Flash Gordon 3 - The Space Circus (5 page)

The lion, belly to the ground and tail flicking slowly from side to side, was easing around the injured horse. Its full attention was on Narla.

Three blue men with shocksticks stood many yards away, obviously wary of approaching closer.

“Let’s have that.” Flash stopped for an instant beside the gaping lion tamer to wrench the man’s shockstick from him.

He went sprinting directly toward the lion which was stalking Narla. “Hey,” he shouted at the stalking beast, “get back. Back!”

Paying him no heed, the lion inched closer to the fallen girl.

“Back,” repeated Flash. He circled to the front of the beast. “Back in your corral, fellow. Back!” He jabbed the stick toward the animal.

The lion sputtered, nose wrinkling. It slapped at the shockstick with one clawed paw. It got a shock and yelped.

“Go on into the pen now.” Flash gave the lion a swat across the snout with the electric stick.

The lion yelped again, turned its back, and galloped back into the broken pen.

Flash dived to Narla’s side. “You okay?”

The pretty blonde girl took a deep breath. “Nothing’s broken,” she answered. “I must admit I feel a little strange inside. Working with lions isn’t my specialty.”

“I’ll help you get up.” He put an arm around her shoulders.

“Glad you dropped in,” said Narla, smiling. “For a while there I thought I was going to be the main course for that lion.”

“You ought—” began Flash. He never finished the sentence. Something hit him hard from behind and he let go of the girl and fell down into the sparkling dust.

T
he first thing Flash heard in the darkness, was a rumbling, growling sound. Flash slapped his hand on the floor. He was lying on hard cold stone. He heard a rattling sound when he moved his arm. His wrists were manacled. With one hand, he caught hold of the chain connected to the opposite wrist. He pulled himself up, following the chain to a wall about six feet away. There were shackles around his ankles as well. He felt the wall. It was stone, cold and damp.

There was another growl in the inky blackness. Then a rumbling voice said, “Seems I have company at last.”

Flash narrowed his eyes, but he could see nothing in the dark stone room. “I know your voice,” he said “You’re Mallox, aren’t you?”

“That I am, the strongman of this godforsaken freak show,” answered Mallox out of the blackness. “Yet not strong enough to rip these damned chains out of the wall.”

“Where are we exactly?”

“Beneath the arena,” replied the strongman. “I usually end up down here, by myself and chained to the wall, at least once during our stay in the capital. I’ve been a captive slave of Barko’s for nearly a year. Someday soon, though, I’ll be gone. But why are you here?”

“I’m Flash Gordon,” answered Flash. “I saved Narla during the evening show, when the lions broke loose. Apparently they objected to my interrupting my act to do that.”

“Ah, I was already down here when that happened. I got an opportunity to boot one of those blue devils yesterday and I did,” said Mallox. “You say you quit your act to save the girl?”

“Yes.”

“They don’t like that.”

“I also borrowed the liontamer’s shockstick.”

Mallox gave a rumbling, hooting laugh. “That wouldn’t please them one bit. Ah, I wish I might have seen it. It looks, I suspect, like they’ll keep me down here until the show moves on.”

“When will that be?”

“If things go as they usually do, we’ll leave here in another week or so,” said the strongman. “Not that these little blue devils confide in me. But, judging from past experience, we probably won’t be here much more than a week.”

Flash asked, “You think there’ll be much chance of escaping while the circus is traveling?”

“I’ve tried it twice,” said Mallox. “Obviously, I didn’t succeed. They used their shocksticks and stunguns on me both times. In a way, though, I was lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“You’ve watched at least part of my act. I’m good. Men as strong as I am aren’t easy to come by. We used to have a clown named Speeg. Clowns are easy to supply. When Speeg made his try to get away, about three months ago while we were playing one of the jungle outpost towns, they killed him. Shot him down as he ran,” said the strongman. “So before you make your attempt, figure out how valuable you are to Barko and his cronies.”

Flash leaned back against the stone wall. “Suppose you did escape?” he asked. “Is there any safe place to go?”

“These little blue devils dominate the entire planet,” answered Mallox. “I’ve heard of little enclaves of opposition, off in the wilder jungles. That’s where I’d aim for.”

“The best thing to do then,” said Flash, “is to get loose and then get off the planet.”

Mallox’s growling laugh filled their cell. “Yes, that’s all there is to it.”

Flash ignored the strongman’s sarcasm. “Do all the people of this planet favor slavery?”

“For us, you mean? As far as I can tell, yes,” said Mallox. “There seems to be no great opposition to their hunting trips to other planets. As I mentioned, these silent devils haven’t seen fit to confide in me, but I don’t notice any open opposition to the slave trade.”

“How many slaves do you think are being held on the planet?”

“Several thousand at least, from what I’ve been able to see during my journeying across this unfortunate planet,” said the strongman. “We’re not, I might mention, the worst-treated lot of slaves on Mesmo by any means.”

“If one of us escaped then,” said Flash, “he couldn’t expect any help from the citizens of the planet.”

“Unless he got to one of these rumored jungle enclaves. Basically you’d be a hunted fugitive.”

“You don’t make it sound too hopeful, yet you tell me you’ve tried to escape.”

“As bad as being a fugitive might be, it’s not as bad as being a slave,” said the strongman. “I intend to keep trying and one day I’ll succeed in escaping.”

“I believe you will,” said Flash.

A
rectangle of light cut into the darkness.

Two round-headed figures appeared in the corridor; they came drifting into Flash’s cell.

Flash calculated he’d been locked up for roughly a day now. This was the first time the sliding door to the underground room had opened. They had given him neither food, nor drink.

“What have you brought us to eat?” demanded the strongman in his growling voice.

Flash could see Mallox now in the pale corridor light slicing across the cell. The strongman was well over seven feet tall, his shoulders huge and sloping. His reddish-brown hair was long and tangled and he had a full beard.

The two blue guards paid the strongman no mind. One moved nearer to the seated Flash and stood over him with a shockstick. The other blue man plucked a key out of a pouch at his belt.

The giant said, “It’s not food these little blue devils have come about then.”

The single key opened all of Flash’s shackles and manacles. They fell away.

The guard with the key gestured at the doorway.

“Looks like you’ve served your sentence,” said Mallox.

Flash nodded at the strongman, asking the blue men, “What about him?”

The other blue guard brought the tip of his stick to within an inch of Flash’s face.

“Don’t get yourself into trouble on my account,” said the strongman. “A few days without food won’t hurt me much.”

“We’ll meet again,” promised Flash. He stepped dear of his chains.

The guard who had unshackled him was concentrating on Flash’s movements. He took a few steps back, eyes on him.

“Now then,” roared Mallox as he jumped for the blue man. He twisted an arm around the guard’s neck. “I’ll just take those keys of yours.”

The other guard drew his stungun.

Flash pivoted so that he blocked the man’s arm.

Grimacing in anger, the blue guard struck Flash, across the chest with his shockstick.

“Hey!” exclaimed Flash. The pain of the charge slapped him back against the stone wall.

The guard whom Mallox held was making dry gasping sounds.

The second blue man fired his stungun.

It hummed and the giant froze.

His arm was still locked around the guard’s throat. The blue man kept on gasping, trying to suck in air.

His companion struggled with the stunned strongman’s arm, and finally pried it loose enough to free his companion.

While both guards were preoccupied, Flash could have made a dash for freedom. He decided against trying that. It wasn’t time yet.

Flash didn’t hear of Mallox again until the night the circus broke camp to go on the road. It was a hot stormy night, with rain pouring down on the roof of the building where Flash and some of his co-workers were kept.

Huk, the hawkman, his great feathery wings flapping, was hovering up near one of the narrow windows. “The move will definitely be tonight,” he said. “They’re already loading the wagons out there. And I see they’ve put Mallox to work.”

“Glad to hear he’s finally out of the dungeon,” said Flash. “I haven’t noticed him at any of the performances since I was let go.”

“They always use the poor giant for heavy lifting,” said Narla.

“It occurs to me that if they were to put to work the three or four guards required to watch Mallox,” said Zumm, “they’d get more accomplished.”

“They enjoy watching the big man at work,” said Sixy. “that’s why they haven’t done him in.”

Huk glided back down to the ground. “Which way do you think we’ll be traveling?”

“South, I imagine,” replied Sixy. “I think I’ve got the schedule pretty well figured out by now.”

“That means the jungle country,” said Jape, two of his arms folded over his chest.

“Right you are,” said the pudgy Sixy. “Even more heat and humidity than we have here. I think this is the start of the rainy season, too.”

“Judging by the current downpour,” said Professor Zumm, “I would conclude that you are probably correct.”

Thunder began rumbling far off; the rain came down even more heavily. Soon lightning was crackling all around, turning the steamy sky a hazy white-blue color. Then several blue men came hurrying in out of the storm.

“The hour of embarkation appears to have arrived,” said Zumm.

T
he roar of the lions seemed an echo of the thunder. The animals grumbled and snarled as they headed out of their cage and up the temporary loading ramp which led to the suspended monorail train.

The heavy rain hammered down on the clear pseudoglass roof of the passway from the loading area up to the passenger cars of the long silver train. Flash was walking beside Jape. “How dependable is the train service?” asked Flash.

One of his hands pressed against his forehead, Jape was watching the cloud-filled sky. “On a night such as this anything might happen,” he said. “It would probably be best to postpone moving the circus, but Barko seems dedicated to keeping on schedule.”

Their train car was almost cylindrical inside, its walls covered with panels of colored silk. The seats were silvered metal and dark, pocked leather. The air was chill.

Each performer was ordered, by gesture or an occasional shove with a shockstick, into a separate seat. Each had a wrist manacled to the arm of his chair.

Flash was locked in a seat midway in the car. “What distance are we likely to travel?” he asked Sixy, who was being fastened to the chair immediately across the aisle.

The pudgy high-wire man picked up a scrap of crumpled wrapping paper from the floor with his toes. “They’re not keeping the trains up as well as they did on our last trip.” He dropped the scrap from his toes to his free palm. “Dusty windows, too, and there’s one with a crack in it. Forgive me for rambling, Flash. I always like to do a little complaining when I settle into a new place. Anyway, we’ll most likely be traveling most of the night.”

The loading of the entire Interplanetary Circus took another hour. The storm persisted, rain beating down, lightning ripping across the sky. Rumbles of thunder rolled across the city.

Then the long heavily laden train began to move, carried forward by the suspended cable. By the time they reached the outskirts of town, strong winds were lashing at the hanging train cars.

Booker was a few seats ahead of Flash. “This is rotten weather,” he said. “I’d rather be locked up in a cell than dangling in this thing. It isn’t fair.”

“Your obliviousness to experience is a continual source of wonder to me,” remarked Zumm from the other side of the swaying train.

“What’s that supposed to mean, clown?”

“One would assume that by now you would have learned not to expect fair treatment from our worthy captors.”

“Well, I know what’s fair,” persisted Booker. “These guys don’t even care what happens to us.”

A round-headed guard entered their car. He sauntered along the aisle, a silver shockstick swinging in his hand.

All conversation ceased.

“Don’t you know we shouldn’t be traveling in this rotten weather?” Booker told the guard. “We could all get killed.”

The blue man continued walking.

“You’ll be killed, too,” Booker called at his back. “You can die just as easy as us.”

The guard halted when he reached the end of their car. There was an empty seat there. He took it, resting with his shockstick across his lap.

The train sped on through the storm. At times the cable and the framework which held it a hundred feet or more above the ground were pelted by heavy rain. The train was rocked by ferocious winds as it passed over rocky canyons and whizzed by the tops of high, twisted trees. Sometimes they came so close to the trees that the heavy branches lashed at the windows.

After the circus train had been traveling for several hours and there were only a few scattered lights flickering in the wet darkness, a bent blue man came shuffling into Flash’s car. He moved slowly along the aisle, stopping beside Flash.

The guard sat up, got a better grip on his stick, watching.

Nord smiled at Flash, his half smile. He pointed upward, then at the blond young man. Nodding his head, he smiled again with one side of his face.