Read Flash Gordon 2 - The Plague of Sound for Free Online

Zarkov. “What is it?”
    “Flash, come in,” Zarkov boomed into the mike. “Flash, do you hear me?”
    After a moment he shook his head and set the mike down. He took a step back, hands on hips, and scanned the dials in front of him.
    “Why doesn’t he answer?”
    “I don’t know, Dale,” said Zarkov. “At this point, I don’t know anything. I’ve lost contact with the ship completely.”

CHAPTER 9
    F lash dropped down through the tree branches. Large, brightly colored birds squawked, flapping off their perches. Silver monkeys went scurrying and chattering away.
    “Sorry to disturb your ecological balance, fellows,” said Flash as he drifted by.
    He landed on his feet on the mossy ground and clicked off his flying belt. He checked his position on the instruments built into the thing. “I’m in the middle of the Mazda Territory,” he reflected. “And if I remember my maps rightly, there’s no major city anywhere in the whole darn territory, no settlement at all within a hundred miles of here.”
    He reached into his backpack and drew out a small but powerful hand radio. “Let’s see if I can contact Zarkov with this.”
    But the instrument did not work. He pried off the backside of it. The two tiny batteries appeared to have exploded. “And me without a spare.” Flash closed up the radio and dropped it into the pack again.
    Shielding his eyes with one hand, he gazed upward through the fronds and vines at the hazy afternoon sky. “Zarkov must know somethings gone wrong by now,” he said. “So the best thing to do is make myself comfortable someplace nearby and wait for him to come and find me. If he doesn’t show by dawn tomorrow, I can start trekking south to that nearest settlement.”
    Surveying his surroundings, Flash noticed a small clearing through the trees. It was about a quarter of a mile away. He started walking toward it.
    The jungle grew quieter as he came closer to the clear place. There were no birds around, no monkeys. The huge palm fronds above didn’t rustle at all.
    Flash was nearly at the clearing when he saw the bones.
    Some looked dry and old; some were still fresh and white. They were the bones of animals, half a dozen skulls.
    Flash halted. “This doesn’t look like a very good place to wait for Doc after all.”
    He pivoted to walk away.
    Something caught his ankle. Looking down, he saw a slithering coil of some silky substance winding around his leg.
    He reached for his holster, unsnapped it.
    Before he could get his hand on his blaster pistol, he was yanked off his feet. He went crashing through the brush, thorns ripping at his clothes, branches snapping at his face. He was pulled up completely off the ground, left dangling upside down several feet above the sprawled bones.
    Again, Flash reached for his gun. But it had fallen out while he was being dragged. “Still got a knife,” he said. Twisting, he reached around and opened his backpack. Containers of food came tumbling out. The ruined little radio fell, landing on the skull of a monkey and cracking it. But Flash got the knife.
    He strained, did a sort of midair situp. He thrust the blade into the stuff which was wound round and round his legs. It was tough and sticky. The knife did nothing against it.
    The silky cord spun around his wrist next, binding his hand against his ankle.
    Flash struggled, swinging like a pendulum, trying to wrench his hand free. He was caught tight.
    He could see up into the trees now. He got his first look at what it was that had him.
    Silting up there was a black spider. A giant black spider the size of a leopard. It had caught Flash and was patiently spinning a web around him.
    The aircruiser did not crash.
    It continued to descend after Flash ejected. Soon it was skimming over the treetops, pulled by some invisible force.
    The trees parted, the ship heading straight for the ground.
    But before it hit, two large sections of earth, opened, like enormous cellar doors, and the aircruiser