Bobby gave him a dirty look. Then he placed his hand in his friend's hand and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. “I suppose you think you're pretty funny."
"In point of fact," the blue-furred X-Man replied, "I do find myself rather amusing. Now, let's go. We mustn't keep the professor waiting."
Bobby felt like unleashing a snowball at his friend. However, Hank was right. Xavier had said he wanted to see them pronto.
"Just you wait,” he told his fellow mutant as they continued in the direction of their mentor's study. ”1 haven't even begun to fight.”
Hank didn't say anything. He just went on grinning.
Bobby hoped that saving the world wouldn't take too long this time. After all, he had to plot revenge on his big blue pal.
The ionic construct posing as Professor Charles Xavier sat patiently in his study and waited for his X-Men to join him.
When the two of them arrived, they looked flushed with some recent exertion. However, the energy duplicate didn't inquire about it. He had a more important agenda.
''What's going on, sir?" Bobby asked, plunking himself down in one of the posh leather chairs arranged on the opposite side of Xavier's desk.
Hank didn't sit down alongside his friend. With his brawny, strangely-proportioned body, he wasn't comfortable in people-sized furniture. "By all means," he added, "fill us in."
The doppelganger leaned forward, effecting the grimmest demeanor he could manage. "Obviously," he began in a somber voice, “you remember our encounters with the alien called Lucifer."
Bobby grunted. "How could we forget?"
"Indeed,” said the construct. "And you no doubt also remember his agenda-to set the stage for his people's invasion of Earth."
“An agenda we thwarted,” Hank noted with obvious satisfaction, "which is how he wound up being exiled to another dimension.”
"Precisely," the duplicate confirmed.
“Don't tell me Lucifer's gotten loose?" said Bobby.
The construct wanted to steer the pair away from that kind of thinking. "I have no information to that effect. However, I do have some evidence of Quistalian activity on Earth."
Hanks' eyes narrowed beneath his shaggy blue brows. "Has someone set off the alarm in Lucifer's old base?"
"Not exactly," the doppelganger replied. 'The base itself has remained untouched. However, its communications equipment has become active. And since no one has invaded the premises to activate it..He allowed his voice to trail off meaningfully.
"It's receiving calls from the outside," Bobby said, attaching a conclusion to the uncompleted thought.
"So it would seem," the energy construct told him. "I am currently in the process of gathering telemetry on these communications. What I believe I will find when I am done is a number of as-yet-undiscovered and previously dormant Quistalian facilities, recently brought to life.”
"Sounds like something's about to happen," Bobby observed.
"An invasion?" Hank suggested.
"That is my fear," the doppelganger said.
Bobby frowned. "We've got to figure out where these Quistalian bunkers are and launch a preemptive strike ... X-Men style."
The energy duplicate held up his hand in a call for patience. “You're as eager as ever to meet trouble head on, Bobby. However, I don’t believe an all-out offensive is the best way to approach this problem.”
The mutants seemed to accept his assessment at face value. But then, why should they do otherwise? As far as they knew, they were listening to the man who had founded the X-Men and given meaning to their lives.
"The Quistalians may be watching us," he pointed out. "If that's so, we don't dare deploy all our forces at once-or we run the risk of their moving up their timetable."
"So what do we do?" Bobby asked.
"Good question," Hank told him.
The imposter answered it. "We defuse the Quistalians’ facilities as soon as possible. However, we do it in a more subtle way-that is, with a small, easily assembled squad."
"Including us, I hope," said Bobby.
"What I had in mind," the energy duplicate told him, "is a quintet-my five original X-Men." He ticked off his reasons for the decision on his fingers. “First, none of you is very far from Salem Center at the moment. Second, only the five of you have had experience with Quistalian technologv-which makes you the resident experts on the subject."
Hank nodded. “So it does."
"Third," the doppelganger continued, “you have been working together as a team longer than any of my other students. As a result, you’re the best suited for a series of small, surgical strikes.”
“Have you summoned the others yet?" asked Hank.
Had the Xavier doppelganger any emotions of his own, he would have been immensely satisfied at how well his deception was being received. "I am doing so even as we speak," he said.
It wasn't true. The imposter didn't have the professor's ability to carry out two tasks at once. However, it was the answer Xavier's mutants would have expected from him.
Hank stroked his furry chin and looked pensive. "Hmm,” he said slowly, almost to himself. "I wonder..."
"You have a question, Hank?" the doppelganger asked.
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The X-Man shrugged his powerful blue shoulders. "I was just speculating, sir... could this development be related in some way to yesterday's attack on you and Bobby?"
The imposter took a breath and let it out, pretending to consider the possibility. "I suppose there could be a connection," he conceded. "We will doubtless become better informed as we proceed."
Hank grunted. "I certainly hope so."
"Same here," said Bobby. “I'd like nothing better than to get my hands on the bozos behind that attack.”
Hank glanced at him. "As I recall, you said you wanted nothing more to do with them."
“I changed my mind,” Bobby retorted.
"I should receive the telemetry results momentarily," the energy duplicate informed them. "In the meantime, the two of you would do well to put on your working clothes."
Bobby looked eager as he got to his feet. "As the saying goes... let's get ready to rumble!"
Indeed, thought the doppelganger, rumble all you want. In the end, Lucifer will emerge triumphant.
The first thing of which Jean Grey was aware was the roll of gentle waves under her boat. The second thing of which she was aware was the nearness of her handsome, young husband.
Then she became aware of a third thing and she sat up, squinting in the thin dawn light.
Scott stirred and looked up at her. "What is it?" he asked, propping himself up on one elbow and readjusting the goggles he had to wear even in bed. His brow was creased, his voice taut with apprehension.
"Listen," Jean told him, then amplified the transmission and relayed it to him in a way he could understand.
Come home, said the voice. I need you.
Scott frowned. "It's the professor."
His wife nodded. We’re at least four hours from the dock, she replied. Can you wait that long?
I can wait, Xavier assured her, though his tone told her he wasn't ecstatic about it.
Jean glanced at Scott. "We've got to go."
Without complaint, the X-Man with the codename Cyclops got out of their v-shaped bed and reached for a pair of khakis in a nearby locker. "I'll start the engine," he said.
"Don't bother," Jean told him, picturing the key and turning it with her telekinetic power. A moment later, she could hear the hum of their inboard as it turned over.
Scott smiled as he pulled on his trousers. "All right. In that case, I'll weigh anchor."
"I'm on it," his wife and fellow X-Man assured him.
Kicking the motor into drive, she slid their boat forward little by little. At the same time, she pulled up their anchor line until the pronged aluminum weight emerged from the water. Then she stowed it in its dedicated compartment near the bow.
Scott chuckled softly as he h
eard the clatter of heavy chain joining the anchor. "How about if I hoist the sails?" he asked. "Or would you prefer to do that too?"
Jean melted back into her covers with a mischievous grin. "Hoist away, Ahab. Just be careful not to drop your goggles again. We don’t need any more perforated mainsails."
Her husband rolled his eyes as he reached for a sweater capable of staving off the morning chill, "Battle one deadly threat after another," he said, "and no one mentions a thing. But drop your glasses just once and they never let you forget it."
"That's what I'm here for, Mr. Summers," Jean informed him coyly. "To keep you honest."
"And you're doing a heck of a job," he responded.
Donning the sweater, Scott slipped his feet into a pair of topsiders at the foot of their bed. Then he made his way through the cabin and up the ladder to the deck.
The mutant known as Phoenix watched him go. After all, watching her husband was one of her favorite pastimes. Then she drew in a pensive breath and let it out again.
Professor X knew how much she and Scott prized their time together. He wouldn't have interrupted their little cruise unless something really urgent had reared its head.
As the sails above her caught the wind and the boat picked up speed, Jean wondered soberly what that something might be.
Warren Worthington III, chairman and principal stockholder of eminently successful Worthington Industries, sat at the oversized mahogany desk in his well-appointed Manhattan penthouse and pored over yet another in a series of daily financial reports.
Up there in his personal eyrie, with the blinds drawn tight against the pale rays of dawn, Wall Street's darling could make himself comfortable. He could sit in his white silk pajama bottoms, bare chested, his great white wings proud and unfurled.
Warren's pinions had first begun to sprout during his early adolescence. Ever since that time, he had been forced to hide his wings from prying eyes, strapping them so tightly to his back that he felt like he was walking around in a straitjacket.
As if that weren't bad enough, his skin had turned blue in the course of an encounter with a powerful adversary. As a result, he had to use an image inducer to cover up his appearance when he went out in public... or be identified as an X-Man.
Sometimes, he wondered what was next in store for him. Big red lobster claws? Foot-long antennae with eightballs on the end of them? A neon rash on his forehead flashing KICK ME, I'M A MUTANT?
At the moment, however, Warren Worthington III wasn't thinking about the drawbacks of being born with an unusual set of genes. And contrary to the hopes of his board of directors, he wasn't contemplating the financial reports in front of him either.
He was thinking about the love of his life, who happened to be a mutant as well. He was dreaming about the beautiful, exotic and incidentally telepathic Betsy Braddock, whose nom de guerre was Psylocke.
Unfortunately, Betsy was visiting family in England and therefore wasn't around to alleviate his loneliness. He had been tempted to go overseas with her but... well, there had been an unfriendly acquisition to fend off and a couple of new product lines to launch and a luncheon full of institutional investors to court.
The mutant bowed his head, sighed and ran his fingers through his thick, yellow hair. He missed Betsy. He missed her gentle presence. And what he wouldn't have given for a decent distraction to take his mind off her.
Be careful what you wish for, a voice told him.
Warren raised his head and tried to be as receptive as possible. Professor Xavier? he asked.
Yes, Warren, came the reply. Something has come up. I need you here in Salem Center as soon as possible.
Your wish is my command, the winged man assured his mentor.
His best time from his penthouse to Xavier's school was eighteen minutes. He would see if he could come up with a new record.
Crossing the room, Warren opened a secret closet that contained a few of his blue and white uniforms. He removed one and slipped it on, then opened the only set of doors in the room that led to the outside.
immediately, the wind swept over him. It teased him, inviting him into its embrace like a lover.
Closing the doors behind him, he paused for just a moment to close his eyes and savor the delight ahead of him. Then, before he ran the risk of someone spotting a bird-man standing outside Warren Worthington's penthouse, he opened his eyes, flapped his wings and ascended into the air.
Faster than a human eye could easily follow, the mutant banked and soared over the gargantuan concrete-and-metal spires of Manhattan Island. Up ahead, to the northeast, he could see where the buildings became more modest in size and the land opened up. Somewhere beyond that, along the blue expanse of the Long Island Sound, lay Salem Center.
I'm coming, he told Xavier, though he didn't know if the professor was still listening to his mind. Beating his wings even harder, he thought it again: I'm coming.
As Xavier replayed the words in his mind, they were like fingernails drawn mercilessly across a blackboard.
"Have you summoned the others yet?"
"I am doing so even as we speak.”
Professor X wasn't certain that his energy duplicate was capable of summoning Scott, Jean and Warren while he was still conversing with Hank and Bobby. However, the thought of the imposter contacting the trio at all was terribly unnerving.
After all, Xavier's X-Men trusted their mentor without
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reservation. They would charge innocently into any trap Lucifer and the doppelganger cared to set for them.
And Professor X was still restrained by Lucifer's ionic bonds in the Nameless Dimension, still cut off from everything familiar to him. True, he had mentally penetrated the barrier between dimensions... but where had it gotten him? He had failed to make any kind of productive contact with Hank.
Then an alternative occurred to him. Perhaps there is a way out of this predicament yet, he told himself. To be sure, it was far from a sure thing, but he wasn't going to dismiss the possibility without even trying.
The option he had in mind was Jean Grey, who in some ways was closer to Xavier than any of his other X-Men. To an extent, that was because he had known her since she was a young girl. But it was also because, like him, Jean's powers were psionic in nature.
Without question, she would make the best receiver for the professor's thoughts. If he could contact anyone across the span of the dimensions, it would be her.
However, there was a problem. Hank and Bobby were in Salem Center, a place Xavier knew as well as any on Earth-a place he had been able to locate without difficulty.
Jean was a different story. She wasn't in Salem Center. She and Scott were somewhere else entirely.
Under normal circumstances, Xavier would simply have cast his thoughts like a net and found Jean, wherever she was. However, with the dimensional barrier to hinder him, he would be like a blind man trying to find a penny in a shopping mall-sized parking lot.
On the other hand, what choice did he have? Could he simply accept his fate and let the Quistaiian have his way...
sinus if fie pisf
not only with the mutants who made up the X-Men, but with the entire world?
Taking a deep breath, Xavier composed and focused his thoughts. Then he poked a psionic tendril through the dimensional barrier, as he had when he attempted to contact Hank. It came through in the vicinity of Salem Center, exactly as he had intended.
But where to send it next? That was the question.
Fortunately, the professor possessed a few facts that might help him in his task. He knew, for instance, that Jean and Scott had set out on a sailing trip the day of Jeremiah Saunders' funeral.
"Nothing very ambitious," Jean had told him, aware of how quickly a nor'easter couid come up this time of year. "Just over to Long Island for a couple of nights."
But Long island was a hundred miles long. And though Jean's boat wasn’t fast enough to take her all the way out to Montauk in that time, it coul
d easily make twenty five miles a day.
Think, Xavier exhorted himself. Narrow it down.
It occurred to him that Jean and Scott wouldn't have headed west, in the direction of New York City—not if they wanted to be alone with each other on the water, which was the point of going on the cruise in the first place. And in the other direction, the Long Island side of the Sound didn't have any viable anchorages for quite a stretch east of Mount Sinai.
If they kept to their plan, the professor told himself, they would likely have considered only three locations: West Harbor, a big, secluded basin near the town of Oyster Bay; Lloyd Harbor, a picturesque adjunct to the much larger expanse of Huntington Bay; and Mount Misery Cove, a sand dune-surrounded offshoot of elongated Port Jefferson Harbor.
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While Xavier had never actually gone sailing with Jean and Scott, he had heard them mention these anchorages often enough as their favorites. Tempted by the descriptions his X-Men often tendered, he had visited the places in his astral form and found them pleasant... even serene.
But this time, he wasn't on a sightseeing expedition. Now, his ability to scour these locales with his mind was all that stood between Earth and Quistalian domination.
Think, the professor told himself again.
Scott and Jean had planned a three-day trip. Most likely, they would either have spent their first night in West Harbor and their second in Mount Misery Cove... or they would have reversed the direction. They probably wouldn't have bothered with Lloyd Harbor, since it was situated between the other two sites and less than a day's journey from either.
Ail right, Xavier thought. That leaves you with only two locations. Which of them should you seek out first? In which are you more likely to discover Scott and Jean?
He thought about the long-range weather forecast-something he memorized daily along with a host of other seemingly mundane details-but gleaned nothing from it. No one had predicted the advent of any serious storm systems in the region. And besides, both Mount Misery Cove and West Harbor were protected from wind and waves on all four sides.
The professor scowled. Keep going, he told himself.
It wasn't just important that he come to an accurate conclusion-it was critical. Unaccustomed as he was to penetrating the interdimensional barrier, uncertain of how long he could hope to avoid Lucifer's scrutiny, he didn't know how much time he would have to carry out his search. Clearly, he had to make every second count.
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