And it was coming from my pants.
A gentle vibration told me immediately what had happened. The game controller had slipped past the waistband of my trousers, but caught on the elastic of my Daredevil underpants. My second-luckiest pair.
I needed to buy time while I rummaged.
“Would I get to wear a cape?” I asked.
Christopher Talbot sighed. “Any colour you want.”
“And a mask?”
“Naturally. Now, just let me deal with this little space rock problem and then we’ll get you fitted out with a bespoke costume and, of course, those lovely superpowers. It’ll be great. You can be my sidekick.”
My fingers closed around the solid shape of the game controller. “I don’t think so,” I said, drawing it out.
“What?!” Talbot choked as he saw what I was holding. “You can’t. Luke, I thought we had an understanding. Don’t do this.” Inside I could see him frantically working the onboard controls. But he was too late.
I braced myself against the hull and thumbed the “fire” button.
“NO!” he shrieked.
The main engines detonated and in the space of a heartbeat we cleared the crater rim. The volcano disappeared beneath us like a coin dropped down a deep well. In the next second the speeding Super Suit entered the dense band of smoke. My eyes were stinging and briefly I lost sight of Zack. For what felt like an eternity I was alone in the grey nothing.
In that moment my mind hurtled back to a long time ago. When I was very little my mum and dad projected a lightshow on the ceiling above my cot to help me nod off to sleep. I don’t actually remember it, since I was too young, but I know about it because there’s a photograph of me taken at the time. In the photo I’m fast asleep, clutching my cuddly rabbit, tucked up in my Jedi grobag – and above me the ceiling twinkles. With stars.
We broke through the smoke barrier. The night sky opened up before us. Nine thousand one hundred and ten stars shone their light down on Zack.
Our rapid passage through the air sent up little whirlwinds of turbulence on the outer edges of the suit, which continued to climb at an alarming rate. Ferocious winds whipped at my face. My hands felt numb. I knew I couldn’t hold on much longer.
The stars on Zack’s chest began to glow faintly and then with more vigour. His strength was returning. “Where … where am I?” His words were snatched out of his mouth by the relentless gale. He looked down and let out a cry, then caught sight of me clinging to the hull of the Super Suit. “Luke?” I heard his voice in my head. He was using telepathy. At least one power was back. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Trying to rescue you.”
“Well, you’re not doing a very good job.”
He was so annoying.
But he was also our only hope. Zorbon the Decider had given Zack six powers to defeat Nemesis. Five of them had already revealed themselves. It was now or never for number six. The final power. The one I had been waiting for since that night in the tree house. Who was I kidding? I’d been waiting for this one since my dad used to zoom me around the garden when I was a toddler. I just had a feeling.
I let go.
“Luke!” cried Zack, reaching uselessly for me as I fell past him. He swiped at thin air.
I fell through the darkness. A skydiver freefalls at about a hundred and twenty miles an hour. A peregrine falcon dives on its prey at a speed of two hundred miles an hour. They know what they’re doing. I began to spin uncontrollably. My stomach felt as if it was trying to burst out through my mouth, my eyeballs bulged in their sockets as g-forces tore at my body. The edges of my vision started to dim. But just before I blacked out I caught sight of something above me. Closing fast. A streak of light in the darkness.
Like a shooting star.
A second later I felt arms grasp me and I was no longer falling.
“Got you!” said Zack’s voice in my head.
My stomach and eyeballs returned to their usual positions. “I knew it!” I trumpeted in my head. “I knew it!” Then I had an awful thought. I looked down and then at Zack. “You are flying, right? We’re not both just plummeting to our certain deaths, are we?”
“I am flying,” reassured Zack.
“Oh good, that’s a relief.”
Above us I could see the red glow of engines from the Mark Fourteen Super Suit as it burned keenly towards the edge of the atmosphere and its rendezvous with Nemesis. Whatever I thought of his methods, I had a sneaking admiration for Christopher Talbot’s stubborn determination.
The vast asteroid blazed its own determined course, but the weird thing was that from here it appeared to be stationary. In truth it was already between the moon and the Earth, closing the distance between us at a speed of some twenty-seven thousand miles an hour. It hung over the horizon, a grey-black disc of nothingness ready to swallow everything and everyone I had ever known. Lara and Serge. My mum and dad, my grandparents. Every one of us teetered on the edge of a bottomless hole and if we tumbled in, we would fall forever. Only one thing stood between us and total destruction. And it wasn’t Christopher Talbot.
“Zack. Nemesis is coming.”
“I know. But first we have to get you back on the ground.”
“How fast can you fly?”
“No idea.” He grinned. “Let’s find out. Now, hold tight.”
“I am not cuddling you.”
“Oh for—Just hang on, will you?”
We dived earthwards, back towards Bromley and the comic book store. In less than a minute we had spotted the volcano on the Parade. Zack circled the open crater once and then dropped down. We landed heavily and he spilled me on to the floor. “Sorry,” he said. But I forgave him since it was his first landing. I struggled to my feet, brushing myself down.
“Luke, you’re alive!” Lara hurled herself on top of me, almost knocking me back over. “When you took off like that I was sure you were toast.”
“Mon ami!”
It was Serge. He too began to hug me. Then he turned to stand in awe of my brother. “It is you.”
“Hi, Serge,” said Zack.
“He knows my name.”
I sighed. “Of course he knows your name. It’s Zack – he’s known you for years.” There wasn’t time for any of this fanboy nonsense. I crossed to the costume locker, pulled out a cape and mask, and thrust them at my brother. “Here, put these on.”
“We’ve been through this,” he complained. “I’m not wearing that stuff.”
“The mask isn’t to protect your identity – it’s the rest of us I’m worried about. You might want fame, but speaking as your brother I’d prefer not to have a camera shoved in my face every time I leave the house.”
“OK, OK,” he relented. “I’ll wear the mask.” Reluctantly, he looped it over his head. “But not the cape.”
I didn’t have a good reason for the cape. I just really, really wanted him to wear one.
“My sister Cara has a thing for capes,” said Lara.
“She does?” Zack swallowed. “A thing. When you say a thing, what kind of—Y’know what, doesn’t matter right now. Gimme the cape.” He grabbed it out of my hands and flung it over his shoulders. “Well, it’s traditional, isn’t it?”
Serge pointed at the monitors on the control doughnut. “The nuclear missiles, they are launching!” The countdown was running out and TV pictures from around the world showed nuclear silos opening and missiles moving into their firing positions. Four minutes and counting.
We all looked at Zack. Somehow what had started with an unfortunately timed wee in the tree house and an unpronounceable visitor from a parallel world had led inescapably to this moment. I wanted to say something. Something meaningful, something supportive. After all, it might be the last thing anyone ever said to him. “Zack,” I said. “Don’t mess it up.”
He smiled, then tilted his face up to the night sky framed by the crater rim. He steeled himself, bent his knees and then sprang into the air. We watched him
soar through the open roof, cape billowing out behind him like a ripple in space-time, silver mask shining, chest pulsing with starlight. The smoke had thinned, which meant we were able to follow his arrow-straight progress. He hurled his tiny body into the void, a speck against the monstrous Nemesis. Beside me Serge began to mutter.
“Granted cosmic superpower
In our darkest hour.
Star Lad, star light
Protector of the world tonight.”
Somehow, this time, it didn’t seem so cheesy.
35
THE COSMIC PUNCH
Everyone on the planet knows what happened next.
On every street corner, in every café, school and office, it was the only story on people’s lips for weeks and months afterwards. Cameras on the International Space Station and a bunch of military satellites captured most of the action. In the footage you can see Star Lad racing towards Nemesis. He’s caught between the asteroid in front of him and ten thousand nuclear missiles rising from the Earth’s surface below. On the soundtrack you can hear military chatter about vectors and threat levels and Defence Conditions. Star Lad uses his telepathic power to raise Earth Defence Command. When they realise he’s up there they try to abort Spitting Umbrella, but it’s such a huge bombardment and since the weapons have been fired from all over the world it’s impossible to co-ordinate. So only a few are deactivated in time. That leaves about eight thousand nuclear missiles spearing into the sky heading for the asteroid – and my brother. Nemesis is now right on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere. So close that even with the naked eye you can see the craters on its vast surface and though you know it can’t be true you think you can hear the asteroid howling like a wild animal.
Star Lad uses his radar to lock on to all of the remaining warheads, then forms his force field into a cone shape so that when the missiles strike it they are pushed out and around the asteroid, shooting off into space to explode harmlessly.
The missiles taken care of, he’s about to turn his attention to Nemesis when WHAM! The Mark Fourteen Super Suit slams into him, knocking him unconscious. In all the commotion no one has noticed Christopher Talbot creeping up through the atmosphere, presuming that the blip on the radar was just another missile.
So now Star Lad’s just floating there limply, while in his Super Suit Christopher Talbot moves into position, extending his giant mechanical arms, directing his own telekinetic power at the asteroid. It quickly becomes obvious that nothing is happening. He’s run out of superpower. He jiggles his arms, as if he can shake out the last ounce, but it’s gone. He’s no superhero, just an ordinary, foolish man hovering before a planet-killing asteroid. A second later he’s struck by a flaming chunk of rock which sends him spinning off towards the dawn horizon. Christopher Talbot hasn’t been seen since, and no one knows what happened to him.
Meanwhile, Star Lad is floating like a piece of space junk. In my head I’m screaming at him to wake up. Since then, I’ve found that whoever I talk to was doing the same thing at exactly the same time. Zack’s never been good at getting up in the morning, especially since becoming a teenager, but all of that telepathic shouting must have been too hard to ignore. Star Lad’s eyes flicker. He’s back in business.
With a kick of his legs he flies straight at the asteroid and, raising his arms into position above his head, he summons every drop of his telekinetic powers. He looks a bit like the Titan Atlas who held up the Earth’s sphere. (You’ve probably seen his statues.) Flames start to shoot from Star Lad’s heels as he skids against the upper atmosphere, pushed back by Nemesis’ seemingly unstoppable force. Suddenly, one of the military operators at Earth Defence Command squawks, “We are seeing a course correction for Nemesis. I repeat. The asteroid just changed direction!” But then they do the calculations and it’s not enough. Nemesis has only shifted its path by a degree, which means it won’t miss the Earth. And then things turn really bad.
A split opens up in space. As Zorbon the Decider predicted, the asteroid is actually tearing the fabric of space-time that separates our two universes. You can see Zorbon’s world through the gap. And like the wake of a boat, the passage of the asteroid is pulling the planet through into our universe – which can’t be good. Nemesis is seconds away from causing trans-dimensional carnage. The end of the worlds is nigh.
“Star Lad,” says Captain Kit Rivers of Earth Defence Command in what will turn out to be one of the most famous phrases to come out of the whole saga, “Gotta give it the full cosmic punch, kid.”
Leaving aside the fact that technically Star Lad does not have a “cosmic punch” the next bit is really thrilling. In a wholly unexpected development the starlight from Zorbon’s universe shines through the tear. That plus the light from our universe has some sort of supercharging effect on Star Lad. Scientists have been feverishly speculating on the nature of this event ever since. In my view it’s as if both universes were banding together to help him succeed. But the important thing is that thanks to the top-up Star Lad is at the peak of his power. Blistering with the energy of a gazillion stars he winds up to deliver his final awe-inspiring telekinetic blast and blah blah blah he saves the world and all of humanity and the other world too and the dolphins and the rain forests and and and.
But you know all this. You’ve read the reports, watched the interviews. You’ve probably even seen the made-for-TV movie they rushed out to mark “Yay, We’re Alive!” Day. In the movie Star Lad is played by a much older actor, he’s American, oh, and I’m not even in it. Instead they’ve given Star Lad a dog. Star Pup. I mean, honestly.
The thing you don’t know is what happened afterwards. By the time Zack returned from the edge of space, dawn was breaking. It was time to go home. Before we left the crater room I made sure to wipe Christopher Talbot’s hard drives of any evidence that would link Zack with Star Lad and we dismantled what little the rocket-blast had left of the superpower-sucking equipment. When we finally emerged from the volcano it was early morning.
Low sunlight slanted across the streets and a freshening wind ruffled the trees in the park. The fires that had burned the previous night and caused us so much trouble were still smouldering, but apart from that the world seemed strangely ordinary. People were up and about, the buses were running. We caught the 227 home. I sat next to Lara while behind us Serge spent the journey staring open-mouthed at Zack, who was snoring quietly in the seat beside him.
I had taken a spare superhero costume from the locker in the crater, figuring that it would be useful in future when one needed a wash. As I tucked it into my backpack I saw something rolling about at the bottom. It must have been lodged there for a year. I dug it out and offered it to Lara. “I think this belongs to you,” I said.
She eyed the object clutched between my fingers. It was her Uni-ball Gelstick Pen with a 0.4mm tip. She reached for it but then stopped, and after a long time said, “Keep it.” She shrugged. “I don’t need it.”
Lara decided not to write her story exposing Star Lad’s true identity. She could have become the most famous reporter in the world, but when I asked her why she chose not to tell, she gave another of those shrugs and said there were more important things in life. Girls. Mysterious and surprising.
We hung out together for the rest of the summer, but before you go jumping to conclusions, there was no canoodling. Most of the time we spent in the tree house, just talking and reading. And not just comics. I still read them, of course, but I like other things now too. I’m currently going through a Charles Dickens phase. Serge assures me it will pass.
The summer was flying by in a blur and soon it would be time to start at my new school. I was moving up to the big league. Even after everything I’d faced I still felt scared. But something told me it’d all be OK. That something was my mum. She just wouldn’t stop hugging me and saying, “You’ll be OK.”
I don’t think I can fully express how happy Mum and Dad were to see Zack and me that morning. When they came down and found us in the kitch
en – Zack at the table starting on his third bowl of Cheerios, me rummaging in the cupboard complaining that someone had eaten the Coco Pops from my Variety Pack – you’ve never seen two grown-ups cry like they did. They didn’t even notice when I poured myself a cup of black coffee. And the noises coming out of them. Snivelling, wailing, hiccuping sobs. Honestly, it was like being in the doctor’s waiting-room during a flu epidemic. But I didn’t mind. I think I must be getting sappy in my old age.
On the walk back from the bus stop Zack and I had hatched a cover story to explain his reappearance, but we didn’t have to use it. All Mum and Dad cared about was that he was home, we were all together and the sun had come up. They hadn’t believed me that time I told them Zack was Star Lad and they didn’t bring it up again. The only awkward question we had to deal with arose a few weeks later when Dad went looking for his plate rack.
One last thing about the bus ride. Just after we dropped off Serge, Zack stirred briefly from his well-deserved snooze to mumble something before lapsing back into sleep. Lara didn’t catch it and I said I didn’t either, but that was a lie. I’m not sure why I didn’t want to tell her. I turned away to stare out of the window and saw my own reflection. There was a small smile on my face.
What Zack had said was, “Luke … couldn’t have done it without you.”
And then there had been a lot more snoring.
It was two months after Zack had prevented cosmic catastrophe. We were sitting in the tree house together. I watched the last rays of the sun retreat across the dusty floor and listened to the susurration of the wind in the leaves. “Susurration” is my word of the day. It means “rustling”. I have a lot more new words since I widened my reading material. That evening I was almost at the end of Oliver Twist. Now, there’s someone whose story would’ve turned out a whole heap differently if he’d had superpowers.
Zack had his head in a maths textbook. He’d just returned from seeing Cara. No, it’s not what you think. She’s still going out with Matthias the Viking. Zack’s relationship with Cara is strictly professional – he’s helping her to pass physics. Every Tuesday night he trudges over there and sits with her at the kitchen table for an hour, explaining things like “diffraction” and Boyle’s law, when what he really wants to be explaining is how much he fancies her. It’s painful. When he comes home afterwards he’s in a complete state. Thankfully, the rest of his life isn’t as tense. Now that he can fly he’s been much better at managing his superhero/homework balance. Being able to zoom off, foil a bank raid and be back in time for dinner has removed a lot of the pressure.
My Brother is a Superhero Page 18