Reaching out to hold the power pods a foot or so from the Beast’s quivering form, Iron Man began to release some of the stored energy slowly, in the form of electric heat. As the warmth radiated with a low hum, the Armored Avenger moved the pods gradually over the Beast’s body until the icicles began to melt, and the tremors lessened. In little more than a minute, the trembling had almost completely ceased, and the Beast’s eyelids rose heavily, his mouth pulling into a weak, though sincere, smile.
“A-Anyb-body f-for a t-trip to B-Bermuda? M-M-My t-treat?”
“Welcome back, Beast,” the Scarlet Witch said softly.
Thor and Quicksilver helped the Beast to his feet, where he stood rubbing the residual chill from his biceps as Iron Man replaced the storage pods at his waist. From the moment that the lemonade bridge had split apart, they had had little time for anything but the incidentals of survival. Now, with the abatement of tension and immediate danger, they looked about at their surroundings for the first time—and were astounded.
On the outside, Kang’s obelisk was no more than thirty feet square. Its interior, however, was impossibly rectangular, a good three hundred feet long, with a width half its length and a height, at least in this particular chamber, that was half its width. Kang was, indeed, a master of space.
But even more bizarre than the huge hall’s dimensions was its decor. Lining every tapestried wall were clocks, watches, timepieces of every size, age, and description—hundreds of them, thousands of them, from hourglasses and sundials to digital-readout LEDs and numerals that seemed to float in the air. More such devices hung from the ceiling, and more rested in glass display cases on the carpeted floor. And every one of them had stopped, silent.
The Beast let out a low whistle. “Whew! Talk about kitsch! How many of those freaky tick-tocks do you think there are?”
“My scanners indicate that there are precisely 86,400 chronometers in evidence,” the Vision answered, obligingly.
“It figures,” Iron Man said. “There are 86,400 seconds in a day, and Kang is just mad enough to have constructed this room to symbolize his belief that he controls them all. And I’ll bet that if you checked each of those clocks, you’d find that every one was stopped at a different second.”
Quicksilver fidgeted. “Granted that our quarry is a lunatic, Iron Man, how do we find him?”
Iron Man pointed to either side of the long hallway. “I don’t think we’ve got much choice.”
Halfway down the length of the room, set into the walls on each side, were two doors with crossbar opening rods, looking very much like theater exit doors painted gold. Above the door to the left was an illuminated sign that read, “up.” Above the door to the right was an illuminated sign that read . . . “up.”
“Well, guys, I guess we’ve reached the pits,” offered the Beast. “Looks like there’s nowhere to go from here but up!”
The Scarlet Witch groaned. “Next time, Thor, don’t look so hard, okay?”
“Aw, shucks,” the Beast said, bowing his head in mock chagrin.
Iron Man ignored the banter. “We don’t know if either of those doors leads anywhere, but since the Vision can’t walk through these particular walls, we’ll have to try them both. Thor, Vision, Beast—you take the left. Wanda, Pietro, and I’ll go up through the right. And be careful. I doubt that that roll-away bridge was the only trick up Kang’s sleeve.”
The six heroes split up, three moving to either side. The Beast now carried the cumbersome ice block under one arm as he loped along, whistling “Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work we go . . .” to himself. When he, the Vision, and Thor reached the left door, the Norse god of thunder put his left hand cautiously on the crossbar, gripping Mjolnir solidly in his right, ready for any assault that might await them beyond. Then, raising his mighty mallet high over his head, he pushed down on the bar and shoved the door wide to face the unknown. In this instance, the unknown was a softly lit corridor the same muted green color as many twentieth century hospitals. Its floor was covered in tiles of a darker green, and sloped upward in a gradually ascending, curving ramp.
Thor glanced back across the ground-floor hall and saw that Iron Man had opened the opposite door to an identical corridor. He raised a hand in salute—Iron Man responded with a “thumbs’ up” gesture—and then stepped into the green passageway, followed by his two comrades.
The corridor wasn’t very large, perhaps six feet wide at the most, and curved to the right at a steady angle as it rose. The walls were featureless, unbroken, and were lit from some unseen source, making the upward journey doubly tedious: the first onus being the constant wariness of possible danger, the second the sheer sameness of the surroundings. Ironically, considering the situation, none of the three heroes wore watches, and so each monotonous minute seemed like ten to them.
The Beast grew bored quickly, and began practicing his mail-order ventriloquism on the ice block, having the frozen Captain America return (badly) some of Charlie McCarthy’s classic punch lines. Even Thor grew lax, his senses dulled by the sameness of the climb.
Thus it was that the Vision’s untiring scanners first perceived the throaty whisper of rapidly approaching death.
“Attend! Something approaches!” The Vision stopped, pointing to the passageway ahead. The others stopped as well, staring in the direction of that stabbing finger. At first, they saw nothing; then death rumbled into view, a swirling black cloud filled with glittering, guttering sparks, like thousands of miniature, dancing stars. The cloud swooped down the corridor toward the startled Avengers, roaring and roiling and ripping up tiles.
And then it was on them, buffeting and battering like a wind out of hell. Thor was forced backward a step, instinctively raising an arm to protect his eyes from the burning particles that tore at his clothing and skin. Having traveled the spaceways countless times during his immortal life, the Asgardian immediately recognized the deadly, whirling mass for what it was.
“ ’Tis a cosmic storm!” he cried, trying to be heard above the din of chaos. “Kang hath plucked solar wind and caustic rain from the very heavens to protect his citadel!”
The Vision had already analyzed the nature of the contained tempest, and so had desolidified a fractioned instant before it struck, allowing both cosmic particles and raking wind to pass harmlessly through him.
The Beast, on the other hand, was neither as swift nor as fortunate. The first gust of solar wind had knocked him off his feet, flat onto his furry backside where, eyes closed to the swirling onslaught, he had held fast to his ice-encrusted charge as the unnatural gale had carried them both back down the corridor, sliding and banging off walls like a bumper car in a sadist’s carnival.
Ahead, neither of his companions had noted the Beast’s unwilling departure, being engaged as they were in the more immediate aspects of saving their own lives.
Acknowledging Thor’s unquestioned position as temporary leader, the Vision proposed, “This whirlwind has little effect on me in my present state, Thor. It might be prudent for me to move through to its point of origin. Perhaps I can locate Kang and force him to cease this meteorological assault.”
“Thy courageous offer is appreciated, my friend,” Thor called through the howling tempest, “but ’twill not be necessary. For no storm, natural or man forged, canst hold long before the god of thunder, before the mighty son of Odin!”
Still holding one arm before his face, Thor began swinging Mjolnir in a circle before him with his other hand. Faster. So fast that it soon acted as a solid mass, deflecting both hurricane gusts and the searing particles they carried. Thor lowered the arm from his face, his blond hair no longer blown by the torrent that raged about him, and he smiled. Then, in a single motion, he raised Mjolnir high, stopped the hammer in midswing and dropped swiftly to one knee, bringing the butt of the mystic mallet down with smashing force against the green-tiled floor.
The corridor rocked with the booming of god-brought thunder, and the air was filled with forked fingers
of magical lightning. For an instant, there was a sensation of conflict, as if two incredibly powerful armies clashed in an unseen war. And then, as quickly as it had come, the lightning faded; while in its wake, the black mass and sparkling particles of the cosmic storm began to dissipate, thinning and scattering until there was nothing left but a memory, and a dark, gritty residue on the floor and walls.
The Vision resolidified as Thor rose to his full height once more. “As thou canst see, friend Vision, Kang’s shower was but a minor inconvenience to a true master of all thunder and storm. But how fairest thou and—the Beast!”
Thor had turned to see, for the first time, that the corridor behind them was empty.
“Blast!” he swore. “To have snatched the noble Hank McCoy from the icy clutches of space only to lose him again, and this time with Captain America . . . it doth approach being more than e’en an immortal soul can stand!”
The Vision had put a hand on Thor’s broad shoulder. “I agree, Thor. It is a frustrating tragedy. But you do realize, of course, that it would be illogical to search for him now?”
“Aye. We’ve still an important task to perform, and the Beast be not without strengths of his own. We can but pray that he doth not encounter perils beyond their means. Come, let us proceed.”
Turning grimly and determinedly, Thor marched back up the sloping green corridor, followed by the silent Vision. As he walked, the Thunder God alternately tightened and loosened his grip on Mjolnir, hoping fervently that when they finally did confront Kang, the Master of Time would not be cooperative.
At the same moment that the Vision had first sensed the roiling storm cloud, Iron Man, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch were approaching a doorway. They had been climbing the second green corridor, one that rose in a leftward curve, for about ten minutes, and Iron Man had spent most of that time denying Quicksilver’s repeated requests to speed ahead and scout the terrain. The last time Pietro had rushed into something, Iron Man reasoned, he had almost gotten several of them killed.
All argument had ceased, however, when they rounded yet another portion of the curving passageway and came face-to-mask with an incongruous wooden door. The door was set in a solid-oak frame and looked as if it might have been patterned after the fashion of the mid-1800s. Ornate gilt lettering on a frosted glass panel set in the upper half of the door spelled out the word, “Kang.” A paper sign hanging from the brass doorknob read, “The Conqueror Is In/Out,” with the word “In” circled.
Now, as they stepped to stand in front of the door, Iron Man put a gauntleted hand to the back of his neck, wishing that he could rub his weary muscles through the metal. “So tell me,” he said. “Why do I get this strange feeling that we’re not dealing with a terribly rational human being?”
“Perhaps,” answered the Scarlet Witch, matching her leader’s ironic tone, “because we aren’t.”
“Good point. Shall we go in?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Pietro Frank said quickly. “What are we waiting for?”
Iron Man smiled wryly as he reached for the doorknob. Quicksilver was a good man, and a good teammate. But he had about as much patience as a Doberman in heat.
The knob turned silently, and the heavy door swung smoothly inward on shiny hinges. What the three heroes saw in the room beyond should have startled them; but after all they had viewed and experienced in the last few (relative) hours, they could work up little more than mild interest, along with their usual, well-trained wariness.
Like the sloping corridors, the room was green—all green. It was obviously a music room, roughly the size of a small theater, and everything inside—walls, floor, and furnishings—ran the gamut from light mint to deep olive. There was a green grand piano with a green stool, a green chandelier hanging from a green ceiling, and green violins and cellos stacked in a green corner. Along the walls, green picture frames held pages of sheet music printed on green paper—from songs such as “My Time Is Your Time,” “Time Won’t Let Me,” “Twilight Time,” et cetera.
“When this is all over, Iron Man,” the Scarlet Witch whispered, “remind me to be very ill.”
The only contrast to the verdant surroundings were two dozen silverish-metal globes that sat on green pedestals about six feet above the door. Iron Man decided that it was not purely coincidence that the pedestals flanked the direct path across the music room, between the door where they stood and an open doorway in the opposite wall, through which the rising corridor could be seen to continue.
“Quicksilver,” he said, “try to make your way around one side, behind those globes—and take it slowly! Wanda, you go around the other side. I’ll try going down the middle.”
Step by cautious step—a procedure that the Silver Speedster naturally found less than satisfactory—the three Avengers made their way across the room. They really didn’t expect to make the passage without incident, and they weren’t disappointed.
“You are not authorized to be in this sector! *bzzt-klik*” The tinny voice apparently came from one of the globes. The Avengers were about halfway across the room. “You will proceed immediately to the string section to play accompaniment or you will have your wrists severely slapped! *bzzt-klik* Or possibly removed!”
The Avengers stopped dead in their tracks—now they were startled! As the trio of time travelers watched, fist-sized holes irised open in the sides of the shiny globes and thick metal arms telescoped out. At a distance of about a yard, the arms sprouted fingers at their tips, and then bent back on integral elbows, grasped the sides of the pedestals and lifted the globes free. As the arms held the spheres beyond the green columns, larger holes opened in each orb’s top and bottom surface, letting a smooth trunk extend in both directions. Like clockwork, the top of each trunk grew what was ostensibly a metal head, complete with multifaceted sensor eyes and a speaker-grid mouth; the bottom of each trunk was capped off with wheels, sets of treads, or casters.
The robots looked silly as hell.
“They do not move,” a second tinny voice spoke up. “Perhaps they would prefer to play brass. *klik-bzzt*”
“Wanda! Pietro!” Iron Man cried out. “Get to the other door! Fast!”
Of course, Iron Man’s last word was superfluous in regards to Quicksilver, who had already reached the opposite wall even before it had been spoken. But the Golden Avenger didn’t notice—he was too preoccupied in trying to take his own advice. Realizing that full jet power would be awkward in the enclosed area of the music room, he activated his alternate mobility system, releasing a small, wide wheel from the thick sole of each of his boots. Then, balancing on those wheels, he triggered tiny jet nozzles in the heels of his boots and went skimming across the floor, swerving around both robots and pedestals with a dexterity that would have made even the hardest roller-derby queen steam with envy. The boot skates were designed only as a backup, to provide minimum necessary mobility, but they still took Iron Man to the opposite doorway only seconds after Quicksilver.
Unfortunately, the Scarlet Witch had neither her brother’s speed nor her leader’s gadgetry. She had only her own two feet, and she had moved them but a few fleet steps when the metal mechanoids trundled between her and her swifter comrades. The fingers on the ends of the constructs’ jointed arms had retracted, and had been replaced by a variety of miniature chain saws, laser drills, razor-sharp blades, and other devices whose purposes could only be guessed in nightmares.
The robots no longer looked silly.
“They refuse to play. They have no artistic sensibilities! *bzzt-klik* They must be sent to bed without their supper! *frrt-pzzz* Or their limbs! *klik*”
The mechanical musicians attacked, and without the formality of a spoken order, the Avengers attacked back. Bracing her feet, the Scarlet Witch cast hex bolts in a half dozen directions around her, catching the six nearest advancing robots square in the solenoids. The struck automatons stopped instantly, their internal gear mechanisms fused into solid lumps, and then toppled forward, hitting the
floor like discarded scrap.
To one side, apparently fed-up with the delay, the green piano began playing a boogie version of “In the Good Old Summertime” on its own.
Iron Man jetted into the fray, crouching low as he skated in and out around the robots, blasting them left and right with his repulsors. A laser bolt shot past his head, and he ducked away instinctively, only to find that he had feinted directly into the path of a whirring, diamond-bladed chain saw. The saw scraped across his helmet, leaving a barely perceptible scratch, and Iron Man jerked a hand up to grab the attacking robot’s arm before it had been pulled out of reach. Then, curving around with the off-balance mechanical man in tow, he whipped his arm forward, slamming the chain saw robot into the one that had shot the laser bolt, sending a rain of gears, screws, wires and shrapnel skittering across the music-room floor.
Quicksilver who had been circling the outer perimeter of the room looking for an opening, now darted inward, swooping directly past each of the ten or so remaining robots. Caught in the vacuum of the speedster’s slipstream, the mechanoids were lifted from the floor and drawn behind him. When he had gathered every still-functioning robot, Quicksilver increased his speed to maximum, headed directly for a far wall, and only inches from that wall, made an instant ninety-degree turn. The robots, having very little say in the matter, continued forward, smashing one by one into the wall until the mound of bent and twisted metal on the floor resembled the aftermath of an Indy 500 pileup.
For a moment, the three Avengers stood staring at the mechanical carnage they had wrought. “What a shame,” said Iron Man. “Mauler would probably pay a million creds for this mess.” He then retracted his boot skates and, followed by his teammates, resumed his journey up the sloping corridor.
Marvel Novel Series 10 - The Avengers - The Man Who Stole Tomorrow Page 13