THE SPACE CIRCUS

THE SPACE CIRCUS is the third in the series of fabulous novels inspired by the world famous comic strip FLASH GORDON, read daily and Sunday by millions of fans throughout the world.

Kidnapped, auctioned, forced to perform as a trapeze artist in a circus of slaves, Flash foils his evil blue captors and, with the help of Dr. Zarkov and Dale, escapes the planet Mesmo, and then dispatches an expedition to end forever the tyranny of that planet.

OTHER FLASH GORDON ADVENTURES

from Avon Books

#1 The Lion Men of Mongo

#2 The Plague of Sound

#3 The Space Circus

#4 The Time Trap of Ming XIII

#5 The Witch Queen of Mongo

#6 The War of the Cybernauts

THE SPACE CIRCUS is an original publication of Avon Books. This work has never before appeared in book form.

AVON BOOKS

A division of The Hearst Corporation

959 Eighth Avenue

New York, New York 10019

Copyright © 1974 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Co-published by Avon Books and King Features Syndicate, Inc.

ISBN: 0-380-00064-4

Cover art by George Wilson

All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Avon Books.

First Avon Printing, July 1974

Printed in U.S.A

THE SPACE

CIRCUS

CHAPTER 1

“There’s no such thing as an unidentified flying object,” boomed big, bearded Dr. Zarkov as he circled the large living room.

“You figure,” asked Flash Gordon, “that all the mysteries of the universe can be solved?” He was sitting on a wide pseudo-leather couch, his back to the large window which showed the night desert outside.

“If everyone were as bright as Dr. Zarkov . . .” said Dale Arden. She was a slim dark-haired girl, seated in a crimson wing chair.

“That’s exactly the point I was leading up to,” said the doctor in his resounding voice. “In this day and age, when we can hop, skip, and jump from planet to planet, from planet system to planet system, there’s no need to be puzzled by some nitwit spacecraft.”

“Maybe they’re not spacecraft, Doc,” said Flash. He was a wide-shouldered blond man, nearly thirty.

Zarkov strode to the window and jabbed a finger at the darkness outside. “A few hours in my lab over there,” he said, “and I’d have the whole problem cleared up.”

“Maybe that’s what Agent Cox of EII wants to talk to me about,” suggested Flash.

“If Earth Interstellar Intelligence wanted Zarkov, they’d ask Zarkov directly,” Dr. Zarkov bellowed.

“You probably awe them so much they’re afraid to approach you directly,” said Dale. “Or maybe they don’t know you’re back on Earth. You’re something of a gadfly.”

“You mean gadabout,” corrected Zarkov. “A gadfly is someone who makes a nuisance of himself.” He snorted and commenced pacing around the room again.

The three of them had returned to Earth from the distant planet of Pandor a little over two weeks earlier. They were all staying at the home and laboratory which Zarkov maintained in the Southwest desert country of the United States. Earlier that day, Agent Cox of the Interstellar Intelligence organization had phoned Flash and asked him to meet him late that evening in a town some seventy miles to the south.

“Cox won’t mind,” said Flash, “if you come along with me, Doc.”

Zarkov snorted once more. “I don’t crash parties I’m not invited to.” He stopped near the squat square robot bar in the corner of the living room.

“Drink, sir?” asked the voice box of the servomechanism.

“Nitwit,” muttered Zarkov.

The bar hummed for several seconds. “Don’t seem to have that one in the old memory banks, sir. How do you mix it?”

“I don’t know why I allow these gadgets in here,” said Zarkov as he strode away. “I suppose it’s because I’m a thoughtful host. Lots of good that does. EII doesn’t even invite me to their get-togethers any more.”

“This isn’t a party,” said Flash, grinning. “Cox, as I understand it, just wants to talk over the odd craft which have been sighted in this area over the past few days.”

“After all,” Dale said to Zarkov, “I’m not going along either.”

The doctor tangled his large fingers in his beard, tugging at it. “Considering all the tax money that gets poured into our security system, they should be able to detect and identify a few space crates.”

“You know how the game’s played, Doc,” said Flash. “Every time we come up with a new detecting device, somebody else comes up with a new way to outwit it.”

“Nobody outwits Zarkov,” said Zarkov. “I ought to spend more time here on Earth. The United Nations and the League of Solar Planets don’t seem to know which end is up half the time.”

“Speaking of time”—Flash glanced up at the large round multifaced clock floating up near the room’s ceiling—“I’d better take off for my meeting.”

“If you’re going to fly,” said Dale, “you’ve still got some time.”

“A pleasant clear spring night,” said Flash as he rose, “I think I’d rather drive over there in a landcar.”

The girl stood up, too, moving to him. “I’ll wait up.”

Flash put his hands on her slim shoulders. He kissed her once. “If you get tired of waiting, at least keep a light burning in the window.”

Neither of them had any premonition of what was going to happen.

CHAPTER 2

The night was chill and black, incredibly clear. Flash felt as though he had the entire desert to himself as his sleek black landcar sped along the wide road. There were no other cars on this stretch of highway, nor houses anywhere around. Stars filled the sharp black sky with specks of bright white light. There was not even one sky cruiser anywhere above. Low, rocky hills trimmed the sky. Beside the straight black road stood tall cacti, shaggy joshua trees. The bent-elbow branches of the trees bobbed in the chill night wind.

Funny, thought Flash, I’m used to being on my own in all kinds of isolated and desolate spots, but tonight I sort of wish I had some company on this little jaunt to meet Agent Cox.

After a few minutes more of driving, Flash thought, maybe a bit of noise from the outside world will cheer me up. He reached out and punched the radio button.

Nothing happened.

Flash gave the button another push with his fingertip.

Nothing happened.

Wait till I tell Zarkov about this, he mused. Letting the radio in his car break down.

Up above a low stone mesa, a flat circular spacecraft suddenly appeared. It glowed in the darkness—an intensely bright pale-yellow light flooded the area around Flash’s landcar.

Squinting, Flash put one hand up to shield his eyes. “Can’t see the road at all,” he said aloud. He slowed down, knowing the road was still straight and even ahead.

An odd humming began . . . it was outside, inside. The frame of the car vibrated with it.

“I wonder if that’s one of Cox’s mysterious ships up there,” Flash muttered. He slowed the landcar even more, creeping along. “Might as well stop.”

Through the yellow glare above him, he noticed that a panel had slid open in the underside of the strange ship and an enormous metal-jawed claw was being lowered toward his car. “Don’t like the looks of that,” said Flash. “Makes me feel like the prize in somebody’s penny arcade.” He checked out the roadway and the surrounding countryside as best he could in the blinding glare. Then he swung the wheel, tromping down on the accelerator.

The landcar shot off the road and bumped over gritty ground.

The circular spacecraft stayed with him, about thirty feet above. The glaring lights continued to burn down.

This isn’t going to work for long, Flash thought as he zigzagged the car across the desert. I’m liable to smash into one of these joshua trees before those boys up there get tired of fishing for me.

His engine suddenly stopped; the car rolled on, moving slower and slower.

The jaws of the hovering claw closed on his car with a rasping thunk. Then Flash and the car were jerked off the ground. Flash pulled on the door release, throwing his shoulder against it, but nothing happened.

The claw pulled his landcar up inside the ship, then dropped it down with a quivering thud on the metallic floor of a large empty room.

Flash hit the door again. This time it opened. He jumped free of the car and made a dive for the opening through which he’d been pulled. The panel shut an instant before he reached it.

There was no way to pry the panel open. And now, Flash realized, the ship was rapidly rising. Even if he managed to get out through the opening, he might be thousands of feet up in the air by then.

He stood up, hands on hips, and surveyed the metal room in which he was now a prisoner. It was large and rectangular, constructed of metal panels about two feet square. Flash went to the nearest wall and rubbed his fingertips over the surface. Haven’t seen an alloy like this before, he thought. I wonder what planet system these fellows hail from.

He made a slow circuit of his prison. There was nothing that looked like a door, or a possible way out, in any of the walls. Flash looked up at the ceiling. “Might be another sliding panel up there,” he whispered.

He walked over to his captured car, then looked upward again. Even standing on top of it, he wouldn’t be able to reach the metal ceiling. Anyway, that wouldn’t get me out of here, he speculated. Only closer to the lads who grabbed me.

He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Okay, I’m here,” he called out. “Now what?”

Only silence answered his question.

Since he’d returned to Earth and to America, where he felt relatively safe, Flash had ceased to carry any weapons. There was nothing in the car either, except a tool kit.

Flash returned casually to the vicinity of the landcar. He reached out for the trunk compartment.

Something sizzled up above. The entire rear of the vehicle glowed a flickering blue.

Flash withdrew his hand and moved back from the car.

It continued to glow for another five minutes.

“Guess they don’t want me to touch the car.”

Several more silent minutes passed.

Then a small square in the high ceiling slid aside. Something was shoved through the opening. It fell, landing with a plop at Flash’s feet.

He looked down at it. “What in blazes does that mean?”

Someone had thrown down a large and bloody chunk of raw meat.

CHAPTER 3

With an annoyed grunt, Dr. Zarkov sat up on his circular aircushion bed. “I heard you,” he growled in the direction of the pixphone screen on the opposite wall of his bedroom.

“Phone call,” repeated a soft voice from a speaker grid immediately below the picture screen of the wall phone. “Phone call.”

Zarkov leaped out of bed, landed on both feet at once, and strode to the phone. He always slept in a suit of all-season underwear. He poked at the answer button. “What?” he bellowed into the talkpiece.

An anxious face appeared on the screen. The lean blond young man asked, “Is that you, Dr. Zarkov?”

“This is Zarkov.” Being in his underwear, the bearded scientist hadn’t flicked on the picture-taking device on his end of the pixphone. “What time is it anyway, Agent Cox?”

“Eleven-forty-six,” said the phone’s voice box.

“I didn’t ask you,” boomed Zarkov.

“Nearly midnight,” said the Interstellar Intelligence agent. “Which is why I took the liberty of calling you, Doctor. Flash Gordon was supposed to come over to see me tonight.”

“What do you mean supposed to? He left here a good three hours ago.”

“Well,” answered Cox, “he hasn’t turned up yet.”

Zarkov tugged at his tangled beard with both hands. “I don’t know why not.”

“I was hoping you would,” said Cox. “How was he planning to get over here? I thought perhaps he might have had some kind of accident.”

“He used the landcar,” said Dr. Zarkov, “and I just gave that baby a tuneup myself the other day. It’s not likely to have an accident, but that’s beside the point, Cox. The car’s a black one-dome, last year’s model, license number Z101. You better check with the Highway Authority, see if they have anything to report. Then call me back.”

“Okay, Doctor.” The screen went black.

Zarkov grabbed his crimson bathrobe from the floor. Shrugging into it, he headed for the door. I’d better wake up Dale and let her know, he decided.

Dale, still dressed as she had been when Flash left, was standing in the hallway immediately outside the doctor’s door. “Was it something about Flash? I’ve had a strange feeling all evening.”

“He hasn’t shown up for his meeting with Cox.” Zarkov put a hand on her arm. “Don’t start worrying yet, Dale. That was Cox on the phone. I put him to checking with the Highway Authority.”

“You think Flash has been hurt in an accident?”

“A car Zarkov’s worked on doesn’t have accidents,” he assured her. “But it is possible something went wrong with the road. That might explain Flash’s being delayed.”

“But it’s been hours.”

“We’ll wait and see what Cox can find out,” said Zarkov. “If he hasn’t got anything to report, then I’ll go out with the aircruiser and check over Flash’s route.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Zarkov nodded as the phone in the room announced, “Phone call, phone call.” With the dark-haired girl at his heels, he went back in and answered it.

“No accident of any consequence on any road leading from your place to us,” said Agent Cox on the screen. “No report of anyone seeing the landcar Flash was driving, either on the road or here in town.”

“So where is he then?”

The EII agent hesitated, then said, “There are a couple of odd things. I don’t know if they tie in or not.”

“Tell me and let me decide.”

“Well, Doctor, we’ve had several reports of people saying they’ve seen unidentified flying objects over your way tonight.”

“Hallucinations,” said Zarkov. “Some nitwit’s hallucination isn’t going to help us locate Flash.”

“There’s one more thing,” continued Agent Cox. “A Highway Authority land patrol has reported noticing a place about forty miles south of you where a car had gone off the highway.”

“Was it Flash’s car?”

“There’s no sign of any car.”

“Where do the tracks end then?”

“In the middle of nowhere, apparently. Then suddenly there are no more tracks, as though the landcar vanished into thin air. That’s according to the Highway Authority report I’ve seen, anyway.”

“More fantasizing,” boomed Zarkov.

“Want me to get you more details on those tracks?”

“I’ll take a look at them myself,” said Zarkov. “Give me the exact location.”

Cox did, wished the doctor good luck, and signed off.

In a quiet voice, Dale said, “He’s been taken.”

“We don’t know what’s happened to Flash,” said Dr. Zarkov. “Don’t become more upset until I do some looking around.”

“We’re not going to find Flash,” said Dale in that same faraway voice.

She was right.

CHAPTER 4

After a while Flash tried shouting again. “Hey, where are we going? Somebody come and talk to me!”

They threw him down another chunk of raw meat.

Flash kicked it aside.

He knew the ship had long since left the gravitational pull of Earth. And he was fairly certain that a few minutes ago they had made some kind of jump, a jump through time and space, which meant they were probably heading for a planet far beyond the Earth’s universe.

Well, Flash thought, I’ve visited quite a few planets and I’ve got nothing against seeing one more. But I like to make my own travel arrangements.

We walked once again around the metal room.

Frowning, Flash halted near the two pieces of raw meat. Why do they toss that stuff down to me? he mused. That’s how you’d feed a wild animal.

The ceiling made a loud grating noise, then a much larger section than before opened.

Flash could see pale-blue light glowing above, but nothing of his captors.

Something large was being lowered through the ceiling: a big heavy metal box, judging by the underside of it.

“No, it’s a cage,” Flash said aloud when the thing had come down farther.

The big cage was lowered to rest a few feet in front of him. Its barred door hung open.

The metal floor a yard or less behind him began to sizzle, glowing a flickering red.

Flash had to step closer to the open cage to get clear of the heat. The sizzling glow followed him.

“Okay, I get the point,” Flash said to the opening above him. With a mock salute, he stepped into the cage.

The door clanged shut behind him.

“Much more docile than some of the other creatures we’ve trapped on Earth,” said the blue man in the silver chair. His lips did not move.

“But he roars like all the rest of them, Thelon,” answered another blue man standing across the cabin from him. He, too, did not move his lips nor open his mouth.

They both were small, hardly five feet in height. Their heads were round, melon-shaped, and seemed, if judged by Earth standards, somewhat too large for their slim wiry bodies. Each man wore a dark one-piece flying suit and a soft leather helmet covering their ears. On a bank of viewscreens on the wall of the spacecraft cabin, they watched Flash in his cage.

Thelon had a scarlet circle on the left sleeve. “I notice, Ern, the creature has refused to eat thus far.” He and the other blue man communicated not by actual speech, but through thoughts transmitted from mind to mind.

“Most animals are restless when first caught,” reminded Ern. “They think more of escape than of food.”

Thelon smiled, a thin smile with his lips pressed tightly together. “He’d do better to think about eating,” he said. “Since he’ll never escape from the planet of Mesmo.”

“Each creature we capture reacts differently.” Ern stood with hands behind his back, watching the electronic images of Flash. “Some can be tamed at once; others require a long time, and much effort.”

“This one,” observed Thelon, “seems quite willing to obey orders.”

Ern’s round blue face frowned in concentration. “I’m not certain.” He tapped absently at the earpiece of his helmet. “He may give more trouble than you expect.”

“You can’t read his thoughts, can you?”

“Obviously not,” replied Ern. “That portion of his brain is, as in all other lower animals, not developed. Which is why he howls and makes noises when he wishes to communicate.”

Thelon folded his blue hands over his stomach, which was as round and melonlike as his head. “He’ll fetch a good price at the bazaar, at any rate. That’s all I’m really concerned about.”

“We’ll be landing on Mesmo very shortly,” said Ern. “All in all, we’ve done very well these past few days of hunting on Earth.”

“Time to move on to another planet. Want to try Jupiter next?”

“The pickings on Jupiter are never very good.” Ern rubbed again at the earpiece. “Besides, Thelon, the solar system tends to bore me. It’s very annoying as well—so much noise and hardly anyone capable of communicating directly.”

Thelon took another look at the image of the caged Flash. “Yes, we should get a handsome price for this one.”

“And yet,” reflected Ern, “I can’t help feeling he’s going to bring considerable trouble to whoever buys him.”

CHAPTER 5

His cage was put on a wheeled platform and Flash got his first look at the capital city of the planet Mesmo and at his captors. It was midday, bright but hazy, as the two small blue men supervised the trundling of the cage from the spacefield and through the redstone streets of the city.

“I could just as easily walk to wherever we’re going,” he suggested to one of the blue men.

The man frowned. He thrust a shockstick at Flash, who was holding onto the bars of the rolling cage.

The electric jolt was sufficient to make Flash let go, grit his teeth, and double up.

“Okay, I’ll ride,” he said when he could stand upright again.

The other blue man, who had been walking in front of the land truck that was pulling the cage, came back to squint in at Flash. He then scowled at his partner and moved away.

He knew his sidekick gave me that jolt, mused Flash. How’d he see that from where he was?

The streets of the city were narrow, twisting and turning in every direction. The buildings were low, topped by round turrets, painted in soft pastel shades. There were few windows at ground level, and what windows there were at all were small, round, and composed of jigsaw fragments of tinted nearglass. There was a tropical feel to the city.

Don’t think I’ve been on this one before, Flash thought. Must be a planet system remote from any of the systems I’m familiar with. I’m pretty sure these fellows took us through a space warp, so there’s no way of telling where I am. I’ll need more bearings and facts to find out.

There were signs on some of the buildings; they apparently used some complex cuneiform system of writing here. Flash was unable to read it. The narrow streets were more crowded in the part of the town they were now rolling through. All the people, male and female, were of the same type as his captors—small, round-headed, blue-skinned.

Looks like they’re only outside visitors, thought Flash, come in cages. I don’t see any strangers or any tourists from other planets.

The citizens noticed him, too. They waved, smiled, and some of the younger ones made faces. But it was all silent. No sound of talk or laughter reached him.

“I wish Dr. Zarkov hadn’t set aside that thought-reading gadget he was working on a couple years back,” Flash muttered. “I’m starting to get the impression that my hosts may communicate telepathically. Either that or they’re extremely taciturn.”

The cage, pulled by the landtruck, rumbled on through the redstone streets.

Flash wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. He was perspiring freely in the muggy heat.

Then he began to hear something: it was speech, human speech, from ahead somewhere. Someone was shouting.

His cage went rattling around a corner, heading for an arched doorway set in a pale-blue wall.

Flash could make out words.

Someone was yelling. “I haven’t done anything to you guys. Come on, please. Let me go. Let me out of this thing.”

The cage entered a vast circular room. The air in there was cool and clear. The illumination came from light beaming down from the ceiling. Each beam formed a circle of pale-yellow light around a cage and there were twenty or more cages in the huge room. Everything else was in darkness.

At least fifty blue men were roaming the room, many of them wearing embroidered cloaks of what looked to Flash like genuine silk.

Flash’s cage was rolled into a stall next to that of the shouting man.

“Please give me a break,” the man was pleading, “Let me out of here. Maybe we can make some kind of deal.” He was a black man, in his early thirties, dressed in a one-piece worksuit.

The roaming men noticed Flash’s arrival. Many of them came over to gaze at him appraisingly.

The black man in the next cage turned to get a look at Flash. “You from Mars?” he called in his unhappy voice.

“Earth,” answered Flash.

“Well, at least you talk my language. I can’t get a word out of these guys.”

“They probably communicate telepathically,” Flash told him.

“Think so?” The black man rubbed a knuckle over his stubbled chin. “I thought maybe they were snubbing me. I’ve been here since last night. You got any idea what planet we’re on?”

“We’re a long way from Earth and Mars.”

Blue men were crowding close to Flash’s cage, smiling and nodding approvingly.

“They feed you?” the black man asked him.

“I was tossed some raw meat. I suppose it was meant to be food.”

“That’s all they’ve given me. My name’s Booker, Philip K. Booker.”

“I’m Flash Gordon.”

“Hey, I’ve heard of you,” said Booker. “You’re a celebrity on Mars.” He rubbed at his chin. “I didn’t figure they’d be able to keep a guy like Flash Gordon in a cage.”

“They won’t,” answered Flash.

CHAPTER 6

“This is the place,” said Zarkov. He hunched in the pilot seat, punching out landing instructions on the control panel.

The ship descended slowly and landed beside the straight, black, desert road.

“Do you think we’ll find some trace of Flash?” asked Dale anxiously.

“Sure, we’ll find a trace,” answered Zarkov in his booming voice. “But that doesn’t mean we’ll find Flash himself.”

“I can’t understand what could have happened.”

The bearded scientist hopped from the ship. In a rucksack strapped to his wide back was an assortment of instruments and devices, some standard and some of his own invention. He trotted around the aircruiser to help the girl alight. “We’ll find out what happened,” he told her. “I guarantee it.”

“There are the tracks of a car going off the roadway,” said Dale, pointing. There was enough moonlight to illuminate the marks left by the landcar.

Zarkov fished a small ball-shaped robot camera out of his pack. He set it on the desert ground and gave it a pat on its black metal backside. “Get me pictures of those car tracks,” he instructed the camera.

The mechanism rose a few inches into the air, and started clicking off pictures of the car’s trail.

“It’s Flash’s car sure enough.” Zarkov knelt carefully beside one of the tread patterns. “And he didn’t skid.”

“There’s no sign of any other car being involved.”

“Nope,” agreed the doctor as he stood upright. “Seems like Flash went off the road voluntarily.”

“But why?”

“Well, either he saw something in the desert here that he wanted to investigate,” said Zarkov, “or something was chasing him.”

“There are no tracks to indicate that.”

Dr. Zarkov jerked a thumb up at the chilled black night. “Something might have come at him from above.” He started walking along the ground parallel to the tracks Flash’s car had left.

“One of those mysterious objects Agent Cox was talking about?”

“Possibly.” He stopped for a moment, scanning the prints of the tire tracks which stretched ahead of him. “It does look as though Flash was trying to outmaneuver something.”

The ball-shaped camera floated by, clicking off more shots. It traveled ten yards beyond Zarkov and stopped.

“No more tracks.” Zarkov moved on until he came to the spot where the robot camera was waiting. “They’re wider here at the end, blurred.”

“What would cause that?”

Zarkov, yanking hard at his beard, frowned at the tread marks and then up into the black night. “Something grabbed him from above and lifted him into the air.”

Dale put her hand against the doctor’s arm. “Some spacecraft from lord knows where.” She shook her head, looking up at all the distant stars above them. “He could be anywhere. They could have taken Flash anywhere.”

Dr. Zarkov took two small boxes, each the size of his palm, out of his rucksack. He adjusted a series of dials on each, then released them. One drifted to the ground and the other rose into the air. “We should be able to narrow that down some, Dale,” he said. “Whatever it was that grabbed him should have left some clues behind.”

“Will you find enough to help us get Flash back?”

“Trust me,” said Zarkov.

CHAPTER 7

The auction began an hour after Flash arrived.

At first, since the blue men communicated by thoughts and not words, Flash wasn’t sure what was going on. An elderly blue man, wrapped in a sea-green silk cloak, had begun to move from cage to cage. He would point at one and the crowd would press closer to that particular cage. A few silent minutes would pass. Then the elderly man would continue on to the next cage. Soon the cage he’d been in front of would be hauled away with its occupant.

As Flash studied his surroundings, his captors, and the prisoners in the other cages, he decided the blue men must have been carrying on hunting expeditions, similar to the one which caught him, all through the universe. He noticed a caged lizard man who was probably a native of Jupiter, several bird men from the planet of Gamaliel, a lion man from Mongo. Besides a dozen or so caged men there were at least ten captive animals. These too, Flash recognized as coming from several different planets.

“What’s that old guy up to?” Booker wanted to know.

“I’d say,” said Flash, “he’s probably holding some kind of auction. Judging by the expressions on their faces and by what happens to the people in the cages, I figure they’re bidding on us.”

“They can’t do that. I’m not going to be anybody’s slave.”

“We don’t have much to say about it,” Flash reminded Booker. “And we don’t even know if it’s slavery they have in mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know anything about this planet,” said Flash. “It could be they eat outsiders.”

Booker shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t thought of that.”

“We’ll find out soon. They’re coming to my cage,” said Flash. “Can you tell me what’s going on?” he asked the bent old man who stopped in front of his cage.

The auctioneer ignored Flash and, with his back to the cage, began gesturing at the silent audience.

There was considerable interest in Flash. Nearly all the bidders pushed in close to his cage. One blue man came forward hesitantly, and started to reach through the bars to touch Flash. Thinking better of it, he hopped back.

Flash watched the faces of the blue men watching him. He could tell who was bidding on him by their expressions of interest and cunning and sudden anger. A few of them also gestured with their hands while putting forth a bid. Flash noticed one man who gestured considerably. He was a good deal heavier than most of the others and had a full red mustache. His crimson-silk cloak was trimmed with gold.

“Aren’t you going to do something?” Booker asked Flash.

“What I’m going to do,” replied Flash, “is wait and see what happens.”

“Yeah, but suppose you’re right? Suppose these guys are cannibals, or even something worse?”

Flash grinned. “I’m not in the cooking pot yet.”

A few low moans rose from the crowd of bidders. They shuffled, then moved over to stare into Booker’s cage. The fat blue man with the red mustache remained in front of Flash, his plump hands locked behind his back. In a moment, a landtruck was again hooked to the cage.

Flash was carried away, out into the hazy afternoon.

The fat blue man remained, hands behind his back, in the huge auction hall. When the cage holding Flash was gone, he turned to inspect Booker.

“A fine specimen,” the bent old auctioneer was saying, his thought traveling into the minds of all of the blue men watching him. “Captured, after a ferocious struggle, on the distant planet of Mars. He’d make an excellent addition to your enterprise, Barko.”

Barko, the fat man, drummed his plump fingers on the earpiece of his helmet. “He seems surly, likely to be uncooperative.”

“He’s nearly as strong as the one you’ve just purchased.”

Barko studied the protesting Booker. “Perhaps we could use him. Not as a major attraction, however. Most certainly not at the price I was forced to pay for the other one.”

“Shall we start the bidding at five hundred harlans, gentlemen?” asked the old man.

Barko smiled. “I bid four hundred.”

“Four hundred? How often does one have the opportunity of bidding on a remarkable Martian specimen such as this?”

“Why are you all staring at me?” shouted Booker. “Let me out of this damn thing!”

“Four hundred twenty-five,” offered another of the blue men.

“Four hundred fifty,” countered Barko.

“Surely he is worth much more than four hundred fifty harlans, gentlemen.”

“Four hundred seventy-five.”

“Five hundred.”

“Ah, we have arrived at the price I originally suggested. Much too low at that.”

“Five hundred twenty-five.”

“Six hundred,” bid Barko.

“Ah, so you do wish him as an attraction, Barko. I thought as much,” said the auctioneer, a smile revealing yet more wrinkles on his wrinkled blue face. “Are there any further bids?”

There were none.

“Sold for six hundred harlans to Barko’s Interplanetary Circus.”

CHAPTER 8

A shimmering glare filled the amphitheater. The place was as large as any outdoor stadium Flash had ever seen. Several thousand round-headed blue people sat on the stone benches that ringed the oval field. The field itself was covered with a soft flaky substance that reflected the harsh light of the afternoon sun.

Flash surveyed the place as his cage was rolled out of an entry tunnel. That stuff must be the local version of sawdust, he decided. And, I’m willing to bet, this is a circus of some kind.

A number of things were happening in the arena. A green man was walking a high wire stretched between golden poles. A blonde-haired girl was galloping around a circular enclosure on a huge shaggy mount which vaguely resembled a horse. A half-dozen elephants, lumbering and swaying, paraded around the field. There was a four-armed juggler; a hawkman flew high overhead, a fine silver chain anchoring him to the ground. Giant scaly lizards, almost as large as the marching elephants, were being forced to leap through hoops of fire. And there were clowns, at least ten of them—somersaulting, cartwheeling, pummeling each other.

“There are always clowns,” observed Flash to no one in particular, “no matter where you go.”

The barred door of his cage grated open. A shockstick was thrust in at Flash.

Guess this is my stop, he thought. He avoided the blue man who was attempting to prod him and leaped out of the cage and onto the glistening turf.

Two other blue men approached him. They wore black-silk cloaks and carried silver shocksticks.

Flash stood, hands on hips, looking around him, thinking. Seems like they book their acts by raiding other planets. Wonder what they’ve got in mind for me.

A silver shockstick pointed at him and then to the left. One of the blue men nodded in that direction.

“You mean that ladder?” asked Flash.

A gilded metal ladder rose two hundred feet straight into the air a few yards away from them.

The tip of the silver stick touched Flash’s arm. He leaped back from the shock.

He went to the ladder, glanced at his escorts, and pointed upward.

Both round blue heads nodded.

“Onward and upward,” said Flash, grinning as he commenced his climb.

As he neared the top of the ladder he noticed that there were no nets of any kind below. At the very top of the ladder was a small platform about four feet square.

I guess this is my destination, he concluded. Flash stepped out on it.

An instant after his feet touched the metal square, it began to sizzle with a powerful electric charge.

“Hey!” exclaimed Flash, hopping.

Then the platform twanged and he was flipped out and away. He began to fall down through the bright afternoon.

Barko had returned to his circus a few moments before. He stood in the shadows of one of the entry tunnels, watching the many performers in the glaring light of the arena.

A thin lopsided blue man shuffled up to him. His left arm was bent in an unnatural way; the left side of his face was immobile. “I like the looks of the new recruit,” his thoughts said to Barko.

“I had to pay enough for him,” returned the circus owner.

The bent blue man gestured with his right arm. “He should make an excellent aerialist. They’re sending him, at my suggestion, up the ladder now.”

Barko grimaced, watching Flash make his ascent. “Your appraisal of his potential better be right, Nord.”

“I know what it takes to make an aerialist,” replied the bent man. “Even though I don’t have it any more myself, Barko.”

Nodding, the rotund Barko thought, “I don’t know why you ever wanted to risk your neck up there. Much easier to let these outlanders take the risk.”

“Ah, but the thrill of it,” thought Nord, “the feel of soaring through the empty air. There is nothing like it.”

“Nothing like the inevitable fall either, I wager.”

Nord concentrated on Flash, but made no reply.

Barko thought, “He seems to be well coordinated. He’s in very good shape, trim.” Absently, the circus man rubbed at his own large stomach.

Nord was breathing through his mouth, hands clenched. “There he goes.”

“Let’s hope he’s as good as you think, Nord. I’d hate to lose my investment so soon.”

A rope with a large metal ball at its end was swinging through the air toward the plummeting Flash.

“Catch it, catch hold now,” thought Nord.

Flash did. He grasped the ball at the end of the rope and was jerked to a stop.

“Very good,” commented Barko. “Look at those muscles ripple in his back. The audience likes that sort of thing.”

Nord was intent on watching Flash. He knew what was coming next. “Don’t lose your head. Keep calm—that’s the secret.”

An electric shock was sent into the ball Flash was holding on to. The shock was sufficient to force him to let go.

Flash fell again. Now three more ropes were swung out at him from the complex mechanism that loomed above the area where he was being forced to perform.

Flash caught one, swung himself halfway across the arena, and let go. He dropped another fifty feet before catching hold of another rope. This put him not more than fifteen feet above the glittering turf.

“Ah, very good,” thought the admiring Nord.

Flash let go of this rope, turned a full somersault in midair, and landed on his feet on the ground.

The audience had been concentrating on him, too, and they applauded thunderously now.

“I don’t know if I like that final touch of his,” thought Barko. “It’s almost as though he were thumbing his nose at us.”

“Perhaps,” thought Nord, smiling with half of his face. “But he’s very good, Barko. You can see how they like him.”

The two blue men with the silver shocksticks came running for Flash. They prodded him back toward his waiting cage.

“We’ll see,” thought Barko. “I admit he’ll be a good attraction, but he may turn out to be a disruptive force among the other performers. I won’t tolerate that.”

“I wish there were a way to communicate with him.”

“You’re incurably sentimental, Nord. You know there can be no communication with the lower orders.”

“Even so . . .” thought the bent man as he went shuffling away.

CHAPTER 9

The meal chair reverberated when Dr. Zarkov dropped down heavily into it. “Anything new?”

Agent Cox was sitting on the edge of his rubberoid desk. “You look as though you’ve been up all night, Doctor.”

“I have been up all night,” Zarkov boomed. He slapped a handful of thermopaper sheets down on top of the Interstellar Intelligence agent’s desk. “Why are you perched there like that?”

Dropping to the floor, Cox replied, “You lead a much more active life than I do, Doctor. I spend a good deal of my life in this office. To give some variety to things I try to sit in different places. Behind the desk, beside it, over in the—”

“If you’d get yourself behind it now,” suggested Zarkov in his booming voice, “you could read what I dug up at the spot where they snatched Flash Gordon.”

Cox obliged. “We haven’t, by the way, had any further reports of mysterious spacecraft in nearly twelve hours.”

“They’ve all gone home.”

The blond young man looked over the bundle of notes Zarkov had brought him. “Your robot typer needs overhauling, Doctor.”

“I typed those out myself,” said Zarkov. “The fewer useless gadgets in our life the better. The trouble with most of the inhabitants of the solar system is they don’t know the difference between a useless gadget and a useful one.”

The EII agent had the top sheet of paper held up close to his slightly tilted face. “You’re sure of this, Doctor? Flash Gordon was picked up by an alien spacecraft?”

“Flash and the landcar he was driving.”

“How’d they do it?”

“Swooped low, dropped some kind of large metal claw down, and scooped up the car,” explained Zarkov as he twisted an end of his beard around his forefinger. “I found minute traces of the metal around the spot where they snatched the car. Plus flecks of paint which fell off on each side of the car when the claw teeth took hold.”

“You’re very thorough, Doctor. A lot more so than the Highway Authority.”

“Of course,” agreed Zarkov. He bounced out of his chair. “I want to talk to your computers here. They may not be good enough for my purposes, but I’d like to give them a try and maybe save myself a trip to the Planetary Data Center in Houston.”

“EII can tell you as much as the PDC.” Cox was spreading out several pages of Zarkov’s report side by side. “You’ve got a lot of speculative stuff here about where this ship may have come from.”

“It’s not speculation,” Zarkov informed him in his booming voice. “It’s a fact—plus maybe a smidgen of brillant intuition.” Bending over the desk, he poked at various passages on several sheets. “This, this, and this—to name just three—are all facts I’ve verified.”

“You got all this information from traces the spacecraft left behind?”

“Zarkov isn’t the Highway Authority or the EII,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. Flying that close to the ground the damn crate left strong radiation patterns behind. I used a parascintillator that I whipped up myself, as well as a damn good Swedish-made heat-wave analyzer, to mention only a few of Zarkov’s many tricks.”

Agent Cox looked up into the doctor’s face. “You seem to imply, if I’m reading this material correctly, that you’ll be able to tell exactly which planet this ship came from.”

“That’s why I want to talk to your nitwit computers,” Zarkov told him. “I’ve got it narrowed down, using what info I’ve got stored in my head, to a dozen or so planets in various spots around the universe.” He wandered away from the desk, slapping his palm against his thigh. “I’ve got to shave the list down more than that.”

“You’re welcome to use any of our EII facilities, Doctor,” said Cox. He hesitated a few seconds before asking, “But even if you do get the name of the planet, what then?”

“Then I go there,” answered Zarkov.

CHAPTER 10

The high narrow windows tinted the late-afternoon sunlight. The walls of the room were a pocked white, made of some kind of gritty plaster.

Flash was examining the length of heavy chain which connected his shackled right ankle to the wall.

“Ten feet,” said a voice nearby.

Flash looked up. It was the hawkman he’d seen in the arena earlier. “Yes, I was wondering how long the chain was.”

The hawkman had two sturdy wings, thick with gray feathers, growing out of his back. “I never expected to see you here, Flash Gordon.” Lowering his voice, he added, “Or is it that you have allowed yourself to be captured in order to rescue us from this place and from this planet?”

Flash answered, “They caught me sure enough, but it wasn’t part of any plan, I’m afraid. How do you know me?”

“As you must know, I am from Mongo,” said the hawkman, who was chained to the wall ten feet away. “There is not one on Mongo who doesn’t know Flash Gordon. You’re a hero to everyone on our planet, a true liberator.”

A chain rattled on the other side of the room. “Ah, would that these chains were longer so I might obtain a closer view of such a prodigious hero,” said a heavyset man with white hair.

“That’s Professor Zumm,” said the hawkman. “Fittingly enough, they have cast him in a clown’s role.”

Zumm grabbed his chain in both hands and gave it another tug. “If only it had been my destiny to be a liberator. I’d, therefore, have no trouble in at least liberating myself.”

“Now that I’ve introduced our resident clown,” said the winged man, “I may as well introduce the rest of our group. I am Huk. The lanky fellow next to the professor is Jape. On his native planet of Anterra, he was a physicist.”

“Here, on Mesmo, I’m a juggler in Barko’s Interplanetary Circus.” Jape had four arms.

“Where I come from,” said the short pudgy young man chained next to the juggler, “we don’t go in for names. I am called 606-27. They call me Sixy around here.” His prehensile feet were bare. “I do a wire act.”

The last member of the group was a fair-haired young girl. “My name is Narla,” she said. “Welcome to the gang, Flash Gordon. I do an equestrian act. I watched you out there this afternoon. You looked pretty good.”

“I didn’t have much choice,” said Flash, returning her grin. “How many prisoners do they have in this circus?”

Jape, the four-armed man, answered, “At present Barko owns nearly fifty of us.”

“Is Barko the fat one who does the bidding at the auctions?”

“That’s him,” said Sixy.

“A renowned liberator,” said Zumm, “must have fetched an impressive price.”

“I can only guess at the price tag they hung on me,” said Flash. “Since they never got around to mentioning it out loud.”

Huk said, “The blue men apparently communicate only through thought waves.”

Rubbing at his chin with one of his four hands, Jape shook his head. “I’m not certain, Huk, if that’s exactly it.”

“Jape has a theory,” explained the hawkman to Flash, “that the helmets they all wear aid their telepathic communications in some way.”

“However they do it,” said the pretty blonde Narla, “they think anybody who doesn’t is pretty low on the chain of evolution. People who communicate by talking are no better than yapping animals to them.”

“A theory not completely lacking in merit,” said Zumm. “In the abstract, I hasten to add. In practice it has forced me to modify my dining habits considerably.”

“That explains the raw meat,” said Flash.

“Yes,” said Huk, “they assume we eat like the lower animals of their own planet.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Myself, six months,” replied the hawkman. “But Sixy is our veteran.”

“A year and a half,” said the pudgy high-wire man.

“Seems to me,” said Flash, “they’d have noticed raw meat wasn’t your favorite dish by now.”

“Perhaps they have,” said Jape. “But they probably also consider us stubborn.”

“Animals in captivity don’t always behave the way they do when roaming free,” said the girl. “That’s probably what they think.”

“Do they make any attempt to communicate with you?”

“Only with those shocksticks of theirs,” said Huk, ruffling his feathers.

Flash began pacing as far as his ankle chain would allow. “And when we’re not performing, we’re kept here?”

“They allow each of us an exercise period once a day,” said Jape, “to look after our personal needs. The rest of the time we spend in chains.”

“Is the circus permanently quartered here?”

“We move around,” said Sixy. “I’ve been all over since they grabbed me. The whole planet is a hothouse.”

“I wasn’t thinking about the climate,” said Flash. “They chain us for the trips, too?”

“Most travel on Mesmo is done by monorail,” said Huk. “Barko has several special railroad cars for us.”

“Each of us is chained to a seat,” said Narla.

Jape rubbed two of his hands together. “You’re thinking, Flash, that it might be easier to escape while the circus is moving.”

“Yes,” answered Flash.

“We’ve thought of that, too,” said the hawkman. “So far there’s never been an opportunity.”

“Those chains are as strong as these,” added Sixy. “Even Mallox can’t snap them.”

“Who’s Mallox?”

“Our strongman,” said Sixy. “He’s a real wild man. They captured him in the forest of the planet, Anmar.”

A door opened. Two blue men entered, dragging a battered Booker with them, bleeding from several gashes and cuts. The two men chained him to the wall and left, not paying any attention to the other captives.

With a groan, Booker sat up. “What the devil is this anyway?”

Narla was closest to the new arrival. She went to his side; her chain was long enough for that. “They put you in the wrestling cage, huh?”

“I guess,” said Booker, wiping a tattered sleeve of his tunic across his bloody face. “Had me tangling with a bear and some other hairy thing I couldn’t identify. What is this place?”

“Barko’s Interplanetary Circus,” said Huk. “Welcome.”

“A circus? You mean that fat guy bought me to be a circus freak?”

“It is a fate similar to that which has befallen all of us,” said Zumm.

“It’s not fair,” said Booker. He noticed Flash now and held out a bloody hand toward him. “You got to get me out of here.”

Flash said, “We’ll all get out.”

CHAPTER 11

The bent blue Nord nodded his round head approvingly. “He grows better each day.” His eyes were on Flash, who was performing high above the arena. This was an evening performance of the circus, and a humid, misty darkness hung over the amphitheater.

The dozens of bright night lights caused Barko’s new yellow-silk cloak to glow. “The audiences continue to like him,” he admitted. “My notion of raising his platform another hundred feet higher has, despite your objections, improved the act.”

“I merely pointed out that putting him three hundred feet above the crowd added greatly to the danger.”

Barko spread his blue hands wide. “That’s what makes a circus what it is—danger. Look at the audiences—they love it. The idea that someone, even a lowly outlander, may fall to his death at any moment is thrilling to them. The life many of them lead, you must realize, is dull and conventional, not at all like our circus life.”

Nord’s attention turned from Flash to the center of the arena. A piebald man was working in a large fenced-in circle with five big lions. “Something is wrong with the lions.”

The animals were ignoring the whip and the shockstick the lion tamer was working with. They huddled in one corner of their pen, snarling, tails twitching.

“It’s not the lions,” came Barko’s mental reply, “it’s that fool tamer. He doesn’t know how to handle them.”

“These animals only recently arrived from Anmar, remember,” Nord reminded. “The arena lights still bother them.”

“I’m inclined to leave that speckled fool and the whole pack of lions behind when we go on the road next week.”

“They’re the only lions we have in the show at present. When we hit the small towns the lions are always one of the biggest draws.”

“True, Nord, but—”

The greatest shaggy horse Narla was riding had stumbled. It fell hard against the wooden pickets which fenced in the lions. There was a crackling sound. Part of the fence gave way.

The audience was not silent now. A stunned inhalation of breath, coming from thousands of throats, could be heard.

Two of the snarling lions leaped free of their enclosure, then a third.

This one attached itself, claws digging deep, to the flank of the horse Narla was riding. The horse whinnied with pain and dropped to its knees. The girl cried out.

The lion let go of Narla’s mount, turning its massive head toward her.

Flash went sailing through the humid night air. “A few new tricks up their sleeves tonight,” he said as he glanced briefly at the metal tower from which the ropes and trapezes used in his act were controlled.

When the lions broke free, Flash was grabbing hold of a trapeze which came flying at him a hundred feet from the ground. The sudden gasp of the audience reached him.

“What’s going on down there?”

The metal bar he was gripping began to sizzle with an electric charge. Flash let go, when the trapeze was at the high point of its arc. As he fell, he twisted so that he could see the glistening arena below him.

“That looks like Narla in trouble down there.”

A rope came swinging at him. Flash ignored it. He kept plummeting downward.

“Let’s hope this thing will hold my weight.” He threw his arms out and caught hold of a cord which held decorative pennants.

In the week he’d been a captive performer in Barko’s Interplanetary Circus, Flash had studied the arena from every possible angle. His particular act afforded him several unique views. He’d filed in his head a half-dozen ropes and railings he could grab onto in case of an accidental fall.

The rope dipped low. One of the wooden poles which held it cracked.

Flash let go and dropped to the ground. He went down to his knees, sprang up, and ran toward Narla who was some thirty feet away.

The girl had apparently twisted an ankle when her mount fell. She was trying now to drag herself away across the sparkling sawdust.

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.

CHAPTER 12

The 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.

CHAPTER 13

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.

CHAPTER 14

The 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.

“Can you understand me at all?” Flash asked him.

Nord frowned. He repeated the pointing and the smiling, adding several loops traced in the air with his finger.

You’re referrring to my act, decided Flash. He’d been with the circus long enough to know this crippled blue man was an assistant of some sort to Barko. He’d been aware of Nord’s watching him from down below while he performed.

Suddenly the blue man inhaled sharply.

The guard jumped to his feet.

A harsh beeping sound poured out of two ceiling speakers.

“Some kind of emergency,” said Huk.

“Trouble up ahead,” said Jape.

“Might be something wrong with the cable,” suggested Sixy. “They’ve been known to unravel and snap in weather like this.”

“I told all of you,” said Booker. “I told you they’d get us killed.”

Their car was swaying wildly, traveling ahead in screeching lunges.

Nord reached his good hand under his cloak.

“It is the cable!” warned Jape. “They’re not going to be able to stop the train in time.”

Nord placed a ring of keys in Flash’s hand, then tapped at the manacle which held him.

The guard was running along the aisle, making a low moaning sound.

Through the roar of the storm new sounds came from outside: the shouting and screaming of the performers in the cars ahead.

The circus train left the cable and went plummeting down into darkness.

CHAPTER 15

Dr. Zarkov sneered at the white metal walls. “Antiseptic,” he pronounced as he approached the EII computer he wanted.

The computer was a compact one with a white face built into one of the walls of the large computer wing. When he was ten feet from it, a wall panel slid open to allow what appeared to be an attractive young blonde girl to step into the room. To the perceptive Zarkov, it was immediately evident that this was an android.

“Good day,” the pretty blonde mechanical girl said in her pleasant, slightly husky voice. “My name is Jackie, and I’m hostess for this area of the Earth Interstellar Intelligence building. May I assist you?”

“Be gone,” bellowed the bushy doctor. He continued on toward the computer.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“Scram,” said Zarkov. “Get back into your wall.”

“Won’t you need, sir, some help in operating this computer?” the attractive android asked. “They can be quite tricky.”

“Nothing is too tricky for Zarkov,” he assured the blonde mechanism. “Go away.”

“Well, at least let me get you a cup of pseudocoffee or perhaps—”

“Nothing.” Dr. Zarkov halted in front of the computer of his choice, then thumped it hard with his fist. “Wake up and let’s get to work.”

Tiny lights here and there on the computer’s face began to light up. “At your service, sir.”

“Or possibly a soydonut?” inquired the android hostess. “We have them today frosted with imitation maple frosting, synthetic nearcheese spread on artificial sunflower honey. Personally I’d recommend the nearcheese.”

Snorting, Zarkov took hold of the android by elbow and knee and deposited her in the cubicle from whence she’d come. “Gadgets,” he muttered, “too many useless gadgets.”

“I hope your condemnation doesn’t extend to me,” said the computer.

“We’ll see.” Zarkov tugged a handful of notes out of a pocket.

Several hours later, a door to the rear of Zarkov whirred open. “No donuts,” boomed the doctor, not looking around.

“I don’t have any with me anyway,” said Dale, approaching him. “But it might not be a bad idea for you to have something to eat, Doc.”

Zarkov had the sleeves of his worksuit rolled up. He turned and frowned at the dark-haired girl. “I left you elsewhere,” he said.

“Yes” she conceded. “I got impatient, then decided to come along here and see if you’d found out anything.”

“We’ve been going great guns,” said the computer out of its voice box.

“I talked to Agent Cox and he sent me down here,” continued Dale. “Apparently, there’s no new information about Flash.”

“Not until I finish wringing what I have to out of this gadget.”

“I was hoping, well, that possibly you were wrong. That Flash would turn up someplace on Earth, after all.”

Zarkov put a knobby hand on her shoulder. “You can’t help hoping for the best, Dale,” he told her. “But you have to keep in mind that Zarkov is never wrong. Flash has been taken to another planet.”

Inclining her head toward the computer the doctor had been working with, she asked, “Have you found out anything as to what planet it might be?”

“Gradually,” boomed Zarkov, “I’ve been able to extract what I want to know out of this verbose contraption here.”

“I was designed to be thorough,” said the computer in its defense. “If you insist upon skimming and skipping over the pertinent descriptions of flora, fauna, and terrain of each specific planet, you cannot expect precise results.”

“Purple prose,” said Zarkov. “This thing is stuffed chock-full of the most highfalutin jargon.” He drilled into his thick tangled beard with the end of his electric pencil. “I’ve been able, in spite of the difficulties, to narrow my list down.”

“Then you know where Flash is?” the girl asked hopefully.

“Right now,” said the doctor, “I’m ninety percent certain Flash was picked up by a craft hailing from the remote planet, Mesmo. A few more minutes of digging and I should be a hundred percent sure.”

Dale said, “When you’re sure, then what?”

“Then I’ll go to Mesmo,” said Zarkov, “and help Flash get back home.”

CHAPTER 16

The rain pounded down through the broken and twisted metal of the roof. There was a harsh burnt smell everywhere.

Flash stirred, shaking his head, and looked around him. Water was running along the sharply slanted floor of the train car. The bent blue man who had handed him the keys just before the train smashed to the ground was nowhere in sight.

“The keys,” remembered Flash, shaking his head again. He found he still held them clutched in his hand.

He tried several of the keys on the manacle holding him to his chair. The fourth one worked; he was free. His wrist was bloody, the metal had cut into it when the train hit, but the injury was not serious.

“I’m dying,” said the unhappy voice of Booker. “I’m all smashed up and dying.”

From nearer at hand came a groan. It was the pudgy Sixy. He was slumped in his twisted chair, a bleeding gash zigzagging across his forehead.

Flash eased across the aisle and began to try the keys Nord had given him.

“Get me loose first and I can help out,” said Huk the hawkman.

“You okay?” asked Flash as he turned toward him.

“A sprained wing is about all the damage, I think.”

Flash moved along the wet slippery floor. Rain was spraying down on him through the ruined ceiling. He freed the hawkman.

“What about me?” yelled Booker. “I’ll die if somebody doesn’t pay any attention to me soon.”

“You’re pretty talkative for someone who’s dying,” said Jape. He was holding his head with two of his hands, feeling his ribs with another and massaging a welt on his knee with the fourth.

“Just because I can talk doesn’t mean I’m not all busted up inside.”

Sixy groaned again while they were unlocking him. His eyelids flickered, tried to open, but stayed shut.

Huk stared up at the rents in the roof of their car. The rain slapped at him, making him narrow his eyes. “I can carry him out through that biggest hole up there.”

“You guys going to fly away and leave me to die here?” Booker wanted to know.

“Set him down clear of the wreckage,” said Flash. “Then come back for the rest of the injured.”

Huk extended his wings, splashing water. “Hard to take off in wet weather, but here goes.” He got hold of the unconscious Sixy under the arms, went flapping up to the ceiling of the train car, and then out into the rainy darkness.

“Doesn’t seem,” said Jape, when Flash came to unlock him, “as though our guard is up and around.”

“He’s slumped back there in his chair,” said Flash, nodding. “I don’t think he’s alive.”

“I won’t be alive much longer myself,” said Booker, “unless somebody does something.”

Jape went to him. “What’s wrong, exactly?”

“How do I know? I’m not a doctor. I got pains all over, and internal injuries.”

While Jape was trying out keys on Booker’s manacle, Flash worked his way over to Narla. The blonde girl was hanging out into the aisle, long hair brushing against the rain slick floor. “Narla,” he said, touching her hand.

She did not respond.

“Is she alive?” asked Jape.

“Yes,” answered Flash. “I can feel her pulse. I don’t quite know what’s wrong with her.”

“She’s probably got internal injuries like me,” said Booker.

Jape found the key which released the silent girl.

The hawkman returned, landing near them. “We’ve been very fortunate,” he said.

“How serious is the damage to the rest of the train?” asked Jape.

Huk shook his head. “There won’t be many other survivors. Many of the other cars are twisted beyond recognition. And some of them are burning.” He noticed Narla. “She all right?”

“She’s alive,” said Flash. “You better take her out next.”

“How about me?” asked Booker. “I’m hurt worse than her.”

The hawkman took the blonde girl gently in his arms. He flew up and away with her.

“What about Zumm?” asked Flash, glancing around.

“There he is,” said Jape. “Seems to be unconscious, too.” He went to the side of the slumped clown. “We’ll have you out of there in a minute, Zumm, and—”

“What is it?” said Flash.

“He’s dead,” said Jape. “Neck’s broken.”

Flash looked at the dead clown for a few silent seconds. “Anybody else to set free.”

Squinting, Jape said, “Someone on the floor down there in the shadows. Must be that crippled fellow who was standing by you when we dropped.” Holding on to the seats with two of his hands, Jape went down the slanting floor to the figure of Nord.

“How is he?” called Flash.

Jape touched the blue man with his third hand, then pulled it back streaked with blood. “He’s dead, too.”

“I don’t even know who he was,” said Flash. “But he saved us by giving me these keys.”

“It doesn’t do any good to stand around crying over the dead and gone,” said Booker. “Why doesn’t somebody pay attention to me? I’m badly hurt.”

Flash took a step toward Booker, halted, and took a deep breath. Then he proceeded. He stooped and ran his hands over Booker. “No sign of broken bones,” he said.

“I told you it’s inside that I’m wrecked,” said Booker.

“We’ll find out when we get you outside.”

“I don’t suppose they had a doctor on this train.”

“If they did,” said the returning Huk, “he’s dead now. We seem to be the only survivors.”

“Wrong,” said a rumbling voice from up above.

They all looked up. “Mallox,” said Flash.

“That little bounce we took,” said the strongman, “was just what I needed to smash my cage.” He laughed his growly hooting laugh. “Yes, they put me in a cage, not trusting those little handcuffs for Mallox.” He thrust a massive leg down through the ruined roof. “Stand back and I’ll drop down there. I can help boost everybody out of this thing.”

The car shook when the giant hit the floor.

“We’re free then,” said Huk. “There are no guards to stop us, no trainers to tell us what to do. We’re free.”

“Free of the circus,” said Jape, “but a long way from being free of this planet.”

Flash gestured at a broken window. “What’s out there, Huk?”

“Forest country,” replied the hawkman. “And beyond that the jungle.”

“That’s where we better head then,” said Flash.

“We may have a chance there,” said Jape.

“What about me?” said Booker. “How am I going to travel in the jungle, a guy in my condition?”

“You’ll make it all right,” Flash assured him.

“How do you know that?”

“Because if you don’t, we’ll leave you behind.”

CHAPTER 17

The hawkman dropped down through the dawn, arms full of gathered weapons. He landed in a clear space between the trees and made his way to the sheltering branches where the others waited. His hands and arms were streaked with soot which the hard-driving rain hadn’t completely washed away. “This should be enough,” he said.

“Six shocksticks, three stunguns, and a blaster rifle,” said Jape, cataloguing the haul as the winged man set the weapons down on the dry ground.

Huk said, “I would settle for fewer weapons and more food.” On an earlier trip to the train which lay twisted and broken a quarter of a mile downhill, he’d found three cartons containing some kind of dry-food rations.

“From what you say,” said Flash, “there’s no chance of retrieving any more supplies.”

The hawkman shuddered. “Everything else is destroyed down there.”

Flash was kneeling beside Narla. He returned to watching the still unconscious girl.

“Do you think she’s seriously hurt?” asked Huk.

“Doesn’t appear to be,” answered Flash with a frown. “Nothing’s broken, and her eyes are okay. So a concussion doesn’t seem likely. But she should have awakened by now.”

“Good thing I’m not out cold,” said Booker. “I’d get tossed in a pit like a dead dog if I was.”

“That’s not a bad idea even with you wide awake,” said Sixy. He’d come to soon after they’d carried him into the woods beyond the monorail track.

“If I wasn’t hurt so bad,” said Booker, who was sitting with his back resting against a tree trunk, “I’d fix you good, you monkey-footed fool.”

“Enough,” put in the giant Mallox. “We want no squabbles. Those little blue devils will be hounding us soon enough. We must all work together.”

“I’m helpless,” said Booker. “I can’t run.”

Jape said, “You better get rid of that notion right now, Booker. I’ve examined you and there’s nothing much wrong with you beside a few bumps and bruises.”

“You’re no doctor.”

Mallox said, “He’s close enough to a doctor to satisfy me.” He held one huge hand, fingers slightly clenched, out toward the black man. “If you want to pretend to be sick for a while, I can carry you. Because when it’s time to move from here, we’ll move.”

Booker looked away from the giant. “Maybe I can walk a little bit,” he said in a low voice.

Jape rubbed at his head with one of his hands. “I’ve heard that other runaways may live off in the jungle. Perhaps we can reach them.”

“That’s okay for now,” said Flash.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning it’s only a short-term solution,” Flash said. “Eventually we have to get off this planet. Off and back home to our own planets.”

The hawkman’s wings fluttered and he laughed. “Maybe I can fly to Mongo,” he said. “I don’t see how else we can do it. The chances of getting hold of a spacecraft are rather slim.” He shook his head.

“There’s more to leading a guerrilla life than annoying the enemy,” said Flash. “Eventually, you have to make a play, take over. Maybe only one town, but something you can control.”

“You mean that if we live in the wilds for a while,” said Sixy, “we have to be planning all along on how to take over Mesmo.”

“We’ll have to take over a spaceport,” said Flash.

“Some chance,” said Booker. “With a half-dozen escaped slaves, you’re going to overthrow millions of those blue men.”

“There are seven of us,” said Mallox, “and you forget that we’re an exceptional group. I’m with Flash Gordon. I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life in the wilderness. I miss my home planet.” He reached out his huge hand and gave Flash an encouraging thump on the back. “I say we try.”

Jape stroked his chin with his upper right hand. “If we could learn more about them, about how they communicate,” he said, “we might be able to accomplish something.”

“I know what Flash was able to do on Mongo,” said Huk. “There were many who thought Ming would never fall, but fall he did.”

“It’s good to have a plan,” said Sixy, “something to work toward. Even if—”

“Look there!” said Jape, pointing with all his hands.

Lights glowed in the rainy gray sky over the wreck of the train.

“Some kind of aircruiser,” said Huk.

“They’ve come to investigate the wreck,” said Sixy, pushing up off the ground. “Time for us to get deeper into the woods.”

Without a word, Mallox reached down and yanked Booker upright. “What’s it to be, walking or riding?”

“I can limp along okay, I guess,” said Booker. “You’ll probably leave me behind, but that’s okay.”

“You’ll keep up with us,” the strongman told him. “We want none left back for the blue devils to find,”

Flash eased his arms under Narla.

The blonde girl opened her eyes slightly. “Where are we?” she asked in a faint voice.

“On the run,” he told her.

CHAPTER 18

The rain fell hard on the roof of the cottage. Yawning, the blue man swung out of his bed. He reached to the raw wood floor to pick up his helmet and clothes.

“Good morning,” came the thought of his wife once Djorj had the helmet on.

“Good morning.” He went into the kitchen of their cottage. “Rained all night. I doubt my traps will have caught much of anything.”

His wife pointed at a radio which sat on the oaken table in the room’s center. “There was a train wreck not far from us.”

“I’m not interested in other people’s troubles this early in the morning.” He made his way to the wood stove, holding his blue hands over it.

“It could turn into trouble for us.”

Frowning, the trapper went to the table and put on the earphones of the portable radio.

“We repeat the announcement,” came the message. “These animals are dangerous. It is believed that at least a half-dozen of them, or perhaps more, escaped from the wrecked circus train. They are all highly dangerous alien creatures. The government and the militia advise you to stay inside if you live anywhere in the vicinity of the crash. Lock your doors and do not venture forth until these vicious creatures have been recaptured. Captain Suell of the National Militia promises that all escaped beasts will soon be caught.”

Djorj removed the earphones, leaning back in his wooden chair, “Did they say anything about a reward?”

“I don’t know,” said his wife, turning anxiously to him. “You’re not thinking of—?”

“If I could catch even one, there should be something in it for us. Surely more than a month’s hides bring us.” He nodded to himself. “These are rare creatures, after all. I’ve heard some have sold for as much as fifteen hundred harlans in the capital. Yes, fifteen hundred.”

“But they’re dangerous,” his wife told him. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Suppose I could catch all six.” Djorj stood up. “Think of what they might pay me for six.”

“Djorj, please. Stay here, inside and safe.”

The blue man was already in the parlor, taking a rain garment and boots from the closet. “Some of these beasts are probably roaming our woods right now. This is my chance.”

“At least wait until you’ve had your breakfast.”

The trapper selected a stun rifle from the rack in the closet. Then he returned to the kitchen to grab up the radio. “I’ll take this along so I can keep up with the hunt. I think I know these woods a good deal better than the militia.”

His wife looked away, sending no parting thoughts to Djorj as he went tramping out into the wet morning.

Narla said, “Not that this isn’t comfortable, but I really think I can walk now.”

Flash had been carrying the slim girl. “Okay, let’s try it and see.” He placed her gently on her feet on the mossy ground.

“I’m a little bit dizzy,” she said, steadying herself with a hand against his arm.

“Nobody gives a hoot about me,” said Booker, who, breathing heavily, was at the rear of the group as they made their way deeper into the forest.

“I’m thinking about you all the time,” Sixy said, back over his shoulder.

“Nobody gives me a helping hand.”

They had been pushing up through the woods for over a half hour. There had been no sound of pursuit.

“I think we’ve gotten clear of those little blue devils for now,” said the huge Mallox.

Flash placed a hand under the girl’s elbow. “I’ll hold onto you till you’re sure of yourself.”

Huk fluttered his huge wings. “I think I’ll fly ahead for another look around.”

“Careful of their airships,” cautioned Jape.

The hawkman went flapping up through the rain.

“I wonder,” said Narla, “if we’ll ever get off this planet, Flash. Sometimes I think it’s hopeless.”

“The blue men have ships for interplanetary travel,” said Flash. “We should be able to capture one with luck.”

“You sound very confident,” she said. “I’d like to believe you. You’re certainly the kind of man I can believe in, but I feel very gloomy this morning. All I can see is the ‘right now’ of things.”

“It may take us some time. We don’t, remember, know very much about Mesmo.”

“Well, I suppose living in the forest or the jungle, or wherever it is we’re going to wind up, is better than being a prisoner,” she said. “And better than being . . . well, than being like poor Zumm.”

“Wait,” called Booker. “Help me, will you?” He’d fallen, tripped over a twisting root.

Sixy, sighing, halted and went back to give the black man a hand up. “Maybe it would be simpler if I hefted you, Booker.”

“My ankle’s busted or sprained,” said the fallen Booker.

Sixy bent down toward him. There was a droning humming sound and he froze where he stood.

“It must be—” began Jape, two of his hands reaching for weapons. The droning came again and he never reached either one.

Mallox roared, lumbered in the direction of the rifleman, but he was hit before he got there. Flash let go of Narla and threw himself to the ground. He rolled, did a backward somersault, and was behind the trunk of a huge oak before the stun rifle could fire again.

CHAPTER 19

In spite of the cold nervousness which filled him, Djorj smiled to himself. I’ll soon have them all, he thought, hunched in the brush a few yards from the spot where the stunned Sixy, Jape, and Mallox stood frozen. The blue man had only picked up their trail moments earlier.

The blonde girl had fallen when Flash made his dive for concealment. She was struggling to her feet now and was crawling in the direction Flash had taken.

Can’t let that one get away. Djorj squeezed the trigger again.

Narla froze, still on all fours.

What about the black one? He appears to be injured, unable to move, reflected the trapper. Yet he makes a good deal of noise.

“Who is it out there?” Booker was shouting. “You don’t have to kill me. I give up. It was their idea to run away, not mine.”

None of this meant anything to Djorj. I’d better stun him, just to be on the safe side.

“Come on, we can make some kind of deal.”

The rifle hummed once more.

“That’s five of them,” tallied the blue man. “Imagine what money they’ll bring. I’m sure to be paid at least a hundred harlans for each one. In fact, I’ll insist on at least that much before I turn them over to anyone, militia or otherwise. That’ll mean at least five hundred. Perhaps it will come to even more. But I still have to catch the sixth one, the last one. He looks to be more cunning, more dangerous than the rest of the pack.

Djorj stayed another moment in his hiding place, rain hitting down at him.

The beast may be getting away even now, he thought. I have to start after him. He began to move, traveling as silently as when he had approached the group initially.

Flash bellied along over the damp mossy ground, soundlessly. He eased behind the trunk of another tree, listening.

Didn’t hear them coming at all, he thought. Don’t even know how many of them are out there.

With his head close to the earth, hidden by thick underbrush, Flash could see part of the area where they’d been attacked. He saw the immobile Narla, the shock-still Jape.

Nobody’s come near them yet.

Flash heard something, caught his breath, and listened more intently. Only the sound of the rain clattering down on the leaves and branches came to him.

But I heard something else, he thought again. Somebody stepped on a branch, not very far from me.

With narrowed eyes, he scanned the forest around him. There was no sign of anyone—no sound of anyone. The rain kept falling.

He sensed the presence of the trapper before he heard him or saw him. Flash threw himself to the side as the rifle hummed.

He swung and fired his stungun.

But the blue man was not where he had been, framed between two tree trunks.

Flash ducked, then spun around behind a tree bole. That guy must be used to walking in these woods, Flash decided. He hardly makes a sound.

He took three steps backward, slightly crouched, watchful. Then something caught him around the ankle. It bit into his flesh. With a violent snap, he was hoisted off the ground to dangle upside down several feet above the moss.

Flash went swinging through the air, thwacking into a tree. His breath was knocked out of him. The stungun fell from his hand.

The motion of the rope trap gradually decreased; his movement to and fro stopped, Flash hung head down and dazed.

Djorj smiled once more. “Luck is indeed on my side today,” he murmured. “The beast has been caught in one of my own animal snares.”

He was thirty feet from the dangling Flash, stun rifle in his hands and radio slung over his shoulder. He stood and watched the hanging man, not heeding the heavy rain.

This one will be worth at least two hundred harlans, Djorj decided. He began to make his way nearer to his catch. Now to stun this one. He raised his rifle to his shoulder, took aim.

An immense flapping sounded above him. The agitated air swirled drops of rain all around him. Then something hit him across the back of the neck.

He fell forward, losing consciousness. His last thought before blacking out was, Now I’ll never get the money.

CHAPTER 20

“The thing to do,” insisted the giant Mallox, “is to throttle him.” He swept a huge hand in the direction of the blue man.

“No,” said Flash.

“He’ll tell the others,” said the strongman. “We can’t even be sure he’s not sending them some kind of message right now, sending it from his head to theirs.”

“I don’t think so,” said Jape. With all four of his hands he was tinkering with the radio Djorj had been carrying.

“We’ve wasted enough time,” said the hawkman. “Let’s not waste any more in arguing.”

It had been Huk, returning from his reconnoitering flight, who dropped out of the sky to fell the trapper before he could use the stun rifle on Flash.

Now, several hours later, the effects of the stunning had worn off for all of them.

“I still got something wrong with me from getting shot like that,” said Booker. “I feel all upside down inside.”

“Flash was really upside down from what I hear,” said Sixy.

During these exchanges Djorj looked anxiously, hope mixed with fear, from face to face. All this howling did not convey anything to him. But the giant reaching for his throat had been easy enough to understand; the big creature wanted to kill him.

Flash and Huk had tied the trapper to the trunk of a tree with rope cut from the trap which had snared Flash. Flash had tried to communicate with Djorj during the time they were waiting for the others to become unstunned. The blue man did not understand. Although he sensed that Flash, unlike the giant just now, meant him no harm.

“We must get going,” Flash said.

“I say it isn’t safe,” repeated Mallox, “leaving this little blue devil alive. He’ll tell them he’s seen us.”

“He’s not to be harmed,” said Flash. He then walked to Narla’s side. “You up to continuing?”

“You don’t have to worry about me anymore,” the girl told him, her face expressionless and her voice even.

“I left you alone when the attack came because I can move faster by myself,” said Flash, realizing why the girl was angry. “I wanted to get a chance to find out who was firing on us and try to outfox them.”

“I don’t care about an apology.”

“I’m not offering an apology, only an explanation.”

“We’re ready,” said Huk. “As I told you earlier, Flash, we’re about fifteen miles from the edge of the jungle. I doubt we can reach it before nightfall, but we can get close.”

“Fifteen miles?” said Booker. “I can’t walk any fifteen miles in the shape I’m in.”

Flash went over to the bound trapper. “We have to leave you here,” he said, pointing at the ropes. “But you should be able to work yourself free in a few hours. Or maybe someone will find you.”

In another minute, with Mallox muttering about the folly of allowing the blue man to remain alive, they resumed their trek.

The dusk was filled with enormous scarlet-and-gold butterflies. The rain had ceased as the day began to wane. The butterflies drifted silently through the treetops high above.

“Still about five miles to go,” the hawkman told Flash.

“We should be able to keep on for another hour at least before we stop for the night,” decided Flash.

Back at the tail end of the line, Booker said, “When are we going to call a halt? Seems like we must have come fifty miles by now.”

“Why don’t you stop by yourself and rest up?” suggested Sixy. “You can catch up with us later.”

“Are you joking? I’m not about to try making my way through this wilderness by myself,” said Booker. “I’d get lost for sure.”

“That possibility had occurred to me.”

Jape came trotting up to Flash’s side. “I think I’ve got this thing figured out.” He was holding the blue man’s radio in two of his hands, the earphones over his ears.

“So they do communicate by means other than telepathy?” asked Flash.

Removing the earphones, Jape fell in step with Flash. “The whole process isn’t exactly telepathy at all,” he said. “After listening to this radio for a while I began to hear something. It makes sense, because if the people of Mesmo are completely telepathic they’d have no need of earphones at all.”

“You heard something!” said Flash. “What?”

“A human voice,” replied Jape. “So I turned the volume up as high as it will go. Here, listen.”

Flash took the proffered earphone and held it to his ear. “You’re right, Jape, that’s a human voice. Sort of a low muffled growling, though.”

“Here’s what I’ve concluded,” said the four-armed physicist. “The language of the blue men is what you might call ‘ear-mitted.’ That is, they talk by way of their ears.”

“Their ears?” said Huk.

“It’s not that unusual a thing,” continued Jape. “That’s why they all wear earphones. To help transmit and pick up messages. You see, it’s a much less raucous way of communicating than ours. Which explains why they think of us as rough beasts.”

“Then they aren’t using extrasensory powers at all?” said the hawkman.

“I’m not sure of that,” said Jape. “They may be able to communicate telepathically, but only at close range.” He shrugged with all his shoulders. “We may never know, since I don’t think I’m going to have an opportunity for much detailed study.”

“Let’s hope not,” said Huk. “I want to stay as far from the blue men as we can.”

“What you’re listening to on the earphones,” said Flash, “is there any way you can translate it?”

“I’m only guessing at this point,” answered Jape. “The language sounds fairly close to that spoken on the planet of Yasmin. This could mean Mesmo was colonized from there centuries ago. I know a little Yasminian, and if I stick with this radio a few hours longer it’s just possible I can pick up this Mesmo version of the language well enough to understand what they’re saying to each other.”

“It would be helpful to know what they’re saying about us,” said Huk.

“That’s important now,” agreed Jape, “but equally as important is the fact that if I can understand the language we’ll be able to find out a lot more about this planet.”

“Such as the location of the spaceports,” said Flash.

“Well,” said Huk, “you two can handle the long-range planning for the time being. I’m more concerned with seeing we get clear of any blue men who may be tracking us.”

“We’ve been pretty careful,” said Flash. “I don’t think any more trappers are going to sneak up on us.”

“You’ve decided that’s what that fellow was?” asked Jape.

“I have a feeling that snare that caught me was one of his,” said Flash. “And he wasn’t dressed in the style of the blue men we encountered in the city.”

“Yes, he had a woodsman’s look about him,” said Huk.

Darkness gradually dropped down on them. The party continued on. When they stopped to make camp for the night, they were still two miles from the vast jungle.

CHAPTER 21

“The trees grow thick here,” said Huk, who was kneeling in front of the small campfire he’d started. “They should conceal the flames from anyone flying over.”

“Don’t see why we need a fire at all,” said Booker as he chewed on a cake of the dry food they had salvaged from the wreck. “We got nothing to cook.”

“A fire’s good for more than cooking,” said Flash. “It’ll keep curious animals at a safe distance.”

“What kind of animals?” asked Booker. “I haven’t seen much around here except butterflies.”

“Well, since the fellow who almost caught us had animal traps set,” replied Flash, “I figure there must be animals.”

“Probably a few nocturnal types at least,” said Huk.

“I noticed signs while we were traveling,” said Sixy. “Tracks on the ground, marks on the trunks and branches. Some kind of big cats, I’d say.”

“How big?” asked the strong man.

Sixy ripped open a food packet with his toes. “Oh, as big as the lions we worked with in the circus.”

Mallox laughed. “There’s nothing to worry about then,” he said. “Cats that size, I can just snap their necks.”

“We don’t all have that ability,” Sixy reminded him. “If one of those big cats comes along tonight while you’re asleep and—”

“I don’t need any sleep.”

“We’re all going to need rest,” said Huk.

“What we’ll have to do,” said Flash, “is divide the night into shifts. We should keep at least two on watch all night.”

“I need my sleep,” said Booker. “I’m still not recovered from the train wreck.”

“You and Narla can have the last shift before morning,” said Huk. “That way you can sleep from now until then.”

“How early you going to wake me up?”

“I can take all the night shifts,” said Mallox. “Then everyone can sleep. There’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Huk shook his head. “No, we have to divide the work, Mallox. And everyone has to do part of it. There’s no telling how long we may be together and it’s best to get a system worked out now.”

The giant made a rumbling sound in his chest, letting his huge hands slap against his thighs. “Very well, I’ll go along with the system.”

Flash, after the shifts were set up, went and sat beside Jape. “Making any progress?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered the physicist. “The language they use here on Mesmo is definitely a variation on that spoken on Yasmin. I’m beginning to understand a few words here, a phrase there.”

“Any reference to our train wreck?”

“I believe they’ve been sending out a warning all day,” said Jape, patting the radio with one of his hands. “Something to the effect that several wild animals have escaped from the crashed circus train.”

“The wild animals being us?”

“Yes, though as far as I can gather they aren’t advocating that we be shot on sight,” said Jape. “Some group—I think the right name would be militia—is apparently searching for us.”

“Are they searching the forest we’ve just passed through?”

“I can’t tell,” said Jape. “But by tomorrow I think I’ll be able to figure out most of what’s being said on here.” He smiled. “That is, if we don’t get captured before then.”

The silence awakened Flash. It was a misty morning, the chill hour of dawn. Flash sat up from the bed he’d made of leaves.

The campfire had died; a trickle of sooty smoke spiraled up from it.

Flash looked to the place, some hundred feet from the camp, where Narla should have been standing watch. The girl was not there.

Jumping up, he turned to where Booker ought to have been. The black man was nowhere in sight.

“What is it?” asked Huk, coming awake.

“Narla,” said Flash, “and Booker. They’re not here.”

“I thought he looked too drowsy when I roused him to take over for me,” said Sixy, yawning and rubbing at his eyes.

Flash moved quickly to the spot where Narla had been. He cupped his hands, calling her name.

No answer came back to him out of the misty woods which surrounded them.

“Better if I had stayed up all night.” Mallox stretched his enormous arms above his head. “Where have they gotten to?”

Huk had been looking over the spot where Booker had kept watch. “There appear to be other prints here. What do you think, Sixy?”

Squatting, Sixy said, “Yes, it was two men. Wait—no, three. There’s the heel print of a soft leather boot mixed in with the others.”

“Looks like two more men grabbed Narla,” said Flash, after examining the ground.

“How could they have come so close?” asked Jape.

“For one thing,” said Sixy, “Booker may have gone back to sleep.”

“I would have heard anyone approaching,” said Mallox. “Even the smallest animal.”

“But you didn’t,” said Huk. “None of us did.” He unfurled his wings. “I’d better go up and take a look around.”

Flash returned to the place where they’d piled their supplies. He took up the stun rifle, scanning the trees around them. “They may still be out there.”

Jape rubbed one of his hands over his chin. “If it’s the national militia I’ve been hearing about,” he said, “I don’t see why they didn’t take us all.”

“Once when we played a little town on the jungle’s edge, I got to talking with a fellow who worked as a slave for one of the food vendors,” said Sixy. “He told me there’s more than one kind of slaver on Mesmo.”

“Men who don’t travel to other planets, you mean?” said the hawkman.

“Exactly,” said Sixy. “Bands of renegades who are more or less pirates, land-going pirates. This fellow knew of a man who’d escaped from one master only to be caught by a band of roving slavers. These fellows will even capture their own kind.”

“That might explain,” said Jape, “why they only took the girl and Booker.”

“I’ll wager they were afraid to tackle all of us,” said the strongman.

Flash said, “Huk, you go on and take a look around from above. If you don’t spot anything, then we’ll follow their trail on the ground.” Carrying the rifle, he went again to examine the tracks around the place where Narla had stood.

CHAPTER 22

“Another Zarkov masterpiece,” said Zarkov, “if I do say so myself.” The light stripe which criss-crossed the ceiling of his large workshop, tinting him a pale yellow, threw prickly shadow images of his beard against the side of the spacecraft he’d been at work on. He stepped back, admiring the low cylindrical ship. “Not bad for a rush job.”

He glanced at the one-way pseudoglass walls of the big workroom, noticing it was night outside. He crossed to a table where he’d left a cup of broth. He took a sip, then scowled. “That sure got cold fast.”

“I brought the soup to you four hours ago,” said Dale as she came into the workshop.

“That accounts for its being cold.” Dr. Zarkov extended one hand, palm up and fingers spread toward the ship. “Handsome, isn’t it?”

“And certainly roomy enough to carry two.”

Zarkov frowned into the mug of cold broth. “This is going to be a solo rescue operation, Dale.”

“I don’t know why,” said Dale, “you keep thinking I’m not capable of handling myself—”

“It’s not that,” cut in the bearded doctor. “The thing is, we know very little about the planet Mesmo. The PlanExplo Foundation has never sent a survey team out there. Most of the data on the planet comes from a couple of EII robot-ship flybys.”

“I’ve gone into a heck of a lot of unexplored places with you and Flash,” the girl reminded him. “Including landing on several planets where no outsider had ever set foot before, from Mongo on.”

“There’s always a chance,” said Zarkov, “that I won’t come back. Even somebody as competent as Zarkov fouls up now and then.”

“Seems to me,” said Dale, “the chances of your fouling up will be less with me along to back you up.”

Zarkov banged the mug down onto the table. “Out of the question!” he boomed. He opened the door to the cabin of the revamped spacecraft and boosted himself in with a chesty grunt.

Dale came up beside the ship and stood looking inside. “You’ve finished your modifications?”

“Yeah, it’s ready to go,” he said. “With a few more little adjustments.” He clicked the tip of an electric screwdriver against his front teeth. “I’ve come up with an interesting variation on the conventional spacewarp equipment. Much more compact, and it should be a great deal more efficient. If I wasn’t in such a hurry to get off, I’d hop back down to Washington, and take out a patent on it.”

“To get to Mesmo,” said Dale, “we have to jump across both space and time then?”

“Unless you want to spend a couple of lifetimes or more enroute,” bellowed Zarkov. He hunched, frowning at the control panel. He tinkered for a moment, then said, “I notice you said we!”

“You know how I feel about Flash,” said Dale. “I have to go along.”

The doctor concentrated on his tinkering for another minute. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve appealed to Zarkov’s sentimental side.”

Dale laughed. “And most people say you don’t have one. I’ll get my spacesuit ready and pack some basic things in a rucksack.”

“Hum,” said Zarkov. “I just happened to pack an extra rucksack and stow it in here. To test the floor space. You can use that.”

“I see,” said the girl, smiling.

“What you can do, though,” said Zarkov, “is go turn the house down to its lowest operational level. I don’t want those nitwit servos mixing drinks and playing mood music all over the place while I’m gone.”

Dale climbed up inside the ship, caught hold of Zarkov’s arm. She kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks,” she said.

As she jumped from the cabin, the doctor said, “You had better be prepared for the possibility that we may not find him at all, you know, Dale.”

“Oh,” she said, “I know we’ll find Flash.”

CHAPTER 23

Sixy dug his toes into the mossy ground. “They all got together here,” he said. “The three who got Booker and the two who took Narla. Then they headed that way.” He poked a finger at the jungle looming up a quarter of a mile away.

“That would explain,” said the hawkman, “why I didn’t see anything from up above. Those big trees make a roof over the whole jungle.”

“Well, we were figuring on going into the jungle anyway,” said Sixy, examining twigs and bits of leaf with his agile toes.

“They have a few hours on us,” said Flash, “don’t they?”

“Judging by their tracks, yes. They probably made their move not long after Booker and Narla took over the watch.”

“That Booker,” rumbled Mallox. “We should have tossed him to the little blue devils long ago.”

Flash shifted his grip on the rifle he was carrying. “Let’s get going, then.”

The tallest trees in the jungle rose up, thick and straight, for two hundred feet. Their fat leaves and branches formed a green ceiling over a good part of the ground below. The sunlight fell in slanting columns, like the light coming through stained-glass cathedral windows. Vines were twisted and snarled around branches and trunks, corkscrewed across the ground. Huge ferns—green, yellow, and deep purple—festooned the spaces between trees. Gigantic orchids, with bright scarlet petals, grew all around.

Down at ground level, the jungle was hot, the air thick and musky. Sparkling patches of fungi grew on the dark sides of the trees, pale-yellow fungus, dead-white fungus and a bloody-red fungus. There were many birds, small flickering ones and large birds that flapped high above. Insects buzzed, hummed, flittered.

“Damn,” said Mallox, slapping two lavender-winged mosquitoes off his bare arm. “You fellows won’t make a meal of me.”

Sixy brushed a swirl of hundreds of silvery little gnats away from his face. “Look here, Flash,” he said.

“What is it?”

“There’s a print made by Narla,” said Sixy. “Means they set her down at this point and let her walk.”

“So at least we know she’s okay,” said Flash.

“She can walk, anyway.”

A dozen monkeys swung through the trees about fifty feet above, chittering. Part of a red banana skin came spinning down to splat on Mallox’s head.

“Little polka-dot devils,” he hollered up at the swinging monkeys.

Jape had the earphones of the radio on again. He removed them now as he came up beside Flash. “The militia is still searching for us,” he said. “They report they will soon have us all in captivity.”

“No mention of Narla and Booker then?” asked Flash.

“None.”

“Then these are definitely slavers we’re tracking,” said Flash. “If the militia had got them, they’d be bragging about it by now.”

“Yes, I agree,” said the four-armed man. “One thing I’ve learned from listening to all this: they sound very stubborn, very determined. I don’t think they’re likely to give up hunting us.”

“Once we find Narla and Booker,” said Flash, “we might turn the tables and start hunting the militia.”

Mallox slapped at the steamy afternoon air. “Watch what you try, little red rascal.” A tiny hovering bird had just taken a peck at his ear.

“There’s something about you that seems to attract the wildlife,” said Huk.

“You’d expect the birds at least to prefer you,” growled the strongman.

“Huh?” said Sixy, who was at the head of the procession. He halted, squatted down, and poked at the ground with toes and fingers. “That’s interesting.”

Flash joined him. “Seems they split up at this point.”

“Yes, some of them went north and the rest south.”

“What about our friends?” asked Jape.

Sixy put his face close to the ground. “I think three of the slavers took Booker with them and headed to the north,” he said after several quiet seconds. “The other two boys kept Narla with them and went that way.”

“It could have something to do,” suggested Flash, “with where they intend to sell Narla and Booker.”

“Different markets,” said Huk. “That might be it.”

“I don’t like this,” said Mallox, making huge fists out of his hands. “Selling a woman to a circus is one thing, but these blue devils more than likely have something much worse in mind for Narla.”

“We’ll have to stop them,” said Flash.

“As far as I’m concerned,” said the strongman, “they can have Booker. We’ll save the girl.”

“No,” said Huk. “We have to try to rescue both of them.”

“Man,” said the giant, “we’re fugitives. You can forget about your fancy rules and beliefs. What I’m concerned about is staying alive.”

“We’re going to stay concerned with each other,” said Jape. “That’s just the way it is, Mallox. We can’t make you do what you won’t, but you can’t keep us from doing what we have to do.”

“And what might that be?”

“We obviously have to separate here.”

“All right, you go find Booker,” said Mallox. “The rest of us—”

“Try to be as sensible as I know you are,” said the hawkman. “We have evidence right here on the ground before us that three men have taken Booker with them. Therefore, we’re going to need the majority of our group to rescue him.”

“Nonsense,” said the giant. “Why I could handle three men myself.”

“Very well,” said Huk, “then lets you and I go after Booker.”

Mallox snorted, scratched his fingers across his chest. “Very well, Huk. I’ll go with you to see they don’t pluck your feathers and roast you on a spit.”

“I’ll appreciate that,” said the hawkman, giving his wings a flap.

“Maybe I’d better go with you, too,” said Sixy. “To help read the trail. Flash can track the fellows who’ve got Narla.”

“Okay,” said Flash. “Jape and I will follow her trail.”

Jape rubbed his chin with one hand, scratched his head with another. “We have to get back together again,” he said. “I’d like to suggest that whoever finds their quarry first backtracks and tries to catch up with the other party.”

“I’ll wager I find that useless Booker sooner than you locate Narla,” said Mallox.

“In that case,” said Jape, “turn around and follow us.”

“You’ll probably need me by that time,” said the giant. He slapped his big hands together. “Come along then, Sixy, lead the way. I’m anxious to meet with those devilish slavers.”

They separated into two groups and set off in opposite directions.

Flash and Jape could hear the strongman boasting long after they had lost sight of him.

CHAPTER 24

The light of the day began to fail, seeping away through the high, straight trees. A hundred feet up small orange frogs, squatting on branches, began to croak forlornly. Tiny golden butterflies came fluttering through the warm jungle forest air.

“Here’s where they stopped again,” said Flash, kneeling.

Jape detached himself from the portable radio set to study the spot. “This would have been their midday break for a meal,” he said. “Which means we’re several hours behind them still.”

Flash studied the signs and indentations on the ground, poked a finger at the few minute remains of food. “Don’t think it was that long ago,” he said. “We could be as close as a couple of hours traveling from them.”

“Then,” said the four-armed man, “we should catch up with them when they camp down for the night.”

“If they do.” Flash straightened up. “They may continue on all night, we have no way of telling.”

Jape took a new grip on the radio as they continued on. “Our early capture is still being promised,” he told Flash.

“Anything that might help us find a spaceport?”

“Nothing so far,” said Jape. “They broadcast a good deal of news and propaganda on the only stations I can get. Then some quite interesting ten-tone music. There don’t seem to be, surprisingly, any advertisements. The radio networks are apparently government-owned.”

A luminous moss began appearing on the tree trunks now. The light beneath all the branches was thin and soon the last of it died away as blue-black night filled the jungle. But the moss glowed more strongly.

A frown touched Flash’s forehead. “Hear that?”

Jape tugged off the earphones. “What?”

“Some kind of odd humming.” Flash tilted a thumb skyward. “Up above us somewhere.”

Jape studied the jungle overhead, eyes narrowed. “Could be almost anything,” he said. “There’s a great diversity of life in this jungle.”

The humming grew louder. Mixed with it was another sound, a high-pitched squeaking sound which resembled laughter but wasn’t.

“There they are!” said Flash.

Flapping down through the dark branches were two dozen huge bats. They glowed a faint, ghostly blue.

“Coming for us, too,” said Jape. He set the radio aside, quickly got out a stungun and a shockstick.

“Hold off,” cautioned Flash, his blaster rifle held lightly in both hands. “Let’s make sure it’s us they plan to attack.”

“Big fellows like that are more than likely vampires,” said Jape.

Some of the pulsing glowing bats were gliding, tracing slow circles about fifty feet above the two men. As they moved behind tree trunks and into sight again, they seemed to flash on and off.

The squeaking laughing noise was all around them now. The bats hung in the air for a few seconds, then two of them dived—dived straight down through the blackness for Jape and Flash.

“It’s us they want.” Flash squeezed the trigger.

The thin beam of the blaster rifle sizzled across the night. The two bats turned to dust, glistening dust, that slowly drifted down through the trees.

More of the bats were diving now, humming and squeaking.

Flash fired again, then again.

Some of them got by him. A huge fat-winged bat, its rat teeth flashing white, lunged through the air at Flash’s neck.

“Watch out!” Jape swung his shockstick, swatting the creature across the skull.

The glowing bat stiffened, wings folding up. It fell at their feet.

Two more made for Flash.

Jape swatted again, firing the stungun at the same time.

He got both of them.

Flash pivoted, shot again up into the darkness. “Thinning them out,” he said.

Jape swung at another bat. He missed and the creature whirled and sank his teeth into his shoulder. An instant later, Jape used his stungun on it. The bat let go and fell away from him. But blood was flowing down his arm. He used one of his free hands to press against the wound.

The remaining bats made louder squeaking noises now, concentrating on trying to get at the bleeding Jape.

Flash kept on firing.

Soon the dark night was filled with glistening sparkling dust which had been the bats.

The last five went flapping up and away finally, leaving Flash and Jape.

Flash inhaled and exhaled through his mouth. “So much for the bats,” he said. “How are you doing?”

“It hurts a good deal,” said Jape. He put away his weapons while he got out a cloth handkerchief from a pocket. He pressed it hard against the bite wound. “The bleeding’s almost stopped.”

“We don’t know much about the local wild life,” said Flash. “I’m wondering if there’s a risk of rabies.”

“Not much we can do about it if there is,” said Jape.

Flash shrugged out of his pack. “There was something that looked like a first-aid kit in what we salvaged from the train wreck. Maybe we can at least disinfect the wound.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” said Jape. “Although—”

He saw them first. Five men came out from behind the nearby trees.

Flash had set down his rifle to dig in the pack. He looked back over his shoulder now.

Three of the men were blue; all five held guns.

CHAPTER 25

Huk’s powerful wings ceased flapping and he drifted down through the dusk. “I can see nothing of them from above,” he announced as he landed on the ground.

“Don’t worry about that,” said the strongman. “We’re still on their trail, getting closer all the time. If you’d let me forge on ahead, I could catch the whole pack of blue devils and snatch back that worthless Booker.”

“We stay together,” said Huk.

Sixy was poking at the ground with his toes. “They’re not all blue men we’re after, by the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“The trail they’ve left, faint as it is, tells a different story. This one fellow here, judging by the length of his stride and the depth of his prints, has got to be nearly as big as you are, Mallox.”

Mallox scowled. “I’ve never seen a blue devil who matched me in size.”

“Nor have I,” said the hawkman. “That means at least one of our kidnappers is probably from some other planet, like ourselves.”

“Which fits in with the stories I’ve heard,” said Sixy. “Some of these roving bands have runaways in them.”

The strongman snorted. “I don’t think much of men who run away from slavers only to become slavers themselves.” He clapped his big hands together. “Well now, let’s move along. I’d like to catch these fellows before nightfall.”

“I doubt we’ll encounter them that soon,” said Huk.

The light began to fade slowly, the more distant trees turning gradually dark, then those closer at hand. The ceiling of green leaves and branches gave way to one of thick darkness. Small night birds began to call from the interlaced lower branches. Enormous fireflies, that glowed bright green and scarlet and gold, flittered all around.

“At least they don’t bite.” Sixy brushed one of the big light-throbbing insects off his elbow.

The three men continued on through the jungle, slowed now by the darkness that made the faint trail even more difficult to follow.

Mallox’s left leg continued in motion even as he sat, the knee bobbing impatiently up and down. The strongman spit out the final mouthful of dry rations. “We’ve paused long enough for our evening meal,” he said, rising to his full height.

Sixy was leaning against the bole of a tree, hands locked behind his head and using his fingerlike toes to tear open a fresh packet of food. “I don’t see how you grew up so strong if you’ve always ignored your nutritional intake this way,” he said.

“I eat what I like when I like,” said Mallox. “The best way to build yourself up is to keep moving all the time. On more civilized and lazier planets, they call that exercise. Where I grew up you had to keep moving and keep fighting simply to survive. That was our exercise.”

Sixy flipped a morsel of dry food into his mouth with his big toe. “It’s also important to learn when to sit still.”

Huk’s wings extended once, flapped, then folded in on themselves. “Let’s agree right now how many more hours we’re going to keep on tonight.”

“What is there to agree on?” said Mallox. “We keep going till we find these little blue devils, or whatever they are.”

“No, we have to stop and rest sometime,” said Huk.

The strongman gave an impatient grunt before saying, “Very well. Whenever you two get tired, tell me and we’ll make our camp for the night.”

When Sixy finished eating, the three of them moved on. A heavy murky dark filled the jungle now.

“We could use a couple of these fireflies,” said Sixy. “Too bad they deserted us.”

They had been traveling under an hour when they heard something up ahead.

“Somebody’s shouting,” said Huk.

“It sounds like Booker,” said the strongman.

“Yes, it is Booker,” agreed Sixy.

As they moved slowly forward, the voice became clear. “Help me! Please, somebody help me!” Booker was shouting in the dark. “Help me. Is there anybody around to help me? Please, they left me in this quicksand to die. Please, somebody come and help me. I’m going to die this way.”

“There he is,” said Mallox.

Fifty yards to the right was a wide dark place in the jungle floor. A few of the giant fireflies were circling the spot, illuminating the struggling Booker. He was up to his waist in the thick, sucking ground.

“I don’t want to die here in this,” he shouted. “It’s not fair. Help me—somebody come and help me!”

Eyes narrowed, Mallox glanced quickly all around. Then he cupped his hands to his mouth. “Stop thrashing about, you fool. Keep still and we’ll save you.”

“What took you so long to get to me?” called Booker when he realized who it was. “Those guys left me here to die when I accidentally fell in. They didn’t even think I was worth saving. Please, get me out of this stuff.”

“Quiet down,” the strongman told him.

Carefully, the three men began to make their way to Booker.

But they never reached him. Seventy feet from the pit of quicksand, the earth beneath them suddenly opened up. They fell down into a square deep hole.

“A trap,” said Sixy as he hit the ground hard.

CHAPTER 26

The man nearest Flash was thickset with a red beard. He wore a tunic and trousers of jungle green and had pouches and rucksacks, gunbelts, and bandoliers strapped to him. His eyes were partly closed and red-rimmed. “Well, well,” he said, “no slaves this trip, eh, my friends? That’s sad, that’s unfortunate.” He held a black blaster pistol aimed at Flash’s chest.

The three blue men in the party all grinned.

The fifth man was small and old, with feathery white hair swirling around his head. He was dressed in a tatered dark cloak. A thin arm protruded from a slit in the cloak. The old man’s weapon was a stungun. “That’s unfortunate,” he said.

“I fear,” continued the bearded man, “that we’re going to have to put you lads out of business for good and all.”

“We’re not slavers,” Flash told him.

“Not slavers,” echoed the old man.

“Perhaps you are tourists then? Nature lovers who’ve come here on a pilgrimage to study our wildlife.”

The three blue men grinned more broadly.

Flash looked from one man to another for a moment. “We’re runaways,” he said. “We escaped from a wrecked train yesterday.”

“We’d been slaves,” added Jape, “in Barko’s circus.”

One of the blue men tapped the red-haired man on the arm, then gestured at the radio. He nodded his round head up and down.

“Yes,” said the red-bearded man, “we heard about the wreck.” His left eye was nearly closed. “Why are you here?”

“Right now,” explained Flash, “we’re trailing a gang of real slavers who carried off one of our friends.”

The bearded man unsnapped a pouch which hung at his hip. He drew a short-bladed knife out with his free hand. From a sack on his back, he pulled a chunk of black bread. Dropping his pistol into a holster, he cut himself a slice of bread. He took a bite and chewed it thoughtfully. “How many of you escaped?”

“Seven,” replied Flash.

“And were all but you two carried off?”

“No,” said Jape, “only two. We separated some hours ago, since the slavers seemed to have carried one of our friends in this direction and the other in another.”

“Tell me about the one,” the red-bearded man said as he chewed, “you’re looking for.”

“A girl,” said Flash. “A blonde girl in her twenties. At least two slavers are with her.”

“A girl,” said the old man.

The bearded man cut another slice of bread. He held it out to Flash. “Are you hungry?”

“No, we have rations.”

The old man reached another hand out of his cloak and grabbed the slice of bread.

“I’m Hopp,” said the red-bearded man. “Your story sounds true.”

“Flash Gordon,” said Flash. “And this is Jape.”

Hopp nodded. “It’s a bad sign if they brought the girl this way,” he said. “The slave markets that sell women are not pleasant places.”

“Not pleasant,” said the old man as he took a bite of the bread.

“How far away is the nearest market?” asked Flash.

“A hundred miles to the south from here,” answered Hopp. “It lies in a disreputable settlement on the river.” From another pouch he pulled out a blotched, folded wad of paper. “I have a rough map of the countryside hereabouts. I’ll show you.”

One of the blue men came up to Jape, tapped on the radio, and then the earphones.

“You’re welcome to listen,” said Jape, handing him the earphones.

“Despite the impression you may have gotten while you were in captivity,” said Hopp to the four-armed man, “the blue people can understand us. It takes some effort and patience. The masters are not willing to go to any trouble to communicate with their slaves.”

“You appear to be friends with these men,” said Flash.

“Everyone on Mesmo does not go along with the present government, with the policy of capturing slaves from other planets,” said Hopp. “Blue men with such opinions find they cannot live comfortably among their own kind any longer. So, rather than going to prison or to the slave markets themselves, they leave the cities and the towns. We have many blue people living in our jungle.”

“You’re from where?” asked Flash.

“Grew up on Mars,” said Hopp. “Worked a few years on Venus, then bummed around several planet systems. I was on Anmar when these slavers got hold of me.”

“How long have you been on Mesmo?”

“Five years. I escaped nearly three years ago from a cattle ranch where they had me working.”

“And how many others live in the jungles?”

“Hundreds,” answered Hopp. “Our group has about fifty members. We break into smaller groups within the big one. I lead a band of ten, usually. My other men are off hunting right now.” He unlaced a sack hanging from his other hip and took a flask out of it. “Drink?”

“No, thanks.”

After taking a long pull on the flask, the red-haired man said, “Never been able to shake the habit. And the liquor on Mesmo is awful, too.” He took another gulp, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“You’ve lived in the jungle three years,” said Flash. “Have you ever tried to get off the planet?”

“Off the planet,” said the old man, chuckling dryly.

“It’s next to impossible,” said Hopp. “That’s why old Abel here is laughing. The spaceports are guarded incredibly well.”

“With a hundred men,” said Flash, “I’d think you could take over a port.”

“Perhaps,” said Hopp. “You’ll have to realize that not everyone wants to go home, Flash.” He dropped the flask back into its sack. “No, not everyone is nostalgic for his home planet. Some of the men, and the women, too, who’ve been brought here by the blue men didn’t amount to much where they came from. You see, it’s often easier for the slavers to kidnap someone who’s alone in some out-of-the-way place. That’s why a good many of the slaves and the runaways are people without much family waiting for them on some other planet.”

Flash said, “I see. And I suppose a lot of them are doing pretty well in the local slave racket.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Hopp. “The life in the jungle isn’t that bad. There are dangers, as you just found out in your encounter with the vampire bats, but it’s a better life than that of a slave.” He reached into another pouch and took out a wedge of green cheese. “Another thing you have to realize is that many people, slaves or not, don’t have much ambition. So they’re as happy here as they were on their own planet.”

“I want,” said Flash, “to get off Mesmo.”

“Yes, I guessed that.”

“Can you help us?”

After slicing off a large chunk of the cheese, Hopp said, “Well, my friend, I can give you a copy of one of my homemade maps, showing you where the nearest spaceport is.” He took a few bites of the cheese. “Beyond that, I can’t give you any men. You see, we’ve been over these matters many times and there just isn’t enough enthusiasm for attempting a full-scale raid.”

“What about you?”

Hopp’s thick red eyebrows rose and fell. “Huh,” he said. “I haven’t thought about that. You mean, would I like to come along with you when you try to capture a spacecraft?”

“There are other ways beside force and numbers to take over a field,” said Flash. “Yes, I’m asking if you want to try to get off Mesmo. Talking to you, I get the feeling you’re not as satisfied with living here the rest of your life as some of the others.”

“It’s something to think about, my friend.”

“Something to think about,” said the old man.

CHAPTER 27

Huk tried to fly free.

But they were ready for that.

As the hawkman came flapping up out of the trap, they threw a weighted net over him. Huk struggled, twisted, fought against the net. It was no use. He was pulled back down to the ground.

He thrashed around, still trying to fight free. They hit him across the back of his skull. His wings fluttered once, his body twitched, and then the hawkman collapsed into unconsciousness.

Sixy, down in the earthen hole, made no attempt to climb out. His right leg had twisted under him when he hit and his ankle was badly sprained.

Mallox roared and bellowed. His big hands clawed into the dirt wall of the freshly dug pit. He climbed up out of the ground.

“Stay right where you are, big fellow!” ordered the large yellow-haired man who faced the giant. He held a blaster pistol in his hand.

“I don’t take orders from the likes of you.”

The strongman hurled himself through the air and hit the other man hard in the stomach with his shoulder.

The pistol fired. It had been knocked back and was aimed straight up. Burned leaves, ashes, and soot came falling down to splash on the two big struggling men.

“I did my part,” said Booker. “Get me out of here now.”

The two shaggy blue men who’d netted Huk paid no attention to Booker. They cautiously circled the fighting men, each holding a stungun.

“You won’t,” panted Mallox, “be able to hold out much longer against me.”

“I can handle two like you, big fellow,” grunted the other. He drove two harsh blows into the giant’s chest.

It took a little of the wind out of Mallox. He took a surprised step back. Then he dived forward again, head low, and butted his opponent in the lower abdomen.

The man’s long yellow hair flapped. He staggered, one knee dipping toward the ground.

“Stop watching that fight,” said Booker. “Get me out of here. I could really sink in this stuff, you know.”

While the light-haired man was still off-balance, Mallox hit him full on the chin.

The big man stumbled, swayed far to the left, and then toppled over into the hole.

“Just what you deserve,” the strongman shouted after him. “Now for you little blue dev—”

They made no attempt to fight him hand to hand. The two blue men fired their stunguns at Mallox.

He froze, hands reaching for them.

“Okay, you fixed him good,” said Booker. “Get me out of this muck, will you?”

The blue men went instead to the edge of the hole. One uncoiled a rope which hung at his wide belt.

“He’s in no condition to grab hold of that rope,” said Sixy from down below. “Your big friend is out cold.”

The blue man swung the rope in Sixy’s direction, motioning him to take hold.

Sixy climbed up. “I’m a little surprised at you, Booker,” he said when he was on solid ground. “Playing along with these slavers or whatever they are.”

“What kind of choice you think I had?” asked Booker. “They made me do it, said they’d kill me if I didn’t. I had to! Didn’t make no sense to risk my life, since it wouldn’t’ve helped you guys any.”

Sixy massaged his sprained ankle with the toes of his other foot. “What do these fellows plan to do with you—with us?”

“Same thing everybody does with us,” answered the black man. “Sell us.”

CHAPTER 28

Captain Suell of the Mesmo National Militia was standing stiffly beside one of his ground tanks, a cup of herb tea in one gloved hand. He was admiring the way the barrels of the mounted blaster cannons sparkled in the light of the aircruiser that was hovering above.

The belly of the cruiser flapped open; a large crate was lowered.

“Let’s handle that as gently as we can,” projected the blue captain to the militiamen who caught the case and eased it to the ground at the edge of the night forest.

“Sir.”

Suell turned to the lieutenant who had come up behind him. “What is it, Padd?”

“One of the patrols scouring the woods came across a trapper who had an interesting story.”

“I’m not interested in stories, Padd. What I want are facts,” thought the captain. “It’s incredible to me that these beasts could stay at large as long as they have. I’ve come out to this godforsaken wilderness to personally supervise the hunt. I don’t have time for tall tales.”

“This man captured the runaways, sir.”

Captain Suell allowed his eyebrows to rise a fraction. “Did he now? What, please tell me, has he done with them?”

“He says they turned the tables on him,” said Padd, “and escaped again.”

“They’re very good at escaping, these animals.” Suell flung his tea away, cup and all. “Where is this trapper?”

“Over there, sir.” The blue lieutenant pointed at the forest. “He was somewhat reluctant to come because he says his wife will be worried.”

“His wife, indeed his entire domestic life, is of no interest to me, Padd.” Captain Suell gathered his cloak around himself and walked stiffly toward the cluster of militiamen around the unhappy Djorj.

“I’d like to go home now,” he thought as the captain drew near.

Suell reached out and slapped the trapper across the face. “Tell me about the escaped animals,” he thought.

Djorj rubbed his fingers over his cheek. “There ought to be a reward,” he thought, his eyes on the ground. “After all, I caught most of—”

The second slap was harder. It knocked him back against the trunk of a tree.

“Serving your government should be more than sufficient reward,” thought Suell. “Now I want to hear your story: I don’t want any whining or complaining; I don’t want pleas for money. I want the facts.”

Djorj massaged his cheek again. “It was about twenty miles from here,” he thought. “That’s another thing, these men dragged me all that way even though— Yes, all right, I’ll tell you the story.” He gave Captain Suell a detailed account of his encounter with Flash Gordon and the others.

Wlen the trapper was finished, Suell thought, “You might have had some money at that. You shouldn’t have let them get the best of you, though.”

“They’re very clever beasts,” thought Djorj.

Tapping his broad chest, the captain thought, “But still beasts, nonetheless, and no match for men.”

One of the blue militiamen stepped forward now. He held several lengths of rope in his gloved hands. “These are what the fellow was tied up with,” he thought.

Suell grabbed a length and came close to Djorj.

The trapper cringed.

The captain laughed. “You’re an easily frightened fellow, for a trapper,” he thought. “I won’t hit you again, don’t worry. I simply want a few more facts. Did the animals handle this rope?”

“Yes, when they tied me up with it.” He took a few steps back from the captain.

“Very good, that’s very good. You can go home now, trapper.”

“Thank you.” Djorj quickly slipped away into the woods.

“Cowardly fellow,” mused Suell as he returned to the crate. “One would think a trapper would have to be a brave man.”

“Many people fear the militia, sir,” pointed out Padd.

“Yes, I suppose they do.”

“And the fellow had been tied up in the woods for many hours.”

“We all have to learn to endure hardships, Padd. That’s what makes us men—what makes us superior to animals.” He stopped beside the crate, nodded at the militiaman who held a crowbar. “Why haven’t you opened it, man?”

“We waited your arrival, sir.”

“A little more initiative on everyone’s part might make for a more efficient militia,” thought the captain. “Might produce a group that could track down escaped animals a bit more quickly. Well, go ahead and open it.”

“Very good, sir.”

A side of the crate was soon pried free and lifted away. Captain Suell stepped forward and peered inside.

“A half dozen of them,” he thought, nodding to himself. “All right, get them out of there and ready to work.”

Three of the militamen hauled out the robot dogs that had just been delivered to aid in the search. Each metallic dog was large and copper-colored. Their teeth were of stainless steel, their eyes of yellow vinyl, and their nose mechanisms of aluminum mesh.

Lieutenant Padd activated one of the hunting dogs by flicking a switch concealed beneath a metal ear. “If I might have the rope, sir.”

The robot dog opened its jaws and snapped at the air once. Its eyes flashed an intense yellow.

Suell himself held the coil of rope beneath the robot dog’s nose. “Sniff this, old fellow,” he commanded. “Then go into that forest and find us the animals who handled it.”

The dog’s nose quivered. A low growl began rumbling and rattling inside its metal chest.

CHAPTER 29

The old man said, “Good as new,” and put his hands away under the cloak.

“Thank you,” said Jape. Old Abel had just treated the wound Jape had received in their recent tangle with the giant glow bats.

“Our local bats,” said Hopp, “are a healthy lot. So it’s not likely you’ll get too many after-effects from that bite, my friend.” He dipped a hand into a pouch hanging from his belt, extracting a thin black cigar.

“That’s good to know.”

“They’ll kill you if they can, and drink your blood afterwards. But if you escape, you usually don’t have to worry about disease.” The red-bearded man took a glowing stick from their small campfire and got his cigar going.

They were all seated around the campfire. Flash was studying the rough map Hopp had given him. “Our slavers will be heading this way?” he said, tracing a finger along the splotchy paper.

“Yes,” said Hopp, exhaling a swirl of smoke, “that’s the route to the slave market.”

“Maybe if we keep after them all night,” said Flash, “we can catch up with them.”

“Probably not, my friend.” Hopp reached over to tap the map with the wet end of his cigar. “What your slavers will do is reach the river about there someplace. They may be at that spot already.”

“You mean they’ll travel by boat down to the settlement?”

“Many of them have forlorn little boats of their own that they use in their trade,” explained the red-haired man. “There are also a few crooked bargemen—not that almost all bargemen aren’t crooked—who don’t care who they carry. They’ll take anybody downriver if there’s a little money in it.”

“Can you help us get hold of a boat?” asked Flash.

“Nothing to it,” chuckled old Abel, his feathery hair seeming to flicker in the firelight.

“We have some friends on the river,” said Hopp.

“I’d like,” said Flash, standing up, “to get going tonight.”

Hopp remained seated. He took another puff at his cigar. After watching the exhaled smoke spiral up and away into the darkness, he said, “The best we can do for you, my friend, is first thing in the morning.”

One of the old man’s hands appeared from under his tattered cloak. He pointed at Jape. “Ought to rest,” he said.

“Abel’s right,” said Hopp. “You ought to give that wound a night to start healing, my friend.”

Jape said, “I suppose so, but the longer we delay the worse it is for Narla.”

“Patience,” said the old man.

Flash said, “Okay, we’ll stop here for the night and get going tomorrow at dawn.”

One of the blue men had been listening to the portable radio. He detached the earphones now, snapping his fingers to attract Jape’s attention.

“Something you want me to hear?” said the four-armed man.

The blue man’s head bobbed up and down.

Jape put on an earphone, frowning. He listened for a few silent moments, then put the radio aside. “A fresh announcement by the militia,” he told Flash. “Seems the effort to catch us is being stepped up. Captain Suel is quoted as saying they’re bringing in the latest technological devices to aid in the hunt for these vicious animals.”

Flash looked inquiringly around the circle. “What exactly does that mean?”

“Well, my friend,” said Hopp, “it’s not likely they can get tanks into the jungle here. And that roof of leaves and branches makes it pretty tough for any airships to spot us . . .” His voice trailed off as he rubbed his forehead thoughtfully.

“Dogs,” said the old man.

“I was thinking about that,” Hopp said. “We hear the Mesmo National Militia has robot dogs especially designed to hunt runaway slaves and the like.”

“We’ve got a pretty good lead on them,” said Flash. “If they’ve just turned the dogs loose now.”

“The river’ll help you, too,” said Hopp. “I don’t think even robot tracking dogs can trail you on the water.”

“Yes, so maybe well be safe,” said Flash. “But the rest of our friends are traveling inland. Huk and Mallox and Sixy.”

“Patience,” repeated Abel.

“He means,” said Hopp, “there’s nothing you can do about that, Flash. You’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

“I don’t like waiting,” said Flash.

CHAPTER 30

A mist was on the river, thick yellowish vapor that swirled and scurried along the surface of the black water. It drifted among the vines and roots which hung out over the river edge, wound around the ramshackle barge which was drifting downstream.

Mist seeped under the wooden door of the small cabin Narla was in. She shivered, hugged herself tighter than ever. There was nothing in the small low room with her, not a stick of furniture. The only illumination came from what little misty moonlight filtered through the one tiny window near the ceiling. There were bars, close together, over the window.

“There’s absolutely no chance now,” she cried aloud. “They’ll never be able to find me again. They might be able to follow our trail on land, but you can’t track a boat. Even an old slow broken-down one like this.”

A big night bird came flapping down to land on the roof of the cabin. It danced a few scraping steps, then flapped off again into the mist.

How long, thought the girl, before we get to the slave market? Probably by morning.

She knew what the two men who had kidnapped her intended to do with her. She had known that ever since they split from the other group of slavers, from the ones who had poor hopeless Booker.

“If only Booker hadn’t fallen asleep. But then I didn’t hear the ones who jumped and gagged me either. So maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

The thick door of the cabin creaked and rattled. It swung outward a few inches and a large hefty man worked his way in. “Not a word, love,” he whispered.

He was dressed in black, with a short black cloak over his wide shoulders. He had a pale, pocked face, touched with a wisp of beard. Narla knew he was the captain of the barge.

He closed the door silently. From under his cloak he took a small electric battery lantern and set it on the dirty plank floor, with the light falling on the huddled girl. “You know me, don’t you, love?” he asked, crouching beside the lantern. “Norlan, captain of this noble craft and one of the best bargemen on the river. Eh?”

“Yes, I saw you when they threw me in here last night.”

“I had nothing to say about that, love,” Norlan told her. “Had I had a say you’d have been treated much more gentle. Eh?”

“What do you want?”

A smile curled the corners of his mouth. “What would I want but to help you. Eh?”

She watched his pale face. “Help me escape, you mean?”

“What else would I be up to, love?” He eased closer to her. “You don’t know where we’re going, don’t know what it’s like there. A vicious place, no place for as lovely a girl as you are. Eh? No, so I’m determined to do anything in my power to see that such a sad fate does not befall you.”

“That’s very nice of you,” said Narla, not trusting him at all.

“To be sure it is, love,” agreed the barge captain, “You see, I know this fellow Zarle who’s got you in his clutches. Scum is what Zarle is. Even among the lowlifes on the river, he is not liked.”

“When are we due at the slave market?”

“Soon, love, very soon,” answered Norlan. “We’ll make port by dawn.”

“Then you’d better tell me now how you intend to help me get away,” said the girl.

“Exactly why I’m here, love.” He moved even closer to her. “Here, then, is my offer. I will set you down at a safe spot some distance from the settlement. Zarle is deep in a drunken stupor, something I saw to I might add, and he’ll not know a thing about it until it is far too late. I will tell him you escaped on your own and arrange things here to indicate that. Eh?”

Narla said, “Where is this spot you’re going to put me off?”

“Ah, it’s a perfectly safe little place, love.” The captain smiled. “In fact, you’ll be well looked after there.”

“There are others there?”

“I have a small house and warehouse near there, back in the jungle a bit,” explained the captain. “Let me be perfectly frank with you, love. I also have a few women there. Ah, but none such as you.”

“I see,” said Narla. “So what you’re offering me is really one kind of slavery instead of another?”

“You might put it that way, love,” said Norlan. “Let me assure you that it’s nothing like what will befall you if you’re sold at the market.” He laughed, a choking laugh deep inside himself. “I may be only the lesser of two evils, I admit. But you don’t have much of a choice. Eh?”

Narla thought she might have a better chance if she were off the barge, away from Zarle and the blue man who had originally captured her. But she didn’t know how many people she might have to tangle with at the captain’s establishment. It might be harder to escape from there than from the slave market. “It’s an interesting offer,” she said, debating what answer to give him, trying to decide what course of action would give her the best chance of escape.

“You haven’t much time to think it over, love,” said Norlan. “So I’d advise—”

The door was wrenched open and a lank black-haired man stepped over the threshold. “She’s got no time at all, Norlan.”

The captain jumped, stumbling to his feet. “What’s the matter, Zarle? I was merely having a little fun.”

Zarle stepped into the cabin and struck the bargeman across the face with his open hand. “You know our deal, Norlan,” he said in a calm level voice. “You leave my girls alone. I pay you well. That’s our deal.” He hit the other man twice more in the face, using his closed fist.

Norlan fell to his knees, pulled himself up, wavered. “You’ve no call to do that, Zarle.” He rubbed his fingers across his bleeding mouth.

“A deal is a deal, Norlan.” He grabbed hold of the captain’s tunic, pulling him across the small cabin. He kicked him out onto the corridor floor.

“We’re not going to do any more business,” said the captain. “We’re finished from this night on, Eh?”

“You’re not the only thieving bargeman who plies the river,” said Zarle as he slammed the door. He turned to grin at the girl. It was a dreadful, mirthless grin, “I’m sorry that fellow annoyed you, miss.”

Narla said nothing.

Zarle bent to pick up the lantern the captain had left behind. “It’s quite late, miss,” he said to her. “I advise you to get some sleep. It would be nice if you looked fresh and rested when we arrive at the slave market.” He continued to grin and left her there in the misty darkness.

CHAPTER 31

They were moving through the infinite silence of space. Dr. Zarkov was muttering an old New England sea chanty under his breath as he sat hunched over the controls of the spacecraft. Somehow space travel always put him in a nautical mood.

“We’re nearing the transfer point,” said Dale, her eyes on the array of dials before her.

“Okay, get ready for jump number two,” boomed Zarkov.

He gave his beard a final tug, then poked, jabbed, and pulled at the control panel. Switches were thrown, toggles flicked, buttons pressed.

Sitting tensely in the pilot chair, Zarkov gave a shake of his hips. “Here we go.”

The ship quivered slightly. It executed a spatial-temporal jump and they were in the planet system of the planet Mesmo.

Dale ran her tongue over her lips. She felt slightly dizzy, and her stomach was acting as though she’d just dropped a hundred stories in an elevator. “It works,” she said faintly.

“Of course it works,” bellowed Zarkov, slapping the control panel proudly. “Most things Zarkov comes up with work. And you don’t even feel anything on the transition. Not like the clumsy system they’re still using back home.”

“I felt something,” said Dale.

“You’ve got butterflies in your stomach from worrying about Flash,” he told her. “That’s all you’re feeling, Dale.” He took a few hearty tugs of his beard, then punched out a flight pattern on the control board. “Now we can relax until we land on Mesmo.”

“It’s a big planet,” said Dale.

“Got an equatorial diameter of seventy-five hundred miles,” said Zarkov as he slouched back in his seat. “Which means it’s nearly as large as Earth.”

Dale activated a row of dials and switches. “We better start collecting information about her.”

“You think of Mesmo as a her?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“Probably because you feel she’s taken Flash away from you,” said the doctor. “A jealousy reaction.”

“It’s not something to make jokes about.”

Zarkov glanced over at the sad-eyed girl. “I’m as anxious about Flash as you are, Dale,” he said in a softer tone. “I wouldn’t have batted out this crate if I wasn’t.”

She reached over and touched his arm. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Most people like my jokes,” said Zarkov. “I’m in great demand at scientific conventions and dinners all over the universe. And talk shows. Why the last time I was on Jupiter, I sat in on at least . . .”

“Forest below us,” announced Dale after consulting a scanner screen.

“Good,” said Dr. Zarkov. “I’d rather not land in the middle of Main Street.”

“You can’t land this ship on the treetops.”

“In my youth, I would have tried,” boomed Zarkov. “But the mellowing effect of time has given me a little more sense. So we’ll find a clearing, set her down, and then conceal her.”

“You called the ship her,” pointed out the girl.

“It’s an old naval custom,” answered the doctor. “Means nothing.”

“Quite an impressive jungle,” said Dale, looking again at the pictures their infrared cameras were taking of the sight forest below. “Clearing coming up.”

Zarkov gritted his teeth and began the braking operations.

The ship slowed and slowed.

Zarkov switched to manual controls, putting the craft into a wide circling pattern. “Now have the scanners tell the landing mechanism where that clearing is,” he told Dale.

“Okay, done.”

“It’s a shame we can’t arrive a little more openly,” said Zarkov. “Not that I’m especially vain, but I must say I do enjoy arriving at a spaceport and having the local officials rush out to greet us. I like parades, too. Except on some of the more backward planets where they still go in for open landcars. You have to watch out for flying eggs and fruit then. It’s amazing that even a scientist with my reputation in so many of the known planet systems occasionally gets a ripe tomato tossed at him.”

“We’ve landed,” Dale said.

“So we have.” Zarkov checked over everything on the control panel. Then he unfastened himself from the pilot seat.

“Do you have any idea what kind of people the Mesmen might be?” Dale joined him at the egress chamber door in the floor of the ship.

“Nasty rascals,” replied Zarkov. He strapped a backpack on, thrust a pistol into the belt of his work-suit, and grabbed a blaster rifle from the wall rack. “Any people who’d go in for the kind of galactic kidnapping they apparently do can’t be too lovable.”

“We haven’t seen any of them yet,” said Dale. “As a scientist, you ought to keep an open mind.”

“I’ve got an open mind,” said Zarkov in his booming voice. “But I know a nasty rascal when I encounter one. There’s nothing that says you have to be so detached as to be a nitwit.”

He opened the door in the floor and slid down out of the ship.

CHAPTER 32

“At least you could give me some dry clothes or something,” Booker said.

The big blond man pulled his long hair back and tied it with a leather cord. “Shut up,” he told Booker.

“I can no way get all this muck off me,” said Booker. He was sitting close to the newly built campfire, scraping mud and slime off himself with a sharp stick and handfuls of leaves. “And even if I could do it, I’m still going to be wet. So I’ll probably get a headache and a bad cold. I always do when I get really wet.”

“I’ll throw you back in if you don’t shut up,” said the yellow-haired slaver.

“That’s gratitude for you,” said Booker as he flicked a gob of muck away. “Here I help you get a whole bunch of new merchandise and you—”

“Whoa there,” said Sixy. “You told us you were forced into baiting that trap there, Booker.” Sixy was sitting with his back against a tree, his hands tied behind him.

“Well, I was. But that don’t mean they have to let me sit around and catch a cold or worse.”

“Perhaps you’ve learned a lesson,” said Huk. The hawkman was bound and lying on his side a small distance from the crackling fire. “Don’t trust anyone.”

The yellow-haired man laughed. He had started roasting the wing of a wild bird over the fire. He withdrew the spit now, examined the meat, and held it over the flames again.

“Don’t even give us nothing much to eat,” said Booker. “Ain’t nobody going to buy skinny old slaves.”

“We’re a good week’s march from the market I have in mind for you,” said the yellow-haired man. “We’ll fatten you up before then.”

“You could start now,” said Sixy.

The slaver laughed again, shaking his head at his two blue associates who sat across the fire from him. “I’d almost like to keep you around for myself,” he said to Sixy. “You’re an amusing fellow.”

“Untie me and I’ll juggle for you,” said Sixy.

“They say that’s Bentan’s only fault,” said the yellow-haired slaver, “my sense of humor. I truly do love a joke.”

“That’s your name—Bentan?” asked Huk.

“Yes, bird man,” answered the slaver. “I’m known throughout this jungle. You’re lucky you fell into my hands and not those of some other slaver. I’m as kindly as your old maiden aunt compared to some of the devils you might have run into.”

“Mallox might not agree with you,” said Sixy, nodding at the unconscious giant.

The two blue men had dragged the strongman here and propped his stiffened body against a tree trunk. Small mosquitoes were circling him.

“That one,” said Bentan, laughing. “He’s all bluff and wind. To hear him tell it, there’s no beating him.”

“He did toss you in the pit,” Sixy pointed out.

The yellow-haired man scowled for an instant, then laughed again. “An accident, that was. I lost my footing.”

“I can understand that,” said Sixy, wiggling his toes. “A punch on the jaw like he gave you would make anybody lose his footing.”

“You’re an interesting little fellow,” said Bentan. “You enjoy twitting me even when you know I could kill you in a minute.”

“A good many things could kill me,” answered Sixy. “If I worried about them all I’d never have time for anything else.”

“You got dry clothes in one of those sacks,” said Booker, pointing to a knapsack next to one of the blue men. “Even a pair of trousers would help.”

Huk tried, and finally succeeded in, getting into a somewhat more comfortable position. “This market you’re taking us to,” he said. “Who are its customers?”

Bentan took his fowl wing away from the fire. It was burned. “Just the way I like it.” He detached the spit and threw it over to one of the blue men. After taking several huge bits of the sooty meat, he said, “They’re not so high-class as your former masters, I’ll wager. Across the jungle there are a number of farmers. They practice what we call slash-and-burn farming.” He took a few more bites, laughing as be chewed. “A slash-and-burn farmer, he cuts away the trees and burns away the rest of the underbrush in a patch of jungle. Then he’s got himself some acres for growing.”

“Not very good land, is it?” asked Huk.

“Not as good as that the gentry own, no,” answered the yellow-haired man. “But good enough for a few years of crops. Then the farmer finds himself another patch of jungle to slash and burn.”

“That’s where we come in,” said Sixy.

“Yes, you’ll be farm lads.”

“They can’t pay much,” said Sixy. He began to rub his toes over his injured ankle. He wanted to keep the slaver and the two blue minions distracted. Because he’d noticed, which they hadn’t yet, that Mallox was regaining consciousness.

“I’ll make about fifty harlans on each of you,” said Bentan. “Plenty of money for the kind of life we lead.”

“We could arrange for you to get more than that,” said Huk.

“Oh, so?” The slaver laughed.

Sixy casually glanced at the yellow-haired man, noticing that the man’s rifle was on the moss a few feet from him and that his pistol was snapped inside its holster. “Our other friends have money,” he said.

“Indeed? I have never heard of a slave with a bank account before.”

“When the train was wrecked,” continued Sixy, “we salvaged a good deal of money from the dead passengers, also from our guards and from the circus people.”

“It amounts to several hundred harlans,” added Huk.

“I think I’ll settle for the two hundred harlans I’ll make by selling you to the farmers.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Booker, who was shivering. “You’re not supposed to sell me like that. That was part of our deal.”

Mallox jumped straight for the seated slaver at that instant. “Now, you yellow-haired devil!” he roared.

The strongman yanked the slaver upright, lifted him high over his head, and tossed him across the fire.

The man’s big body bowled over the two blue men.

With a triumphant growl, Mallox leaped the flames. He snatched up both of the Mesmen, banged their heads together several times, then dropped them, dazed, to the ground.

He dived for Bentan.

The slaver doubled up, twisted around, and brought his feet up into the giant’s chest.

It didn’t phase Mallox, He threw three tremendous blows into Bentan’s face.

The slaver groaned and fell. He rolled over once, gave a great sigh, and was still.

“Ha,” said Mallox, “I knew I could beat that devil in a fair fight.”

“Good work,” said Huk.

“Now, I’ll cut you loose and—”

Something was rattling in the brush off in the darkness beyond the circle of light the fire produced.

They all turned to look in that direction.

A dog emerged, snarling. It was a robot tracking dog and it had found them.

CHAPTER 33

“We must be near some form of humanity,” said Dr. Zarkov in a subdued voice. “I hear gunfire.”

Dale held back, catching hold of his arm. “Hadn’t we better avoid them, then? We’re here to find Flash, not get ourselves shot.”

They’d been moving across mossy ground, surrounded by the huge high trees of the jungle. “I want to make contact with someone relatively soon,” said the doctor. “We need a little more information about this planet. Once I get myself oriented, learn the language and the customs, we can track down Flash.”

“I know you’re a very gifted man,” said Dale, “but to do all that may take weeks.”

“Nonsense,” he responded. “Zarkov can usually pick up a local language in a matter of hours. Customs, I admit, take a bit longer.” He took hold of her hand. “Now let’s get closer to this fracas.”

“All right, but don’t go barging into someone else’s fight.”

The bearded doctor bounded silently ahead, Dale following. “You can learn a good deal about people by watching them fight,” he told her.

The crackle of blasters grew louder as did the whir of stunguns and some kind of electrical crackle Zarkov couldn’t quite identify.

Dr. Zarkov motioned Dale to halt beside him. He jabbed a thumb at the darkness above. Through the tree branches and leaves penetrated a few glowing yellow lights. “Some kind of aircraft.”

“Aircraft and guns,” said the girl. “An advanced civilization for sure.”

Zarkov made a slight tangent on the course they’d been following.

About a quarter mile up ahead through the maze of trees someone screamed.

Crouched low, moving without any sound, the doctor and the girl made their way forward.

“No need to stun me or kill me or anything,” someone shouted. “I surrender. See, my hands are up. I quit, you understand.”

Zarkov dropped to his knees. Dale followed suit “Look at those nitwit things there,” he whispered. “Some kind of mechanical dogs, probably used in hunting people down.”

“We may be walking Into an action by the local police,” said Dale.

Still on his knees Zarkov inched ahead. “Look at that fellow there, with the wings,” he said. “That’s a hawkman from Mongo.”

“Yes” agreed Dale, “it is. These might be escaped captives then, do you think?”

“If we can scare off those blue guys we can ask the hawkman,” said Zarkov.

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

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

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

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

A militiaman shot him in the leg.

Scrambling, Booker dived for shelter.

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 34

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No word since then?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where are the slaves kept?”

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

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

“Couldn’t afford it,” said old Abel.

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

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

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

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

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

“And your friends?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who was the slaver?”

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

“He delivered her to the market?”

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

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

“A dozen, same as always.”

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

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

“Very good,” said Hopp.

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

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

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

CHAPTER 35

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

“What you doing here?” he demanded.

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

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

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

That took care of him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you alone?” she asked him.

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

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

Fists were pounding on the door.

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

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

The door snapped open a second after the girl leaped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They reached the river well ahead of any pursuers.

CHAPTER 36

“Farms,” said Narla. “They mentioned something about farms.”

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

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

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

“Slash and burn,” muttered old Abel.

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

“A week,” said Flash.

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

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

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

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

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

“Setting traps,” said the old man.

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

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

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

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

“Grain of sand,” said the old man.

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

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

“Trouble ahead,” said the old man.

Hopp, who was at the head of the procession, stopped abruptly. “Scatter,” he warned. “Something’s coming this way.”

Taking hold of Narla’s arm, Flash pulled her down with him into the brush. He could hear it now, too. A thrashing sound up ahead of them. Something was coming through the thick jungle in their direction.

“What is it, do you think?” whispered Narla close to his ear.

“Not sure. It could be the militia.”

“Move a little faster, you nitwit gadget,” boomed a familiar voice. “I keep stepping on that tin tail of yours.”

Flash waited a few more seconds, then stood up and called out, “Doc!”

Dale answered first. “Flash, are you all right?”

“Don’t nip at my leg, you fool engine,” Zarkov was rumbling. “I’m not your quarry.”

Dale came running up to Flash. She put her arms around him, hugging him tight.

He kissed her, then said, “I was going to say this is a surprise. But that’s an understatement. How did you get here?”

“Well, from Earth in a new ship Dr. Zarkov conceived,” said the dark-haired girl. “And from the landing spot in the jungle to here we just walked.”

Zarkov thrust out a big hand and shook Flash’s. “I only had to make a few simple adjustments in these robot dogs and then I could use them for my purposes. Zarkov doesn’t usually like to rely on gadgets, but since we were in a slight rush—but tell me about what’s been happening to you.”

“That gigantic devil moves even faster than I do,” roared Mallox as he came puffing onto the scene. “Ah, you’ve found Narla.”

Dale noticed the blonde girl now. Narla had been standing a few feet away from them, watching the reunion with a glum expression on her face.

“We feared,” said Jape to the strongman, “that you’d all been caught by the militia.”

“A dozen of those little blue devils were no match for us,” said Mallox. He gave Zarkov a friendly punch on the shoulder.

“We stumbled onto the fracas,” said Zarkov. “And I took a hand. Using my native cunning, plus a few tricks I learned when I was in the commando reserves in my youth, we outfoxed the militia. Got them all stunned, then trussed them up.”

Her eyes still on Narla, Dale took hold of Flash’s arm. “We learned from Huk, who recognized Doc, what you were doing, Flash.”

“He’s okay? And Sixy?”

“We left them guarding our ship,” said Zarkov in his booming voice. “And our prisoners. I figured I could find you more efficiently on foot and using these tracking gizmos. As usual, I was absolutely right.”

“Well,” said Jape, “if you have a spacecraft, Doctor, then that solves all our problems. Once we get together with all our friends we can leave Mesmo forever.”

Dr. Zarkov twisted his beard around his finger. “I’m afraid it’s not going to be that simple,” he said. “The ship is only big enough to carry four people off the planet.”

CHAPTER 37

The spacecraft dropped down through the night. It came in low over the treetops, skimming the high metal wall which circled the small spaceport at the forest’s edge.

The cabin door opened and a blue man dropped down to the surface of the field.

There was another larger ship nearby, sitting on a launching area. Further off was a hangar which held two other spaceships.

Two blue men in white cloaks came running out of a lighted office, carrying electric hand lanterns.

“What’s the meaning of this?” one of them asked the blue pilot.

The man spread his hands wide. “It’s an emergency.”

“You’re not authorized to use this field,” the other port official told him. “And if you had an emergency situation why didn’t you radio us?”

“The radio’s not functioning,” thought the blue man. “If you’ll take a look inside the cabin, you’ll understand why I did what I did.”

“We’ve no time for that. You’ll have to get off the field at once.”

“I can’t. I don’t think the ship will take off anyway,” he said. “But look for yourselves and you’ll see why.”

One of the men thought, “Very well.” He pulled himself up into the ship. “I don’t see any—”

He was grabbed from behind by powerful hands; his helmet was ripped off.

Down on the ground, his partner thought, “What’s the trouble up there?”

He got no answer.

“Better look for yourself,” suggested the blue man who was pretending to be the pilot.

The official drew out his shockstick. “That I will.” He went up into the cabin.

His stick was chopped from his hand with one sharp blow. Before he could even turn, he was caught around the neck. His helmet was pulled free from his round head. Dizzy, he went stumbling across the cabin to land in a heap atop his partner.

“So far so good,” said Zarkov in a subdued boom.

“We’ve got six more men to take care of,” said Flash, “if Hopp’s figures are correct.”

Zarkov used a stungun on the second man before he could untangle himself. “Let’s proceed,” he said.

Flash stripped the official’s white cloak from him, then patted his remaining clothes until he found a ring of keys. He dropped those down to the blue man waiting on the ground.

Then Flash searched the other stunned man, taking his key ring and cloak. He wrapped the cloak around his own shoulders. “Stand by here, Doc, in case our bluff doesn’t continue to work.”

Flash leaped down into the darkness. He sprinted across the field to the lighted office from which the two blue men had come.

There was a third man standing in the doorway.

“No, I guess the cloak doesn’t fool you,” said Flash.

The man, mouth gaping, was reaching for a pistol.

Flash’s stungun sounded first.

He ran on to the office, shoved the frozen man aside, and entered. “Well, Hopp’s right so far. Three men stationed here.”

Flash located the radio set against the far wall. He deftly removed a few essential parts. Then he left.

Across the dark field, a blaster rifle crackled. It lit up the wall of the barracks, turning it a bright yellow for a second.

In that second, Flash saw that Hopp was using the rifle, that the red-headed man had wounded one of the other field staff men.

By the time Flash reached the area of the blast, there was no more fighting.

Mallox came out of the barracks doorway rubbing his big hands together. “Knocked out three of those little blue devils with one hand,” he announced.

Sixy came out after him. “We’ve taken care of everyone.”

Dr. Zarkov materialized out of the darkness now. “Jape, you said you know how to pilot one of these space-warp jobs.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Let’s take a look at the baby that’s ready to launch,” said Zarkov. “I’ll fill you in on anything that may be puzzling to you.”

The two men jogged away toward the launching area.

Through the open gate in the metal fence, which had been opened by Hopp’s man in his official disguise, now came Booker. “We did it,” he said. “I knew we could.”

Dale and Narla followed him.

Huk came out of the barracks and joined the rest of them. “The entire staff is safely stunned,” he announced.

“Zarkov is going over the ship on the launching area with Jape,” Flash told him. “If everything is okay, you can take off pretty soon.”

Huk said, looking around at all of them, “I’m anxious to get back to Mongo. And yet, well, I’ll miss all of you.”

“Oh, we can keep in touch,” said Sixy. “Maybe once a year we can have a reunion. You know, pick some planet that’s convenient to all and . . .” He let the words trail off. “No, I guess we won’t do that, will we?”

“No,” said Narla, “we won’t be seeing each other again.”

“Still,” said Sixy, brightening, “we’ll probably be seeing Flash again. He travels all over the universe.”

Flash grinned. “Yes, I’m sure we’ll all see each other again.”

“I doubt it,” said Narla. She turned away and walked off across the dark field toward the launching area.

Dale watched her for a few seconds. “I think she likes you, Flash,” she said.

Flash didn’t reply to that. To Huk, he said, “That ship is big enough to carry most of you. I’ll travel with Zarkov and Dale.”

“It’s not going to be an express, though,” said Sixy. “We’ll be making a lot of local stops, dropping each of us off on his home planet.”

“I don’t see why I have to go with them,” said Booker. “I mean, I’m from Mars. I want to go back there. That’s in the solar system, Flash. I ought to go with you.”

“But we’d miss you, Booker,” said Sixy. “And there are several places I’d like to drop you. I have a nice roomy asteroid especially in mind.”

“This isn’t no time for kidding around,” said Booker. “I really don’t see any reason why I—”

“Okay,” Flash told him. “We’ll take you along.” He took a few steps toward Hopp. “What about you? Ready to leave Mesmo?”

“We’ve been talking about what you’re going to do next, Flash,” said the red-bearded man. “When you get home and alert the various interplanetary peace-keeping outfits, they’ll be sending a task force out here to Mesmo to rescue all the rest of the slaves and convince the locals to stop the slaving business.”

“Yes, Mesmo won’t be a slave-market planet much longer.”

“So I think I’ll hang around until that happens.” He held out his hand. “But I hope we’ll run into each other again sometime, somewhere.” After they shook hands, he and his blue associate left the field, returning to the forest beyond.

Mallox watched them go. “It might be fun to stay on in the jungle,” he mused, “and have a go at more of these little blue devils myself.”

“I thought you were homesick,” said Sixy.

The strongman said, “That’s true. And yet—but, no, I’ll go home now. There’ll be plenty of fights to be had on my own planet.”

Across the field, Jape emerged from the large spacecraft. He held a lantern in one hand and was waving the other three hands. “Just about ready to go,” he called.

The group began to walk, somewhat slowly, toward the launching area.

“I don’t foresee any problems,” Jape said to Flash as he approached.

Dr. Zarkov dropped down out of the ship. “Childishly simple to operate,” he bellowed. “Somewhat clumsy construction, but there’s no time to modify. You’ve got it all straight in your mind, Jape?”

“Yes, Doctor.” The four-armed man held out a hand to Zarkov and one to Flash. “I won’t forget my stay on Mesmo. And I won’t forget our time together, Flash.”

“All this talking is okay,” said Booker. “But some more of those blue guys are liable to show up any minute. And I ain’t in the mood to get captured again.”

“You can go over and get in our ship,” Flash told him.

As Booker went to do that, Zarkov asked, “We’re taking him with us?”

“Seemed like the safest thing to do,” said Flash, grinning. “I have the feeling Sixy would leave him in the middle of space somewhere.”

“On a very comfortable asteroid,” said Sixy. He glanced around. “What’s become of Narla?”

Jape replied, “Already in the ship.”

Flash left Dale’s side and climbed up inside the Mesmen craft. He saw the blonde girl sitting on the floor against the cabin wall. “I wanted to say good-bye to you, Narla.”

“Goodbye,” she said.

“And I wanted to wish—”

“Are you and that girl—Dale, is it?—well, I don’t know what the custom is on your planet. Are you engaged or promised to each other or espoused or anything like that?”

“I guess you’d say we’re informally engaged.”

The blonde stood up. “Well, that doesn’t sound very serious.” She walked over to him, put one hand on each of his shoulders. She kissed him once. “Good-bye, Flash.”

CHAPTER 38

“This ain’t my idea of fast,” said Booker. He was sitting beside Flash in the cabin of Zarkov’s ship, “Seems like we’ve been traveling for hours.”

“We’ll be making our final space-time jump any minute now,” said Flash. “Then we’ll be back in the solar system.”

“Where you going first?” Booker asked. “You going to stop off at Mars first?”

“We most certainly are,” boomed Zarkov from the control seat. “The sooner the better.”

“Because I don’t see any sense going all the way to Earth with all of you and then having to catch a shuttle back out to Mars. I been wasting enough of my time.”

“I’ve got,” said Zarkov in an especially loud voice, “this crate set to pop back into the solar system relatively close to Mars.”

“That’s good.” Booker leaned back some in his chair. “You really think you’re going to get the planets in our system to do anything about Mesmo?” he asked Flash.

“Yes, I’m sure we will,” said Flash. “The Earth Interstellar Intelligence people will do something. And so will the United Planets. That’s part of their charter.”

“Charter is just a piece of paper,” said Booker. “You figure they’re going to send ships and men way out to Mesmo.”

“Sure,” answered Flash.

“Going to be—”

The ship crossed over at that moment, making a great leap through time and space. The side effects of that kept Booker silent for the next several thousand miles.

CHAPTER 39

Zarkov paced in front of the view window of his living room. Twilight was coming on, the light of the day was rolling away across the flat dry desert. “I was absolutely right,” he said.

Flash had just entered the big room. “About what, Doc?”

“Does it matter?” said Dale from the pseudo-leather couch. “He’s absolutely right about everything.”

“The last time we were all gathered here,” continued the bearded scientist, “I told you both that there was no such thing as an unidentified flying object. And I was correct, one hundred percent correct.”

“Yeah,” agreed Flash, “we sure identified those flying objects all right.”

“Granted,” said Zarkov, “that it was a little rough on you, Flash.”

“Not that rough,” Flash said with a grin. “And I met quite a few interesting people.”

“Especially that interesting blonde girl,” said Dale.

“You still haven’t told me all about your life in that circus,” boomed Dr. Zarkov into the silence which followed. “I want to hear everything.”

The squat, square, robot bar in the corner of the living room made an odd noise.

“What’s the matter with you, nitwit?” demanded Zarkov.

“I was clearing my throat,” said the voice box of the servomechanism.

Dr. Zarkov took a few steps toward the bar. “Why?”

“Preparatory to interrupting you.”

“And why were you going to do that?”

“To tell you there’s a phone call for you,” explained the voice of the robot bar. “Now before you fly off the handle, let ask me to explain that there’s something a wee bit wrong with the summoning and annunciation system at the moment and so the phone asked me if I’d be so good as to—”

“Okay, okay,” said Zarkov. He stalked to the phone and jabbed the answer button.

The lean blond young man who appeared on the phone screen said, “Good evening, Dr. Zarkov.”

“Flash is on vacation,” said Zarkov. “He’s not available for any more EII conferences.”

Agent Cox smiled. “I only wanted to tell you that EII has voted to send an expedition of six ships out to the planet Mesmo. If you could come in and give us the benefit of what you found out during your brief stay we’d—”

“It was brief,” said Zarkov, “but it gave me more than enough time to gather a good deal of data about the planet and its people. I can also give you, thanks to a discussion I had with a fellow named Jape, some hints on how to communicate with the Mesmen. Not only that but . . .”

While the doctor went on talking to the EII agent, the robot bar said, “Sir?” to Flash.

“Yes?”

“The door chimes are on the fritz tonight, too, and they wanted me to tell you that there’s someone ringing out on the front-porch area.”

Flash rose from the position he’d just taken beside Dale. “I’ll check on it.”

The porch scanner mounted above the door showed him a picture of a small silver-plated robot with a blue cap standing out there in the dusk.

“Spacegram for a Mr. Flash Gordon,” said the robot in a high-pitched voice.

Flash opened the door. “I’m Flash Gordon,” he told the robot messenger.

“Actually, Mr. Flash Gordon, I have two messages for you,” said the spacegram robot. “First, here’s one from a Mr. 606027—that’s a funny name, isn’t it? Well, I’ll read you the message. Hum. ‘Just a line to let you know I’m back home safely. All the others are, too. Maybe someday we’ll meet again. Your friend, Sixy.’ Would you like a printout on that, Mr. Flash Gordon?”

“Might as well have one.”

A ticking commenced inside the robot. Then a thin blue slip of paper slipped out of a slot in its chest. “You’ll have to tear it off. Tear hard because sometimes they stick if you don’t.”

“You said something about a second message.”

“You’ve got that first one out? Good. Here’s the second one. Comes from someplace called Mongo, from a Mr. Huk. He says, ‘Arrived home and found everything was well. I owe a good deal to you, Flash. I’m sure you’ll be returning to Mongo someday. Until then, all my best wishes to you. Huk.’ And I suppose you’ll want a copy of that, too?”

“Yes.”

When he had his two thin blue messages, Flash went back into the living room.

Zarkov was still on the phone with Agent Cox. “No, like this,” he was saying. “They talk through their ears. There seems to be a certain amount of extrasensory perception involved.” He squeezed his nose with one hand, clamped another over his mouth for a few seconds. “You try that for a while and you’ll find you can talk through your ears, too. Now the little gadget I can whip up for you will let you amplify what your ears are saying. The Mesmo language itself is merely a vulgarized version of—”

“Spacegrams?” asked Dale.

“From Sixy and Huk,” replied Flash. He went to the wide window and watched the darkness filling the sky. “Seems everyone got home.”

“Even Narla?”

“I imagine so.” He turned to look at her. “Let’s go for a drive. I’m anxious to try out that new landcar Zarkov bought this morning.”

Dale stood. “I don’t suppose there’s any danger of getting hauled off to Mesmo again,” she said.

“Very little.” He took her hand and they quietly left the living room.

“You’re not holding your nose the right way,” Zarkov was telling the EII agent. “Try it again and grab it like this. No, like this . . .”

The robot bar sighed.

Table of Contents

Back Cover

Books

Titlepage

Copyright

THE SPACE CIRCUS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39