Storm Over Saturn (10 page)

This went on for more than fifteen minutes. The pile of incapacitated guards was soon twelve men high. Still the fistfight continued. Zoloff was very winded; Hunter's arms felt like they were going to fall off. It finally dawned on him that this was a fight they could not possibly win. Not when there was an endless supply of the tin men.

So he just stopped swinging, and so did Zoloff. Annie screamed. Two tin men picked her up by the shoulders and carried her away.

Hunter tried to get to her again, but the sheer weight of a dozen guards piling on top of him was too much even for him to handle. Subdued more from exhaustion than anything else, he and Zoloff were bound by the wrists and led through the palace gate to the throne room, prodded all the way by the weakly flaming spears.

No surprise, the throne room was ostentatious to the max. Very high ivory-like ceilings, gleaming golden walls. Shafts of bright light coming from no discernible source.

Hunter couldn't help be impressed by the tacky grandeur of it all—but oddly, it looked a little familiar, too. Almost like…

A guard shoved him forward, breaking his thoughts. "You must kneel before Ping!" was his muffled order.

But Hunter just turned around and head-butted the guy. He went over in a heap. Zoloff did the same with his guard. Like Hunter, he was too proud to bend to anyone. More guards rushed forward, but a flash of light from the center of the room froze them in place. Suddenly, where there had been nothing a moment before, a huge throne had appeared, complete with a hundred or so steps leading up to it and an accompanying bank of greenish fog. Behind it was a banner of sufficiently tacky red and yellow colors, boasting a cascade of crests and scrolls and icons, all proclaiming how great the person seated on the throne really must be.

When the last of the mist cleared, indeed a figure was sitting on the jewel-encrusted chair.

He barely looked human. A long snout face, very beady eyes, pencil-thin mustache, heavily greased goatee. He was pale, with very feminine hands and long fingernails. He was wearing a silver lame robe and womanly sandals.

This was Ping the Pontificator.

He looked down at them with the appropriate disdain, but seemed bored and far away at the same time.

Very weird
, Hunter thought.
And very familiar
…

Ping weakly clapped his hands twice. A new troop of tin soldiers waddled in. Annie was being led behind them. Though she'd only been out of Hunter's sight for a few minutes, she'd undergone yet another wardrobe change. She was now wearing a very low cut, see-through gown, white high heel boots—and nothing else. Hunter got a rush seeing her like this. She was both gorgeous and sexy.

She also appeared to be hypnotized. Eyes wide and unblinking. Blank stare on her face. So stiff, she was having trouble walking. At this rate, the same would be soon true for Hunter.

Annie was led to the bottom step of the throne and left there. A light from behind showed all her natural beauty. Hunter was getting very distracted. At least Zoloff's eyes were elsewhere. He was glowering up at Ping, his archenemy in the endless chapters of this place.

"You have my daughter and her betrothed!" Zoloff thundered up at Ping. But the man on the throne simply waved away his protestations.

"It's your constant meddling that is the cause of all this!" Ping thundered right back at him. "Your noodlings and your science! Once I've eliminated you and your kind, then can I rise to my proper glory!"

Even the tin soldiers seemed to be rolling their eyes at the bad dialogue. Hunter was hardly paying attention though; he still could not drag his attention from Annie. Even in a near-comatose state, she looked very desirable.

Finally he broke out of his own spell and contemplated the situation at hand. He had to rescue not just Annie now but her fiance as well. But how?

"Is Ping not a man of honor?" Hunter suddenly heard himself bellow.

Everything else happening in the throne room came to a crashing halt. Hunter could still hear his words echoing off the high ceiling.

Ping turned his attention away from Zoloff and leveled his gaze on Hunter.

"It is honor which is in such short supply these days," he said to Hunter in a very singsong voice. "What would a friend of Zoloff know of honor?"

"Enough to know that an honorable man would allow another to fight for the woman he loves!" Hunter yelled back at him, surprised at the mossy words he was tossing out.

Ping sneered at him but then pulled on his tiny goatee in an approximation of deep thought.

"This woman is the one you love?" he asked Hunter, pointing down at Annie.

"She is!" was his dramatic reply.

"And a contest of strength for her freedom—this is what you propose?"

"It is…"

Ping thought a few more moments, men lifted his hand and gave a kind of royal wave. "Let it be," he said.

A curtain off to the left opened, and no surprise, there was a small arena located here. A large cage covered it. The bars looked as flimsy as the tin men's armor. Inside was a monstrous figure, at least fifteen feet tall, arms already flailing, roaring loudly, its entire body covered with hair.

Hunter took one look at it and murmured, "What the fuck is this?"

It was too big to be a man, so, he surmised, it must be a robot, one covered in fake hair.

He'd just assumed he'd have to battle it out with some of Ping's tinny guards; he could fight them all day, if they came at him one at a time. This thing, though, might be a bit more difficult.

He was led to the cage by a clutch of soldiers. With little ceremony they opened the gate and threw Hunter in. Zoloff was screaming at him not to do it. He was so animated more tin men had to hold him back. Ping, however, was smiling fang to fang. Annie remained immobile.

Hunter turned to face his opponent. It looked even bigger up close. His first thought, that this might be a mechanical man of sorts, was dashed as soon as he was in the arena. Robots made noise, even in a crazy place like this. Whirring, motor-driven. Robotic. He could detect no sounds like this from the monster. Instead, he heard a lot of heavy breathing, along with a fair amount of grunting and whispering.

Hunter rolled his eyes, walked up to the creature, and just stood there. The creature looked down at him, smoke coming out of its nostrils on cue. He heard a roar—no, two roars, one right after the other—and it was apparent that neither originated from the monster's mouth.

Hunter held up his fists like an ancient boxer, ready to fight. More smoke. Most out-of-sync roars. Hunter believed now he knew what was going on here.

He was deciding exactly where the best place to hit the beast might be, when the beast hit first. Its right arm swung around with such speed and force, it sent Hunter reeling through the air before crashing him to the hard stone floor below.

The crowd in the throne room gasped, then cheered. Zoloff cried out, "Stop this madness! We are men of peace!"

But no one was paying attention to him. Ping meanwhile never lost his detached grin. Annie was still a statue.

Hunter slowly got to his feet. He boldly walked up to the beast again. The snorting and smoke-blowing was drowned out by the sounds of an angry, whispered, unseen argument going on between two people. The monster had hit him with a lucky shot, but Hunter knew at that moment that the creature had blown its load.

He taunted it to hit him again, pointing to his chin and dancing around a bit. Once more there was a wild swing, but this time Hunter was able to limbo himself out of its path with seconds to spare. More smoke, more snorting, and even more heated unseen arguing.

Hunter stuck his chin out even farther, once again daring the thing to hit him. There was yet another swing, another nimble move by Hunter to avoid it, but this time as the arm went by, Hunter grabbed onto it and yanked it back toward him. Two near identical yelps could be heard, followed by some deep groaning.

Those in the throne room just gasped now. They'd feared the monster since… well, since their existence here had begun. No one had ever really hurt it before. Even Ping looked concerned.

The thing swung again, and Hunter repeated his earlier action. He ducked as the punch went by, and then grabbed onto the arm and yanked it back toward him before once again letting go.

This time the pair of screams coming from the beast could be heard by everyone in the throne room. Hunter almost laughed; it was funny. But he was getting tired of this game. The next time the thing took a swing, he grabbed onto its arm, and this time he held on.

The beast began flailing wildly again, trying to get him off, but Hunter hung on tight. He cracked the arm near the elbow, then threw himself at the beast's chest. He heard two successive thuds, and then two short cries of pain.

Time for the revealing act
, he thought. He climbed up onto the beast's shoulders even as the thing tried to reach up to grab him, a distinct impossibility. Hunter threw two roundhouse rights into the beast's mug. This stunned the creature long enough for Hunter to reach around the back of its neck, where his hands found just what he knew would be there: a zipper.

He gave it a yank; he heard it start to unclasp. He gave it another pull, and that's when he heard it rip. He jumped over the head of the beast and, still clutching the top of the opened zipper, dove for the floor, taking the creature's hairy overgarment with him.

A louder gasp went up from the royal court. Even Zoloff let out a cry. The hairy overcoat was just that—a prop to make the creature look more menacing and to hide its secret. With this outer garment torn away, what lay beneath was revealed for all to see. This was not some space being or something from one of the really low-rent dimensions. Instead, it was two short royal guards, one with his feet on the other's shoulders, each with a different hand control to operate.

They were still arguing as their two-man contraption fell to the hard floor. The confusion was hilarious.

Hunter just shook his head as the two men scurried away, still arguing with one another. Then he turned back toward those in the court and performed a dramatic bow.

That's when the trapdoor beneath his feet opened up…

It seemed like he fell for ages.

He was in a tube, sliding, round and round, pitch black, the sound of running water filling his ears. Just when he thought he couldn't get any more dizzy, the tube ended, and he was deposited into huge tank of inky black water.

He went all the way to the bottom but was able to quickly push himself back up to the top. No sooner had he surfaced when Dr. Zoloff came flying out of the tube, landing right on Hunter's head and carrying him back to the bottom again.

There was a moment of disentangling themselves and then they both made their way back up for air. Hunter swam over to a point under the tube, hoping against hope that maybe Ping's men would throw Annie—
beautiful
Annie—down as well. Even at this uncertain moment, Hunter found his thoughts flash to an image of her in that see-through gown, soaking wet. He shook off a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the water. He hoped Zoloff couldn't read minds.

"They will not send her down here with us," the doctor told Hunter, who nearly snapped his fingers in disappointment. "They will bring her instead to see her true love—before he is executed. That was Ping's dastardly plan all along!"

Hunter had to take his word for it. "That will just make it easier for us to rescue them both!" he yelled back to Zoloff boldly. "We've just got to get out of here first…"

At that moment they heard a huge splash on the other side of the thirty-foot tank. Then came another, and another.

What the hell could this be
? Hunter wondered. He got his answer a moment later, delivered with a painful punch to his jaw. It was the second such shot he'd taken in the past few minutes.

The haymaker came out of nowhere and knocked him below the surface again. That's when he first saw the guy with the fins on his back.

Even underwater, this guy's uniform looked, well…
unmanly
. Tight, green, with fake gills and ridiculous fins, obviously its owner was the cause of one of the splashes they'd just heard. This meant at least three of these aqua-men were in here with them.

Hunter stayed down this time, diving deeper and looking for a swirl of legs above. Sure enough, he could see three dark figures heading toward a fourth; the strangely dressed swimmers were converging on Zoloff.

Hunter pushed himself off the bottom of the pool again and, moving swiftly, fists put together, he torpedoed one of the fin men just as he was about to hammer the good doctor. He hit the guy square on the back of the head, and his victim let out a yelp so shrill, Hunter actually heard it underwater. He surfaced an instant later, coming over the top with one fist cocked. One of the swimmers had Zoloff by the throat. Hunter clocked this guy on the way down. He, too, let out a yelp that would have seemed more appropriate for a young girl and not a big bad fin man.

With his two colleagues quickly out of action, the third swimmer splashed around for a few moments, assessed the situation, then turned tail and started swimming away. Zoloff was furious and began pursuing the man, but Hunter caught him at the last moment.

Hunter said to the doctor, "If we let him go, then he will lead us to the way out."

Zoloff thought a moment and then smiled, a rarity.

"You are more brilliant than my son-in-law-to-be!" he declared.

Then they both dove back below the surface and began swimming after the fleeing fin man.

There was one light in the vast tank. It was located next to a metal door, which Hunter could only surmise led to an air hatch.

He and Zoloff held up a moment and watched the swimmer desperately turn the wheel on this door. It took some effort to open it against the water pressure, but finally it did spring free with a great whoosh of air bubbles.

The swimmer tried his best to delicately swim into the hatchway, but Hunter and Zoloff had other ideas. They hit the man with both barrels just as he was closing the door. The fin man was more stunned than hurt. Hunter pushed him out of the way, finished closing the hatch, and then activated the oxygen valve. The water quickly drained from the chamber, and finally he and Zoloff could breathe again.