by Mack Maloney
Hunter had to pat him on the back. He was almost in tears himself. "I have something very important to tell you," he began. "For what it's worth, there is a place where you can be both. It exists. It's not an amusement park. It's real. I've been there."
"Both?" Zoloff asked. "Both Russian and American, you mean?"
Hunter nodded slowly. "Russian, American, European, Japanese, Indian. White, black, yellow, brown. Everything. It's a place called the Home Planets. It's a place where the original people from Earth were sent against their will when evil forces took over the empires. A deep dark secret kept from you, no doubt. But the Astronaut found out about it somehow. And like me, he knows it is a place where anyone can be all of those things, simply by being one thing: a person from Earth. An original Earthling."
He leaned over and showed him the flag on his shoulder. It was the American flag.
"This is our flag," he said. "It used to represent all that was good and free and just within my country, but now it represents all of those Home Planets as well."
Zoloff became so emotional listening to this that he began to cry. "If I went to this place," he said. "I could have the best of both worlds?"
"Of all worlds," Hunter told him.
Zoloff got a very determined look on his face. "Well, then, that's what I must do!" he said. "But first, we must get out of this jam. And the ones that come after it." He looked around the cell again. "The question is, how?"
At that moment, as if on cue, the door to the sheriff's office opened.
A woman walked in with a tray full of food and two vodka bottles. It was Annie, of course.
Hunter unconsciously pressed himself up against the cage. She looked even more beautiful than before — which he would have thought was an impossibility at this point. But it was true: she was now slinky in her very tight, very revealing saloon hall dress. And her face was full of makeup. She was tarted up, in a way.
But was something wrong here? She ignored both him and Zoloff in the cage and walked over to the pair of SSG men. She gently shook both awake, stopping to massage one's shoulders.
"I thought the sheriff and his deputy might be hungry," she said sweetly.
The SSG man getting the massage reached around and grabbed her by the waist. She cried out playfully. Now the "deputy" wanted some. He pulled her away from his partner, and let her wiggle in his lap for a while.
One of the vodka bottles was opened. Three glasses materialized, too. Drinks were poured out, all three began to imbibe.
Hunter leaned even farther into the bars. The two Solar Guards drained their drinks and poured out two more. Annie was openly flirting with them. Her dress being very low cut, every chance she had, she bent down in front of them, giving them a view of her twin nebulas. One guard put his hand on her back. Another started stroking her hair. Hunter was enraged. He tried to bend the bars, but it was no go. Not this time. This wasn't Ping's Palace. This was real life.
Wasn't it?
Annie extended her arms and pulled both men toward her. Then she looked at Hunter — and winked.
In the next moment, both bottles of vodka came crashing down on top of the SG soldiers' heads. They both hit the floor with a simultaneous thump!
Then Annie herself nearly collapsed. "I didn't think I could ever do that!" she cried.
She retrieved the electric key from the wall, and soon the electron cage was open.
Annie fell into Hunter's arms and squeezed him tight. He thought he was going to melt. But then the reality of the situation returned to him.
"Is there another ticket booth close by?" he asked Zoloff urgently.
The doctor only had to think a moment. "Yes! Of course!" he roared. "Follow me!"
They ran out of the sheriff's office, across the street, and into the basement of the brothel. Sure enough, there was a battered PC waiting there. Zoloff overrode all the security functions and quickly hit the Enter button.
An instant later, they were all standing on the grand pile of socks.
Out of breath but safe, they did a group hug. But Zoloff was instantly worried again.
"Our problems do not end here," he said. "In fact, they are just beginning."
Hunter slumped into the soft pile; Annie automatically snuggled up to him. What he would have given just to stay like this with her — for a couple million years.
"Those two mooches were foolish enough to reveal something very disturbing to me," Zoloff said.
"Do I really want to hear this?" Hunter asked with a groan.
"There is an officer in this hideous Solar Guards. He's part of a special unit of theirs."
"Yes, the Special Solar Guards," Hunter said. "The SSG. The real bad characters."
"Exactly," Zoloff went on. "Well, on the strength of what these two found, he is due to come down here very soon. Within hours, even. They were supposed to meet him. He is said to be very well-versed in the ways of torture and extracting information from the reluctant. He, of course, will be looking to work me over. And you, too, I would imagine. His name is simply Commander X."
Hunter wearily took out his quadtrol and asked it for information on Commander X. The reply came back that an officer of that name was known to be one of the top interrogators within the SSG. His methods were known to be so brutal, he was even feared by members of the regular Solar Guards.
"He probably knows a lot of what the SSG is up to," Hunter thought out loud. Then he explained the rumors about Warehouse 066 and the so-called magilla to Zoloff and Annie.
"Well, before we know it," Zoloff said. 'This monster will be here, in our midst. And if he doesn't find these two waiting for him, he'll have half the SSG down on our tails."
Hunter tried to think, but it was hard to do. He was tired, hungry. And now, very hungover. Finally, he just looked back up at the Mad Russian.
"So… what are we going to do?" he asked.
Part Three
Grand Finale in C Major Diminished
9
Commander X wore his best combat uniform down to Alpha Moon.
It was black, of course, with aluminum insignia on both shoulders, signifying his rank in the SSG. Just 210 years old, he was a small man, both in stature and in his respect for the human race. He was a tough nut to crack, though, a man who'd vowed that should he ever get captured by an enemy, he would take his own life before giving up any information to them. Conversely, he was an expert at wearing down a victim, physically and psychologically, to get them to the point where they would tell him anything, even though they knew their own death would be the result. Officially, his job description was mortis inquisitorus.
He'd brought his ion-silver ray gun as a side arm this day. Also, his ceremonial silver dagger, his new super quadtrol, which was the latest in know-it-all technology, his electro-shock wand, and just in case he had occasion to grow bored, a flask of gold slow-ship wine, the best of the best.
CX, as he was also called, knew very little about Alpha Moon, the so-called Mad Russian, or the concept of a dizzylando. He'd been directly involved with the renovations on the Big Generator, lording over the Empire scientists and supervising the beating of any one of them who did not seem to be working hard enough. But when the top echelon of the SSG discovered, through a paid informant, that there was a person somewhere in the Galaxy who actually had the knowledge to thwart what they were trying to do to the big black slab, they ordered CX and his men to track him down. Once found, he was to be tortured, brain wiped, and then executed — three talents that Commander X and his men reveled in.
They'd discovered information about the Mad Russian and his amusement park simply by breaking into the inner sanctuary of O'Nay's palace on the floating city of Special Number One and reading one of the Five Secrets. These sacred mysteries at one time were guarded by entire armies of O'Nay's bodyguards. But since the Emperor fled to a second, top secret floating city — Special Number Two — currently riding the airways up near the Earth's North Pole, it was no trouble at all for the
SSG to have the run of his first floating palace. Gaining access to the Five Secrets' vault had been surprisingly easy.
So they read about the Ancient Cosmonaut and the deal he made with the early rulers of the Fourth Empire, and how he'd been given a handful of moons around Saturn and tons of secret technology to essentially create a fantasy world of his own. They also learned how brilliant he was, especially in the area of super electricity, which, was believed by many to be the principle behind the mysterious Big Generator. After reading his dossier, they were convinced, as was anybody who knew him, that the Mad Russian would be able to counter anything they did to the BG, first by passing a cure on to the Space Forces, and then by spreading the same message throughout the Galaxy.
Just what that cure would be, the SSG didn't know, and frankly, they didn't care. Their mission was to find this guy, beat the daylights out of him, drain all the knowledge out of his head, and then grease him.
CX sent his best two men down to the dizzylando first. No sense in him getting his own uniform dirty — or his dagger for that matter — until absolutely necessary. He'd received word just that morning that his men had indeed tracked down the Mad Russian — after a rather unusual pursuit that started out with them crash landing on the wrong moon. The last he'd heard from them, their message insisted that the collection of moons was so crazy it was "best to start at the beginning," which sounded logical to him. It was now time for Commander X, the closer, as they said in the torture business, to make his appearance and bring this mission to its inevitable conclusion.
So now he was here, transported to the Alpha Moon via a superstring transfer — not to be confused with a DATT. His trip was smooth and instantaneous. One moment he was in his barracks back on Earth, at the secret base out in the middle of the western desert — the next he was standing on the faux wood front porch of the first ticket booth, armed with his password and all the instructions he needed to work the ancient PC inside.
He went through the procedure of booting up the old computer and getting through its security procedures. When it came time to fill in his hobby, he laughed and typed, "Watching people squirm."
Highly satisfied with himself, he straightened his uniform, wiped the dust from his sleeves… and pushed the Enter button.
"Quick… jump on!"
Commander X was immediately confused. A moment before he was inside the railroad station ticket booth, not really knowing what to expect, simply following the instructions given to him by his two advance men, and now, suddenly he was… well, where the hell was he?
His vision cleared, and he found himself standing on a cliff. Not in the middle of it, but right on the edge. Below him was a very deep ravine, at least five hundred feet down. Not twenty feet behind him were three armies of soldiers in skirts and carrying spears charging toward him. There were explosions going off all around him. The air smelled awful. And it was dawning on him that he was about to either get skewered by a thousand spears or fall to his death.
He was certainly the one squirming now.
"Quick… jump on!"
Finally CX looked right in front of him. Here, he saw the most confusing sight yet. There was an insane-looking spaceship of some kind hovering — sort of — just a few feet off the tip of the cliff. Its hatch was open, its tailpipe was smoking heavily, and damn it if he couldn't see three sets of near invisible strings coming out of the top of it. A man was standing in the hatchway, hand extended, pleading for him to leap to safety.
Commander X didn't really jump as much as he was pushed. Three flaming spears nailed him in the buttocks all at once. This and the screams of the soldiers in skirts gave him the impetus to leap toward the spaceship. It was his only means of escape.
It was about a six-foot leap, but again the flaming spears propelled him forward. Still, he just barely managed to grab on to the bottom of the hatch, very nearly falling into the chasm. He let out a scream in a voice he'd never heard come out of himself before. It was very womanly. The man in the open doorway tried to help him on board, but the spaceship started vibrating madly, and then the bottom of the hatch began tearing away from its body. Commander X couldn't believe it. This damn thing seemed made of cardboard!
He pulled off a chunk of it with his right hand — and here came that scream again — as now he was hanging on by just four fingers of his left hand. The spacecraft was shaking mightily now. The tin soldiers were throwing their flaming spears at him, and he was about two seconds away from plunging to his death.
As it turned out, the only reason he didn't fall at that moment was that the spacecraft did an incredible sideways flip, literally turning on its side ninety degrees. So now Commander X, instead of hanging off of the ship, was suddenly on top of it, looking down. He hung there for a second before dropping through the hatch, smashing his head and shoulder as he fell, then cracking his skull a second time as he hit the cabin's interior far wall.
Dazed, bleeding, and stunned, CX felt the ship right itself and slowly, very slowly, start moving away from the cliff.
He opened his eyes to see two people looking down at him: an old man with bad teeth and a beard that looked fake, and a young girl, pretty but dumb-looking. They were alternately trying to help him up and stepping on him. He was blubbering, trying to speak, trying to assess his wounds, trying to keep his bladder from bursting involuntarily.
Finally he was able to shout, "Where the hell am I?"
The reply from the old man was maddeningly simple: "You're with us."
"But who the hell are you!"
"I am Dr. Zoloff. This is my daughter, Annie."
CX struggled to get up, but the ship was gyrating so wildly, it proved impossible.
He began sputtering again. "Do you know who I am?" he screamed at them.
"Yes, of course," the old man said. "You're Flash Rogers! And you've come to help us!"
CX finally got to his feet and was hit with a sudden attack of motion sickness. If this was flying, he had to get his legs back on the ground as quickly as possible. But the flimsy ship was swaying so violently, he was lucky he could stay upright.
He cleared his eyes again and saw the old man was now at the controls of the craft, but they looked too simple to actually control anything. Commander X's first instinct was to shoot the both of them, but then who would fly this claptrap? He did make his way over to the control panel, intent upon at least seeing how this thing was able to stay in the air. By the time he stumbled to the front of the craft, the old man had turned it around by using the huge steering wheel, and they had picked up speed. A'little anyway.
"Where are we going? What are you doing?" CX demanded of the old man.
The old man turned and looked at him with scary eyes. "We are going to Ping's Palace, of course!" he bellowed at him. "We must rescue Buck!"
CX's response was predictable. "Who the fuck is Buck?"
But before he could get half of it out, the young girl yelled, "The Wingmen!"
The next thing CX knew, twenty spears were suddenly sticking through the skin of the craft, half of them burning him in the ass again. As he was pulling their tips out, the craft suddenly shook from one end to the other. He fell to this rump again, only to see a huge burning arrow was now sticking out of the front of the spacecraft.
Suddenly the interior of the cabin was filled with smoke. Before CX could get to his feet, the craft severely pitched downward, causing the SSG officer to slam his battered head once again.
The craft crashed into something very hard a moment later. It came apart all around him. Cardboard pieces flying in every direction, it disintegrated into nothingness. CX was thrown to the ground, landing on his bad shoulder. He got to his knees only to see another small army of soldiers in huge buckethead helmets advancing on him.
His first instinct was to reach for his ray gun, but it was already too late for that. A tidal wave of tin soldiers fell on him and began beating him severely. The sheer weight of their armor was cracking his bones. Any time he tried
to throw a punch, he hit one of their iron heads, further smashing his fingers, his knuckles. Meanwhile, the girl was led away by a couple of the soldiers, with the old man following close behind.
It went on like this for what seemed like an eternity, the soldiers pummeling CX with their fists and kicking him with their shod feet. There were so many on top of him, the SSG officer thought he would suffocate. Only when he started screaming like a girl again did the tin soldiers back off. One soldier ended the lopsided fray with a powerhouse kick to CX's groin. The SSG officer doubled over, falling on top of his flattened ray gun, and was finally dragged away.
CX went unconscious for a few minutes. When he came to, he found himself inside a very tacky, brightly lit throne room. More tin soldiers were on hand. He was dropped on his head before a staircase that led up to a seat on which a guy who looked suspiciously like the Supreme O'Nay was glaring down at him. Even in his battered state, CX laughed out loud at this man's outfit.
That was a mistake. The man apparently liked his clothes, as girly as they were. CX started into his "Do you know who I am?" routine again, but the guy on the throne would have none of it. He clapped his hands twice, and CX was lifted to his feet. Bleeding, his new uniform ripped, he was dragged to a curtain that opened to reveal a small, caged-in arena.
He was thrown inside, landing facedown. He looked up to see a huge hairy robot standing over him. What hell is this? Before the next thought went through his head, this monster picked him up, held him in midair with one arm, and swatted him across the arena with the other. CX landed in a heap again, only to have the monster pick him up a second time and hurl him to the other side of the cage. Stunned, dazed, eyes blurry, CX couldn't prevent the monster from kicking him, punching him, and momentarily sitting on him, before lifting him off the ground a third time and dropping him into a hole that had suddenly opened up in the arena floor.
