Annie and the doctor ushered him into the house. That's when he discovered the house was the observatory. It was mostly one big room, with a large but oddly plastic-looking telescope at its center. Strangely, the place seemed a lot bigger on the inside than it did from without. The interior was done in polished wood and chrome, an odd combination. One wall was dedicated to dozens of control panels. All blinking lights and soft buzzing, the switches, buttons, and lightbulb arrangements looked as primitive as those inside the tiny flying craft.
Annie disappeared, only to return wearing another short skirt outfit, this one with a very tight-fitting top. Her hair was now curly, her lips were flaming red. Where she'd been just plain cute before, now she looked gorgeous. The doctor suddenly appeared behind Hunter with two snifters of brandy.
Hunter gratefully accepted his and took a big gulp. It tasted like nothing more than colored water.
"We are so lucky you came along when you did," the doctor said. "Flash never lets anyone down…"
Hunter began to correct him again — but stopped for a moment. All of this had to have some kind of wacky reason to it, something that would lead to something else. Plus the Astronaut told him he had to play it out, and go with the flow. But was there really any harm in asking?
He took the yellow ticket from his pocket and unfolded it. Turning it to the side with the faded picture, he held it up for the doctor and Annie to see.
"Do you know this man?" he asked them. "Do you know where I can find him?"
It was strange, because not only didn't they reply, they simply seemed to stare right through him. His question did not compute. At least not at the moment.
He tried again. "It's important that I find this man," he said. "Just as important as it is for you to rescue Annie's fiance."
With that, Zoloff came back to life. "Yes, that's exactly what we must do!" he cried. He dramatically threw his brandy glass into a roaring fireplace. Annie rushed forward to embrace Hunter once again. She pulled him even closer and whispered very seductively in his ear, "Yes, we must save him…"
Hunter just closed his eyes for a moment. Once again, the Astronaut had been right. This place — this existence — was more than just a moon that had been puffed. Its reality had been radically altered, too — and was maybe getting a little rough around the edges. It was hard to tell.
And the people were strange here, no doubt about that. Nothing had been said about events prior to when Hunter appeared on the scene. Why Zoloff and Annie were up on that mountain, why three armies were climbing up to seize them, how Annie got all tied up. It was like he'd just walked into the middle of a space play, somewhere at the beginning of the second act. What's more, there might not be any explanation, he thought. Not one he could understand, anyway.
Despite this oddity, Zoloff was an immensely sympathetic character. And Annie… she seemed to get more attractive with each passing moment. Even now, she was snuggled up against him so tightly, her pert breasts seemed permanently imbedded in his chest. Not a bad feeling.
A very strong emotion was welling up inside him. Suddenly, Hunter really wanted to help these people.
So he just gave up on getting any information about the Mad Russian from them, at least at this point. Just as the Astronaut had suggested, he decided to play along.
"OK, so where is he being held?" he finally asked the doctor. "This lucky guy?"
Zoloff seemed surprised. "At Ping's castle, of course!"
Hunter looked around the big room, wondering if there was any chance of a bottle of real booze being in here somewhere.
"And where is that?" he asked absently.
Zoloff's face screwed up in a mask of incomprehension, but then he let out a hearty laugh.
"Flash Rogers — jokester!" he declared in a very loud voice. Annie smiled sweetly — and blocked her ears.
Free again, Zoloff dragged Hunter over to the telescope, cranked a mechanism that lowered it from pointing toward the heavens to pointing horizontally. He practically forced Hunter to look through the eyepiece.
What Hunter could see was a huge palace that appeared to be as close as the next mountain range away. It was gold with many spirals and towers, and was so high up in the mountains, a layer of clouds had apparently taken up permanent residence just below it. Combined, it made the castle look like it was floating on top of the clouds. Almost like…
"Can you see them?" Zoloff was screaming in his ear. "The devils? The hedonists?"
Actually, Hunter was seeing neither. What he could see was about a hundred scantily clad dancing girls going through very outlandish gyrations on a concourse of sorts in front of the palace main gate. The choreography was atrocious.
Surrounding the gyrating dancers were hundreds of soldiers, all wearing the same tin man suit of armor as the ones who'd nearly caught them earlier. Some were walking guard duty along the top of the palace walls, others were marching up and down the palace's main street.
"Our friend is there," Zoloff was saying to Hunter. "In the Dungeon of the Doomed, at the bottom of that infernal place. The son I never had. My only daughter's only love!"
That was getting a bit more difficult to believe as Annie was back at Hunter's side, hugging him closely.
"Do you know exactly where your friend is being held?" he asked Zoloff, eye still looking through the telescope.
"As I said — in the Dungeon of the Doomed," he moaned again. "As deep as one can go in that horrid place."
Hunter studied the palace and the mountain, or as much as he could see of it through the mist. It seemed impenetrable, at least from the bottom up. To him that meant that the only way to gain access to the place was from the air.
He turned back to Zoloff. "Did you say there is a clock ticking here?" he asked.
"Ping has vowed to kill our friend at the stroke of midnight," was Zoloff's breathless, anxious reply.
Hunter thought a moment. "What time is it now?"
No sooner were the words out of his mouth when "the sun" above them slid down to the horizon. Day turned to night, just like that. Annie hugged him tighter. Her father moaned again.
"Night has fallen!" Zoloff cried. "We must hurry!"
Hunter was astonished by the sudden sunset.
"Yes," he said. "I guess we should."
They were quickly back inside the flying craft — their only delay was waiting for Annie to do another costume change. She emerged wearing a stunning micro-miniskirt, tight silver blouse, and very alluring boots. Her long brown hair was now tied up by a piece of golden sash. She was mind-bogglingly beautiful.
She was also holding another set of clothes. Long red leotards, purple shorts, a skintight tunic, and a cape. She handed them to Hunter. "I got some new clothes for you, too," she said sweetly. He would have done just about anything for her at that moment — she was so stunning. But he looked at the outlandish outfit and just shook his head. "Sorry," he told her. "But I ain't climbing into that."
They lifted off the cliff in good fashion, Hunter expertly manipulating the simple controls of the spacecraft as Zoloff worked the lightbulbs.
Hunter had briefly studied the contraption's strings before climbing aboard, amazed at the long, thin lines disappearing up into the sky. What was going on up there? What would he find on the other end? Did he really want to know? Maybe not…
The ship moved ever so slowly now across the divide between the two mountains. The windows at the front of the craft were small, Hunter could barely see what was in front of him, never mind the terrain below. He looked up into the sudden night sky but saw no stars, no other moons, and certainly not the gigantic mass of the planet Saturn or its rings. How did they do that? he wondered.