The Fifth Element

27

“Don’t push,” said Fog. “There’s plenty of room!”

Nobody was fooled.

The enormous crowd filled the corridor, pushing toward the tiny lifeboats.

Loc Rhod’s three assistants found themselves near the front.

“Hurry up ladies… er, gentlemen,” said Fog, who had been fooled at first by their unisex outfits.

The three stopped, looking around for their boss, their mentor, their hero, icon, and legendary leader, Loc Rhod.

“We can’t go without our master!” said the first.

“We WON’T go without our master,’’ said the second.

“Absolutely NOT!” said the third.

“This is the last boat,” said Fog.

Three identical faces fell.

“Maybe he already left,” said the first.

“I think I saw him leave,” said the second. “I KNOW I saw him go!” said the third. And all three piled into the boat as it cut loose from the hovering luxury hotel.

“TWO.MINUTES.TO.COMPLETE.EVACUATION!” said the loudspeaker, as Korben, Leeloo, Loc Rhod and Father Cornelius raced to the docking garage.

Korben broke the lock on the first ship he saw that looked spaceworthy—

Zorg’s ZFX200.

In the dead Diva’s savaged suite, Zorg was coming around.

He raised his bruised and battered head and looked for his gun.

The liquid crystal counter read:

01:12

01:11

In the ZFX200, Korben swept the broken box off the copilot’s seat, and set Leeloo down.

He gently strapped her in.

Loc Rhod and Cornelius crowded into the tiny cockpit behind them.

Zorg picked up his ZF1 and studied it.

“I didn’t fire three thousand rounds. Did I?”

“ONE.MINUTE.TO.TOTAL.EVACUATION,” droned the loudspeaker.

“You know how to fly this thing??” Loc Rhod asked.

Korben strapped himself into the pilot’s barca. “It’s like a cab, isn’t it?” he asked drily.

Loc Rhod winced.

“THIRTY.SECONDS.UNTIL…”

“Anyone know how to open the garage door?” Korben asked.

Loc Rhod shook his head.

Cornelius shook his head.

Zorg was still studying his empty gun when the display on the bomb flashed.

Bleep!

Ten second warning!

00:09

00:08

Zorg pushed a hidden button on the side of the ZF1 and held it directly over his head.

A mauve-colored magnetic force field descended from the gun, enveloping him in an indestructible protective sarcophagus.

“EIGHT.SEVEN…”

The robotic loudspeaker had patched into the mini-nuke’s countdown.

Loc Rhod and Korben searched frantically through the switches and dials on the dashboard of the ZFX200.

“Found it?” Korben asked.

Loc Rhod shook his head. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for!”

Father Cornelius pointed to a row of buttons. “Press them all,” he said.

“Good idea,” said Korben, fingertips already flying.

Servos whined.

Magnetic motors howled into service.

Valves opened and solenoids clicked.

A battery of guns emerged from the front of the tiny fighter—all pointed toward the garage door.

An auto gun trigger emerged from the dash.

“Found it,” said Korben.

“BLAMBLAMBLAM!!

A storm of cannonfire erupted from the nose of the ZFX200, blasting the garage door off its hinges.

“Hold on tight!”

Korben pushed the throttle forward.

The little ship rocketed out of the side of the great luxury liner, into the azure sky over the turquoise sea.

00:02

00:01

00:BHAAARRRROOOOOOOOOOOM!

The Diva’s suite disappeared.

The corridor disappeared.

The dirty laundry disappeared.

The Concert Hall and intermission bar disappeared.

All in a hellish, scorching wave of destruction.

The passengers, safe in their tiny lifeboats, watched in horror as the. magnificent luxury liner itself disappeared, consumed in a ball of flame—

From which only a tiny spacefaring jet, the ZFX200, emerged, coasting on up into the clouds, just ahead of the gigantic shock wave.

Cornelius breathed out, realizing as he did that he had been holding his breath for several minutes.

“Just like a cab,” quipped Korben, leaning back in his pilot’s barca.

Loc Rhod checked his watch, then made sure his skeeter-mike was still open—and had picked up the sounds of the blast and the escape.

He rapped:

“Dear listeners, your favorite DJ is alive and kicking!! It’s seven o’clock, Galactic Standard, Time, and time for the news!! Tune in tomorrow for another adventure with yours truly—

“Loc Rhod!!”

He hit a tiny switch.

Bleep!

End of transmission.

Loc Rhod leaned back and let out a huge, satisfied sigh. He looked up to see Father Cornelius and Korben both watching him.

He grinned weakly. “Best show I ever did!”

General Munro entered the President’s office. He was smiling: an unusual configuration temporarily softening the rough military terrain that was his face.

“Major Dallas has the Five Elements on board. Munro said. “The Priest is guiding them directly to the Temple.”

President Lindberg closed his eyes in relief. “Thank God. We’re saved!”

The blast wave from the explosion of the Fhloston Paradise carried out in waves like the ripples from a stone thrown into a pond.

Big stone. Big pond. Big ripples.

Flying at the leading edge of the cloud of dust, debris and detritus was a mauve magnetic digital sarcophagus, which tumbled end over end over end, and…

Fell into a snowbank on an untracked glacier high on the shoulder of an inaccessible range unexplored peaks near the middle of an unmapped polar continent.

THWUNK!

High in the towers of Manhattan, in Zorg’s office, the phone was ringing.

The secretary paused in her task of polishing her nails, long enough to pick it up.

“Yes?”

“ZXXDXDX those damned XXSSZXC!”

“Oh, Mr. Zorg. I was so worried.”

“I was ZXZXZXSW in the ZXZXS!”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you so well.”

High in the polar mountains of the planet Fhloston, a figure clambered out of a sarcophagus-shaped hole in the snow.

Zorg.

Bruised, battered, bloodied… but unbowed.

He was carrying a cellular phone.

“Can you hear me better now?”

“Yes, Mr. Zorg, I can hear you perfectly. How was the concert?”

“Listen up, instead of running off at the mouth! My batteries are almost gone.”

“Sorry, sir!”

“Send me another ZFX200, immediately! ” “Right away, sir. I’ll send it to the hotel.”

“I’m not at the hotel! There is no hotel!”

Bleeep.

“Hello! Hello!”

Battery dead.

Silence.

A silence broken only by the cold howling of the polar wind.

Zorg sat down on a hummock of ice. “I need to think,” he muttered.

President Lindberg and his military staff were toasting their success with champagne, when suddenly a worried looking scientist burst into the office.

All scientists look worried.

This one looked more worried than usual. “Mr. President—”

“Yes?” Lindberg said impatiently. “Now what? “There’s a small problem.”

The scientist nodded toward a tech, who touched a panel on the office window, turning it into a long-distance galactic viewscreen.

The display, patched in from a pursuing war-ship, showed a planet-sized ball of dark fire hurtling across the nether regions of space. “It’s moving?” asked the President.

“It’s not only moving,” cut in the command of the pursuing warship. “It’s moving at incredible speed. We’re having trouble following it.”

The President turned to the scientist who had brought him the bad news. “Any idea where it’s heading?” The scientist gulped.

Then nodded.

“Here.”