“Focus it on the coordinates we discussed,” said Agrayn, one of Jerred’s colleagues on the Council.
Agrayn was a sturdy-looking man with a full head of white hair. Though everyone on the Council was supposed to be equal in authority, he was generally looked to as their leader.
One of the technicians they had brought with them worked the controls in the back of the machine. A moment later, the red light softened and gave way to an image.
But it was fuzzy, difficult to make out. It took a little while for the image to sharpen and become something recognizable.
When it did, Maleen saw the figure of a man. He was flying through the sky like a bird, white clouds streaming past him like a great, frothy river.
“It’s him,” said Darmac, another of the Council’s elders. He was a portly man with a fringe of hair around his otherwise bald skull. “The machine is as accurate as you said it would be, Elder Jerred.”
“As accurate as the ancient ones made it,” Jerred replied.
Maleen smiled to herself. Her uncle was a modest man who seldom felt the need to take credit for anything.
But it was the figure in the clouds that drew her attention and held it captive. It wore a green and black uniform that Maleen had seen before—with a lantern symbol on its chest, a reference to the amazing source of energy that enabled the figure to fly.
“What is his name?” she asked.
“John Stewart,” said Jerred.
“He’s one of the Guardians’ fiercest warriors,” Darmac added.
Maleen knew all about the Guardians and their planet, Oa. After all, her people had been rivals of the Guardians thousands of years ago. They had even gone to war with them and nearly defeated them.
But while the Guardians grew in power and created the Green Lantern Corps, driven by a compulsion to protect and defend planets throughout the galaxy, the Aoranites became complacent. Gradually, so gradually they failed to see it happening, their knowledge of technology withered and their power diminished.
Now they needed someone to protect and defend them from a brutal and merciless enemy called Evil Star. And Maleen’s people couldn’t ask the Guardians for help because they had declared Aoran off-limits to their Green Lanterns.
She gazed at John Stewart. He seemed so confident, so unafraid. So comfortable with the great power he wielded.
“You see what I mean?” Jerred asked her.
She nodded. “I do.”
Earth’s Green Lantern was just what they needed.
Maleen’s uncle turned to her and spoke softly, so the other elders couldn’t hear what he was saying. “Are you certain you want to go through with this, my child?”
She sighed. What choice did she have? The fate of her entire world was at stake.
“I’m certain,” said Maleen.
“Good,” said Agrayn, who had overheard the conversation despite their whispering. He turned to the technicians who had gathered around the machine’s control panel. “You may proceed.”
The one who had raised John Stewart’s image worked the controls for a moment. Then he looked up and said, “It’s done.”
Agrayn nodded approvingly. “If I understand the process correctly, it will take some time before we obtain our champion. In the meantime, we should review what we’re to do when he arrives.”
Darmac looked at Maleen. “Especially you, my dear.”
She nodded. “Don’t worry, Councilor. I’ll be ready.”
John made it to California’s Coast City in a matter of minutes. After all, he was used to covering the vast, dark distances between stars. Flying from one city to another was child’s play.
He had barely arrived when he caught sight of the high-tech monstrosity that J’onn J’onzz had warned him about. The thing was immense, nine or ten stories tall, and it didn’t look anything like an orbiting telescope anymore.
If John were to compare it to something, it would be an ape. After all, it had long arm-like limbs in front of it and shorter, more powerful limbs in back. But that was where the resemblance ended.
Solarac—or rather, the thing that used to be Solarac—was made entirely of the supertelescope’s component parts. Its body was an accumulation of dark metal plates and cagework. Its arms and legs were long white accumulations of molded plastic. And its head was made up of transformers and coolant containers and computer circuit boards, with huge mirrors where its eyes should have been.
And it was all connected by lengths of thick, black power cable. They ran through every part of the thing, channeling energy to wherever it was needed.
But Solarac wasn’t just using energy. As J’onn had pointed out, it was absorbing energy as well. John homed in on the artificial marauder and saw it grab an electrical line and tear it apart. Then he watched it feed both ends of the line into openings in its upper body.
He could almost imagine the thing sighing as its rampaging hunger was momentarily satisfied. Nothing like a good meal, the Green Lantern thought. But not at the expense of Coast City.
Those power lines kept hospitals and police stations and a thousand other places alive and operational. Without electricity, people all over the city would be in trouble.
Then John realized that the problem posed by Solarac was even bigger than he had thought—because right before his eyes, the high-tech colossus began to grow.
Somehow, it was converting the energy it “ate” into matter—and adding that matter to its already bizarre form. Whatever had caused Solarac to transform itself from an orbital telescope into a towering monster was still at work, still spurring a transformation—and there was no way of knowing where it would end.
That is, if John and his teammates didn’t do anything about it. But they would, the Green Lantern vowed. That’s why the Justice League had been formed in the first place—to tackle threats too big for any one hero to handle alone.
As he swooped down past the skyline, he saw that at least one member of the League had beaten him to the scene. The Flash, John thought with a touch of resentment. The guy in the red suit wasn’t called the Fastest Man Alive for nothing.
Looking like little more than a red blur, the Flash was gathering people up and depositing them blocks from the high-tech marauder’s path. Good idea, the Green Lantern had to admit. The first rule of combat was to make sure all bystanders were out of harm’s way.
Descending from the sky, John saw his teammate start to circle the monster’s legs as quickly as he could—almost too quick for the eye to see. John understood exactly what the Flash was up to. After all, he had seen him do it before. He was trying to create a whirlwind powerful enough to topple his adversary.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to bother Solarac. Bending over, the thing swatted at the Flash and only narrowly missed him.
My turn, John thought.
But before he could pound the monstrosity with an energy beam, a winged figure came darting across the space between skyscrapers. It was Hawkgirl, another of his Justice League teammates.
Like J’onn J’onzz, Hawkgirl was a being from another planet. But if one ignored the large gray wings that propelled her through the air, she looked as human as any Earthwoman.
As she reached the lumbering mass of research components, she swung her trademark weapon—a mace that looked as if it would fit perfectly in a medieval museum collection. However, it was actually a highly sophisticated energy weapon created on Hawkgirl’s homeworld. It flashed and made a loud klaannng as it struck one of Solarac’s metal parts.
But it didn’t seem to do any damage. In fact, Solarac appeared invigorated by the mace’s power—so invigorated that it struck back with blinding speed.
As the winged woman twisted in midair to avoid the monster’s counterattack, John swept in and took her place.
Clenching his jaw, he extended his right hand and willed a blast of the Guardians’ green energy at Solarac. It didn’t punch a hole in the thing as John had hoped, but at least it got its attention.
Solarac lurched toward the Green Lantern and took a swipe at him, no doubt meaning to snatch him out of the sky. But John swooped away just in time to save himself.
Man, he thought. This thing is tougher than it looks.
But so was he.
John! someone cried out.
It took him a moment to realize that the voice wasn’t in his ear this time. It was in his brain, which meant it was a tiny bit faster.
It also meant the voice could have come from only one person—a guy who could communicate without speaking because he was born on a planet where everyone did that.
That guy was J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter. The other Martians had died at the hands of an alien invader, but J’onn had sworn to help the people of Earth avoid the same fate.
The Green Lantern had barely completed the thought when J’onn came hurtling toward him—with the strikingly beautiful Amazon champion known as Wonder Woman flying right behind him.
At Wonder Woman’s birth, she was blessed by the Greek gods with amazing speed, incredible strength, and the power of flight. Raised on an obscure island called Themyscira, she was still learning what life was like in what she called “Man’s World.”
J’onn and the Amazon banked at the same time and stopped just outside the monster’s reach.
I have been in contact with a scientist named Van Domelen, the Martian said with the power of his mind. He has shed some light on the problem before us.
“So spill!” the Flash shouted up at him. “Before that thing sucks up every kilowatt in sight!”
J’onn went on, undistracted by his teammate’s outburst. Solarac was exposed to an unusually powerful release of energy in the form of an immense solar flare. It damaged the telescope and also altered its self-repair program, causing Solarac to rebuild itself in a way its creators never intended.
John saw where the Martian’s explanation was going. “And it wants to continue rebuilding itself. But to do that, it needs a whopping supply of power.”
So it would seem, J’onn replied.
“So,” said Wonder Woman, “it’s up to us to see that Solarac doesn’t get that power.”
Hawkgirl swooped past John. “So far, we haven’t had much success in that department.”
“Yeah,” said the Flash. “The only one showing signs of slowing down here is me.”
We can’t beat Solarac one on one, the Martian told them telepathically. We must work as a team.
That was fine with John. As the one with the most experience fighting such threats, he took charge of formulating the League’s strategy.
“Flash and Wonder Woman,” he shouted, “go after its legs. J’onn, Hawkgirl and I will hit it high. With a little luck, we’ll send this thing sprawling.”
Agreed, came the Martian Manhunter’s response.
“All right,” the Green Lantern roared, “let ’im have it!”
Everything went the way it was supposed to. Wonder Woman tossed her golden lasso around one of the giant’s legs and tugged for all she was worth. Flash did his whirlwind trick again, running circles around Solarac. Hawkgirl hammered away with her mace and J’onn plowed into it with all his Martian strength.
That left John to drive one of his energy beams into the thing’s head. Flying as close to the creature as he dared, he released a green barrage that could have leveled a fair-sized building.
But it didn’t even slow Solarac down. If anything, it seemed to bolster its energy supply, judging by the speed and power with which it swung its appendage at him.
Again, he was forced to swoop out of the way. And again, the monster missed him. Or did it?
The Green Lantern felt dizzy all of a sudden, disoriented . . . as if he were losing consciousness. It felt as if Solarac had gotten a piece of him after all.
No, he insisted. It missed me.
Then John spiraled down into a bottomless well, a place as cold as space and twice as dark.
John was falling through darkness. It seemed to him that he had been falling for a long time. Maybe his entire life.
It was quiet as he fell, as quiet as could be. And then, suddenly, he heard voices. They were worried, it seemed to him, though he didn’t know why. And they seemed to come to him from very far away.
“Why isn’t it working?”
“It will. Give it time.”
“What if the procedure fails?”
“It’s too soon to worry about that.”
“But what if it does?”
“Then our last hope is gone.”
What are they talking about? John wondered.
Then the sound of their argument faded and he began falling again.
As Maleen watched the image of the fallen Green Lantern in the core of the seashell-shaped machine, she frowned at something her uncle had told her.
If the machine worked as it should—as the ancients meant it to—John Stewart would remain there on Earth. But at the same time, he would appear on Aoran.
That meant he would be in two places at once. Maleen didn’t see how that was possible. For that matter, neither did Jerred. But he had assured her that it would be so.
“All that will be transported here is his essence,” her uncle had said. “His ingenuity. His courage. His strength—both the kind in his body and the kind in his ring.”
John Stewart wouldn’t remember anything about his life on Earth. All he would remember was what Agrayn and the others had programmed into the machine—memories of a life on Aoran that the Green Lantern had never led.
If that were all true, the ancients were even more powerful than Maleen had imagined. More than ever, it seemed like a pity that her people had lost the scientific secrets of their ancestors.
“Something’s happening!” Darmac cried out.
He was pointing to something in the core of the machine. Maleen followed his gesture and saw that the councilor was right. Something was happening.
The image of the Green Lantern was fading. The ruby light was returning to assume its place. And something seemed to be taking shape inside it.
It took Maleen a moment to realize what it was. A skeleton, she thought. It was building itself up bone by bone, so quickly that her eyes could barely follow the process.
Then muscles wound their way in and around the bones. Tiny, red pieces of flesh appeared and grew into organs such as kidneys, lungs, and a vibrant, beating heart. A network of tiny nerves spread out from the backbone and formed a wet, gray brain.
A layer of skin spread to cover it all. And that, in turn, was clothed in a green and black uniform. Last of all, a ring appeared.
The process was complete. The being called John Stewart had been reconstituted on the planet Aoran, looking as if he had existed there all his life.
But was it John Stewart? Did the body lying there in front of them have his essence in it? His courage and his strength, as her uncle had said? Or was it just a construct of flesh and bone, unable to think or feel for itself?
There was only one way to find out.
“John?” someone said.
He opened his eyes and saw that he was in a room with violet walls, their surfaces sculpted to look like fish scales as they approached the arched ceiling. There was a circle of men around him—men in long, belted garments of various hues, old enough for their hair and beards to have turned white.
He didn’t recognize any of them. However, they had an air of authority about them. Authority and wisdom.
“Are you all right, John?” one of the men asked. He had stern-looking features and a full head of hair.
John. That was his name, wasn’t it? He remembered that much—if nothing else.
“What happened?” he muttered.
“We don’t know,” said another of the men, a heavyset fellow with a white fringe of hair around a bald head. “You must have had a run-in with some of Evil Star’s henchmen. We found you on the outskirts of the city.”
“Thankfully,” added a slender man with a white wisp of a bea
rd, “just inside the defense barrier. Otherwise, you might be waking up in Evil Star’s prison instead of among friends.”
John didn’t remember Evil Star or anything else. Why didn’t he remember?
“You look confused,” one of the men observed.
“Of course he does,” said the plump one. “He had to have taken quite a beating.”
“A beating . . . ?” John repeated numbly.
He shook his head, as if that would help him remember. He didn’t like feeling so helpless. He didn’t like it at all.
Suddenly, a door opened and a woman came through it. John felt his heart skip a beat.
She was beautiful—as beautiful as any woman he had ever seen. But that wasn’t what made her feel so special to him. It wasn’t the almond shape of her dark eyes or the majestic sweep of her cheekbones. It was something else entirely.
Something he felt he should know, but couldn’t quite remember.
“Oh, John,” she said. And she threw her arms around him.
He would have liked to embrace her in return, but he didn’t know who she was.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “do I know you?”
The men standing around them exchanged looks. They didn’t seem happy with John’s question.
Neither did the woman. She held him away from her and looked at him, her eyes full of surprise and concern. Then she seemed to gather herself.
Turning to the man with the wispy beard, she asked, “What happened?”
The man looked grave as he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Maleen, I don’t know. We found him on the edge of the city a little while ago. He was unconscious.”
“He must have taken a blow to the head,” one of the other men offered. “Such injuries have been known to cause people to lose their memories.”
The stern-looking man frowned with concern. “What do you remember?” he asked of John.
John thought about it. “Not much. My name.” He glanced at the ring on his finger. “That I use this. But I can’t remember why or where I got it.”
The men looked at each other again.
“Don’t worry,” said the woman. “We’ll help you remember. But for now, let’s just go home.”
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