Storm Over Saturn (9 page)

Just go with the flow
, he thought.

Annie and the doctor ushered him into the house. That's when he discovered the house
was
the observatory. It was mostly one big room, with a large but oddly plastic-looking telescope at its center. Strangely, the place seemed a lot bigger on the inside than it did from without. The interior was done in polished wood and chrome, an odd combination. One wall was dedicated to dozens of control panels. All blinking lights and soft buzzing, the switches, buttons, and lightbulb arrangements looked as primitive as those inside the tiny flying craft.

Annie disappeared, only to return wearing another short skirt outfit, this one with a very tight-fitting top. Her hair was now curly, her lips were flaming red. Where she'd been just plain cute before, now she looked gorgeous. The doctor suddenly appeared behind Hunter with two snifters of brandy.

Hunter gratefully accepted his and took a big gulp. It tasted like nothing more than colored water.

"We are so lucky you came along when you did," the doctor said. "Flash
never
lets anyone down…"

Hunter began to correct him again—but stopped for a moment. All of this had to have some kind of wacky reason to it, something that would lead to something else. Plus the Astronaut told him he had to play it out, and go with the flow. But was there really any harm in asking?

He took the yellow ticket from his pocket and unfolded it. Turning it to the side with the faded picture, he held it up for the doctor and Annie to see.

"Do you know this man?" he asked them. "Do you know where I can find him?"

It was strange, because not only didn't they reply, they simply seemed to stare right through him. His question did not compute. At least not at the moment.

He tried again. "It's important that I find this man," he said. "Just as important as it is for you to rescue Annie's fiance."

With that, Zoloff came back to life. "Yes, that's exactly what we must do!" he cried. He dramatically threw his brandy glass into a roaring fireplace. Annie rushed forward to embrace Hunter once again. She pulled him even closer and whispered very seductively in his ear, "Yes, we
must
save him…"

Hunter just closed his eyes for a moment. Once again, the Astronaut had been right. This place—this existence—was more than just a moon that had been puffed. Its reality had been radically altered, too—and was maybe getting a little rough around the edges. It was hard to tell.

And the people
were
strange here, no doubt about that. Nothing had been said about events prior to when Hunter appeared on the scene. Why Zoloff and Annie were up on that mountain, why three armies were climbing up to seize them, how Annie got all tied up. It was like he'd just walked into the middle of a space play, somewhere at the beginning of the second act. What's more, there might not be any explanation, he thought. Not one he could understand, anyway.

Despite this oddity, Zoloff was an immensely sympathetic character. And Annie… she seemed to get more attractive with each passing moment. Even now, she was snuggled up against him so tightly, her pert breasts seemed permanently imbedded in his chest. Not a bad feeling.

A very strong emotion was welling up inside him. Suddenly, Hunter really
wanted
to help these people.

So he just gave up on getting any information about the Mad Russian from them, at least at this point. Just as the Astronaut had suggested, he decided to play along.

"OK, so where is he being held?" he finally asked the doctor. "This lucky guy?"

Zoloff seemed surprised. "At Ping's castle, of course!"

Hunter looked around the big room, wondering if there was any chance of a bottle of real booze being in here somewhere.

"And where is that?" he asked absently.

Zoloff's face screwed up in a mask of incomprehension, but then he let out a hearty laugh.

"Flash Rogers—jokester!" he declared in a very loud voice. Annie smiled sweetly—and blocked her ears.

Free again, Zoloff dragged Hunter over to the telescope, cranked a mechanism that lowered it from pointing toward the heavens to pointing horizontally. He practically forced Hunter to look through the eyepiece.

What Hunter could see was a huge palace that appeared to be as close as the next mountain range away. It was gold with many spirals and towers, and was so high up in the mountains, a layer of clouds had apparently taken up permanent residence just below it. Combined, it made the castle look like it was floating on top of the clouds. Almost like…

"Can you see them?" Zoloff was screaming in his ear. "The devils? The hedonists?"

Actually, Hunter was seeing neither. What he could see was about a hundred scantily clad dancing girls going through very outlandish gyrations on a concourse of sorts in front of the palace main gate. The choreography was atrocious.

Surrounding the gyrating dancers were hundreds of soldiers, all wearing the same tin man suit of armor as the ones who'd nearly caught them earlier. Some were walking guard duty along the top of the palace walls, others were marching up and down the palace's main street.

"Our friend is there," Zoloff was saying to Hunter. "In the Dungeon of the Doomed, at the bottom of that infernal place. The son I never had. My only daughter's only love!"

That was getting a bit more difficult to believe as Annie was back at Hunter's side, hugging him closely.

"Do you know exactly where your friend is being held?" he asked Zoloff, eye still looking through the telescope.

"As I said—in the Dungeon of the Doomed," he moaned again. "As deep as one can go in that horrid place."

Hunter studied the palace and the mountain, or as much as he could see of it through the mist. It seemed impenetrable, at least from the bottom up. To him that meant that the only way to gain access to the place was from the air.

He turned back to Zoloff. "Did you say there is a clock ticking here?" he asked.

"Ping has vowed to kill our friend at the stroke of midnight," was Zoloff's breathless, anxious reply.

Hunter thought a moment. "What time is it now?"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth when "the sun" above them slid down to the horizon. Day turned to night, just like that. Annie hugged him tighter. Her father moaned again.

"Night has fallen!" Zoloff cried. "We must hurry!"

Hunter was astonished by the sudden sunset.

"Yes," he said. "I guess we should."

They were quickly back inside the flying craft—their only delay was waiting for Annie to do another costume change. She emerged wearing a stunning micro-miniskirt, tight silver blouse, and very alluring boots. Her long brown hair was now tied up by a piece of golden sash. She was mind-bogglingly beautiful.

She was also holding another set of clothes. Long red leotards, purple shorts, a skintight tunic, and a cape. She handed them to Hunter. "I got some new clothes for you, too," she said sweetly. He would have done just about anything for her at that moment—she was so stunning. But he looked at the outlandish outfit and just shook his head. "Sorry," he told her. "But I ain't climbing into that."

• • •

They lifted off the cliff in good fashion, Hunter expertly manipulating the simple controls of the spacecraft as Zoloff worked the lightbulbs.

Hunter had briefly studied the contraption's strings before climbing aboard, amazed at the long, thin lines disappearing up into the sky. What was going on up there? What would he find on the other end? Did he really want to know? Maybe not…

The ship moved ever so slowly now across the divide between the two mountains. The windows at the front of the craft were small, Hunter could barely see what was in front of him, never mind the terrain below. He looked up into the sudden night sky but saw no stars, no other moons, and certainly not the gigantic mass of the planet Saturn or its rings.
How did they do that
? he wondered.

It was more like he was driving a boat than some strange aerial machine. The air seemed thick, the going sluggish, and the rumbling whine coming from the faux power plant was beginning to hurt his ears. But Annie was right beside him, as always. She was radiating both beauty and innocent vulnerability. This had the potential of being a very dangerous endeavor once they reached the castle. Why then was she here? There was no reason. Yet here she was. Just another part of the plot.

They were about halfway across the divide when Zoloff let out a cry.

"The Wingmen!" he bellowed, nose pressed against the ship's tiny porthole. "They are coming to attack us!"

Wingmen?

Hunter looked left to see that, yes indeed, there was a squadron of winged men heading right for them. They looked just about as ridiculous as the tin soldiers they'd battled during their escape from the cliff. It's just that they all had wings.

Now what?

"Use the smoke gun!" Zoloff cried.

Smoke gun?

Annie unclenched from Hunter just long enough to point to a lever on the control panel. He would have sworn it was not there just a moment ago.

"The smoke gun?" he asked her.

She clutched him again. "Yes—the Wingmen hate it!"

Hunter just shrugged and turned the ship to meet the incoming aerial attackers. They were firing some kind of weapons at them, but Hunter could see only tiny pebble-size shrapnel hitting the side of the spacecraft. The tin soldiers' spears had gone right through the craft's skin up on the cliff. That's how thin it was. Yet these BBs were bouncing off.

The attackers were now just one hundred feet off his bow. Hunter pulled the weapon lever. There was a burst of smoke from a muzzle that had suddenly appeared on the ship's nose. Though seemingly in defiance of physical law, the puffy smoke traveled faster than the craft itself and soon covered the dozen or so winged men. That was all it took.

Suddenly their tight formation was in great disarray. The Wingmen began streaking all over the sky, out of control, almost as if they were surprised to see this simple weapon used against them. They quickly regrouped, turned themselves 180 degrees, and beat a very haggard retreat.

"That was easy," Hunter muttered.

That's when the huge flaming arrow went by.

Hunter's highly advanced sixth sense detected the crude missile coming about a second before it would have nailed them. It was just enough time for him to spin the steering wheel and push the strange little craft enough to starboard to avoid getting hit.

Yet no sooner had he saved them from one arrow when another rose out of the palace, trailing smoke and weak flame, but heading right for them. Hunter stood on the brakes and spun the wheel at the same time. The craft fell off to the left; the missile just kept on going.

The palace was now just a few hundred feet below mem, but it was obvious their arrival had been detected.

"Fear not!" Zoloff cried. "We can defeat them because justice is on our side!"

The third flaming arrow hit them an instant later.

It came out of nowhere. Like the smoke gun and its muzzle, one moment it wasn't there, the next it was.

The arrow rammed them head-on. The flames and wimpy smoke spurted through the cracked windshield, making almost no noise but causing Annie to scream and her father to groan. By instinct, Hunter looked down at the controls. All six lightbulbs had blinked out.

We're screwed
, he thought.

But then he realized that although they had a big flaming arrow stuck in their nose, the ship's flying integrity didn't seem to be affected. He floored the gas pedal and put the ship into a dive.

Their sudden increase in speed served to both put the fire out and dislodge the smoldering arrow from their bow. Trouble was, they were only about twenty feet away from the palace courtyard—and still heading nearly straight down.

Damn
...

The slatternly dancers scattered as Hunter yanked back on the steering wheel and managed to hit both the gas and the brake at the same time. The corresponding jolt served to bring them to a stop a mere six feet from the surface. They hung here like this for just an instant; then the marionette strings above them finally snapped, and they crashed the last few feet to the ground.

Annie screamed, of course, but Hunter had grabbed her at the last moment and was able to cushion her from the worst of the blow. Zoloff was tossed about, but he, too, was unharmed.

The flimsy door fell off, and the three passengers tumbled out of the strange little craft. When they all looked up again, they were surrounded by tin soldiers.

Hunter got Zoloff and Annie to their feet as the circle of palace guards closed in on them. They were similar in dress to the tin soldiers they'd fought on the cliff, except they wore larger helmets, and the tips of their spears were spouting weak tongues of flame.

Hunter's priority at that moment was protecting Annie. She was stuck to him like glue as always, but he managed to put himself between her and the creaking guards. He didn't have time to think about what they should do next. Zoloff, however, was way ahead of him. The elderly scientist took a roundhouse swing at the nearest soldier, bitting him square in the face. The guy went over like a lead weight, hitting the man next to him, and the man next to
him
, setting off a chain reaction that toppled a dozen of the palace guards in a second's time.

The unexpected bulge sent several of the guards falling right into Hunter. He dispatched each one with a solid punch to the jaw. The most ridiculous aspect of their battlesuits was their buckethead-style helmet. It was a wonder that they could see anything out the two tiny slits provided for the eyes. Plus the helmets appeared to be very heavy, making the palace guards needlessly clumsy and slow.

Zoloff kept punching, and so did Hunter. The guards were easy to hit. One punch usually did the trick, flattening them. With heavy armor weighing them down, it was hard for them to get back up. The problem was, they just kept on coming. There seemed to be no end to the ridiculously armored soldiers pouring out of the palace gate. Zoloff was punching them two at a time. Hunter's hands were becoming numb simply because he'd hit so many of them. Yet their slow-motion onslaught was relentless.