Flash Gordon 3 - The Space Circus Read Online Free PDF Page A

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
    T he 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.