9/11 25th Anniversary THE BIG LIE

Before the phrase became indelibly-associated with Don da Con's paranoid delusions about the 2020 elections......

...it defined the paranoid delusions of the pre-QAnon nuts who inhabited the internet in the early 2000s about the events of 9/11/2001!

You can read excerpts from the the unverified tale

HERE

and buy the comic itself

HERE

FLASH GORDON THE MOVIE "Interlude" & Chapter 12 "Here Comes the Bride"

Read the Precious Chapter HERE!

Interlude

NOT only was the moon dangerously veering from its orbit, but comets careened wildly into the Earth’s path. The texture of the ether developed unusual, indescribable colors at various places for extended periods, as if the universe itself was somehow sickened by the Earth’s presence. On the planet, things had become even stranger.

Huge evergreens burst through the ice-packed surface of the North Pole. Ricky Montrose of Tazewell, Virginia, fell through a dimensional portal temporarily created by an electrical disturbance in the atmosphere; the kid was never seen again, much to the relief of his parents. (“He was a little terror!” Mr. Montrose became fond of saying.) Enrico Brusati of Rome discovered that his weight consistently registered at thirty kilograms, though his girth remained the most spectacular (or repulsive) in the city; no one could put forth a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon, and Enrico adamantly refused to permit the doctors to puncture his belly with a hat pin, even under the strictest conditions. Pravda insisted there was nothing fishy going on in the U.S.S.R., an observation which normally would have passed without notice; but the Soviet news agency made the remark every day, and foreign diplomats sent secret correspondence to their superiors complaining about the tigers stalking the streets of Moscow.

Theoretical physicists, however, became preoccupied with the color variations of the ether, and when Dr. Peter Falkenburg of the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, California, read a newspaper article on the disappearance of the Montrose boy, he had a startling premonition of Earth’s ultimate fate. “Only one man can construct a device which can send out rays to halt the degeneration of the ether,” said Dr. Falkenburg to a colleague. “We must find this man and offer him all the assistance he requires. He’s our only hope!”

“Who is this man?” asked the colleague, lighting a cigarette.

“Dr. Hans Zarkov!”

Here Comes the Bride

FLASH was on his knees constructing a parachute from a blanket when the abrupt swaying of the Sky Palace knocked him off the platform. He grabbed a bar, pulled himself into a hole, and found himself sliding down a tubular silver chute, unable to halt or even impede his progress. I hope there’s some laundry down there so I have a soft landing, he thought.

The chute took him to a dock. Holding onto the sill he had grabbed to break his fall, Flash realized he was seeing a rocket cycle, probably used by friendly visitors of the Hawk Man Kingdom. He had never before seen this invention, and consequently he had no idea how to fly it. But he thanked the Fates he was a fast learner.

Maintaining his balance with difficulty as he crossed the floor, he straddled the cycle, supporting himself by leaning against a metal bar. He gunned the engine. The force of the cycle’s kick, combined with the violent lurching of the palace, sent him flying against the wall. He pulled himself back onto the cycle and gunned it again, this time prepared for its kick. Exhaling bolts of flame so hot their color was pink, the cycle slid down its short track.

Unnoticed by all, Flash was a kilometer away from the Sky Palace when it exploded.

Sitting on a limb on the forest moon of Arboria, Luro the HawkMan picked an insect off his chest. “They were brave creatures, Vultan. With respect, the man who rid us of Klytus shouldn’t be deserted.”

Vultan winced. It was bad enough he was feeling claustrophobic beneath the canopy of foliage, but Luro had spoken loud enough for several of his other Hawk Men perched in the trees to hear. “Will you shut up? So maybe I’d do it differently if I could. But there’s no way I can help a man who’s dead!”

“Perhaps . . .”

“Yes?” said Vultan eagerly.

“No. Forget it. I was going to say that you could ensure that Flash Gordon didn’t give his life in vain, but it’s too ridiculous to even contemplate.”

Vultan pursed his lips and nodded. “True, true. Still, it’s too bad.” Resting his elbows on his knees, he placed his large fists beneath his bearded chin.

Suddenly, static drowned the murmurings of the HawkMen. A familiar voice manifested itself. “Flash Gordon to Vultan; do you read me? Mayday! Mayday!”

The Prince of the HawkMen looked about. Like many of his kind, he believed in reincarnation, but this development was unprecedented. Then he smiled with relief. He spoke into a wrist communicator. “This is Vultan. I read you! Where are you?”

“Flying blind on a rocket cycle.”

“We’re in Arboria. I’ll send you a homing beam.”

“Thank you, Vultan.” A pause. “For what it’s worth, Ming’s got Dale, Zarkov, and Barin.”

“I see,” the Prince said heavily. “My thanks to you.”

“Yeah? What for?”

“Oh, for giving a dumb old bird a second chance. After all, the worth of a man’s life can only be judged by the droppings he leaves behind him. Over to homing beam!”

Vultan suppressed a thrill of pleasure, for he knew he had committed himself and his subjects to a harrowing enterprise which would possibly result in the death or total subjugation of all. Nevertheless, he did not doubt his subjects would accept the risk. Some, such as Biro and Luro, would welcome it.

A certain blond Earthling also welcomed it. While flying a rocket cycle through green and blue skies he let out whoops and hollers and other Alabama war cries.

Dale Arden, on the other hand, experienced no exhilaration, no hope, no sensation, only an overpowering numbness and weariness that caused her every movement to be the result of a tremendous effort. Sitting on a bed of pillows, surrounded by unfortunate harem women who reveled in their exploitation, Dale resisted the comfort offered by the more hedonistic women who liked to keep in practice. Under different circumstances, her pink and blue gown would have inspired a number of sensual fantasies in her subconscious; its touch was soft, like the caress of a tender man. And knowing the caresses she would soon be subjected to, like any woman who permitted powerful men to use her body in any fashion they deemed fit (without regard for the spirit residing inside), she felt like a traitor to everything she had believed in, not to mention everything Flash would have wished for her. The fact that she had no choice but to surrender was not comforting, not in the least.

The doors to the chamber opened. Two red-robed guards threw Aura, daughter of Ming the Merciless, onto the bed of pillows.

Suddenly, the weariness left Dale. She felt alive again. But she was more like an animal than a thinking creature as she bore upon Aura and slapped her with all her might, sending her flying across the bed.

“Are you mad? Stop!” exclaimed Aura. “I’m a prisoner too!”

“You damned Mongoperson!” said Dale, ruthlessly and repeatedly striking Aura with a pillow, then wading in with her tiny fists. “You couldn’t tell the truth to save your life!”
Aura warded off the blows, only to find herself speaking to a wrestling opponent. “Dale, stop! I’m going to be exiled to Frigia in the morning!”

“Liar!” Rolling onto her back, Dale threw Aura across the bed for the second time. Her knee gave Ming’s daughter extra impetus.

Before Dale could renew the onslaught, Aura rushed toward the door, which opened automatically. However, the two guards threw her back into the room. On their knees, Dale and Aura faced each other across the pillows.

The savage rage was beginning to leave the Earthling now, but her hatred remained at a constant level. “It’s a trick,” she said woodenly.

“Is this a trick? Could tears come from my eyes if my heart hadn’t changed?”

Dale leaned over and touched the liquid flowing down Aura’s cheeks.

“I’ve been such a spoiled fool, Dale. I never knew what my father was until he let Klytus put the Bore Worms on me.” She shrugged. “I confess that at first the pain was rather interesting, but as the little creatures made progress, the pain became out of control, utterly unbearable.”

“I believe you, Aura, but I don’t trust you. You have Ming’s blood in your veins. You’ll be cozying up with him again in the morning.”

“Not if you give him this.” She pulled a black compact from the depths of her flimsy pink gown. “It’s a deadly poison. Unless his passions have gained complete control of him, my father drinks a Power Potion before he makes love. Drop this into his chalice!”

Dale stared at the compact for several moments, contemplating and discarding several courses of action. Then she shook her head. “I can’t, Aura. Not after I gave your father my word of honor.”

“What word?”

“To try to be a good wife if he’d spare Doctor Zarkov and Barin. He vowed he would.”

“My father has never kept a vow in his life!”

Dale appeared crestfallen. “Oh? And he seemed so sincere. Well, isn’t that just like a man? But I can’t help it. Keeping our word, or at least trying to, is one of the things that make us Earthlings better than you Mongopeople.”

Aura’s reaction was destined never to be revealed. For at that moment the door opened again. Flanked by two guards, Hedonia entered, wearing an ornate green gown that, Dale noticed with some satisfaction, exposed a bit too much of her tummy for her own good.


“Follow us,” Hedonia said to Dale. “It is time to prepare you for the bliss which is to come.”

Her lower lip trembling, Dale grabbed Aura’s wrist. “I’m lost. Nothing can save me now!”

A rocket cycle tore through the shimmering veils and swirling colors of the Mongian sky. Flash Gordon maneuvered it through the winds. He felt merged with the megaunits of power expended by the cycle; his muscles flexed with pleasure whenever he manipulated the steering controls. He zoomed over the peasants laboring in the mines, the vast forest of pale crystals, the charred remnants of Ming’s personal firing range, and finally, into the valleys and crevices carved into the barren land about the Mongian city. Flash felt an exhilaration he had never imagined possible as he swooped into an especially large crevice and saw the red and yellow city before him, at this distance an insect in his path, fated to be crushed and then forgotten. As it loomed, he gained more respect for it, but it was still a thing to be conquered, and he experienced a fraction of the pleasure Ming knew every day of his life. He permitted himself a moment of philosophical speculation, thanking the Fates he had always possessed a firm set of principles guarding him from the darker side of human nature, a luxury Ming had never enjoyed. And with that moment acknowledging the common spiritual bond between them, Flash divested himself of all feelings of nebulous kinship with Ming. The Ruler of the Universe was his foe. For the first time in his life, Flash was prepared to cast his principles into the void. After all, the hand of Dale Arden, not to mention the fate of Earth, was at stake.

He accelerated the rocket cycle. It shot forward dangerously, but he held the controls securely.

General Kala sauntered up and down the rows of monitors with an intense air. She could not have been happier if Ming had granted her a kingdom. The sudden loss of Klytus was an unexpected reprieve from a symbolic term of confinement.

Consequently, she became extremely deflated when the colonel from Battle Control appeared on her telescreen and said, “General Kala, Flash Gordon is approaching!”

“What?” she exclaimed.

“Yes, on a HawkMan rocket cycle. Shall I inform His Majesty?”

“Imbecile. The Emperor would shoot you for interrupting his wedding with this news. Fire when Gordon’s in range. Dispatch War Rocket Ajax to bring back his body.”

Flash swung around the rocket cycle as lasers, fired by cannons, bolted about him. Their heat seemed to singe the atmosphere itself. Unable to resist a grin, Flash prayed the Mongians’ communication devices were unable to transmit a close-up of him. His grin widened when he looked over and glimpsed the battleship slowly following him, like an obese carnivore suddenly granted the power of flight.

Aura rode upward in an elevator with a red guard. Her lower lip protruded more than usual, but otherwise she concealed her agitation admirably. She thought of the life she would lead on Frigia. It wasn’t the coldness she minded so much, but the inadequate men of the icy moon. The ever present subzero temperatures had a definite detrimental effect on some of her favorite pastimes.

She wore a golden headdress, a pink gown, and a complimentary wrap that hung from her shoulders like a cape. She unloosed the wrap and let it drop.

“Pick that up, would you?” she asked the guard in a commanding tone.

The guard obeyed instantly.

Just as his fingers touched the wrap and were beginning to tighten about it, Aura withdrew two long pins from her belt. Gritting her teeth (she had never personally killed before), she buried the pins deep in the guard’s back.

She appreciated the satisfied thrill that ignited her heart as she listened to the discordant noises of the guard’s mechanical parts breaking down.

Dale Arden felt like a poison was seeping into her pores; the sensation of her glittering black gown was abhorrent. Her life stretched before her like a dreary monologue in purgatory, and she foresaw an existence without joy and without pleasure. Already the thought of her limbs intertwined with those of the debased murderer filled her with a revulsion unparalleled in her memory. The more intimate details of their marriage—well, she wondered why he found it necessary to marry her at all, if that was what he wanted. She sensed more than she knew the answer; he had to marry her if the consummation of his lust was to defeat her totally. If he took her without their mutual vows, she would still be free in her heart, regardless of the debaucheries he committed on her body.

Boy, I haven’t slept with anybody like that since I was in high school, she thought.

As she walked down the seemingly endless hallways, escorted by two silent guards, she heard the voice of General Kala over the public address system:
“Attention, all wedding guests. While you await the ceremony, all palace screens will display for your viewing entertainment the executions of the traitors Barin and Zarkov.”

This news so numbed Dale that the guards held her arms and forced her to walk onward. Her only thought was a recurring chorus of That heel, that heel.

A weight within her crushed her organs. She had never before felt so alone.

“Tell me more about this man Houdini,” said Prince Barin to Doctor Zarkov. His interest was genuine, for they both were blindfolded and chained against a dungeon wall. They conversed to pass the time, to share their mutually incomprehensible dreams, to forge a bond of friendship.

For despite their widely divergent backgrounds, they shared a longing for freedom and spiritual wholeness. Both desires had been suppressed in Barin’s breast, and he envied Zarkov his control over many factors of his personal destiny. Barin instinctively grasped that until he had decided to fight with Flash and not against him, his life had been fashioned totally by naturalistic forces. Zarkov, however, had undergone heady moments of well-being and good wishes toward the universe, moments when the entire history of Earth seemed to swell in his breast and enlarge his sense of personal identity. How sad that their lives were to end so soon, when this scientist could have taught him the nuances of living he fervently desired to learn.

Zarkov, too, found Barin interesting, particularly as a subject frequently in touch with the right hemisphere of his brain. He regretted (what he considered to be) the myriad failures of his own life, especially the lonely days spent without the warm, passionate, hot, burning touch of a woman.

They tensed as they heard the dungeon doors opening.

A laser fired twice. Something shattered and fizzled.

“Oh my God! Barin!” exclaimed Zarkov, suddenly buried beneath a crippling sorrow for his departed, barbaric friend.

Another burst.

Miraculously, Zarkov found himself dropping. He nearly collapsed when he landed. He pulled off his blindfold to see Aura speaking into a communicating device in the wall.
“Scanner malfunction, Area Seven Seven Delta. Under repair . . .”

The Earth scientist and the Mongian Prince had not been prepared for hope. Looking into one another’s eyes, they repressed their laughter until Aura released the communicator controls. When they saw that an unknown insurrectionist had painted “Long Live Flash!” on the wall between their places of bondage, they shook hands and embraced like brothers.

Flash flew the rocket cycle on a zig-zag path toward a red-tinged cloud hanging in a yellow sky. Laser beams flew past him, and he knew it was a matter of time before one struck him or his vessel. However, as he disappeared into the cloud, the warship ran out of time. He was nowhere to be detected.

The ornate behemoth hung in front of and below the cloud. Though it waited patiently, the captain inside was anything but patient. He paced about the command console; his men silently awaited his orders while he merely waited.

The captain could not know (and he was not clever enough to suspect) that Flash had emerged above the cloud to greet an army of hovering HawkMen, spread out across the sky in a magnificent formation. They were armed with swords and Mongian explosives and lasers and clubs and with courage.

Vultan grinned, baring nearly all his white teeth, as Flash halted the rocket cycle beside him. He was proud of the Earthling, who had learned the subtleties of the vessel well under his tutorship.

“Our trap play worked well, Vultan,” said Flash.

“Excellent!” replied the HawkMan Prince vigorously, his stiff wings flapping; he hovered like a somnambulistic hummingbird. “Now they’ll electrify the cloud.”

Indeed, at that very moment the captain gave the order: “Charge capacitators to electrify the cloud. Prepare sky nets to catch Gordon’s body.”

The red cloud crackled with white bolts that not only embraced it, but crisscrossed through it so closely together that not even a bird could have survived the vicious onslaught. After a few moments, the captain ordered the electrical barrage to be halted. And waited.

As the cloud began its gradual dissipation, Vultan ordered the first wave of HawkMen to attack. The majority remained where they were . . . and waited.

Flash watched the first wave disappear into the cloud, and he wondered about the texture of their lives; he prayed for them. He knew that in war men were fodder for the generals and little else, fodder which had to be conserved because supplies were limited, but he also knew that each HawkMan possessed his hopes, dreams, and desires, the intangible objects that granted life its meaning. He trusted that each man who died today died willingly, for a cause he fervently believed in.

As the first wave of HawkMen descended upon the war rocket, Ming’s minions burst from the open hatches and onto the railways and fins with a thundering roar. Lasers singed the atmosphere. HawkMen struck soldiers with clubs, stabbed them with broadswords, sent them falling from the ship. But the soldiers possessed superior weaponry, and many a Hawk Man fell from the sky as his body bled and his wings burned due to the scorching heat of the laser blasts. Soon the battle area was filled with the screams of the dying; the ship was stained with the colorful Mongian blood; and bodies of both sides regularly plummeted.

Watching the scene from above, Flash hardened himself against his more compassionate emotions as the battle progressed and the cloud dissipated. The HawkMen were taking a terrible beating, but that was part of the plan. Flash spied old, irascible Biro, who radiated the vitality of twenty younger men, who had insisted so stubbornly on performing his appointed task that not even Vultan could overrule him; Biro crawled along the fin of the warship, carrying the explosive device which would blow up the bulkhead and allow the Hawk Men easy access inside. Biro crawled through the smoke of charred skin and overheated engines; he warded off several attackers; he planted the device (the bottom of which was a suction cup) and pulled out the antenna that would receive the detonation signal. Then he cried out; he grasped his side, nearly rolling off the fin.

“Biro’s been hit!” exclaimed Flash. “I’m going in!” And he promptly suited his actions to his words, revving up the cycle and bolting through the remaining wisps of red cloud.

“That young hothead!” said Vultan. Then he thought of Biro lying on the fin, of Flash’s bravery, of how the Earthling had not hesitated to rush to the aid of a companion he barely knew. “Ah, well, who wants to live forever?” he called out, laughing boisterously. “Attack! Dive, my Hawk Men, dive!”

And the remaining wave of Hawk Men swooped down to join the fray.

Flash leaped off the rocket cycle and onto the fin. Part of him was surprised at how he had accepted the grosser aspects of battle now that he was in the midst of it. He lifted Biro’s wing, winced at the sight of the wound, which must have been painful, minor though it was.

“Are you all right?”

“They just winged me. Here’s the detonator,” said Biro hoarsely, removing a tiny control unit from his belt.

Flash dragged Biro to safety and pressed a button on the unit.

The bulkhead exploded. Men (inside and outside, friend and foe) screamed as shards of metal exploded in a deadly spray. At least one soldier caught pieces in his head and heart. Flash’s stomach turned as he saw a Hawk Man collapse and futilely attempt to halt the blood gushing from his wounded leg. A soldier shot the HawkMan, putting him out of his misery. Picking up a laser gun Biro had appropriated during the battle, Flash sliced the soldier in half. He ignored his pleasurable sensations.

Flash moved into the warship.

Elsewhere, Vultan waded through the fray like an elemental force that only materialized whenever groups of men battled one another. He smashed in a skull with his club, disemboweled a second foe, and shattered a jaw, sending his victim plummeting. He stood tall and proud. There was an air about him, as if he was fated to survive the day, as if he was positive he would emerge from battle unharmed. That air, as much as his undeniable skill, was his greatest weapon. Vultan only allowed himself to be diverted from the task at hand when he heard the explosion. He glanced up, saw Luro make an affirmative and defiant gesture. “To the bulkhead, my Hawk Men, to the bulkhead!”

Soon Vultan caught up with Flash and the foremost HawkMen as they fought their way through the ship. A HawkMan set an explosive which tore asunder the door leading to the command post.

As the HawkMen barged in, fighting and slaying all who stood in their way, Flash tossed a Mongian grenade at the second level, killing the soldiers or else rendering them incapacitated. Vultan slew the captain.

The HawkMen had taken the warship.

Aura led Zarkov and Barin through the maze of dungeon hallways she had often explored as a child; she was amazed she remembered them so well. They reached an elevator door. Aura manipulated her ring; a light shone from the jewel onto the fixture beside the door. “They’ve changed the code!” she exclaimed.

Before she had the opportunity to despair, Zarkov lifted her wrist next to the fixture and began fiddling with her device. “It’s okay. I’ll try to work it out.”

Aura turned to Barin, who hefted the laser she had taken from the guard. Ever since she had been in his presence, her knees had been weak, and she yearned for him to take her in his strong arms. She could not recall having previously felt this way about a man, but there was a purity and security in Barin’s spirit that attracted her to him as if he were completely new in her life, as if she had finally met the man she would gladly call master.

“I’ve changed too, Aura,” said the Prince of the Tree Men.

“So have I,” she replied breathlessly.

“Can you still love me?” he asked, knowing full well the answer.

“I don’t know. We’ll try.” But there was no commitment in her voice. “I don’t know what kind of relationship would satisfy me. I’m not the monogamous type.”

“I know.” Barin smiled in a manner which implied he understood her internal conflict. “You have needs.”

“Yes. Perhaps an open, liberal relationship would be the best thing.” Though her words seemed to widen the gulf between them, she found it difficult to resist him as he leaned over to kiss her. She knew the kiss would be tender. Though Zarkov kept distracting her by moving her arm around, she had never known such a tenderness. She broke away with an effort. “Not now, Barin!”

For a moment Barin’s former personality reasserted itself. “You haven’t changed!”

“Please! If I’m not at the wedding I’ll be shot!”

At that point Zarkov succeeded in cracking the code. A light stabbed out of her wrist, and the elevator door opened.

As Barin moved past her to join Zarkov, Aura succumbed to her overwhelming passions and planted a kiss on her lover that almost caused him to drop his weapon.

“Hurry!” said Zarkov.

Aura ran down the hallway, and Barin entered the elevator. As the door closed, Zarkov said, “I thought it was a prime number. Part of the Zeitman series. I haven’t changed!”

HawkMen jury-rigged the warship instruments that had been damaged during the battle. Flash was amazed at how quickly and efficiently they worked on the complicated equipment; he recalled Vultan had confided in him that his people had been preparing several years to revolt against Ming. The arrival of Flash and friends, which had caused events to get out of hand, had merely caught them off guard. Flash did not see any prisoners of war, and he pointedly avoided inquiries concerning their treatment. He concentrated on mastering the warship flight controls.

Biro looked up from the instruments he had been working on; he wiped his brow and smiled. “Autopilot repaired.”

Vultan slapped his round belly. “Good, good. All right, everybody take off! Luro!”

“Yes?”

“Watch Biro here; see that he stays out of trouble.”

Luro and Biro grinned at one another, it was clear they both would be going out of their way to find trouble once the main battle commenced.

Vultan shrugged. Those two, he thought warmly. “Form into a battle stream behind the rocket,” he ordered. “Flash and I will bail out when the shooting starts.”

As the HawkMen filed out, Flash pushed buttons on a device in the upper right corner of his console. Numbers ran backward.

“What’ve you set there?” Vultan asked.

“That’s how long Earth has left, Mongian time. One of your mathematicians figured it out for me. The differentials due to the space curvatures gave him trouble at first, but I almost wish he hadn’t done such a good job.”

The digital clock read three minutes forty-three seconds.

“Level with me, Vultan. Will this do it?”

“No doubt. They’ll switch on the lightning field around the city. And when this baby hits it—BOOM! It’ll blow that field dead, and my HawkMen fly right in.” He twirled some radio dials. “Let’s hear what the airwaves have to say!”

Vultan and Flash stood frozen as the traditional ceremonial music of Mongo crackled through the speaker.

Flash turned pale. “Oh my God.”

Though the stoic monitors cared not for how her mannerisms indicated her emotional state of mind, Kala found their presence unnerving as she paced back and forth. Without warning, she had found herself fighting off a HawkMan attack while Ming was engaged in a social function he would not permit to be interrupted. Sometimes she wandered to the main console, which she alone knew how to operate now that Klytus was dead, but mostly she paced the length and breadth of the room.

The face of the colonel posted at Battle Control appeared on the screen. “I am pleased to report that Rocket Ajax is returning, General Kala.”

“With Gordon’s body?”

“I presume so. Communications are out for some reason.”

Suddenly alert, Kala dashed toward the main console. “Are they in the proper approach pattern for today?”

The colonel hesitated, licking his lips. “Actually, they are not.”

“Open fire.”

“On Ajax, General?”

“Open fire! All weapons! And charge the lightning field. I take personal responsibility in the Emperor’s name.” Though I reserve the right to change my mind at some future date. As the turrets’ shocks reverberated throughout the castle, Kala spoke into the public address system, “Attention, all wedding guests. There is no cause for alarm. The city’s weapons are being fired in continuous barrage in honor of His Imperial Majesty’s wedding.”

As Dale slowly marched the intricate path through rooms and the throngs of the court, her life became even more desolate. Her ornate black headdress seemed to weigh her down. She was totally unaware of Aura’s renewed treachery against her father, of the escape of Barin and Zarkov, of the attack upon the city led by Flash. She had become a person without an identity; no longer an individual by any definition of the word. Cut off from her past on Earth, her future became, impossibly, increasingly repulsive. When she heard the voice of Kala over the speakers, a twinge of hope momentarily stirred in her breast. Though she had perhaps indulged in too many attempts to make her fantasies (particularly those of a certain order) come true, she was a realist at heart, and she did nothing to nurture that hope. It was utterly impossible for Flash to have survived the explosion of the Sky Palace.

Thoughts of a similar nature went through Ming’s mind as he walked up a flight of steps which led from beneath the palace hall to the altar where he had wed so many times before. He wore his finest red clothing, the gold collar of his softest jacket being formed by three circular shapes that encased his visual perceptions in a luxurious cage. The anticipation he felt for this Earth woman threatened to distract him forever from the spiritual matters of genuine importance an emperor was duty-bound to dwell upon. However, he did not regret his preoccupation with mundane affairs. To the contrary. Oneness with the universe could wait a while.

That is why Ming nodded with approval when he heard Kala explaining that the barrage of gunfire was merely a salute. He did not wonder why she had ordered this unprecedented act. Nervously rubbing the fingers of his right hand, he hurried to his wedding as quickly as his stoic façade would permit.

The gaudy city, which resembled a plastic toy from a distance, was enclosed in a net of ever-moving yellow gold bolts. Flash marveled at the power the Mongians possessed, for the city lights behind the field had not dimmed in the slightest. He was tempted to make some kind of moral judgment, but he was too busy dodging laser blasts and keeping the warship relatively on course. The ship had been hit several times, and it required all his strength to manipulate the altitude controls. Consoles hummed; exposed wires fizzled; white smoke even rose from the digital clock counting down the time remaining to Earth.

Vultan climbed up a ladder leading to the second level and an exit hatch, but he paused halfway when he realized Flash was not leaving the controls. “What are you doing? It’s time to bail out.”

“I forgot to tell you. I broke my rocket cycle.”

“So come on. I’ll carry you.”

“Bail out, Vultan—quick, while you still can.”

The Prince of the Hawk Men both leaped and flew toward Flash. “Are you crazy?”

“The laser fire’s too heavy. You know we’ll never hit that field with nobody at the wheel.”

“You’ll blow to pieces, Flash! It’s suicide!”

Flash tried to keep his voice steady. “No. A rational transaction—one life for billions.”

When Vultan grabbed his arm, he fought off the Prince. “You loony bird, go on, get out of here! Your men need you outside!”

White smoke intermingling with an odorous gray fume entered the control room as a terrific explosion rocked the warship; even Vultan nearly lost his footing. He regained his balance, then contemplated the Earthling as he slowly caressed his beard. “So long, Flash,” he said quietly, though the volume of laser fire continued to increase. “It’s been . . .”

“I know. For me too, Vultan.”

The warship swerved to one side and a rear exhaust sputtered. Vultan moved for the escape ladder. He paused when he had reached midway, as Flash said, “Tell Dale I know it would have been good.”

“That must be one hell of a little planet you guys have,” said Vultan.

Flash shrugged. “Not too bad.”

By now the city resembled not a toy, but a crazy arcade. The warship thundered forward though it was struck several times, sending showers of sparks onto the barren landscape. It thundered forward as if its metal parts had somehow become infused with Flash’s tremendous will.

Behind it were the HawkMen. They advanced bravely, avoiding the streaks of burning light stabbing through the air. Though he was horrified as a Hawk Man near him was turned into a charred parody of a man, Vultan’s voice was joyous as he communicated to his men via his wrist radio: “Onward, my brave warriors! Don’t, falter! Let this be known forever as Flash Gordon’s day!”

General Kala was dealing with the many communication breakdowns hampering her defense of the city when Barin and Zarkov burst into the room. Holding his laser at the monitors, Barin said, “Freeze, you bloody bastards! Freeze!”

The monitors, who up until that point had still spoken aloud, quietly informing Kala what they saw and what they were doing, instantly complied. Their sudden silence was eerie.
Standing behind the central console, Kala withdrew a laser pistol from her black leather holster. Barin instantly spun on his heel and shot the pistol from her hand. It twirled on the floor until it stopped cold in a corner.

Zarkov advanced toward Kala. “Take us to Ming!”

Kala said indignantly, “We do not lead traitors to the Imperial Presence.”

“I’ve heard that story many times before,” said Zarkov. “Don’t worry; we’ll find a way. Barin, why don’t you grab an imager from one of those agents?”

“Certainly,” said Barin eagerly. He tore an imager off the nearest monitor. Sparks flew and static resounded throughout the room as the Prince recoiled in unexpected horror. For the monitor did not possess eyes; instead, frayed wires protruded from his empty sockets. The monitor screamed silently and lowered his head against the console; a moment later the remaining monitors did likewise.

Zarkov rubbed his beard. “I wonder why I didn’t know they were cyborgs. Guess that information must be Level Seven.”

Unseen by both the intruders, Kala moved around the console and withdrew a slim tube from her boot. She aimed it at Zarkov, pressed a button. A tremendous jet of flame roared from the tube, singeing the scientist’s head, before Barin spoiled her aim by firing his laser directly into her chest. Collapsing, having expired instantly, she slid partway down the steps that separated the main console from the monitors.

Before Zarkov could thank Barin, the colonel from Battle Control appeared on the screen. “Rocket Ajax is still approaching. We guarantee its destruction when it reaches the lightning field. Life-form scanners identify Earthling Gordon at the controls.”

“Holy Moley!” exclaimed Zarkov. “We’ve got to do something!”

“General Kala?” said the colonel. “Will you please show yourself on the screen?”

Barin fired the laser toward the image of the colonel, and the communication device exploded with a crashing and hissing.

“We’ve got to deactivate that lightning field!” said Zarkov, rubbing his hands, anxious to get to work. “Not only that, but we’ve got to save the Earth!”

“Admirable goals, both of them,” said Barin, “but how can we accomplish them?”

“Thanks to my Level Six indoctrination, I think I can override the field controls here. Your mission, whether or not you choose to accept it, is to destroy the control panel of the third atomic generator near the pits of radioactive material.”

“But they’re too far away. I’ll never make it!”

Zarkov tapped his forehead. “I know a shortcut. Listen now, I’ve only got time to say this once. Go down the hall, make a left . . .”

A definite shortage of oxygen in the warship began to affect Flash’s performance. He felt dizzy. He knew he was going to die, but he had hoped it would be quicker than death by suffocation. Nevertheless, despite the difficulties, Flash managed to keep the warship on course.

Though her heart was pounding, Dale felt numb, practically deceased, as the short, balding priest Zogi, who possessed wayward clumps of gray hair and an obsequious manner unrivaled in all Mongo, performed the barbaric marriage ceremony. Dale, flanked by guards, stared at Ming standing opposite her. She was mesmerized by an unwelcome fascination with the evil aura of his unrepentant personality. His stoic façade had crumbled, and his lean features struggled to contain the expression of his pleasure.

“Do you, Ming the Merciless, Rightful Ruler of the Universe, take this Earthling to be your Empress of the Hour?”

“I do.”

“I don’t!” said Dale, futilely trying to pull away from the guards.

“Do you promise to use her as you will?” the priest asked.

“I do,” said Ming. His anticipation was keen.

“Not to blast her into space?”

Ming raised an eyebrow and glared.

Zogi cleared his throat. “Until such time as you grow weary of her?”

At that moment, Barin exchanged fire with red-robed guards in the corridor. As he hid in a recess, there was a hubbub of confusion as the guards got their orders mixed up. Barin took advantage of the situation and blasted them. He retrieved a high-powered laser from a tripod and, carrying it in both hands, rushed down the corridor. His greatest fear was that he had run out of time.

“The ring,” Ming said sternly.

Zogi’s eyes widened as he glanced at his aides. The second aide finally produced a crystal ring. Wide-eyed and perspiring, the priest gave it to Ming, who held it before Dale. A guard roughly lifted her hand into position, and Ming forced the ring onto her finger.

“Repeat after me, Your Majesty: With this ring I thee wed . . .”

“With this ring I thee wed . . .”

The lightning field was but a few seconds away when Flash heard the final vow of the ceremony over the radio. He had thought he would feel anger or sorrow, but instead he felt nothing, not even regret that he was about to die. He bit his lower lip. “Poor Dale. What a damn shame.”

Barin fired into the door and kicked it down. Before the startled Power Men could react, he began shooting at all the regulating devices and other controls. The machinery coughed up red smoke. A soldier on guard aimed a weapon, but Barin cut him in two.

Meanwhile, Zarkov pressed a button at the smoking console in the monitoring room. He had worked feverishly for the last two minutes, but now he experienced an elation much like Barin’s.

Flash did not know the lightning field had been switched off until the warship had nearly crashed into the castle.

The wedding guests had realized it seconds earlier, and Zogi and his aides had realized it before they. The priest’s eyes practically popped from their sockets, something they always did when panic gripped his soul and he lost faith in his gods (which occurred with alarming frequency). Knowing that his subconscious would forever regret he had not kissed the bride, knowing that escaping the oncoming rocket was more important than a little sexual titillation any day, he hiked up his robes and ran from the altar as quickly as his stumpy little legs would take him.

Ming raised an eyebrow.

The Emperor of the Universe saw Dale fleeing into the doorway from which she had emerged onto the altar. He wondered why the guards had not detained her. He noticed the guards fleeing from the palace hall. In fact, the entire wedding reception was running amok in all directions; the caterers had overturned the tables of food in their haste to find an exit.
At this point Ming could not fail to perceive the warship bearing down upon the gigantic picture window of the palace hall. The huge tine fixed to the bow seemed to call for him as the warship crashed through the window with an ear-splitting noise future generations would say was heard ’round the universe.

Ming ran to the right, he ran to the left, but in the end he stood where he knew the Fates had dictated he stand: in the center of the wedding platform. He did not feel pain, he did not experience fear, he only stared in astonishment as he grasped the tine which had passed through his chest. He did not hate Gordon, nor did he curse the Fates. For he knew during those moments, as only one who frequently communed with the universe could know, that he had been destined to lose.

As the Ajax crashed into the palace hall, it propelled Ming with it off the platform; his weight tipped it over as it came to rest, and he eventually appeared to be standing on the lower level, though in actuality the Ajax was supporting him.

Ming pulled himself forward on the tine. He left it vibrating behind him, coated with blue blood and pieces of his internal organs. Tenaciously holding on to life despite the inevitable, Ming knelt, tried to stand, refused to fall.

The blond Earthling, pale and shaken from his harrowing experience, crawled from the wreckage and retrieved a golden sword from the rubble. He raised it, fully prepared to use it if necessary.

“You could have been ruler of a kingdom,” said Ming hoarsely, defiantly turning his ring on Flash even as his life ebbed away.

“Turn off the generators and I’ll spare your life,” Flash said.

Ming’s upper lip curled in a snarl. “My life is not for anyone to take.”

“Your power is fading,” said Flash. He was fascinated at how Ming was becoming transparent before him, though he knew he should have been occupied with other matters.

Closing his eyes, Ming turned his ring on himself. He sent his will to uncharted realms, he divested himself of his considerable ego. The cold matter of the universe called. The myriad planes and dimensions of space became easily accessible to him. And as he sent his mind to the aforementioned uncharted realms, his atoms loosened their mutual bondage and became a red gas that flowed into his ring as if it had been sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.

For a long moment the ring stayed in the air; then it dropped onto the floor.

Flash lowered the sword.

Dale emerged from the doorway. Running toward him, she exclaimed, “Flash, Flash!”

Vultan entered the palace through the rubble created by the Ajax. “Congratulations, Flash! You’ve won!”

Barin burst through a doorway directly opposite Vultan. He held his weapon high. “I’ve destroyed the generator controls! The Earth is saved!”

At that point, the globe which had disintegrated the Lizard Man and Zarkov’s pistol flew into the room and halted in front of Flash. The victors tensed, Flash stepping before them.
“Hail, Flash Gordon, conqueror of Mongo!” said the globe.

Shouting with delight, Flash leaped into the air, and pandemonium erupted throughout the courtroom.

To Be Concluded Tomorrow at Atomic Kommie Comics

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FLASH GORDON THE MOVIE Chapter 8 "Crashing on Arboria"

 Read the Previous Chapter HERE!

Crashing on Arboria

The inscription on the brass plate read:

FLASH GORDON, EARTHLING.

EXECUTED FOR DEFIANCE OF

MING THE MERCILESS.

The black glass coffin containing the corpse had been paraded by soldiers throughout the Mongian city, serving the citizenry an example of what happened to those who defied Ming’s rule. There was no indication of how the citizenry reacted to this; no one dared speak, not to his mate or to his closest friends or to his family, for no one was to be trusted and Ming rewarded his spies well. But Klytus’s underground network, which kept tabs on every event or word which might be of interest to the regime, knew this: While individuals had not taken a stand on the context of Gordon’s speech to the court, they had not been reluctant to report its occurrence. The information banks of Klytus’s computers contained the names and serial numbers of those who had inadvertently reported to spies.

The coffin rested on a metal stand in a small room near the stoves where the Mongian dead were cremated. Here the nobles and their families said farewell to their loved ones. A hunchbacked dwarf wiped the glass coffin clean of fingerprints with a handkerchief; he paid more attention to his reflection in the shiny dark panels of the wall than he did to his work. (In his strata of society, he was regarded as a handsome devil; all the available female hunchbacked dwarfs were warm for his form.) Consequently, he was quite surprised when Aura, daughter to Ming the Merciless, wearing tight red trousers and a complimentary red tunic, entered the private room. She brought with her the brown-haired doctor.

Aura snapped her fingers several times. “Get out, get out, get out!” She tossed a clothing bag on the coffin. Then she clapped her hands as if she was speaking to a disobedient pet.

The dwarf was so shocked at her unexpected appearance that he did not know which supplication to perform first; he merely bowed twice as he hurried out. Aura slammed the door behind him.

The doctor was late middle-aged; he was pockmarked but comely; his body was soft, but that was to be expected of a man of science. He wore a white smock. Around his neck hung a Mongian stethoscope, which basically consisted of two flexible rubber tubes attached to a living bug with forty-eight squirming, thin legs. He set his medicine bag on top of the coffin.

“No!” exclaimed Aura, taking both the medicine bag and the clothing, placing them on the floor. Avoiding the doctor as he attempted to capture her in a mad embrace, she opened the coffin lid with a red beam that emanated from her ring. She stared boldly at Flash’s body, covered with a black shroud. “Hurry!” she said.

Pursing his lips, the doctor took a loaded injection gun from the medicine bag. “Do you realize what happens to me if I’m found out?”

“You won’t be,” said Aura automatically. A pause. “I swear,” she added just as automatically.

“I’m a fool for you, Aura.”

Laughing, Aura pulled the shroud away; with a trembling hand, she walked her fingers down his body.

The doctor fired the injection into Flash’s arm. He casually tossed the gun back into the bag, then applied the stethoscope to Flash’s chest. The creature, sensing blood, sent several legs deep into the skin. While the legs absorbed the fresh blood the creature needed to survive, its body mysteriously communicated the sounds of the heartbeat via the rubber tubing. The creature would not harm Flash, though it would leave a temporary mark somewhat resembling a hickey. The doctor nodded. “There we are. I think he’ll be just fine.” He yanked at the stethoscope. The creature was reluctant to release Flash. The doctor pulled four times before the creature relinquished its hold with a loud pop. “Think it’s time to get a younger one,” the doctor mumbled. He looked at Aura; anticipation gleamed in his eyes. “Sybaria again? Same place, next weekend?”

Aura stifled a yawn. “I can hardly wait.”

Before she could resist, the doctor grabbed her by the nape of the neck, pulled her over the corner of the coffin, and kissed her passionately, his tongue practically caressing her esophagus. When he released her, she finally remembered why she liked him, and it definitely had nothing to do with his personality. Grinning like a maniac, the doctor retrieved his bag and left her, as she had instructed and as his fear of exposure demanded.

Aura looked at Flash. Her eyelids fluttered. She kissed him. Her fingers dug into his scalp as if they could take root there. When she had finished indulging herself, Flash whispered, “Where am I?”

She placed her hands behind her back. “You’ve risen from the dead. I saved you.”

Flash pushed himself into a sitting position. “My God! How?”

“By magic, of course. With a kiss.”

“You’re a brave woman. After an eight-hour sleep, my breath alone could stun Ming at fifty yards. Where’s Dale and Zarkov?”

“Don’t worry about them; they’re safe for now.” She began pulling the clothing from the bag. “Well, I hate to do this, but I have to cover you up.”

“What?” Flash fingered his leather briefs. He grimaced.

“Quickly, before the other dwarfs come to cremate you. Put on this uniform.”

Flash hesitated, staring at her and then at the clothing.

“Oh, you’re such a child,” said Aura. “All right. I won’t look.”

She turned around and folded her arms across her stomach. The uniform she had given Flash consisted of a red leather jacket with golden insignia, a red T-shirt, black trousers, and black leather boots. She watched him dress in the reflection on the wall in front of her. Poking her cheek with her tongue, she nodded. “I like you a lot. You know that, don’t you?”

Aura escorted Flash to a conveyer belt in a seemingly endless tunnel with walls that were white, smooth, and curved. They were forced to crouch because the conveyer belt took them past many soundproof windows which, Aura explained, enabled her father to inspect the labs quickly and, to some degree, surreptitiously. Aura made Flash uncomfortable for many reasons, not the least of which was her insistence on crouching close to him. The scent of her perfume intoxicated his brain; he felt dizzy, he needed someone to support him, his legs were falling asleep and he swayed from side to side, but he was afraid to touch her. He resented her because he could not think of Dale while her obvious appetite tempted him.

Unfortunately, he was unable to distract himself by looking into the labs. The possibility of exposure was too great. In addition, he was not certain he wanted to know exactly what was transpiring below him.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, hoping they would leave this tunnel soon.

“To the moon Arboria.”

“Arboria? I don’t want to go to any moon. I’ve got to rescue my friends and save the Earth.”

“Isn’t it pretty risky telling that to Ming’s daughter?”

“Wasn’t rescuing me a pretty rash thing to do just for a thrill?” When he realized that Aura’s only reply would be a provocative smile, he asked, “What’s in Arboria?”

“People who’ll help you.”

“Why?”

“Prince Barin does anything I ask.”

I doubt it, Flash thought.

“Trust me,” she said with all the sincerity she could muster. In Flash’s opinion, it wasn’t quite enough.

Flash caught a glimpse of a cylindrical machine through one of the soundproof windows. The machine made him curious. He chided himself for being too cowardly to have peeked into the labs before. What he saw caused him to grip Aura’s shoulder and squeeze hard.

“You’re hurting me,” she said, not without some approval, as she removed his hand.

But Flash paid no attention to her. In the lab below, Zarkov lay strapped to a table, the tip of the cylindrical machine less than a yard from his nose. Green discharges of radiation danced between circular metal bands surrounding the lower third of the machine. With Zarkov were Ming, Klytus, a technician, and a busty woman who seemed to have a position of authority, if the manner in which she slapped her whip against her tight leather trousers was any indication. Though a large woman of an imposing height, she had a figure a Buddhist monk could not help but notice. Frozen with horror, Flash did not attempt to conceal himself as they passed by.

“It’s nothing,” said Aura, pulling him down. “They’re just conditioning him to our climate.”

“Right! You actually expect me to believe that!” replied Flash as he struggled to keep Zarkov in view as long as possible.

“Keep out of sight! Do you want us both killed?”

Knowing she was correct and resenting her all the more for it, Flash grabbed her by the arms; he restrained himself from shaking her. “Don’t you understand? I’ve got to help him.”

“There’s nothing you can do for him now. You’ve got to go to Arboria. What’s so important about saving him anyway?”

Flash released her, glared at her. “Life is pretty cheap to you people, isn’t it?”

“He is only a common scientist, no one to be truly concerned about.”

‘Let me tell you something about us Earthlings, Aura. Zarkov may be a weird bozo, he may have brought Dale and me here against our will, totally wrecking our lives, but his heart’s in the right place and he did what he thought he had to do. I have to stand by him because he’s my friend. With the exception of saving Dale and the Earth and a few other matters I can’t think of at the moment, saving Zarkov is the most important thing in the universe to me. You understand?”

Aura pursed her lips. “I must think about it.” Suddenly she smiled and her eyes glowed. “Have I told you I like you a lot?”

“Do your worst, friends!” proclaimed Zarkov. “Someday I’ll see if you can take it as well as you dish it out!”

Briskly slapping her whip on her calf, Kala leaned over and inundated the scientist with her hot breath. “I sincerely doubt it,” she said in a sultry voice. “And rest assured, we shall do our worst.” Kala had an oval face with classic bone structure, which she deliberately accentuated by concealing all her hair beneath her ornate gold headdress (Zarkov suspected she was merely bald). Her glittering black blouse had loose, slashed sleeves. Over it she wore a vestlike lamellar structure with wide gold borders that rose in curved peaks on her shoulders. In the black middle of the lamellar was a circular gold insignia. The leather of her knee-length black boots had been treated in a manner identical to the leather of the tassels creating the whip at the ferrule of a narrow black cudgel.

“Please, Kala, we should derive no personal pleasure in our work,” said Klytus, concealing his hands in his sleeves.

“I realize that is your goal,” said Kala harshly.

Why is she so hostile to him? thought Zarkov.

“But there are others who believe finding pleasure in one’s work is a virtue,” she continued.

“And what possible pleasure could there be in reprogramming this Earthling?” asked Klytus.

“The pleasure of serving Ming and the state of Mongo for one,” replied Kala, boldly exhibiting the note of triumph in her voice.

Klytus remained silent. Ming covered his mouth with his black glove. Seeing this, Zarkov scowled. Why would Ming suppress his unholy mirth about those two, why would he permit them to use his name openly in a petty disagreement unless . . .

Oh my God! thought Zarkov. She and Klytus must be rivals!

And Ming had no qualms against seeing Klytus squirm; Zarkov had noticed that during the audience in the palace hall. Their political situation must amuse Ming to no end. But it bodes ill for me.

Ming paced back and forth in an area where Zarkov could watch him between his feet and the tip of the cylindrical machine. He wore an ebony robe, highlighted and decorated in gold. “As one scientist to another, Doctor, I must tell you something I trust you will find interesting. Due to the curvature of space, time passes very slowly here in the eye of the cosmic whirlpool. Subjectively, it is the same, of course, but objectively, well, you’ve already been away from Earth for many weeks. Periodically, or every thousand years Earth time, I test each civilization our sensors have detected. I create structural disorder in its solar system, causing earthquakes, tidal waves, and unpredictable eclipses. If there is no response to speak of, I judge that system harmless; I spare it. But if the attack is countered in any way whatsoever, I conclude the civilization has reached a dangerous technological level. And then I call upon the vast spiritual resources inside me, my astral self contacts the ineffable oversoul of the universe, and I pervert it to my personal will. I destroy the civilization! I destroy its homeworld—utterly!”

“My God! I was the one who . . .” said Zarkov.

Ming smiled, nodding almost imperceptibly. “Yes.”

“You’re saying it’s my fault Earth is being destroyed!”

“You penetrate to the essence rather quickly, Doctor. I thought it might amuse you to know this before your mind is gone.” Ming turned to Klytus. “Proceed with it.” With a mock bow in Zarkov’s direction, Ming disappeared from view. Doors hissed open, then closed.

“What are you going to do to me?” asked the pale scientist. He feared the truth as much as he feared ignorance.

Perhaps there was a faint note of glee in Klytus’s voice as he replied, “We shall empty your mind.”

Zarkov tensed. He imagined himself sitting up and breaking his bonds with a strength born of adrenaline. But his appraisal of reality promised no hope. “What?” he mumbled, praying he had not heard correctly.

Kala’s note of glee was anything but faint. “We are going to empty your memory as we might empty your pockets, Doctor.”

“No! Don’t do that!” Despite the futility of it all, Zarkov struggled mightily against his bonds. “Please, I beg you, my mind is all I have. I’ve spent my life trying to fill it!” When he realized that the obviously unmoved Klytus and Kala perceived him much as the Nazis perceived the prisoners in concentration camps, he became angry and indignant. “All right, I’ve had just about enough of this. Your unoriginal emperor is going to treat Dale like a two-dimensional character in a spicy pulp story. You people execute Flash who was a little stuffy but was definitely a right Joe. Now you’re going to brainwash me! That is the last straw! I’m not going to lie here and take this any longer! And I must say that you Mongians are perhaps the rudest people I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter!”

Kala purred, “Yes, Doctor, you are most misfortunate.” Her voice froze him with horror.

Klytus nodded at the technician. “Begin.”

The green radiation dancing between the metal bands amplified. A loud crackling like a thousand chitinous shells being crushed underfoot drowned all other noises. A purple ray oozed from the tip of the cylindrical device like an ectoplasm escaping from a mouth; it absorbed Zarkov as he increased his frenzied struggles, it tightened about his skull, it seemed to draw substance from him.

Klytus and Kala looked to a screen where flashes and flickers from Zarkov’s life passed by like specters reborn. Though the pictures generally regressed toward his childhood, they were intermittently interrupted by sensuous visions of Zarkov’s liason with his second wife, perhaps the high point of his amorous adventures; for in an attempt to draw his attention away from the purely intellectual pursuits which, inevitably, demanded the greatest amount of his time, she led him down a progressively kinkier and kinkier path, eventually giving up in disgust and taking up with an accountant whose desires were as prodigious as her own. It was clear from the visual record unfolding on the screen that Zarkov’s memories of this time took precedence over his childhood impressions. An especially enticing scene from his point of view—involving black stockings, a whip, transvestism, half a lid of marijuana, Volunteers by the Jefferson Airplane, and a rocking horse—was revealed to his torturers just before the purple ray took him back to the womb, whereupon Klytus signaled for the technician to shut off the ray.

Breathing hard, staring at the screen as if it was still disclosing perverse delights, Kala said, more to herself than to Klytus, “Remind me to revise my opinion of these Earthlings sometime. Perhaps they aren’t so primitive after all.”

“I suppose that is true,” said Klytus, “if your definition of civilized creatures includes those with predilections for freely indulging in barbarous, sensuous, mindless pastimes of lust.”

“What would you know about it?” inquired Kala in a tone which implied that in her opinion, he knew nothing about it. When she received no reply, she calmed herself with an effort and asked, “Shall we reprogram now?”

“Yes, but don’t fill him with anything above Level Three. I doubt if the human mind could take it.”

“Is that a veiled reference to your Level Five and your so-called superiority since—the accident?”

“Kala, remember the chain of command. I am still your superior. And I said Level Three.” Putting his hand beneath her chin, he turned her face toward him.

“I understand,” said Kala, demurely closing her eyes. “Level Three only.”

“I will return after hearing reports from our spies among the people,” said Klytus, walking through the entry as the doors hissed open.

Kala stared at the closed doors for several moments. She cracked her whip on her thigh; she placed her other hand on her derriere. She thought of years past, of how she had openly declared her undying love and passion for Klytus after the accident that had increased his sexual potential even as it had squandered it, of the chemicals that had caused the glands regulating his emotions to go into a kind of hibernation that verged, if not on dormancy, than on deterioration, and of the many deaths that had befallen her when, after she had brazenly supplicated and humiliated herself before him, demonstrating in graphic details her proposals for their immediate future, he had matter-of-factly declared her body held no possible interest to him; even if he permitted her to touch it in the provocative ways she dreamed, he would be unable to feel the sensation. The rhythmic sting of her whip now caused her leg to throb with a stimulating heat. Her smile was cold and grim when she turned it on Zarkov. The indifference in her voice fully matched that of Klytus when she said to the technician, “Level Six.”

The ebony night of Mongo was ending when Flash and Aura walked onto the spacecraft dock nestling between the tallest towers of the castle. Seeing the size of the red tower nearly a hundred yards away, directly in front of him, Flash came close to comprehending, for the first time, the mighty fortress that was Ming’s. Beyond the tower, great shards of red-tinged and blue-tinged light broke through the thinning space clouds, exposing portions of the barrenness below. Though the scene was magnificent, it did not awe Flash. The Mongian landscape was a drab parody of sterility, and there could be nothing awe inspiring about seeing it stir to its vague half-life. Of course, a Mongian might discern a certain grim beauty in it, but none of the soldiers in the sleek uniforms of Ming’s space corps, who milled about and occasionally smoked a particularly odorous type of cigarette, noticed the concluding moments of the night.

The uniforms which most closely matched Flash’s red jacket and black trousers seemed to belong to men in authority.

Flash had already stood on the port for several moments before he realized what he was doing: coolly exposing himself to men who would surely recognize him. The muscles of his neck tensed like coils of rope, but he struggled to keep his mouth impassive and to quell the panic in his eyes.

One by one, the men saluted Aura. She returned their salutes and they smiled as they stood at attention. Flash saluted as few times as possible, as many men as possible at a time, in an attempt to avoid notice in case he was committing a grievous error. In addition, he realized that if he created a steady movement, more men would be predisposed to study his features.

“What are you trying to do?” Flash asked between his teeth as he and Aura walked toward one of the rockets. “I’m going to be recognized!”

Aura unfastened a button near the threshold of her bosom, and now her breasts strained desperately for freedom from her tight red jumpsuit. “I doubt they’ll be paying much attention to your face,” she said imperiously. “Fall three steps behind me. Only Ming himself may walk by my side!”

Flash resisted the urge to snap back at her. Of course she was correct. He could not deviate from custom. He could not permit his pride to be his downfall. He complied with her instructions.

He only glimpsed the larger fliers—silver or golden cigar-shaped objects, with fins and sharply articulated wings and huge tinelike protuberances fixed onto the bows. With their platforms bordered by thin low railings (at different places, depending on their design), the large fliers resembled Barsoomian vessels. Flash and Aura walked toward a bullet-shaped version devoid of platforms, containing a cabin with enough space only for a pilot and, if available, a copilot. Painted a dull red with glossy yellow half circles and bars highlighting its structure, the flier resembled a toy more than a functioning ship. Its bow protuberance was a little stub; a stylish silver fin stood on top of the cabin; its wings were hardly well-articulated. Standing about or leaning on the flier were three noncoms, wearing black trousers with red stripes and black shirts with red and yellow buttons and patches; they snapped to attention long before Aura’s whispers to Flash were within their hearing range.

“When they open the door for us,” she said, “get directly into the pilot’s seat.”

“Eh?” Flash replied. He was afraid the sudden, noisy wind blowing pockets of brown and black dust like crippled dervishes had caused him to misunderstand her.

But she did not have the opportunity to repeat herself. The soldiers saluted her; they squinted from the dust (the burst of wind was already dying) and they refrained with difficulty from overtly staring at Aura’s diversion. Flash realized his escape was as good as made.

“You promised me a lesson, pilot,” said Aura woodenly as an eager soldier opened the flier door. “Are you ready to, uh, give it to me today?”

Flash touched his eyebrow. “Never fear, my most illustrious lady. When you’re safe in my hands, you’ll soon enough overcome your fear of flying.”

Inside the flier, Flash was unable to conceal his consternation. The controls deviated from any design he had ever seen; they were positively incomprehensible, with panels that consisted merely of colored squares and others that were a morass of buttons, levers, and wires. Even the curved ceiling was layered with controls and apparatus, including two perplexing devices of three connected parallel bars vaguely shaped like a helmet, one above each seat.

“Don’t worry; it’s a lot easier than it looks,” said Aura, directing Flash to his chair. Sitting down herself, she passed a hand over a panel. The colored squares—red, green, blue, and yellow—glowed, and the ferocious engines buzzed like a slew of irate bumblebees. She pulled a microphone toward her face, pressed a button on its side. “Stand clear for blastoff!” Her voice echoed in the loud speakers above the dock. She passed her hand over the panel again.

Before Flash had the opportunity to fasten his safety belt, the flier was propelling itself toward the crimson skies above. Flash could not help but notice that Aura was pointedly leaving her diversion intact.

Dale lay on a luxurious, circular bed of silk pillows and silk sheets. Though a portion of her mind was still alert (she had estimated that the bed could comfortably hold twenty writhing bodies, so long as only five were reaching the most frenzied heights of ecstasy), she had never before experienced such an all-consuming numbness. She feared her impending fate with all her instinct, but all her intellect and emotional thought was focused on the loss of the great romantic love she had always yearned for. She had known it so briefly! Her numbness making her unable to distract herself with the smooth cool touch of the silk, Dale did not wonder about the chambers beyond this one (which was just large enough to contain the bed), she did not strain to hear the chatter of the harem women next door. She had been unable to arouse a flicker of interest when the women exchanged her red gown for this white one, an exact duplicate in all other respects. Apparently, Ming had changed his mind about what color would most please him. She cried for Flash, she prayed a part of his soul resided in her, she wished she had known him better, both socially and Biblically, she feared the cold merciless creature whose hands would soon caress her, who would demand that her (physical) passion match his, who would soon soil her private parts with his filthy seed, who doubtlessly would force her to engage in acts which if performed with Flash would be glorious statements of love directed toward the oversoul, but while performed with Ming would be hideous mockeries of Nature’s great gifts to humanity.

The door between the harem and the bed hissed open. Dale shivered, resisting the urge to cover her eyes; was it Ming? The question plunged her to the utmost depths of despair. She reluctantly turned, breathed an involuntary sigh of relief. It was Hedonia, an imposing brunette wearing a flimsy series of veils exposing an array of freckles on her shoulders and back. On a tray, balanced on her left hand as if she were a truckstop waitress, was a bronze chalice; the liquid inside bubbled audibly. Hedonia knelt beside her. “Drink this, Earthling.”

Dale peered into the chalice. She wrinkled her nose at the odor of the aquamarine liquid. “What is it?”

“It has no name. Many brave men died bringing it from Galaxy 6R-3Y. When the stocks become depleted, many more brave men will die. Here; drink it. It will make your time with Ming more agreeable.”

Dale lifted her hand to knock away the chalice, but then she reconsidered. “Will it make me forget?”

“No, but you won’t mind remembering.”

Dale took the chalice and drank from it. The final swallow nearly caused her to gag. She returned the empty chalice to Hedonia and waited for the liquid to take its effect. Before a minute had passed, she felt a curious warmth in her stomach; all her fears and tensions had been erased, and she was in tune with the rhythms of life and the mysteries of the universe. She perceived that nothing was evil and nothing was good, that everything was, instead, neutral. She accepted Flash’s death and her impending fate with an elated fatalism. In addition, her head spun, sweat beaded on her brow, and she had a vicious attack of heartburn. Her eyes widened. “Wow. That stuff isn’t bad at all.”

“That’s why men don’t mind dying for it. Listen: soon a slave girl will bring you a potion which will unleash your carnal desires. You will be absolutely pliable to Ming’s instructions. He will take you to . . .”

“Don’t tell me; let me guess. He’ll take me to undreamed-of sexual heights. Right?”

Hedonia was somewhat taken aback. “Why, yes. How did you know?”

Dale shrugged. “Lady, I’ve heard it all before, and I haven’t believed any of it. Does Ming always need this potion to get his women excited?”

Hedonia lowered her eyes. “I cannot comment on that.”

“You’d better tell the slave girl to bring me a double dose. I may not care what’s happening to me, thanks to this nameless drink here, but it’s going to take one hell of an aphrodisiac to get me aroused.”

Kala regarded the tiny eye-slits of Klytus’s mask. Perhaps more than Ming, she deduced his mood or thoughts from his eyes; she perceived the near-nonexistent with clarity. She drew information fraught with countless ramifications from the rapidity of his blinking and the movements of the pupils, not to mention all the other avenues of acquiring knowledge that were open to her in those six square inches. Thus far, his eyes had revealed no inkling that he was aware of her duplicities. Nevertheless, Kala scrutinized them with a dangerous transparency. Could it be he actually did not suspect she had given Zarkov a Level Six Indoctrination, reducing him to a mindless zombie? No matter, she thought, tingling with excitement, he’ll know soon enough.

As Klytus unfastened the last of the straps holding Zarkov to the table, he asked, “What is your name?”

“Hans Zarkov, Agent Number 2133 of the Imperial Anti-Insurgent Espionage Group.” The Earth scientist saluted with a raised fist, although he remained too weak to stand. “Hail Ming!” He lowered his arm, cupped his hands in his lap, looked at Klytus, and grinned like a child.

“What is your mission?”

“To seek individuals or groups who work to overthrow the Established Order of the Universe.”

“What is your favorite color?”

“Khaki.”

Klytus nodded. His hands, too, were cupped, and his shoulders were slightly slumped. “Good, good,” he said with a faint note of satisfaction that astonished Kala (for it was so uncharacteristic during circumstances such as these). “We must now proceed with the physical tests.”

Kala’s mouth twitched twice.

A technician handed Klytus a ball of ice soaked in a red syrup, standing on an inverted soy cone. Klytus inspected it as if he were about to consume it personally. “This is to test your reflexes,” he said. Then, with a professional, almost nonchalant air, keeping his elbow straight all the while, he gave the ball of ice to Zarkov.

Zarkov took it gingerly; he slowly, oh so slowly opened his mouth . . . and promptly shattered the ice on his forehead.

Aura’s rocket soared through veils of numerous hues in the sky. Though the flier felt sturdy to Flash, it was still like a gigantic toy, fragile in a few important places. As soon as it had left the docking area, Aura programmed navigational instructions into it; then she turned to Flash, crossed her legs, folded her hands over her knee, and began a spate of idle banter designed to lull Flash into a false sense of security. Incidentally, between remembrances and compliments, she taught him how to operate the controls. The complex system turned out to be simple; the automatic pilot did most of the work, and Flash did most of the little deviations from the course.

The veil lengths gradually became smaller; soon they were passing through a veritable kaleidoscope. The mesmerizing colors engulfed Flash in a hazy euphoria; time slowed, his fears for Dale and Zarkov receded into the background. And Aura sat through the cascade of beauty as if there was nothing unusual about it, as if one saw this sort of thing every day. For the first time, Flash envied the savage princess. Maybe she did.

Suddenly, they were awash in a green sky with a density that, however illusionary, equaled that of an ocean. The atmosphere nearly buoyed the flier. In the center of the mists floated a tiny world with thick white clouds—and with glaring streaks of charred land—carved into the light green surface.

“That’s Aquaria. Once it was the lovely Water Kingdom of the Lizard Men. They rebelled . . . and my father blasted them!” She grinned, speaking her last words with relish. She then realized that Flash disapproved. “It seems cruel, I know, but how else should one rule the universe?”

Flash bit back his reply as he bore to the left more sharply than the automatic pilot had intended. Aura watched his impassive face; occasionally a muscle in his neck twitched. She rubbed the upper crests of her breasts. She stirred deliciously in her seat.

The red flier burst into the cool blue sky as if breaking through the surface of water. Dropping his stoic manner for an instant, forgetting the intoxicating scent of his benefactress, Flash gaped at the moon of Frigia, a semicircular hunk of ice floating in a cold pocket of the atmosphere, with icicles fifty miles long, with bases twenty miles in diameter, hanging from the edge of the southern hemisphere. There were crevices and valleys like huge slashes made with a giant butcher knife, but they only served to increase the moon’s hold on Flash’s imagination. The Terran quarterback felt his heart drawn to this cruel vista of death; he yearned for the peace of its cold embrace even as he yearned to challenge it for the sheer glory of survival.

“Every moon of Mongo is a kingdom,” said Aura, continuing the conversational tack. She seemed oblivious to the glorious vision in the sky. “My father keeps them fighting each other constantly. It’s a really brilliant strategy.”

She talks like a surfer girl from southern California, thought Flash, resuming his impassiveness but surreptitiously orbiting the moon by overriding the automatic pilot. I guess when you’ve got her other attractions, you don’t have to talk like an adult. “Why don’t the moons unite their forces and overthrow Ming?” he asked, hoping to keep his mind off those attractions.

Aura giggled. (Flash’s stomach turned.) “You saw what happened to the Lizard Men,” she said. “Hey! Keep us on a straight course!” She quickly reset the flier on automatic pilot. Satisfied, she pressed a button; the three metal bars descended on two rods; Aura maneuvered them until they slipped over her head. Squirming, she closed her eyes and concentrated.

Before long, Flash blurted, “What’s that?”

Aura sighed like a martyr. She pressed the same button and the rods took the device to the ceiling. “A thought amplifier. I’m going to call up Barin. Don’t you have thought transmissions on Earth?”

“Sometimes there’s a telepathic incident, but I’ve never witnessed one.”

“You mean you can’t read my thoughts?” The manner in which she stared at him and fiddled with her open collar fully revealed them.

Sighing, Flash gestured with his palm upturned. “I came here with Dale.”

“She’s not here now. And you know the old saying: ‘If your baby’s millions of parsecs away, love the one you’re with.’ ”

In exasperation, Flash looked toward the ceiling. He saw the amplifier over his head. “Wait! Could I call Dale with that?”

Aura accentuated her perpetually pouting expression. “If I showed you how. But I’m not about to.”

Flash exuded friendliness and warmth; he had switched on the old Gordon charm. “Pretty please?”

“You’ll have to use more effective persuasion than that,” she said, leaning over to touch his hair.

He moved away from her and felt relieved when she sank into her seat and pondered her next strategy. Rubbing his hand over his mouth as if to wipe away an imaginary kiss, he studied the consoles. Why didn’t you watch what she was doing? He pressed buttons, passed his hands over panels, and flicked switches, but nothing happened. He scowled. Suddenly, he passed his hand over the flight control console with a determined, final air. Frigia began to grow ominously larger through the window.

“What are you doing?” asked Aura.

Flash ignored her; he did not even shrug. Aura scrambled for the controls, but Flash grabbed her arm; he roughly threw her to her seat. She stared at him with loathing. After a moment she stood up before the controls so it would be more difficult for Flash to restrain her. He, too, stood, bracing himself behind her and tightly holding her wrists, forcing her hands to rest against her breasts.

“Let me go!” she squealed. “We’re diving into Frigia!”

“So what else is new?”

Aura attempted to kick him. Wrapping his left leg about hers, he held her easily. She gave up, realizing his strength could incapacitate her with a mere second of effort. “We’re going to be killed!”

“Not if I tune in on Dale,” said Flash.

Dale lay on her stomach; her eyes were closed and she tried to block out the chattering harem women. She wished the minutes were longer, so as to delay Ming’s approach, and she wished they were shorter so the ordeal would be over that much more quickly. The nameless drug was unable to combat her ever-growing fear of the immediate future.

Dale—it’s me—Flash—are you—receiving me?

Her heart pounding, her breathing rapid, she sat up, verging on sheer panic for the first time since arriving on Mongo. Suddenly her greatest fear had become that of losing her sanity.

It’s telepathy. I’m inside your head. Just try to think of me!

Flash clenched his fist in front of Aura’s face; he was not threatening her, he was merely expressing his frustration. The amplifier bars around his head shimmered with a dull blue glow. “She’s not getting me!”

“I must reverse my earlier sentiments and tell you not to use your brain, but your mouth instead.” She straddled him, rubbing her groin and inner thighs against his legs. The heat of her body as well as the heat of the blue glow caused him to break out in a sweat.

I’m with you, Dale. Just concentrate hard and think to me!

Can this be real? I saw you executed. You sure this isn’t an instance of Jung’s active imagination?

I was saved, I tell you, thought Flash, desperate to convince her. I’m still alive. I never felt so alive!

Oh thank God! thought Dale, nearly swooning. Where are you?

In a rocket, racing to the moon of Arboria for help. Are you okay?

I’m terrific. Even in her thoughts, Dale’s sarcasm was like undiluted lemon extract. I’m a prisoner in Ming’s royal sack.

Flash did not know which development shocked him the most: Dale’s predicament or the fact that Aura was now kissing him, expertly nibbling at his lips and caressing his teeth with her tongue. Somehow she had divined every erogenous zone around and inside his mouth. Her fingers quickly unfastened his jacket; beneath his T-shirt, his chest smoldered with her heat, pouring through the material as if it did not exist. Flash tried not to pay attention to what her other hand was doing. Fake Ming out! he thought.

How?

Come on, girls know how. It’s been done to me before.

It has? Dale asked.

Just pretend you’re in high school, and fake Ming out till I get back.

It’s too dangerous for you here. You can’t come back. Stay where you’re safe and I’ll find Dr. Zarkov somehow!

God! This chick really knows how to turn a man on!

I didn’t quite get that, thought Dale. Think it again.

Flash shoved Aura off his lap; she landed on her elbow and her coccyx, her back smashing against the console. Forget I thought it. It wasn’t about you anyway!

What!? Dale heard a door slide open; the knuckle of her right forefinger in her mouth, she turned to look, expecting Ming prancing like a stallion, ready to shower her with the most personal and (in this case) repulsive attention. But it was only a slave girl, a tall, buxom redhead wearing a shimmering golden gown, carrying another chalice filled with a liquid.

Hang up, Dale thought to Flash. I’ve got to go!

Where?

Someone’s in here. We’ve got to stop thinking like this!

The slave girl bowed. “I am pleased to inform you that his Imperial Majesty shall grace you with his presence very soon. I have with me a potion which shall prepare you physically and emotionally for the ardors of love which will surely follow close upon his arrival.”

Dale patted a silk cushion beside her. “Come here, sit down.”

The slave girl shook her head. “I regret to inform you it is forbidden.”

“By whom?”

“No one in particular. It simply is not customary.”

“It is if I ask it. Now sit and chat a spell. Besides, I hate to drink alone.”

Sitting, the slave girl offered Dale the chalice. Dale took it, but did not drink; she said, “Tell me, what’s your opinion of Ming?”

“He is the Most Illustrious Ruler of the Universe.”

“Don’t give me that. I mean, what’s your opinion of him sexually?”

The slave girl paled. “I’ve never heard any complaints. No one would dare; she would be executed.” She paused. “I do not believe we are permitted to have an opinion, though of course if Ming the Merciless ever desired me, I would gladly submit to the rigors of his investigations.”

“So then you would enjoy it?”

“I would strive to do so,” replied the slave girl, demurely bowing her head.

“What attracts you to Ming?”

The slave girl looked toward the ceiling; a dreamy haze glistened in her eyes. “He is so forceful, so ready to order executed those who slightly displease him. Those who greatly displease him are tortured. When he personally slew Prince Thun today, I experienced a beautiful tingling sensation, as if my spirit had flown to the stars and back. Yes, I admit it; I would freely submit to the caresses of Ming. However, I fear I am unworthy, for he has never noticed me.” Again, she bowed her head.

“Would you care for a sip?” asked Dale, holding the chalice toward her.

The slave girl shook her head. “It is forbidden. This ration was selected for Ming’s Chosen, and I shall not receive my slave’s rations until the end of the week.”

“Oh go ahead. I can’t finish it all by myself.”

With trembling fingers, the slave girl took the chalice. She sipped it, then paused.

Dale nodded. “Quality stuff, isn’t it?” As the slave girl prepared to take another sip, Dale tilted the chalice, forcing her to take larger and larger gulps. “Bottoms up, sweety.” In more ways than one.

Aura’s pouting expression was uncharacteristically sincere as she sat with her arms folded beneath her breasts and her eyes straight ahead. Flash could not resist smiling to himself, but only because she would not see it. Extrapolating from hints about her past and what little he knew about Mongian society, Flash deduced she was confused and hurt, for surely she had never been so rudely and soundly rejected.

“You men!” she snarled, breaking a silence of several minutes. “You think your pride is so important that you must maintain your so-called honor because it somehow supplies you with your masculine attributes. I must inform you, Gordon, I know from long personal experience that all men give in sooner or later, regardless of their pride. In the end, nothing is more important to them than coupling with a woman like me. You’re no different, Gordon. You’ll succumb to my charms . . . eventually.”

Despite himself, Flash felt sorry for her. He sadly shook his head. “Aura, I’ll be frank with you. I get the itch every once in awhile, and I scratch it too, just like every other robust, red-blooded American male I know, but I don’t scratch it with just anybody. Honey, you just don’t understand what makes a man tick. There’s more to a satisfying relationship than physical beauty, sophisticated techniques, compatible perversions, and a ravenous sexual appetite. There has to be mutual respect, kindness, consideration, the desire to have a mature and meaningful relationship however long it lasts, and full acknowledgment of the male as a human being in his own right. Men aren’t cheap vessels you can use up and throw away. Men have feelings too, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll reach some of the more rewarding plateaus of life.”

Aura stuck out her lower lip. I don’t think she believes me, Flash thought as he suffered a long moment of despondency. It would certainly make things a lot easier if he reached the center of decency he sensed in her evil, perverted heart.

The red flier was hurtling through the verdant skies spotted with yellow droplets that warmed the moon of Arboria, trapping and holding the heat generated by the cosmic whirlpool. White mists swirling about, dissipating in the flier’s wake like fibers shorn by antimatter energy rays. Eventually, the tiny rocket created only a minimal disruption, for soon the intertwining strands of mist averaged a hundred yards in diameter. “Can’t we avoid them?” asked Flash. “Every time we pass through one, I can’t see a blamed thing.”

“Don’t worry; the automatic pilot sees better than we can.”

As they broke through an especially large strand into the verdant skies, Flash saw Arboria for the first time. Tremendous roots and limbs tapering into nothingness rose from the light green fog screening the moon. The realization of their size numbed Flash. They were like the legs of gigantic dead spiders, somehow trapped in an eternal milky liquid.

Flash stared at a weaving tan root with green veins as they descended into the thick fog which seemed to cling to their flier like an ineffective adhesive. Their instruments showed them to be nearing their landing site, and the fog quickly became thicker and more tenacious. Flash gave Aura a questioning look.

Aura shook her head to demonstrate her mystification. “The fog’s usually not so bad at this time of the year.”

“How far to the landing pad?”

“Six-point-four. I’ll just drop the flaps a little.” She smiled with wide eyes, genuinely amused, when Flash touched her wrist to prevent her from manipulating the controls. “Trust me.” She flicked a switch.

The electronic command could not have been completely transmitted to the flaps when the flier lurched and there was a scraping that sounded as if its underbelly was being torn off. The engines coughed; parts ground into one another; a shower of red and yellow sparks flew from a console to Flash’s left.

Not again! thought Flash. “Pull ’er up!”

But it was already too late. Branches snapped loudly in quick succession; one cracked the window in front of Aura before it broke; she covered her face and screamed. The flier grazed one huge trunk only to graze another; though its fall was gradually slowing, it was being battered around by nature’s indifferent creations as if it was a rubber ball that had been dropped from the limbs above the green fog. Flash’s seat belt and shoulder strap threatened to tear through his uniform as he bounced in his seat.

Suddenly the flier smacked head on into a trunk, throwing Flash and Aura then backward, as it careened into thick heavy vines. The flier rose and fell for several minutes like a yo-yo; the vines had caught it. When it finally ceased moving, Flash, pale and out of breath, smiled weakly at Aura. “Trust you, huh?”

To Be Continued Tomorrow at Atomic Kommie Comics

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