by Stan Lee
A twenty-foot-tall man in a white spandex suit was a sure draw, especially since the PBA injunction had stopped the Heroes from patrolling the streets. The senator busily hammered away at that point.
“We could enjoy a safer park—and a safer city—if this mighty Hero and his companions were back on the streets,” Demagogua boomed into a set of microphones.
Burke knew that the Senator lived on Long Island.
“But that,” Demagogua sneered, “wouldn’t suit the agenda of certain unions.”
He made “unions” sound like an obscene word.
As Demogogua raved on, Burke realized that Robert’s eyes had sought him out from amid the hundreds of other rally participants.
I guess that stuff about them being able to read minds must really be true, Marty thought. How else could he pinpoint me?
Robert made a barely perceptible beckoning gesture, glancing toward the back of the portable platform Demagogua’s people had erected.
Burke made his way to the edge of the crowd, working round behind the podium. Several obvious cop types—hired security, Burke figured—moved to intercept him, but stopped at Robert’s low rumble of an order.
The giant turned from Demogogua and went to one knee, facing Burke. “I detect troubles,” he said.
“The staff was less excited about my changes than I hoped,” Burke admitted. “But I’ll turn them around.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to do it without me.” Robert ignored the stricken took on Burke’s face and nodded toward the orating Demogogua.
“The senator has invited me to Washington.”
* * *
CHAPTER 4
The next morning, John Cameron tugged uncomfortably at the slightly baggy jumpsuit of some cottony material as he stood in the middle of one of Triadon’s labs. The fit and texture of the garment he wore reminded him of an old-fashioned union suit—except there was no trapdoor in the seat. He didn’t enjoy the sensation of lounging around in what felt like long underwear while everyone else in the room—including Peg Faber—wore armor.
A disassembled exoskeleton suit lay on a lab table, waiting to be fitted to him. First, the head technician had told him, they needed to calibrate his body motions to the controls. Probes had been fitted to the major muscle masses of his body, and thin wires led to some sort of computer overhead. It made John feel like a life-sized Pinocchio as he stood on a circular, raised stage, seemingly made of clouded glass.
“This is only a one-time thing,” the head technician, Melador, said reassuringly as he flicked switches on a control panel.
The rounded dais beneath John’s feet suddenly came to life, pulsing with a lambent glow. The glare grew brighter, and John suddenly felt his feet rising off the glassy surface. He flapped his arms vigorously, as if trying to take off but was held in the grip of invisible forces, and found himself hanging horizontal in midair feeling even more like a marionette.
John aimed a scorching glance at Peg, who, helmet off, seemed engrossed in something on the ceiling. “You might have told me!”
She burst into laughter. “It’s traditional!” she assured him. “What a feeling, huh?”
“Um,” he said, eying the emptiness beneath him. “Weird.”
Melador took John through a whole drill manual of midair maneuvers while the overhead computer recorded and analyzed his muscle movements. He learned how to bank, how to make sharp turns, crash dives, and other aerial moves. The movements of his eye muscles were recorded for ranging and distance calculation. Then he was taught to point in an odd, stiff-armed manner—thumb and pinkie folded together to his palm, the three remaining fingers straight out. It reminded John of the Boy Scout salute, turned horizontal.
“What’s this for?” he asked, holding the pose.
“That’s the tridigirector.” Melador’s usually bland face grew serious as he answered. “It’s used for aiming and firing your armor’s weaponry.”
“Oh.” John lowered his hand, wiggling the fingers. “Sort of elaborate.”
“We thought that preferable to the possibility of triggering ordnance with an accidental gesture,” the technician responded.
The rest of the technical types crowded round, removing the wires and fitting John with his new armor. First, John had to raise each foot to slip on what looked like a pair of metal jockey shorts. He repressed a grin. It was the first time he’d had his loins girded. Next came the clamshell style back- and breast-plates over his head. They merged with an articulated set of strips across his midriff, allowing considerably more ease of movement than he’d thought possible just looking at the stuff. John rapped an experimental finger against the plate armor protecting his chest. Not exactly metal, nor was it plastic.
His arms were yanked out straight as the technicians applied jointed bracers and gauntlets. Then his legs were fitted with greaves and boots.
The technicians stepped back, and John tentatively moved his body until he stood spread-eagled. The armor seemed light as air, moving perfectly in synchronization with his movements, a barely-audible whir coming from the exoskeletal mini-motors.
Melador ran some sort of diagnostic device along John’s left arm, then popped a small hatch to reveal the mechanical guts of the armor.
“The one thing I don’t notice on this thing is an engine or any batteries,” John mentioned as Melador delicately inserted a tiny rodlike device and made some sort of adjustment.
“The suits operate on broadcast power,” the technician replied.
“But how can you control—?” John decided to find the answer for himself, aiming a mental probe through the opening in the armor. He detected a profusion of circuitry, cables, and servomotors, and here and there, clumps of tiny gold nodules.
Focusing his probe even more tightly, John mentally invaded one of the nodules to find near-microscopic threads of gold imbedded in some kind of silicon. “I’ve never seen such tiny microchips!” he gasped.
“The doojiggers?” Melador said in a surprised voice. “I’m surprised you can even see them. Jiggers, yeah, well anybody can see them.” He opened the case of the diagnostic tool he’d used, revealing a mother board studded with what John would have called standard microchips. “But imagine being able to spot a Joojigger with the naked eye.”
Peg stood nearby, taking in the whole exchange with a strange look on her face. John glanced down at the translation device built into the neckpiece of his new armor. “Translator,” he said, “the term ‘jigger’ will be rendered as ‘microchip’ from now on. ‘Doojiggers’ will be translated as ’ultramicrochips.‘ This will go for all translating machines.“
“That sounds a little better,” Peg muttered.
Melador handed John his helmet, and they started for the door. He held the helmet under one arm, looking down at his gray and white, almost pristine armor. “We look almost dowdy compared to these other guys,” he said, glancing at the psychedelic patterns coloring the technicians’ armor. Melador might seem bland, but his breastplate was a virulent rush of neon orange and fluorescent blue, the colors spiraling around each other in a stomach-turning design.
“Clean armor is the local equivalent of a learner’s permit in flight training.” Peg glanced appreciatively at Melador’s heraldic design. “Once we pass our flying test, we get to choose our own patterns. I wonder if I can sketch out some of Rick Griffin’s poster art.”
“Rick who?” John asked.
“He was a San Francisco-based artist who did all sorts of rock concert posters in the hippie days,” Peg explained.
John still looked a little surprised. “And how do you—?”
“How do I know about him?” Peg finished for him. “How do you know about Curt Swan?”
John looked so abashed, she relented. “My mom was kind of permanently stuck in the Sixties,” she said. “Got enough rock memorabilia to start her own museum.”
Shaking his head, John followed her out of the lab. You think you know a person ...
He
crashed into Peg’s back at the entrance to the next lab, where she’d abruptly stopped, standing stiff-legged. The servomotors in their armor stopped them from crashing to the floor. Then Peg brushed past a flat-footed Melador, storming into the laboratory.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she cried at Triadon. The Argonian scientist, armor-clad, stood over a structure that looked uncomfortably like an operating table. Strapped to its surface was the limp-looking figure of Mike. A tangle of wires straggled from points all over his head to a complicated piece of electrical equipment. Mike had what appeared to be an anesthesia mask attached to his face. Through the clear plastic, John could see a thin stream of haze wisping up into Mike’s mouth and nose.
John found himself in a half-crouch, his three middle fingers stretched almost into the form of the tridigirector. Only two things stopped him. He wanted to see if Triadon had a reasonable answer... and he wasn’t sure his training armor had live weapons.
Although he seemed surprised, Triadon didn’t project any guilt as he checked gauges. “Mike is breathing a gas with ionically charged molecules—molecules which interact with the vestigial vomero-nasal organ to encode information directly into the brain.”
“You mean you’re programming his brain with that gas?” Peg demanded, probing Triadon’s brain like crazy.
The scientist nodded. “We call it vaporware.”
John moved on to the next logical question. “What are you programming him with?”
“I was only going to give him general information—the cultural background we provide to most children as they commence their education.”
“Why didn’t you give it to us? I don’t like the idea of you using Mike as some sort of lab animal.” Peg was every inch the defending angel in her armor.
She honestly felt responsible for Mike, John realized.
Triadon, however, merely looked confused. “I wasn’t testing Mike. I was responding to his special needs. He’s from a preliterate culture, considerably more primitive than your own. He needed the boost.”
“And we don’t?” John said, thinking of the incomprehensible holographs that made up Argonian 3D.
Triadon frowned. “I would be most unwilling to introduce any artificial programming into your brains.” He hesitated. “We have no idea how your telepathic powers work, and I don’t wish to tamper with them.”
The mist ceased trickling through the clear mask on Mike’s face. “As a matter of fact, Mike pleaded with me to feed him higher-level programming. Otherwise, I would have left this to a subordinate.” Triadon checked the monitoring equipment at the head of the table, then closed a valve and removed the mask. A second later, the electrodes were off Mike’s temples. He blinked, looked around, then grasped Triadon’s hand and spoke to him.
It took John a moment to realize Mike was talking in Argonian, and he was only getting a translation. “Thank you, noble scientist,” Mike said. “You’ve opened my eyes—my mind—to so much!”
He ran a hand over his forehead, then noticed John and Peg. “This programming is unbelievable,” he told them in a mixture of English and Argonian, lapsing into the alien language for the high-tech term.
Mike turned eagerly to Triadon. “Could I get one of the flying suits? I’ve gotten the whole theoretical background.”
“I see no reason not to,” Triadon said.
Mike turned to Peg with a smile. “We could go flying together, then.” He stopped, peering closely at a tiny readout in Peg’s breastplate. “Have you had the Framistat checked on that thing?”
John and Peg took to the air with a sense of relief, leaving the new, improved Mike to chat with Triadon and get fitted for a suit of flying armor.
How’s it feel? Wasn’t I right? Peg “spoke” to John telepathically rather than using their helmet radios. He couldn’t see her face behind the plast-alloy helm, but he knew her big gray eyes were sparkling.
Much better than a sexual-repression dream, he teased, trying a sideslip maneuver.
Peg swooped over him, nearly kicking him in the butt. “Sure. Be a wiseguy,” she said over the radio.
A discreet cough came over their radio link, followed by Melador’s voice. The proximity sensors in John’s armor located the technician’s Day-Glo figure floating at rest about a hundred feet above them.
“If your initial equipment test and—whatever—is finished, I’ve been cleared by Air Control to take you to the city of Kemot. That will give us excellent cross-country practice; then, a taste of city traffic.”
Melador was silent, but John could read his thoughts as clearly as if the Argonian were speaking them. I hope you won’t be as much trouble as that Sturdley character.
The flight to Kemot passed uneventfully. Melador conscientiously put the novices through the full course of flying exercises along the way. By the time they reached the city limits, the suit felt like an extension of John’s body. He’d already surpassed Peg in expertise, in spite of the fact that she’d had more practice.
It’s almost as if I’m remembering to use the suit rather than learning the functions, John thought. He flew off to one side, moodily watching Peg practice barrel rolls.
The subject of memory was always a sore point for John. His conscious history was only two years long. After finding himself naked and amnesiac on a dirt trail near Cameron Corners, West Virginia, John had stolen some clothes, invented a name, and headed for the big city and employment at the Fantasy Factory. In all the time he’d spent getting closer to Peg, he’d battled nagging doubts. What if his missing memories hid the fact that he was a sleazebag? A criminal? What if he was already married to someone else?
His sudden facility with Argonian armor raised a new specter. What if he didn’t come from Earth at all?
Of course, there were counterarguments. He’d experienced the same facility in learning to write English, and in picking up the elements of comic book art. Maybe he was just a quick study. Either that, or in his previous life he’d been an English-speaking Argonian cartoonist.
His thoughts were shattered by a tense order from Melador to switch to a different radio frequency. John did so, to hear a rattled Argonian nearly babbling out information. “A D-D-Deviant has been spotted in Mile-and-a-Half Spire, topmost level. He is armed and has done—” the sender paused for an audible gulp—“has done physical harm to several citizens. Triadon party, do you copy?”
“This is Melador,” the technician responded.
“And two members of the S-Force,” John added, ignoring the startled look Peg gave him. “How far are we from the spire, Melador?”
“We can be there in minutes,” the Argonian answered grimly. “And we’d better be. The topmost level of the spire houses the broadcast-power arrays for the flight suits. If that power is cut—”
A graphic mental image filled John’s mind—thousands of Argonians plummeting to their deaths. “Let’s see how fast these gizmos can go.” He rocketed after Melador.
John would have enjoyed the chance to explore Kemot from the air. The towering constructions with their landing stages and terraces seemed to thrust skyward with an almost elfin grace, reminding John of cityscapes painted in the golden age of science fiction, instead of the glass-and-steel cyberpunk monstrosities of current sci-fi movies.
The air was still filled with clouds of milling armored figures as the authorities desperately tried to route traffic away from Mile-and-a-Half Spire. There were just too many airborne travelers. Some of the citizens with more initiative were landing on the tower’s terraces. But how many people could those light, airy structures hold?
John thrust a mental probe ahead of himself, penetrating the uppermost stories of the spire. The top landing stage was deserted, and inside John sensed three Argonian technicians—the day-shift maintenance crew. Sending out a deeper probe, John nearly recoiled when he caught agonized pain radiating from two techs who lay wounded. The third was dead, sprawled across a control panel. He’d raised the alarm—and paid for it.
John raided Melador’s mind for technical background, learning that it would take several minutes for the Deviant to disengage the power system. Yet his probes revealed no one inside the control rooms. John frowned in puzzlement—then his features froze as he flashed his immaterial senses into the heart of the broadcast array itself. There was the intruder, in a surprisingly bulky, old-fashioned flying suit—arming the detonators on a series of bombs. Why turn off the array when they could blow it up?
In a few terse words, John described the situation to Melador.
“Of course!” the technician said. “That bulky armor you described on the intruder—he’s wearing a self-powered suit. All he has to do is fly out of the blast zone and watch us all drop like dead insects.”
“Can we fly in there and try to drop him?” John asked, still monitoring the Deviant saboteur. The guy was almost finished, nearly ready to run for it...
“Use energy weapons inside the broadcast array? Even if we hit the intruder, we’d damage the structure. We may even set off the bombs.” Unsaid was the logical conclusion: if the saboteur didn’t set off the bombs himself when he saw them coming.
“Then we’ll have to try something else.” John quickly outlined a plan, then carefully began insinuating tendrils of thought into the saboteur’s brain.
Inside the broadcast power array, the Deviant named Quagamor finished priming the last detonator. He climbed down from the metal gridwork where the bomb was located, moving clumsily as his exoskeletal servos labored against a weight of armor that was incredibly heavy by Argonian standards. It had to be, however, to stand the heavily charged atmosphere within the array—and, of course, to support the battery pack he planned to use in his escape.
Quagamor scrambled down through the interlocking members of the broadcast array, heading back to the control room. He cracked the outer door slightly, then stepped onto the outside platform with a smile. Although there was plenty of frantic traffic activity, no representatives of the newly created defense force had apparently appeared. Quagamor flipped open a small access hatch set in the armor on his right thigh and pressed the button that put him on battery power.