Flash Gordon 5 - The Witch Queen of Mongo (3 page)

“We didn’t see you,” said Dale.

“No. I wished you wouldn’t.”

Flash shook his head. “It’s a strange power, Willie. I don’t know but that it’s a very dangerous power.”

“Not if it’s used for good purposes Flash,” Zarkov said firmly.

“Have you made tests with this thing?” Flash asked Zarkov.

“A few. But we haven’t really started. That’s what I wanted to consult with you about, Flash.”

Flash nodded. “Right.” He turned to Willie. “Willie, let me ask you a question—”

But suddenly Willie was not there at all, nor was the room, nor were Zarkov or Dale.

Flash rubbed his eyes.

He was standing in a very high, remote place, a kind of platform built out in empty air. And there, not ten feet away from him, down to one side, stood Worriless Willie, looking up at him.

“In a minute, Mr. Gordon.”

Willie grinned. He bent over and scooped up a great handful of whipped cream, from what looked like a very large banana split, and began eating it.

“How is it, Willie?”

“I like it!” Willie grinned.

“You’ve done it again, haven’t you?”

“Yes.” Willie looked serious. “I didn’t think you believed I could.”

“I believe you, Willie,” Flash said cautiously. “How do we get back to Doc’s lab?”

“I guess you better just wait for me,” Willie said, grinning. “If you try to get down from here, you may have a pretty long fall.”

Flash peered over the edge of the platform and saw absolute, infinite space below him.

“Okay, Willie,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

“I’ll only be a second,” said Willie, wiping the cream off his face.

Flash sighed and waited.

And waited.

D
r. Zarkov’s laughter boomed out through the room. “Now you know how I felt when I found myself with Willie on that silly planet. I didn’t know how I got there or what happened.”

Flash and Willie had returned suddenly from the place where Willie had dreamed up the banana split to find Zarkov and Dale chatting as if nothing had happened.

“Didn’t you know we were gone?” Flash asked Dale in surprise.

“Sorry, no,” Dale said, smiling.

“Well, we were gone,” Flash responded sharply.

“I just didn’t think about it,” Dale admitted. “Did you, Doc?”

Zarkov frowned, closing his eyes to think back. “No. I can’t really remember, but you did go with Willie?”

“Yes,” Flash said, a bit annoyed that no one had missed him.

Willie grinned. “I won’t do it again. I just wanted Mr. Gordon to know I could.”

“And you wanted your miserable banana split,” snapped Zarkov. “I don’t know how you grow at all on the food you eat!”

They discussed Willie’s power for several minutes more, but came to no conclusion as to how to harness or contain it.

And then Zarkov remembered the time he and Willie had “gone” to Mount Palomar when Zarkov had casually mentioned the famous observatory.

“How did you bet back?” Dale asked.

“I don’t really know,” Zarkov confessed. “One minute we were there, and then we were back at the telescope.”

Willie spoke up. “I just wished we were back here and we were, Dr. Zarkov.”

“I thought for a minute I was on Mongo again,” Zarkov said darkly, “the time he sent us up to that fool planet. I can tell you that gave me a turn.”

“Mongo?” Willie repeated, his green eyes lighting up.

“Yeah,” said Zarkov. “That’s where Flash and Dale and I first went by rocket years ago.”

“Where’s Mongo?” Willie asked.

“It passes through Earth’s orbit every two and seven-tenths years. The first time it—”

“No, no,” said Willie. “I mean where is it now?”

Flash frowned. “Due in about nine months. Right, Doc?”

Zarkov nodded. “Seems to me that’s right. You’ve got to remember, Willie, that when Flash and I met Mongo was heading directly for Earth. On a collision course, as we say in the air force and navy.”

Willie’s eyes were wide. “What happened?”

Flash grinned. “It was pretty scary, Willie. I’m sure you’ve read about it.”

“I never was any good at history. And you were there? Tell me how you felt. That’s what I’d like to hear.”

Flash scratched his head. “Well, I had just graduated from college, and Dale and I—”

“Flash,” Dale said chidingly, “you’re making it seem you were just anybody out of college! Willie, Flash was a star athlete while a student at Yale University. He was fencing champion and a great polo player, known all over the world. I met him at a polo tournament in England, in fact. I had gone there to visit my aunt. Then, when I returned to Megalopolis West, I found that Flash was working in the same company, Electronics Universal, that I was. And we started seeing each other.”

“Gee,” said Willie. “That’s interesting, but what about the darned planet? Mongo, I mean, headed for earth?”

“That’s just it. Scientists at Mount Palomar had first seen the planet coming into our solar system several days before.”

“Yes,” Flash said, “the planet had somehow spun off from the gravitational field of the Mongo system and was headed into ours. It looked at first as if it would hit earth head-on.”

“It was a very trying time,” Dale said. “Flash and I were both sent by Electronics Universal to Washington to attend an important meeting with the secretary of state and the ambassadors from many European countries. We were flying in an eastbound transcontinental plane when it happened.”

“What happened?” Willie asked, his eyes wide.

“A piece of flaming meteor had entered earth’s atmosphere,” Flash explained. “It had, in fact, been torn off from Mongo, apparently when Mongo had been wrenched out of its own solar system. When the meteor shot through our thicker atmospheric system from space, it caught fire and slammed toward earth. The pilot of the plane we were on tried to veer to one side, but the meteor caught the tip of the port wing and ripped it off.”

“Golly!” Willie exclaimed. “What did you do?”

“The plane was hopelessly disabled and began to spin out of control,” Flash explained. “In those days, there were parachutes stored in the companionway for emergencies and the entire group of us on board the ship bailed out. I grabbed Dale and the two of us were the last out. Moments after we had left the ship, it plummeted to earth, where it exploded in a holocaust of fire.”

“Yipes!” Willie said. “And you?”

“We were caught in a hot updraft from the fire on the desert and blown many miles from the site of the wreck. And we came down not far from the very spot where we are now.”

“I’ll be darned!” Willie said. “Here at Dr. Zarkov’s laboratory?”

“Exactly,” said Flash. “And he was the first person we saw after we landed.”

“Did he help you?” asked Willie.

Flash snorted. “Not likely! He ran out of his laboratory and confronted us with a gun. He said he was going to kill us.”

“Wow!”

Zarkov growled in his throat. “You’re making me sound like some kind of maniac,” he said irritably.

“Which you were,” Dale said, cutting in.

“Perhaps, but there was a reason for it.”

Flash grinned. “There was, Doc. You tell it.”

“Willie, I’d been working day and night, ever since the runaway planet was discovered by the scientists at Mount Palomar, to perfect a rocket in my underground laboratory here. The work, incidentally, was financed by a big foundation located in Megalopolis East.”

Willie’s eyes were wide. “That was before they had rocket travel, wasn’t it?”

“You bet it was. I had been working on this theory for years, but the war had made me go underground with my prototypes, for fear the enemy might conspire to steal my thrust formulas. They were the crux of the entire model.”

“Gee!” Willie said gasping. “And so you were trying to perfect your rocket and—”

“I had perfected it,” Zarkov said proudly. “But I had been so security-conscious that I became unnerved when Flash and Dale appeared, more or less right out of the sky. I thought they were enemies of America. I thought they might be spies sent to kill me and make off with the rocket, or saboteurs who would destroy my prototype.”

“Doc was really off his rocker,” Flash said with a smile.

“He was crackers,” Dale said, shaking her head at the memory of the disheveled, wild-eyed man who had confronted them that dark and dreadful night.

“I told them they would have to come with me,” Zarkov continued, “that I wouldn’t kill them if they did, because I didn’t want to waste the bullets in my gun. I wanted them to help me. And they came aboard all right.”

Flash shook his head. “Doc isn’t telling this very well. He forced us aboard the rocket, which he had loaded with the most powerful explosives known to man at that time. It was Zarkov’s idea that he could direct the rocket toward the approaching planet, which we came later to discover was Mongo, and simply blow it off its course toward Earth by crash-landing there.”

“Son of a gun, Willie cried admiringly. “You mean, more or less intercept the planet, and divert it from its collision course with Earth?”

“That’s it,” said Dale.

“What happened?” Willie asked.

“Dale and I more or less accepted our fate and joined Zarkov aboard the rocket. We thought that we would help him, even though he was unhinged. It would be a noble sacrifice to save the Earth we loved.”

Willie nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. “That’s good.”

“So we helped him get the rocket ready, we climbed aboard, sealed the hatches, and blasted off.”

“But how did you live through the explosion when the rocket hit Mongo?” Willie asked, frowning.

Flash smiled. “Actually, Doc’s rocket was very well constructed, but when it came into Mongo’s atmosphere he found that he was not able to control it. The gravitational pull was slightly less than Earth’s and Doc’s finely tuned guidance system was off enough to make the matter serious.”

Zarkov nodded ruefully. “The system was too perfect. If it hadn’t been so good, it would have worked on Mongo, too.”

Flash laughed. “Doc, admit it. You’ve had more crash landings than anyone in space. This was just the first.”

Zarkov shrugged. “Get on with the story, Flash.”

“Okay, then. That’s it—the rocket crash-landed because Doc couldn’t guide it correctly in the different gravitational field.”

“What happened?” Willie gasped.

“Well, we went into the Sea of Mystery, right next to Mingo City. The explosives didn’t go off.”

“Mingo City? Where’s that?”

“It’s part of the inhabited section of Mongo, Willie.”

“How about that? But Mr. Gordon—what about the planet?”

“What about Mongo?”

“If the explosives didn’t go off, how come the planet didn’t hit earth? And how did you keep from drowning in the Sea of Mystery?”

“The explosives didn’t count at all. We never knew all this until later, but the scientists on Mongo were far more advanced than we were on Earth. They had already set up an electric force, a sort of antigravity shield around their whole planet, and the planet passed near the Earth but never struck it.”

“Gee!”

“But by the time we found out what had happened, Mongo and Earth were again far apart and there we were, stranded in a strange world.”

“But what about the Sea of Mystery? How come you didn’t drown?”

Flash smiled. “We got out before the rocket had plunged too deeply into the water, and swam to shore. We were plenty lucky we didn’t land far out at sea. And we immediately became involved with Ming the Merciless’s coast guard. It was a touchy thing, Willie.”

“Holy smoke! Tell me about, Mr. Gordon.”

Flash glanced at Zarkov. “What about it, Doc? Isn’t it time for Willie to be in bed?”

Zarkov frowned. “Well, maybe you can tell him a little bit about Mongo. The Lion Men. The Hawkmen. Ming’s armies. And maybe Queen Azura, the Witch Queen of Mongo.”

“Especially her,” Dale said sarcastically.

“I always did favor that girl,” Zarkov boomed good-naturedly.

“So did Flash,” snapped Dale, her face set.

“I did not,” Flash countered. “Dale, you never will understand that adventure of mine, will you?”

“Gee, Mr. Gordon, tell me what you’re talking about, will you?”

Flash glanced at Dale, then back to Zarkov. He sighed. “Okay, Willie. Just a few more minutes, and then you’re headed for bed.”

F
orty-five minutes later, Flash stopped talking. Willie was staring at him, wide-eyed and completely absorbed in the adventures of long ago.

“Mr. Gordon,” he said breathlessly, “after you were stranded on the planet Mongo, did it still run wild through the universe?”

“No,” Flash answered.

“Why not?”

“The planet had lost momentum. Finally, the effects of our own sun overcame its swing through space and it pulled Mongo into a gravitational orbit around our own sun.”

“I guess I did read that somewhere,” Willie said.

“Mongo now travels in a rather strange orbit in our own solar system for part of its orbit, but goes around its own sun for the other part.”

“I see.”

“Several years after we crashed there,” Flash said, “Mongo crossed the asteriod belt, and Dale and Doc and I were able to make a rocket flight back to Earth.”

“Great!” said Willie.

Dale spoke up. “It’s been about six years since we returned to Earth, hasn’t it, Flash?”

Flash nodded.

Willie frowned, turning his head slightly. “Hey, Dr. Zarkov, isn’t something making a noise in your laboratory?”

Zarkov cocked his head. “You’re right, Willie. Some kind of buzzing. It sounds like a signal from the space-scanner.”

Flash stood up. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”

Zarkov was halfway to the door of the lab.

Dale rose, and they all went into the high-ceilinged observatory next to the lab.

The observatory was dominated by the large electronic telescope stationed right in the center, with green radar-screens of all shapes and sizes spaced out around the large mirror.

Zarkov waved his hand about “These receivers are tuned in to a statellite cruising in the upper atmosphere. The instruments on the satellite flash a signal when they pick up unusual disturbances out there.”