by Stan Lee
She glanced down at the kaftan and harem pants outfit that Triadon’s computers had assured her was high fashion. It seemed to fit the norm of what the local females were wearing.
But it wasn’t a possible violation of the local dress code that had her so anxious. It was the sudden reversal of roles with Mike. Until he’d sniffed that vaporware, she’d been the one in charge of their relationship. Hell, she’d actually reached in and tinkered with his mind.
Now she was the one fumbling her way along while Mike held all the aces and tried to make things simple enough for her to comprehend.
He smiled at her, his dark brown eyes soft and gentle. Peg felt an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach. All of a sudden she was back in college, the naive, struggling freshman, and handsome senior Lew Irvine was coming on to her.
Her eyes went to her plate. No way do I want that to happen again. Why does he have to be so damned attractive?
“Enjoying your ludgub?” Mike asked.
Peg raised a morsel to her mouth. “Funny, it tastes just like chili con carne to me.”
She glanced at the implement. “And this is the first time I’ve ever seen a solid silver spork.”
* * *
CHAPTER 7
“I’ve got three of them in what appears to be an unused office space,” John Cameron said, acting as scout for the Kaldoa S-Force patrol. They’d been out for hours today, without encountering any Deviants. At least now he’d spotted three Deviant-built robots, apparently establishing a sniper’s nest at the summit of one of the Kaldoa city-spires. The robots were heavily armed and in range of a major traffic nexus.
“Get through to traffic control and have them start rerouting everyone out there.” John’s face was tense. In moments, the evening commute was going to begin. If he hadn’t stumbled across those robots, they’d have found hundreds of targets.
He spread his mental net, finding one more bad guy in the picture. “There’s a Deviant just leaving that same office,” he told Melador and the two other S-Forcers. “He must have commanded the robots.”
The highest landing stage on the spire was below the Deviant’s shooting blind. John turned to the rest of the patrol. “We’ll come in on them from above—hopefully out of sight until the last instant.”
“How are we going to get in?” Melador wanted to know. “They’re not going to open the door.”
“We’re going in through the window,” John said. “How strong are those things, anyway?”
He realized a drawback in Harry’s new heroes’ credo. Some of the S-Force—tested veterans, perhaps—should be packing blasters, if only to cut through the enemy’s fortifications. “Could one of those rocket-powered nets break the glass or whatever it is?”
Melador assured him it would.
“Okay, then the three of you go in through the front window and take out the robots. I’ll go for the human.”
They all arrowed downward, John aiming for the rear of the spire while his cohorts went for the front. His audio pickups caught the sound of the rocket being fired, and the smashing of the window. A second later, an armored figure came tumbling from a window on John’s side of the building.
John swooped down, thrusting his arms in the still-unfamiliar tridigirector gesture. His stunners spat pale green fire for an instant, bracketing the figure of the escaping Deviant. Then the stun-beams died.
“What the—?” Whether the rush job of replacing his armament had gone astray, or if it were sabotage, John had no idea. But now he had no weapons while facing an armed enemy leveling his blasters in John’s direction.
John’s instincts took over as he plunged into a wild dive, pushing his suit’s gizmoidal drive to the limit. His odd, “almost-remembered” facility with Argonian armor paid off. John smashed right into the Deviant, denting the villain’s armor and sending them both tumbling through the air.
Before they could bounce apart, John wrapped his opponent in a bear hug. He didn’t want to give this guy a clear shot... better to wrestle.
Still grappling, they hit the spire’s topmost landing stage, sixty feet below where they’d crashed together. The two of them tore right through the plast-alloy flooring, which didn’t do their armor any good. One of the Deviant’s arms now hung at an odd angle. His good hand was set in the tridigirector, sending wild energy blasts into the air as he tried to twist around to aim at John. But John maintained a death grip around the criminal’s wrist and his legs wrapped around the guy’s waist, while whaling away with his free hand.
Their slam-bang bout of hand-to-hand must have weak ened the Deviant’s breastplate. John slugged the guy again, and the chest armor cracked open and fell away. The Deviant twisted loose and dropped like a stone—his gizmoidal drive decommissioned. The man flung up his good arm, trying for a last shot. John had no time to dodge the deadly bolt. He reached out to stop the man with his mind—and discovered he didn’t need to act as he read the Deviant’s fury and disappointment that his blasters didn’t work, either.
Then John realized their continuing plunge was about to smash them into another landing stage. He poured on the gizmo to brake his fall, reaching out to the Deviant. But this guy wasn’t about to let himself get captured. He swung away—to land with a sickening splat.
John hung in midair over the twisted form. He might be flying, but he sure as hell didn’t feel like a superhero.
“I’d say that went pretty well.” Harry Sturdley sounded pleased as he and John stepped into the bright sunshine from the pillared portico of the Hall of Consensus, the seat of Argonian government. The building was in marked contrast to the high-flung spires of Kaldoa, being created of ancient stone and rising only four stories tall.
Both Earthers were clad in full armor, the sigil of the S-Force prominent on their chests. “Okay, now, on the count of three,” Sturdley said as they reached the middle of the plaza fronting on the hall of government. Dozens of cameras were trained on the pair as Harry counted down. Then they rose in unison into the air.
“You’re awfully quiet, kid,” Harry said. “Did seeing all those government types get to you? You’ve got to say one thing for the Argonians—we might consider their government a little crazy, but at least they don’t just elect pretty faces. That Boradon guy has to weigh three hundred pounds if he’s an ounce. But he was very polite. I think we’ll look pretty good on 3-D tonight, getting a vote of thanks from the whole Consensus.“
Let’s find a quiet place where we can talk, John transmitted on a telepathic wavelength.
“Something wrong?” Harry asked. “I’m getting a real angry undercurrent from your mind.”
Privately!
Sturdley cast a quizzical glance but nodded his assent. They landed on a quiet plaza on the edge of Kaldoa, given over to parkland rather than manicured lawns. As they walked among a grove of trees, John removed his helmet and gave Harry a searching glance. “You really think everything went okay?” he asked.
Harry shrugged. “I’d say it was a good sign for the government to give thanks to the S-Force in general—and us in particular.” Unbolting his own helmet, Sturdley gave John a look. “You know, they wanted Mike up there, but I held out for you. Figured it would give you a publicity boost.”
John waved that away. “I don’t care that there’s a Mike fan club.”
“Look, even the opposition went along with this vote-of-thanks thing,” Harry said. “We’ve certainly helped the S-Force’s image. Even that guy Boradon was polite to us. And he’s an elder statesman in the Consensus—”
“Did you read him while you shook hands?” John suddenly asked.
Harry stared at his protege, a little surprised. “I didn’t think this was the time or place.” He peered at John. “You mean you did?”
John nodded grimly. “He had good reason to be polite, Harry. I suppose you’d be polite, too, if you thought you were meeting a heavily-armed psychopath.”
Harry’s jaw sagged.
“You called Boradon an e
lder statesman, and he is—the same way Neville Chamberlain was. He’s tried appeasement—peace at any price. One of the things I picked up from him was that he’d sent secret peace feelers to the Deviants. Complete civil rights for the Deviants already here, and negotiations for releasing the other exiles. I guess we can only be glad that the Deviants sent his envoy back in pieces.“
Harry’s eyes grew large at this report of a near-sellout. “The old fraud! Playing footsie with the bad guys after all we did for him—”
“We’re not doing enough, Harry. After a couple of weeks on patrol, I can see that.”
“The patrols should work. Take the Rambunctious Rodent. When he goes on patrol, he not only tangles with big-name supervillains, but also nails plain thug-types, too. Street crime isn’t a problem here in Utopia. We should have it easier.”
“Harry, this isn’t like the comic books! We’ve got maybe two hundred S-Forcers squared off against the same number of Deviants, two tiny factions lost among millions of ordinary people. The bad guys strike at will while we patrol and guard danger spots like the power grids.”
“We’ve cut down Deviant activity significantly,” Harry said.
“That’s not the same as beating them,” John responded. “It’s not just a case of cops and robbers, Harry. Or heroes and villains. Most criminals, even organized crime, want to keep up the existing order even as they loot it. But these guys—I don’t think they want to conquer and rule the world. They just want to tear everything down.”
“And what do you want me to do?” Harry asked.
John looked at him wildly. Even though the kid was silent, Harry got a whisper of his thoughts. You ‘re the one who’s supposed to have ideas!
Harry stretched out an awkward hand, his gauntlet clanging against John’s armored shoulder. “Give Plan A some more time to work before you start talking about total war.”
“That’s okay for you to say,” John muttered. “You haven’t killed anybody. You’re trying to set up rules, but the other side won’t play along.”
“Kid, what happened the other day was an accident. Everybody who witnessed it—”
John nodded, his face hardening. “Sure, it was an accident. This time, at least.”
“I’ve got them now,” Marty Burke gloated, sliding on the satin bedclothes until he could sit up. “They can moan all they like at the staff meetings, but the board and the giants are on my side. And soon I’ll be able to get the public working with me, too.”
“I’m gonna start moaning if you don’t turn that light off,” Leslie Ann Nasotrudere said from her side of the bed, “and it ain’t gonna be with pleasure. Come on, Marty. I’ve got an early doctor’s appointment tomorrow. He’s going to look at my face.” She raised a hand to the almost faded bruises.
Oblivious, Marty pressed on with his favorite subject, the Heroes movie.
“They’ve gone into rewrites of the basic premise, and all sorts of Fantasy Factory villains are in the story. It all comes down to whose vision gets sold to the public. When Batman went on TV back in the sixties, the comic book went camp—”
“Because that’s what the public expected,” Leslie Ann parroted along with him.
“Exactly! Uh—have I said that before?”
“Only about every fifteen minutes this evening,” she groaned. “Please, Marty, let me get some sleep.”
“But this is important,” Burke went on. “Don’t you see, honey? If the movie public sees my idea of what the Fantasy Factory should be like, the others—the Gunnars and the Nagels—they’ll have to fall in line.”
“Right,” Leslie Ann said acidly. “Now turn off that light.”
“They’re talking real stars to play the villains,” Burke continued heedlessly. “Jeff Goldblum’s people are putting feelers in for Skeletone, and Johnny Depp is showing interest in playing Megalomanik. There’s even some buzz that Sean Young wants a crack at Madam Vile.”
“Light! Off! Now!”
Burke complied, but he didn’t shut up. “Even down in Washington, reporters were asking Robert about the movie. Free advertising!”
Under the frozen gel mask she used to soothe her injured features, Leslie Ann’s eyes opened. Did Burke realize how Robert’s words seemed to parrot his? Or was it the other way around?
From the moment she’d seen Harry Sturdley with those damned giants, her scam-detection antennas had been on full alert. Leslie Ann had gone out of her way to give Sturdley a hard time, convinced he was using the so-called Heroes for his own purposes.
Now she stared up into the darkness.
What if she’d gotten it wrong? What if the giants were manipulating Burke?
* * *
CHAPTER 8
In the interdimensional flux called the Rift, turbulence disrupted the matrix of currents through the void. An eddy developed around a nexus in the lower levels, down to the four-dimensional substrate. Odd pressures were brought to bear on the nexus known as Earth ...
Larry Hammeyer stifled a yawn and looked at his watch. Four A.M., on the dot—halfway through his shift. He rose from the sagging desk chair, his hands reaching around to massage his aching back.
Two steps brought him to the wooden shack’s open door. South Dakota by moonlight was hardly a beauteous sight—at least here in the badlands. The shadowed gullies and tortured rock formations were downright eerie. Even the least imaginative types began to see things moving in the darkness.
But the near-moonscape outside was Hammeyer’s only respite from three walls worth of instruments and readouts. The Gravitic Research Underground Measuring Project covered fifty square miles of monitors buried from one hundred feet to a mile and a half below the surface.
GRUMP. Larry wondered what academic wag came up with that acronym. Esoteric undertakings like gravity research were few and far between nowadays. Federal money had dried up for pure science experiments. Politicians who happily shelled out for pork-barrel projects could be depended on to scream like blazes at spending tax dollars to check if the force of gravity is constant at different altitudes or depths.
It seemed self-evident to a layman, perhaps—gravity was gravity, everpresent and unchanging. Unfortunately, this fact of the senses had yet to be scientifically measured. That’s what GRUMP was all about, getting the data—and providing some change for impecunious almost-physicists like Larry Hammeyer. After all, why should the researchers waste federal money on minimum-wage gauge watchers when they could get physics graduate students for less?
Still, GRUMP would look good on Larry’s curriculum vitae, as long as he didn’t have to go into too much detail about what he’d actually done on the project. Not much glory in admitting he’d spent eight hours a night for nearly a year looking at gauges that never moved.
An agitated beeping noise jarred Larry out of his stupor. Stifling a yawn, he stepped back inside, then stared at the main monitoring bank with bulging eyes. The buried gravitic detectors were registering anomalies like mad. The only exterior force that could affect the probes like that would be an earthquake—and the earth wasn’t moving beneath Larry Hammeyer’s feet.
He leapt back toward the desk and the cellular phone. Standard operating procedure—he was to call the senior researchers if the monitors registered any abnormalities.
In his haste, he fumbled the grab for the phone. It toppled off its charging base, floated upward as if in slow motion, hovered for a moment, then began a leisurely descent.
Larry finally pulled himself together and captured the phone about six inches above the top of the desk. He yanked the antenna out to its full extension and dialed the number of the motel where the senior physicists were.
An unwelcome thought burrowed its way into his consciousness as he listened to the phone ring on the other end. The only thing worse than research that added no new data was research that yielded too much data—especially that of the weird variety.
In the open hangar of the Citadel of Silence, a fully armored John Cameron stood at ease
, listening to Harry Sturdley’s prepatrol lecture. “We’ve gotten a lot of tips about out-of-the-ordinary activity in Kemot.” Sturdley smiled. That they were getting tips at all seemed to vindicate his media blitz to win the hearts and minds of the Ar-gonian citizenry. “We’re going to concentrate our forces there, with six three-person teams, plus a special team led by Mike and John.”
John nodded at Mike, his facial expression unseen behind his helmet. It was bad enough that the former caveman was becoming a media sensation—although easy enough to predict, given Mike’s looks and inhaled expertise in Argonian language and culture. But for Mike to gain top dog status even among the four castaways ...
He repressed a sigh. Since their conversation a few days ago, Harry seemed to be easing John into the side-kick’s position behind his first bona fide hero. John didn’t know whether it was conscious or not, but he knew that Harry felt he was taking too radical a position on the war—pardon me, Harry, John thought—the campaign against the Deviants. He could live with Harry mentioning Mike’s name first. But why did Peg have to pay so much attention to the guy?
John took a deep breath, forcing his irritation into the background. Out on patrol, their lives would depend on teamwork. He and Mike would have to work together, ferreting out Deviants and thwarting whatever mischief they had in mind.
But I’m better at finding the enemy than that overintellec-tualized barbarian, a little voice in the back of John’s head whined.
John wrenched his attention back to what Sturdley was saying.
“We’ve finally found a match in the old government computers for that weapon the robot was trying to steal in Ahkeya,” Harry said, fumbling with a tiny thumbpad computer. He finally entered the right code sequence, and a holographic image gleamed in midair. It looked like a short, squat bazooka, with a handgrip and sight about midway down the gleaming silver cylinder. “I’m calling it a force cannon,” Sturdley announced.