“Calling Space Mummy… Space Mummy come in… the galaxy needs your aid once more… calling Space Mummy… Space Mummy come in…”
The signal rushed across the ether, bouncing off pulsars and rocketing past blue giant stars. The call that could not be ignored, the call for help!
When Space Mummy first heard it, he was wrestling with kelnars on a planet circling the star Arcturus. The kelnars were beasts, savage animals that were half lion, half insect, and all fury. Two of them had their massive jawparts clamped around either of Space Mummy’s arms while a third writhed on the ground under Space Mummy’s massive, bandaged heel.
At the sound of the call Space Mummy burst into action. He shook the two kelnars off his arms and kicked the other into a crater. “Sorry, pals,” he said. “I’m needed elsewhere!” With a great bound he leapt across the crumbling soil of Arcturus IV, back to where his starship, the Astro-Obelisk, stood straight and tall a thousand feet above the beast world’s plain. In the low gravity of that deadly world he jumped up into the ship’s airlock, a round door cunningly worked into one of the countless giant hieroglyphs decorating the Astro-Obelisk’s surface.
He hurried to the engine room, where his chief engineer was already warming up the ecto-reactor. “Beat Bones,” Space Mummy called out, lustily. “You know our next destination?”
The engineer was a human skeleton dressed in a black turtleneck and a matching beret. No one could work the reactor better, because Beat Bones had built it himself. “It’s a stone groove, Daddio,” the beatnik mechanic claimed. “We’ll blow this pop stand before you reach the control room!”
Space Mummy laughed and looked up at the tall ecto-reactor, which resembled a giant hourglass filled with the wailing spirits of the dead. Not for the first time, he wished there was some better way to propel a starship than by torturing the damned. Space Mummy was a man of great compassion. But the galaxy made its demands—what could he do but acquiesce? He climbed a long ladder toward the pyramidal control room at the top of the Astro-Obelisk. When he arrived Miss Death, his factotum and first mate, was already laying in coordinates.
She was wearing a black Chanel dress and a brooch in the shape of the wadjet, the Eye of Horus. Space Mummy took a moment to enjoy the way the colored lights of the control board flashed off her bare skull. He was secretly in love with Miss Death, though he assumed she was beyond all mortal concerns and would never return his affections. “You heard the call?” he asked. Then he grabbed for the side of his chair as the room shook wildly—the Astro-Obelisk was blasting off in a great welter of screaming ectoplasm!
“I have it up on the main screen,” Miss Death said, her eye sockets burning with white fire. One triangular wall of the control room lit up with the jackal face of General Anubis, dressed in his customary paratrooper’s uniform, complete with a bright red ascot and aviator sunglasses. The only being in the stars who could order Space Mummy around!
“You’re needed on Planet 13,” Anubis barked. “The King there has gone mad with power. Great injustices may be committed at any moment!”
“Understood,” Space Mummy said. “Miss Death—how long to Planet 13?”
“Traveling at just below the speed of light, the fastest speed allowed by the laws of Physics,” she said, running the calculation on her own, smaller screen, “about twenty-four years.”
“A blink of the cosmic eye,” Space Mummy said. “General Anubis—I’m on it!”
…
Planet 13 had been a lovely place, once, a paradise of forests full of tall trees and placid lakes. Now it was a hellscape of massive factories belching filth into the sky and endless concrete parking lots, despite the fact that none of the workers could afford to buy cars! The King of Planet 13, Viktor Markoz, had transformed the place in just a few short decades. He’d done it on the backs of his poor subjects, worked till they collapsed by a corrupt and decadent military caste.
“Ha ha!” they would laugh, as their leatheroid whips cracked across the spines of the workers. “Ha ha!” Propaganda posters of the King’s face hung from every building in the capital city, called Markoz after its master. Massive statues of the man stood in every plaza. Try as hard as they might, the sculptors never managed to portray their King with anything but a nasty sneer on his face. Maybe it was the result of the old dueling scar that ran from his chin to his temple, costing him the use of one eye. Or maybe it was the darkness that squirmed inside his evil heart.
“There,” he said, standing on the balcony of his palace, a fifty-story skyscraper in the middle of the city. He peered with his remaining eye through a spyglass and pointed at a polluted lake some miles away. “I own that!” He spun the spyglass around so he could see a strip-mine where once a rolling meadow had been. “No more wildflowers, not when I need iron for my weapons of war!”
His audience was the young Prince Kurt, his only child and heir. “Yes, father,” the Prince said, though not without a heavy sigh. Prince Kurt did not love evil, no matter how much he wished to please his—frankly insane—father.
“Do you see that massive prison?” the King demanded, pointing out across the blighted landscape. “Is that mine? Is it? It is! Ha ha!” he laughed, a laugh that echoed the brutal sadism of his evil soldiers. “And that—that—there…” his gloating drew to a sputtering stop. “What is that? Do I own it?”
Prince Kurt rushed over to the spyglass, though in fact he didn’t need it. A massive building stood on the far side of the central square, directly across from the skyscraper palace. It looked nothing like the other buildings—it was not stained with years of soot, nor was it covered in unnecessary spikes and gargoyles and leering bas reliefs of the face of Viktor Markoz. Instead it was a graceful square column, tapering gently to a pyramidal tip. Its surface was elegantly carved with ancient pictograms. “Why, father,” Prince Kurt said, in wonderment, “I believe that’s—I mean it kind of looks like, that is to say it’s—”
“SPACE MUMMY!” the King of Planet 13 screeched. “He’s here!”
…
Space Mummy had dressed for battle, in a kilt of hammered copper and a golden nemes headdress, the gear of an ancient Egyptian warrior pharaoh. He leapt down to the streets of Markoz City and just as he’d expected—and secretly hoped—was met by a welcoming committee. In this case, a cadre of huge goons wielding leatheroid whips! But these whips were even worse than the ones the soldiers used on the workers. These were electrified.
“Ha ha,” the soldiers laughed, and their whips sang a crackling symphony of pain.
Space Mummy wasted no time. He never did. He grabbed one of the whips even as it sailed toward his face. Yanking on it, hard, he lifted a soldier off the ground and spun him around like a wicked bola, knocking down all the rest of the soldiers one by one.
Next came machine gunners on motorcycles, with sidecars that also carried machine gunners. Space Mummy guffawed as the bullets tore through his bandages. They could not harm a man who had been properly mummified in the ancient Egyptian tradition! As the motorcycles roared ever closer he brought his hands together and whispered the ancient incantation. “By the names of Osiris and Isis, I AM POWER INCARNATE!” Then he slapped his hands together so hard the resulting shockwave sent the motorcycles spinning end over end into the air.
A walking tank came toward him, a colossus of armor in the shape of a man with a massive gun sticking out of his midriff. The gun whined as it charged up for a devastating powershot. But Space Mummy was ready. “Horus Punch,” he shouted, as he dashed forward, one fist curving around to land a thundering blow right in the solar plexus of the walking tank.
When the dust cleared the walking tank’s gun was bent at a comical angle. The big machine tottered on its metal feet and then fell backwards with a great clang.
A final foe moved to stand before Space Mummy. It was not a division of crack troops, nor an aerial bombardment by space planes. Instead it was a single soldier, a young man who had tried and failed to grow a goatee. He shook visibly in his patent leather boots and it looked like he might drop his saber at any moment. But he raised one finger and jabbed it in Space Mummy’s direction.
“You will not get past me,” the young man said. “Oh, you may have defeated all our other defenses handily. Oh, your strength may be immeasurable. And I must admit your cause is just. King Viktor Markoz is a dictator, an evil man. He does not deserve to rule Planet 13. Yet even saying as much—there is a question here, a question of planetary sovereignty, that must be addressed. What right do you have to come here and attack our King Viktor Markoz? What authority does General Anubis possess to send you around the galaxy, toppling governments and fighting cosmic horrors? What kind of freedom do you represent, if the people of a given planet cannot choose their own destiny? Even if they choose wrong, even if they make poor choices, that is their right. And so I will stand before you, alone and afraid. I will stand up to the greatest bully of all—yes! For that is what I name you, Space Mummy. That is what I—”
“Apep strike,” Space Mummy said, and delivered a single karate chop that knocked the young man’s head right off his shoulders.
Space Mummy looked around the square. “Next?” he called.
But there were no defenders left. Planet 13 was defenseless!
…
Space Mummy focused his ka energy and hurled himself toward the skyscraper palace across the square. He didn’t even slow down as he jumped on the head of a giant bronze statue of King Viktor Markoz, denting it badly.
“So-called King,” he sang out, “prepare to be judged in the halls of the dead, where if your heart is found to be heavier than a single feather—”
“One moment,” a voice called out, echoing around the square. It came from a giant loudspeaker mounted on the front of the skyscraper palace. “One moment please, Space Mummy. I can see that you are preparing your famous Desert Oasis Burst, also known as the Attack of One Thousand Staggering Punches. I have heard stories of your great strength. I am sure it would level this entire building.”
“I possess the futuristic technology that built the pyramids!” Space Mummy called out. “I have studied the mind and body techniques of the ancient pharaohs, which have made me an unstoppable hero!”
“Unstoppable?” the voice from the loudspeaker asked. “Or perhaps… not?”
Space Mummy stopped in mid-air and just hung there, waiting to hear what the King of Planet 13 would say.
“I know you fight always for… gah, freedom,” the King announced, the word seeming to stick in his throat. “I know you are worshipped as a god on many worlds. But I know you would also never hurt an innocent.”
King Viktor Markoz stepped out onto his balcony. He was in full uniform, with a half-cape and a saber at his side. He held the hand of a small boy.
“If you attack this building, you will kill me, yes, but you will also kill Prince Kurt. Who, despite all my attempts at indoctrination, still possesses the clean, pure heart of a child.”
Space Mummy dropped lightly to the ground. He could see it was true.
“We have come, I think, to an impasse,” King Viktor Markoz said. “You cannot kill me. I cannot destroy you.”
Space Mummy lowered his bandaged head, his hands balling into fists at his sides. “You’re forgetting one thing, though,” he said.
“Oh?”
“You forget that I possess the greatest weapon the cosmos has ever known,” Space Mummy insisted. “Time.”
He snapped his massive fingers. An airlock opened on the front of the Astro-Obelisk. Two members of Space Mummy’s skeleton crew emerged, bearing a solid gold sarcophagus, worked elegantly in the ancient Egyptian style. Space mummy pointed at the center of the square, at a spot directly below the dented statue.
“Wait,” King Viktor Markoz said. “Hold on. What are you doing?”
The skeleton crew sang prayers to Ra as Space Mummy opened the lid of the sarcophagus. It was no simple casket, but a weapon capable of wreaking untold devestation. Space Mummy climbed inside, adjusted the pillow under his head, and called out to his bony crewmen. “Close it up, boys,” he said.
“No! You cannot! I won’t—”
The King of Planet 13’s voice was first muffled, then silenced as the lid of the sarcophagus closed over Space Mummy’s bandaged face. Space Mummy adjusted the sarcophagus’ controls, setting the Master Dial for seventy-five years.
“Now,” he whispered, as he sank into the Sleep of Pharaohs, “we play… the waiting game.”
…
Seventy-five years later Space Mummy opened his eyes. It would have been impossible for anyone to know that, since his eyes were covered by rich linen bandages, and anyway, he was still in the sarcophagus. He yawned and stretched a little, then punched upward and sent the lid of the sarcophagus flying across the square.
He emerged into a Planet 13 changed beyond recognition. The city square now was a lush park full of medium-sized trees. Children laughed and played in a broad public fountain. The statue of King Viktor Markoz had disappeared, replaced by a monument to the hard-working people of Freedom City.
Space Mummy laughed as he looked around. He reached down one massive hand and took the hand of a little girl who smiled up at him with joy. “It’s Space Mummy,” she said. “Everyone! It’s Space Mummy!”
It wasn’t long before Space Mummy was joined by a young woman in robes of pure samite, with a slender diadem of silver on her brow. She smiled warmly and gave Space Mummy a polite bow. “I am Queen Vladina,” she said. “The benevolent ruler of Planet 13. It is good to look upon your countenance, Space Mummy.”
“What of King Viktor Markoz?” Space Mummy asked. “What came of him?”
“He died a few years after you entered your weaponized slumber. I believe he slipped and accidentally fell fifty stories off his balcony. Onto a terrorist bomb, which was buried under a pile of cavalry sabers. Which had been poisoned. It was a fitting end to such a horrible man.”
“And he was replaced by King Kurt, then?” Space Mummy asked.
“Briefly. Kurt turned out to be a weak and ineffectual leader, who was quickly ousted by a military coup. Which was in turn overthrown by a popular revolt by the Committee for Public Safety. Which grew corrupt and decadent and was then voted out of power by a coalition of workers. Who finally elected me their supreme queen. Planet 13 has entered a golden age under my rule, because there is no evil or greed in my pure soul.”
“I can see it in your eyes,” Space Mummy said. He considered leaning forward and kissing Queen Vladina, but then he remembered Miss Death, and the desperate longing he felt for her, always. “Freedom has come to your planet! As is true everywhere, people long to be free. They crave it. Most likely they were inspired by the sight of my sarcophagus where it lay here, in the central square, for seven and one half decades. No doubt every time they passed by my visage they were reminded of what they truly wanted, a just and fair society. I imagine they must have spent their whole lives dreaming of that which I represent. A free and happy galaxy.”
Queen Vladina blinked several times. She coughed into her hand, delicately. Then she swallowed and nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “It must have been so.”
…
The Astro-Obelisk raced across the spaceways again, pushing the speed of light as it blasted a path through the red clouds of the Crab Nebula. In the control room, Space Mummy and Miss Death sat on comfortable stools, sipping cocktails. Neither of them were capable of consuming liquids, of course, so their martini glasses were full of ectoplasm, the same raw stuff of dead souls that powered the ship’s engines. As Space Mummy lifted his glass to the light he could see a face in there, wracked with torment.
If only, he thought, there was a better way to make a Sloe Ghost Fizz. A way to make one without suffering. Well, what could be done?
“Time,” Space Mummy mused, “will murder all tyrants.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Miss Death said. The white flames that burned inside her eyesockets studied Space Mummy, his noble profile, his massive chest. If only he knew, she thought, how she longed for him, how she dreamed every night of her bones being crushed in his massive arms. Yet, it was impossible. She was one of Space Mummy’s skeleton crew. He would never fraternize with one of his staff—it was unthinkable.
“Have we received new orders from General Anubis?” Space Mummy asked, touching his glass to the bandages that covered his lips.
“Not yet,” Miss Death said. “Though I doubt things will stay quiet for long. Not in a galaxy like this!”
The two of them laughed, long and hard. But unbeknownst to them, the signal was already rocketing its way toward them.
“Calling Space Mummy… Space Mummy, come in… the galaxy has need of you once more…”
DAVID WELLINGTON 