Flash Gordon 3 - The Space Circus (13 page)

There were a dozen blue militiamen circling the campfire. Each man was armed. Three robot dogs were on the scene as well, snapping bright metal teeth at the men on the other side of the fire.

Huk, freed just as the first robot dog found them, was behind a wide tree with a blaster pistol in his hand. Mallox and Sixy used an adjacent tree as a shelter against the attacking Mesmo National Militia men.

Bentan had come to and made a charge at the nearest blue man. They’d shot him twice with blaster rifles. That was the scream Zarkov and Dale had heard. The blond man was still alive, sprawled almost on the embers of the fire.

Booker had been standing between two of the trees, waving his hands over his head and calling out, “I give up. No need to fight with me, you guys.”

A militiaman shot him in the leg.

Scrambling, Booker dived for shelter.

Another blaster crackled across the night. Leaves and vines were burned away to nothing.

“That’s what I get for trying to cooperate,” said Booker when he was safely behind a fallen log.

Zarkov stroked his beard. “I think these lads may be able to tell us a few things,” he said.

“If we could get near them,” said Dale.

“That’s no problem,” said Zarkov. “All we have to do is outfox those blue guys—that won’t be too difficult for Zarkov.”

T
he rain fell straight down through the morning sky. Flash stood at the porthole of the cabin he and Jape were sharing on the cargo barge. He could see Hopp out on the deck, joking with the fat captain and sharing a cup of rum with him.

“Something new coming over,” said Jape, who had been monitoring the radio again.

Flash turned away from the wet misty morning. “About us?”

“About Huk and the others I’m afraid,” replied the four-armed man. Slowly he detached the earphones. “According to the latest news reports Captain Suell of the Mesmo National Militia announced last night that he was closing in on the fugitive animals.”

Frowning, Flash said, “You’re right, that must mean Huk and Sixy and Mallox.”

“The last report came through shortly after midnight,” continued Jape. “The militiamen had run the fugitives to ground and were closing in.”

“No word since then?”

“All the radio will say is that further information is expected shortly.” He set the radio down on the floor and stood up.

“We don’t know enough about how the government manages the news here on Mesmo,” said Flash. “If they’ve captured our friends they may be keeping it quiet until they’ve got all of us.”

“There are other possibilities,” said Jape, a hopeful note in his voice. “Huk and Mallox may have won the struggle with the militia. That would also account for no more messages coming from Captain Suell and his cronies.”

“Hell, all we can do is keep listening to the radio,” said Flash. “If they have been recaptured then well have to make a plan to rescue them.”

Jape rubbed one hand across his chin and tugged at his ear with another. “That’s going to be harder than getting Narla away from the slavers.”

Flash grinned. “Nothing has been easy on Mesmo,” he said.

The rain beat down upon the riverside settlement. The rain and the wind. Pieces of rotten raw wood were torn off the fronts of the tumble-down buildings. Slimy mud splashed up against the slanted walls. The names of the narrow saloons and rundown stores and shops were washed away, streaking milky-white and bloody-red paint down the wood and pitted glass.

The street leading from the swayback piers was awash with sticky brown mud. A wretched, bedraggled dog was painfully making its way along the muddy street, nosing the muck in hopes of finding food. Up on the eaves of a smoke-colored saloon sat a lone green monkey, hugging itself and quivering in the wet and cold of the raw morning. Hidden under the beams and eaves of other tottering buildings forlorn birds huddled, cooing mournfully.

“All right for a visit,” said Hopp, “but I wouldn’t want to live here.” He laughed and patted Flash on the back.

“Where are the slaves kept?”

“We’ll have to slosh up the street a little,” replied the red-bearded man. “There’s a kind of big barn at the edge of town. First, though, my friend, we’ll stop at a grog shop I know of and ask a few questions and perhaps spend a few coins. It might save us some trouble.”

“You mean there’s a possibility we can buy Narla back?” asked Jape.

“Couldn’t afford it,” said old Abel.

“We can afford to buy some information, though,” said Hopp. He pointed at a low wooden building which had once had a whitewashed front. The name Lilson was scrawled next to the jagged door opening. “We’ll stop in here.”

“Wipe your feet,” shouted the small yellow man behind the bar. “I don’t want muck all over my imported hardwood floors.”

“What kind of greeting is that, my friend?” Hopp strode to the bar, holding out his hand.

The yellow man nodded his head sparingly. “Yes, it’s you Hopp,” he said. “I’m glad to see you. But I’m very worried about my floors. I’m starting to suspect that I used the wrong kind of varnish on them. They seem to eat up this frightful mud rather than repell it. And if you only knew what I paid for them.”

“But I do know, Lilson, you’ve told me many a time.” He swung a pouch around in front of him and fished two bright silver coins out of it. He dropped them on the countertop. “A cup of grog, if you please.”

“And your friends?”

“You know old Abel. He never turns away from grog. But the other two lads will pass.” When Flash was next to him at the counter Hopp said to the small yellow proprietor, “You might be in a position to earn two more coins like these, Lilson.”

The proprietor put two cups on the counter, leaned forward and scanned his floor. “That’s an interesting notion,” he said. “Elaborate.”

There was only one other customer in the small dim room, a ragged blue man who was slumped over a table against the far wall.

Hopp lowered his voice anyway. “We’re interested, my friend, in the activity of the slave market, the recent activity.”

“A shameful trade,” said Lilson. He put his hand over the two coins, raked them off into his other hand. “If the settlement had any trace of civic pride we’d have run those scoundrels—”

“Yes, my friend, I’m sure,” cut in Hopp, with a laugh. “But I don’t want to buy a sermon. I want to know about any new girls who’ve been brought in during the past day or so.”

Lilson’s eyes took in Flash and Jape. “They’re buyers?”

“Not at all,” said Hopp. “They’re searching for a lost acquaintance of theirs.”

“Plenty of girls in the world,” said Lilson. “Best to leave the slave market alone.”

“A blonde girl,” said Hopp. “A thin one, as I understand it, but considered pretty by some.”

Lilson rotated his palm. “Two more coins were promised.”

Hopp took those from another pouch and dropped them directly into the proprietor’s hand. “You’ve seen her, heard of her?”

“Let me think,” said Lilson as he absently fixed himself a cup of grog. He drank it then wiped his wrinkled lips. “Three girls were brought in yesterday shortly before the midday meal. They were all fat ones.” He turned to Flash and Jape. “Fat girls are very popular in certain parts of the jungle.”

“We are interested, my friend, in a slim blonde one,” reminded Hopp.

“Early this morning,” said Lilson. “So I hear. Such a one arrived on the barge of that miserable Norlan.” He paused, then laughed a reedy laugh. “Indeed, Hopp, I hear he and the slaver had a slight set-to over the girl.”

“Who was the slaver?”

“Zarle, I hear,” answered the saloonkeeper. “A wretched fellow, even among slavers.”

“He delivered her to the market?”

“Yes, she is said to be there now,” said Lilson. “I doubt she’ll fetch as good a price as the fat girls. Beauty, as I see it, is a difficult thing to sell.”

“How many guards do they have around the market now?” asked Hopp.

“A dozen, same as always.”

“And are they the same louts who were at work during my last visit to this quaint little seaside settlement?”

“I do believe so, except for Slepyan who ran off to take a job as a poleman on a barge.”

“Very good,” said Hopp.

Flash asked him, “You have an idea on how to get in there?”

“Yes, we can get in easily enough, I think,” he answered.

“Ah, but getting out,” said the old man.

T
he big man with the white scar down the middle of his face wasn’t supposed to be there. Neither the man nor his gun.

“What you doing here?” he demanded.

Flash didn’t reply. He threw himself through the air, straight at the man.

The flying tackle knocked the man over onto the bare wood floor of the hallway.

With a swift chopping motion, Flash knocked the blaster pistol from the man’s grip. He dragged him to his feet, hit him twice in the middle, and once on the chin.

That took care of him.

But now a door midway down the shadowy corridor of the slave market opened. A blue man, wearing what looked like a striped nightgown, leaped out with a stun rifle clutched in both hands.

Flash dodged suddenly to the left, firing the blaster he had just scooped up from the floor.

The rifle was snapped out of the blue man’s hands.

“So much for the notion of doing this quietly,” muttered Flash as he jogged down the corridor toward the blue man in the nightgown.

The man was hopping around, waving his singed fingers in the air.

A series of punches to the jaw knocked him down and out.

With the man’s rifle in one hand and the pistol in the other Flash waited, breathing evenly in and out through his mouth. No one else appeared.

He went back to the door that was supposed to be Narla’s.

It was locked. Flash shot off the entire lock mechanism. Then kicked the door open.

“Excuse the flamboyant approach,” he said to the blonde girl.

She jumped up from the cot where she’d been sitting. “Flash! Oh, I’m glad to see you. How did you—?”

“A couple of guards were bribed,” he explained. “And then . . . wait a minute.” He heard footsteps thudding through the hall.

Flash shoved the cot across the bare floor, battering the door shut with it. He pivoted and ran to the one barred window. “Stand clear, Narla.”

The blaster crackled twice and the bars, and the glass, were gone.

“Are you alone?” she asked him.

“I hope not,” said Flash, taking a careful look out the window. They were two flights up. “I’m going to ask you to jump from here. Jape and another fellow are down there and they’ll probably catch you.”

“Probably?” Narla came to stand beside him at the window opening. “Well, the mud looks pretty soft”

Fists were pounding on the door.

“Go ahead,” said Flash. “I’ll follow.”

She touched his hand briefly before she jumped. “Take care, Flash.”

The door snapped open a second after the girl leaped.

Flash used the stun rifle to freeze the first man over the threshold, a hairy yellow man with some kind of ax in his hand.

He hopped to the edge, looked down at the backside of the slave-market grounds, and jumped.

The brown mud splashed five feet high as he hit. “I guess that stint in the circus was good training,” said Flash.

Jape, holding out three hands to him, tugged him to his feet. “Something went wrong, I see.”

“To the waterfront,” shouted Hopp, pausing to send a shot at the blue man who was about to fire down on them from the window of Narla’s recent prison.

They all—Hopp, Jape, Flash, and Narla—began running through the mud.

“Looks like I didn’t pass around enough bribes,” said Hopp as they hurried away from the big ramshackle building.

“An unexpected guard was up in the corridor outside Narla’s room,” said Flash.

“Well, a little surprise now and then makes life more interesting,” said Hopp.

“I’ve had enough surprises,” said Narla.

They reached the river well ahead of any pursuers.

“F
arms,” said Narla. “They mentioned something about farms.”

“That’s where they were taking Booker?” asked Flash.

The jungle was all around them again, the river far behind. The party was backtracking the way it had come.

“I know where they were probably heading,” said Hopp.

“Slash and burn,” muttered old Abel.

“It’s quite a way from here,” said the red-bearded Hopp. “A week of traveling, at least. Some of the less ambitious slavers sell workers to the landowners.”

“A week,” said Flash.

“Maybe Huk and the others caught up with them,” said Narla.

Jape said, “We haven’t mentioned this before, Narla. But there’s a strong possibility they’ve had a run-in with the militia.”

The blonde girl pressed her knuckles to her lips. “You mean they’ve been captured?”

“We don’t know,” said Flash. “Jape’s been monitoring that radio ever since he heard the first news about the militia closing in on them. Nothing further has been said.”

“It’s kind of odd,” said the four-armed man. “They’ve been talking a good deal about this Captain Suell and about the Mesmo National Militia. Now they don’t mention him at all.”

“Setting traps,” said the old man.

“They could be setting a trap for the rest of you,” said Hopp.

“That wouldn’t account for the radio silence, would it?” said Flash. “Far as they know we don’t understand their language at all; we’re just like animals to them. Back on Earth the dog catcher doesn’t worry if the dogs hear about his plans or not.”

“Still,” said Hopp, “we have to be prepared for any eventuality.”

“Can we get to the route to the farmland area some other way?” asked Flash. “And avoid the militia that way?”

“Grain of sand,” said the old man.

“Not quite that difficult, said Hopp. “Abel feels that finding your friends at all is going to be as difficult as finding a specific grain of sand on a beach.”

“I know it would be easier to find Huk and the rest if we simply followed their trail,” admitted Flash. “What I’m—”