Flash stood, hands on hips, looking around him, thinking. Seems like they book their acts by raiding other planets. Wonder what they’ve got in mind for me.

  A silver shockstick pointed at him and then to the left. One of the blue men nodded in that direction.

  “You mean that ladder?” asked Flash.

  A gilded metal ladder rose two hundred feet straight into the air a few yards away from them.

  The tip of the silver stick touched Flash’s arm. He leaped back from the shock.

  He went to the ladder, glanced at his escorts, and pointed upward.

  Both round blue heads nodded.

  “Onward and upward,” said Flash, grinning as he commenced his climb.

  As he neared the top of the ladder he noticed that there were no nets of any kind below. At the very top of the ladder was a small platform about four feet square.