Flash Gordon 5 - The Witch Queen of Mongo Read online

  Through the opening stepped a gangling, thin, youthful figure of a teenage youngster, about fifteen, who stood there for a moment in painful embarrassment. His face turned rapidly red and he looked at the floor shyly.

  He seemed all bone and elbows, with long arms, long legs, and a long thin neck. His head was almost too heavy for his body and the ears again almost too large for the head. He had curly red hair that stood out from his skull and freckles on his rather blank-looking face. His eyes were green and vacant, almost as if his thoughts were never very clearly in focus.

  He wore a tee shirt and bright-colored slacks, with a belt that was too big for his waist and pulled tight through extra loops in the pants.

  “Willie,” Zarkov said. “I’d like you to meet some good friends of mine.”

  Flash was surprised at the difference in Zarkov’s usual effusive, booming manner. He now seemed quite cool and polite.

  The youth lifted his head and looked at Zarkov, then at Flash, and then at Dale. When he saw Dale, he colored again immediately, and looked away quickly.

  “Flash Gordon,” said Zarkov, “and Dale Arden.”

  Willie lifted his head and started walking across the room toward them. “How do you do?” he said awkwardly. His voice had not yet changed fully, and the words came out squeakily.

  Flash stood and held out his hand. “Hi, Willie.”

  “Mr. Gordon,” said Willie.

  The hand that Flash gripped was strong and painfully fleshless.

  Willie then turned to Dale. He made an almost courtly little bow. “Miss Arden,” he said.

  Dale laughed and held out her hand. “Hello, Willie.”

  Willie took the hand and blushed once again.

  “His full name is William Edgar Casey,” Zarkov announced. “But he’s known as Willie. Wordless Willie.”

  Willie flushed and stood back from the group.

  “Worriless?” Flash asked.

  “He doesn’t have any worries,” said Zarkov with a kindly chuckle. “He’s a dreamer,” he continued with a glance at Willie. Willie looked at the floor. “That’s why they sent him to me, actually. Figured I could make something out of him,”

  “You’re an astrophysicist, a nuclear engineer, and a space scientist, Doc,” Dale said quietly. “Since when have you been interested in people?”

  Zarkov frowned. “But that’s just it, Dale. It’s Willie. He’s got one of the finest scientific brains in the world. They wanted me to teach him everything I know about science. It was only when he came out here to the lab that I found out about his—”

  “Where did you come from, Willie?” Flash asked, interrupting Zarkov.

  “I’m an orphan,” Willie said with a faint smile. “I’ve been going to school at the World Science Institute in Megalopolis West. That’s where Dr. Zarkov found me.” He ducked his head.

  “You see,” Zarkov boomed, “they thought Willie was an underachiever, because he paid no attention to his studies in school. But when they gave him an I.Q. test, he only missed two questions in two thousand. And so they wanted me to see him.” Zarkov beamed. “I’m considered the greatest astrophysicist in the country, anyway, and it was only natural that they would send him to me for instruction.”

  Dale smiled wryly. “Naturally.”

  “And it was when Willie got here that I found out why he underachieved.”

  “Why was that?” Flash asked, looking at Willie.

  Willie grinned.

  “He’s a dreamer,” said Zarkov. “Because problems are so easy for him to solve, he simply spends most of his time daydreaming.”

  “But I don’t understand yet about this psychokinesis and extrasensory perception you were talking about in relation to him,” Flash said, puzzled.

  Zarkov settled back in a chair he had taken, motioning to Willie to be seated near them. “Willie doesn’t know how it started, either,” he explained. “But one day when he was daydreaming, Willie suddenly—” Zarkov broke off. “Why don’t you tell them, Willie?”

  Willie nodded, looking embarrassed. “The first time it happened, I was in school at the World Science Institute. I had finished the lesson, and was simply dreaming, looking out the window. I happened to see a mountain peak in the distance. I think it’s called Old Baldy. And I wondered what it would be like up there on the top of the mountain. I kind of wished I was there,” Willie said slowly. “And all of a sudden, there I was!”

  Flash sat up straight. “You mean, you wished you were on top of the mountain, and suddenly you were?”

  “Right,” Willie said with a sheepish grin. “I was really there, too,” he said, chuckling. “I walked around in the trees and brush and reached out and touched the ground. That kind of thing. I even pinched myself.” He giggled. “Yeah, I was there.”

  “But then how did you get back?”

  “I decided I had had enough of the mountain, and I kind of—well—I kind of let go of the idea, you know, and I was back in the classroom.”

  Flash looked at Zarkov. Zarkov laughed. “You see?”

  “What about the classroom? Did anybody notice you were gone?”

  “I don’t think so. I guess that when I was gone I was still there,” Willie said slowly. “Or maybe I imagined myself on the mountain in a split-second of time. You know?”

  Flash nodded. “Sort of.”

  “Then I began to take more trips like that,” said Willie.

  “Did you tell anyone?” Dale asked.

  “No,” said Willie, ducking his head self-consciously. “Do you think I’m crazy? They’d all say I was nuts.”

  “I guess they would, at that,” Flash said, laughing.

  “Then when I came out here to the desert, I kind of imagined myself up on Black Hat Mountain one day, and there I was. Dr. Zarkov didn’t even know I’d gone.” He chuckled mischievously.

  “But how did you find out about this power of Willie’s, Doc?” Flash asked.

  Zarkov smiled ruefully. “One day Willie and I were working at the big telescopic mirror in the lab, jotting down notes on what we thought was a new quasar sighting, and—bingo!—suddenly we were both on another planet!”

  Flash sat up straight.

  “That’s right,” agreed Willie. “I just wished I was there with Doc.”

  “Ill be darned,” Dale said wonderingly.

  “But how did you get back?” Flash asked Zarkov.

  “Willie finally let go of his idea, as he expresses it, and we were back here in the lab.” Zarkov shook his head and pulled at his beard. “It was a scary moment or two, I’ll tell you that! I made Willie promise never to do that to me again.”

  Willie laughed.

  Dale looked up. “What’s funny, Willie?”

  “I can promise all I want, Miss Arden, but when I begin to imagine, it doesn’t do any good. I go there—and so does Doc, now.”

  Zarkov tugged at his beard again. “That’s why I sent for you two. Not only to let you meet Willie, but also to try to sit down with me and get Willie’s power under control.”

  “You mean, work on the power with Willie until he can accurately determine how he manages to move himself and other people from one place to another?”

  “Right,” said Zarkov.

  Flash turned to Willie. “How did you do that to us on the way out here, Willie? I mean in the car?”

  Willie flushed and looked at the floor. “I was hungry, you know, but Doc wouldn’t let me have a second dessert tonight. I was mad at him. And when I looked out the window and saw the headlights of your car coming across the desert, I suddenly thought dessert, and I imagined myself in a place where I could get all the dessert I wanted. The Big Rock Candy Mountain. And I was there, and then I wished you were there, too, because I had just seen your car coming toward the laboratory. And you were there, driving through the ice-cream sundaes and lollipops with me.”

  “We didn’t see you,” said Dale.

  “No. I wished you wouldn’t.”

  Flash shook
his head. “It’s a strange power, Willie. I don’t know but that it’s a very dangerous power.”

  “Not if it’s used for good purposes Flash,” Zarkov said firmly.

  “Have you made tests with this thing?” Flash asked Zarkov.

  “A few. But we haven’t really started. That’s what I wanted to consult with you about, Flash.”

  Flash nodded. “Right.” He turned to Willie. “Willie, let me ask you a question—”

  But suddenly Willie was not there at all, nor was the room, nor were Zarkov or Dale.

  Flash rubbed his eyes.

  He was standing in a very high, remote place, a kind of platform built out in empty air. And there, not ten feet away from him, down to one side, stood Worriless Willie, looking up at him.

  “In a minute, Mr. Gordon.”

  Willie grinned. He bent over and scooped up a great handful of whipped cream, from what looked like a very large banana split, and began eating it.

  “How is it, Willie?”

  “I like it!” Willie grinned.

  “You’ve done it again, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” Willie looked serious. “I didn’t think you believed I could.”

  “I believe you, Willie,” Flash said cautiously. “How do we get back to Doc’s lab?”

  “I guess you better just wait for me,” Willie said, grinning. “If you try to get down from here, you may have a pretty long fall.”

  Flash peered over the edge of the platform and saw absolute, infinite space below him.

  “Okay, Willie,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

  “I’ll only be a second,” said Willie, wiping the cream off his face.

  Flash sighed and waited.

  And waited.

  CHAPTER 3

  Dr. Zarkov’s laughter boomed out through the room. “Now you know how I felt when I found myself with Willie on that silly planet. I didn’t know how I got there or what happened.”

  Flash and Willie had returned suddenly from the place where Willie had dreamed up the banana split to find Zarkov and Dale chatting as if nothing had happened.

  “Didn’t you know we were gone?” Flash asked Dale in surprise.

  “Sorry, no,” Dale said, smiling.

  “Well, we were gone,” Flash responded sharply.

  “I just didn’t think about it,” Dale admitted. “Did you, Doc?”

  Zarkov frowned, closing his eyes to think back. “No. I can’t really remember, but you did go with Willie?”

  “Yes,” Flash said, a bit annoyed that no one had missed him.

  Willie grinned. “I won’t do it again. I just wanted Mr. Gordon to know I could.”

  “And you wanted your miserable banana split,” snapped Zarkov. “I don’t know how you grow at all on the food you eat!”

  They discussed Willie’s power for several minutes more, but came to no conclusion as to how to harness or contain it.

  And then Zarkov remembered the time he and Willie had “gone” to Mount Palomar when Zarkov had casually mentioned the famous observatory.

  “How did you bet back?” Dale asked.

  “I don’t really know,” Zarkov confessed. “One minute we were there, and then we were back at the telescope.”

  Willie spoke up. “I just wished we were back here and we were, Dr. Zarkov.”

  “I thought for a minute I was on Mongo again,” Zarkov said darkly, “the time he sent us up to that fool planet. I can tell you that gave me a turn.”

  “Mongo?” Willie repeated, his green eyes lighting up.

  “Yeah,” said Zarkov. “That’s where Flash and Dale and I first went by rocket years ago.”

  “Where’s Mongo?” Willie asked.

  “It passes through Earth’s orbit every two and seven-tenths years. The first time it—”

  “No, no,” said Willie. “I mean where is it now?”

  Flash frowned. “Due in about nine months. Right, Doc?”

  Zarkov nodded. “Seems to me that’s right. You’ve got to remember, Willie, that when Flash and I met Mongo was heading directly for Earth. On a collision course, as we say in the air force and navy.”

  Willie’s eyes were wide. “What happened?”

  Flash grinned. “It was pretty scary, Willie. I’m sure you’ve read about it.”

  “I never was any good at history. And you were there? Tell me how you felt. That’s what I’d like to hear.”

  Flash scratched his head. “Well, I had just graduated from college, and Dale and I—”

  “Flash,” Dale said chidingly, “you’re making it seem you were just anybody out of college! Willie, Flash was a star athlete while a student at Yale University. He was fencing champion and a great polo player, known all over the world. I met him at a polo tournament in England, in fact. I had gone there to visit my aunt. Then, when I returned to Megalopolis West, I found that Flash was working in the same company, Electronics Universal, that I was. And we started seeing each other.”

  “Gee,” said Willie. “That’s interesting, but what about the darned planet? Mongo, I mean, headed for earth?”

  “That’s just it. Scientists at Mount Palomar had first seen the planet coming into our solar system several days before.”

  “Yes,” Flash said, “the planet had somehow spun off from the gravitational field of the Mongo system and was headed into ours. It looked at first as if it would hit earth head-on.”

  “It was a very trying time,” Dale said. “Flash and I were both sent by Electronics Universal to Washington to attend an important meeting with the secretary of state and the ambassadors from many European countries. We were flying in an eastbound transcontinental plane when it happened.”

  “What happened?” Willie asked, his eyes wide.

  “A piece of flaming meteor had entered earth’s atmosphere,” Flash explained. “It had, in fact, been torn off from Mongo, apparently when Mongo had been wrenched out of its own solar system. When the meteor shot through our thicker atmospheric system from space, it caught fire and slammed toward earth. The pilot of the plane we were on tried to veer to one side, but the meteor caught the tip of the port wing and ripped it off.”

  “Golly!” Willie exclaimed. “What did you do?”

  “The plane was hopelessly disabled and began to spin out of control,” Flash explained. “In those days, there were parachutes stored in the companionway for emergencies and the entire group of us on board the ship bailed out. I grabbed Dale and the two of us were the last out. Moments after we had left the ship, it plummeted to earth, where it exploded in a holocaust of fire.”

  “Yipes!” Willie said. “And you?”

  “We were caught in a hot updraft from the fire on the desert and blown many miles from the site of the wreck. And we came down not far from the very spot where we are now.”

  “I’ll be darned!” Willie said. “Here at Dr. Zarkov’s laboratory?”

  “Exactly,” said Flash. “And he was the first person we saw after we landed.”

  “Did he help you?” asked Willie.

  Flash snorted. “Not likely! He ran out of his laboratory and confronted us with a gun. He said he was going to kill us.”

  “Wow!”

  Zarkov growled in his throat. “You’re making me sound like some kind of maniac,” he said irritably.

  “Which you were,” Dale said, cutting in.

  “Perhaps, but there was a reason for it.”

  Flash grinned. “There was, Doc. You tell it.”

  “Willie, I’d been working day and night, ever since the runaway planet was discovered by the scientists at Mount Palomar, to perfect a rocket in my underground laboratory here. The work, incidentally, was financed by a big foundation located in Megalopolis East.”

  Willie’s eyes were wide. “That was before they had rocket travel, wasn’t it?”

  “You bet it was. I had been working on this theory for years, but the war had made me go underground with my prototypes, for fear the enemy might conspire to ste
al my thrust formulas. They were the crux of the entire model.”

  “Gee!” Willie said gasping. “And so you were trying to perfect your rocket and—”

  “I had perfected it,” Zarkov said proudly. “But I had been so security-conscious that I became unnerved when Flash and Dale appeared, more or less right out of the sky. I thought they were enemies of America. I thought they might be spies sent to kill me and make off with the rocket, or saboteurs who would destroy my prototype.”

  “Doc was really off his rocker,” Flash said with a smile.

  “He was crackers,” Dale said, shaking her head at the memory of the disheveled, wild-eyed man who had confronted them that dark and dreadful night.

  “I told them they would have to come with me,” Zarkov continued, “that I wouldn’t kill them if they did, because I didn’t want to waste the bullets in my gun. I wanted them to help me. And they came aboard all right.”

  Flash shook his head. “Doc isn’t telling this very well. He forced us aboard the rocket, which he had loaded with the most powerful explosives known to man at that time. It was Zarkov’s idea that he could direct the rocket toward the approaching planet, which we came later to discover was Mongo, and simply blow it off its course toward Earth by crash-landing there.”

  “Son of a gun, Willie cried admiringly. “You mean, more or less intercept the planet, and divert it from its collision course with Earth?”

  “That’s it,” said Dale.

  “What happened?” Willie asked.

  “Dale and I more or less accepted our fate and joined Zarkov aboard the rocket. We thought that we would help him, even though he was unhinged. It would be a noble sacrifice to save the Earth we loved.”

  Willie nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. “That’s good.”

  “So we helped him get the rocket ready, we climbed aboard, sealed the hatches, and blasted off.”

  “But how did you live through the explosion when the rocket hit Mongo?” Willie asked, frowning.

  Flash smiled. “Actually, Doc’s rocket was very well constructed, but when it came into Mongo’s atmosphere he found that he was not able to control it. The gravitational pull was slightly less than Earth’s and Doc’s finely tuned guidance system was off enough to make the matter serious.”