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CHAPTER SIX
Attack Of The Mind Worms!
REBELLION ON PLUTO!!! The whole of Zardo's court is in an uproar -- for none other than the STAR PRINCESS ZELLA has interfered in the Emperor's villainy, saving the life of American hero, MARK STYLES, and his long separated friend and ally ROBIN ROBINSON. While Zardo claims that his daughter has nothing to fear, behind her back, he plots against all three.
Meanwhile, in the depths of the DEATH JUNGLE OF CERES, CLAUDETTE T.S GRANT and the PIRATE QUEEN ALTAIR POLARIS find themselves at a crossroads. Claudette wishes to go to Mars, to face down their enigmatic rulers, while Altair believes that the only thing she needs to do is flee to the depths of the solar system.
And, finally, JASMINE STARR plunges through the acidic clouds of Venus to her certain doom!
The winds of Venus whipped past Jasmine Starr's faceplate as she plunged, back first, towards the surface of that hellish world. She knew not what ancient catastrophe had soaked the world in acid clouds, but from Prince S'kye, she had learned what no Earth scientist had ever learned about the fell world into which she plummeted. She had learned that the pressure was intense enough to crush a Ford within seconds, with heat so high that it could cause lead itself to run as if it were warm water. Worse still was the acid -- thick, heavy rains of sizzling, boiling acid that sleeted down upon the rocky wasteland that was Venus perpetually.
Jasmine, though, was not without hope!
She, unlike many executed in this fashion by the Hawkmen of Venus, was not nude. Rather, she was clad in the fearsomely articulated Diamond Suit. The outer armor was solid diamond, placed above thick steel that, itself, contained hydraulic muscles and powered joints that could turn one man's strength into the strength of nearly ten dozen men.
With that mechanical might, Jasmine could move the arms, wiggle the fingers, even preform acrobatic feats as she tumbled through the air. But what was more, the suit contained coolant fluids that were piped along an arterial network that threaded within. This coolant fluid would not work forever to ward off the terrible heat of Venus...but it would keep her alive for a few hours.
Despite how marvelous the Diamond Suit seemed...it was, in fact, a poison chalice. A cruel jest of a device, constructed by the mad King C'arrion V'ulture. Anyone who landed upon the surface of Venus in this suit had not bought themselves a chance at life...no, they had merely found themselves trapped within an even more nightmarish future -- a short period of hope, followed by long, slow despair as even the durability of the suit faded before the continual onslaught of Venus.
Those who were doomed to die within the Suit would have time enough to know how painful it would be...
But Jasmine was no mere shrinking violet! No sir!
She had worked for none other than the Office of Strategic Services itself -- the classified crew of clever codebreakers and ciphermakers who, through cunning and even cruel methods, had bedeviled Hitler and Hirohito's heinous hegemonies! And in the OSS, she had learned many tricks that served her well, doubly so when layered upon her skills at fencing, her scientific acumen, and her deep understanding of the human mind. One such trick?
Always
memorize
a
map
.
For a short time while she had been on the
Bird of Prey
, she had seen the globe map of Venus, which showed the locations of not only the Hawkmen's Sky City, but also the Tunnel City of the Faemen. And so, she had asked to be executed at high noon -- the point in Sky City's steady equatorial drifting that it would be a few kilometers west of Tunnel City itself. As Venus rotated opposite to most other worlds in the solar system, this meant that the prevailing winds would blow her almost directly to the entrance of that subterranean safehouse!
"Now, old girl, you just have to survive the landing," Jasmine muttered to herself. She had not seen anything even close to a parachute...
And she would not find one.
The ground rushed forward, suddenly emerging from the clouds as if she had no time to think at all! Jasmine gritted her teeth...
And the world vanished in a spread of dull white. Her arms locked into place and her head snapped into position -- and then she felt a muffled impact, followed by a wild tumbling...followed by another impact, this on her shoulder. She tumbled once more, then impacted again. Her inner ear was whirling, her stomach tried to crawl out of her stomach. Each jarring impact, blunted as it was, felt as if it was driving spikes of pain into her joints and her shoulders. But each impact came just a bit softer than the prior -- until, at last, there was one impact that led to a slow roll, then a sudden stop...and then the air around her filled with hissing and burbling.
She was able to move her arms a moment later, and she felt as if she was completely surrounded by glop and goo. She shoved it away and stood, and saw that her diamond suit had become hideously streaked...by a slurry of melting white plastic, the plastic of the balloons that had deployed around her body, turning her lethal fall into a relatively painless tumble. Jasmine chuckled under her breath. "Well, there we go," she said, then started to take in the surroundings.
The surface of Venus, despite the desolation and the danger, retained some of the same beauty it had above the clouds. While the clouds had been spectacular, the rocks and slow, flowing rivers of molten rock and burbling liquid that made up the landscape about her possessed its own sepulcher grandiosity. The rocks scattered about the ground were slate-like and oddly smooth, worn away by the acid rain and the fearsome pressure.
