by Stan Lee
A slow smile came to Gunnar’s face as he realized a good, quick way to respond to Burke’s task. He picked up the phone, dialing directory information. Soon he had a short list of airlines—very special airlines. Bob Gunnar read the Wall Street Journal. He knew which major carriers were bankrupt, or nearly so. It took a few phone calls to cut through the corporate underbrush. But he soon found an executive with sufficient juice to respond to his proposal—a chance to restore his airline’s flagging image with a touch of class—providing a Heroplane for the giants’ air transport.
“Of course, it would require essentially gutting one of your 747s.” Gunnar knew, however, that a large percentage of this carrier’s fleet was out of the air and up for sale. “And, in the interest of speed, the Fantasy Factory will finance the renovations.”
Good and quick, Gunnar thought, baring his teeth in an icy smile. But not cheap. These costs will take some of the shine off Burke’s movie deal....
After hanging up, Gunnar reworked his notes so his assistant could type them up. He winced at the prices quoted. Well, at least we’re supporting the economy, he told himself sourly. With these bucks, that airline will survive for at least another month.
Still, he felt obscurely guilty. This was the first deal he’d ever made that hurt the Fantasy Factory.
Forget about it, Gunnar told himself. This is Burke’s responsibility.
Burke’s fault.
On the lawn of Heroes’ Manor, the Westchester estate that housed the giants, Robert endured some good-natured joking from his followers about dealing with the wild Lessers down in Washington.
“What did you make of their chieftain—this president fellow?” one of the giants asked.
“I found he had a surprisingly strong and capable mind. It will take more than one session to Bind him to me properly,” Robert answered. “That’s why 1 want to finish my business here and get back to Washington.”
He had assembled several of the giants on the front lawn. “As you know, filming is to begin shortly on the movie about us. I have selected five of our number to travel to California.” He smiled. “You five. Most of the choices were obvious, given your already existing popularity with the Lessers.” Robert gestured to Maurice and Barbara, Thomas and Ruth—comic book stars all. “And I’ve added Victor because I think he has a future.”
He also has blond hair and a figure not unlike mine—they can use him to double for me in the long-range shots, Robert added silently.
Victor’s almost pretty-boy features lit with a smile that was more like a smirk.
It was only to be expected, Robert thought. In Masterly society, loyalty was achieved only through force or intimidation. Some of his followers naturally thought two thousand miles’ distance would dilute his authority.
“Thomas will be the leader for the time you are away,” Robert went on, watching the smirk disappear from Victor’s face. “Obey him as you would me.”
Robert then dismissed the group, beckoning Thomas over. “From what I’ve read, this California seems an agreeable place, with a moderate climate and many pleasures.” He looked his lieutenant deep in the eyes. “Some people could become very attached to such a place—but it will be a prime target when the nuclear weapons fly. Remember, Thomas, we must keep to our long-range goals, which means for the time we must keep our people on a short leash.”
Thomas nodded, and Robert dismissed him. He had exercised his authority and was confident that Thomas would run the California group with brutal efficiency.
Robert frowned as he watched his powerfully-built lieutenant stroll away. Probably he would have to re-establish his authority in the near future. But Robert only shrugged. It was part of the way of things.
And he’d bested Thomas before.
I should be glad, John thought as he and an S-Force detachment swirled round the tallest tower in the city of Kaldoa. All the way from the Hall of Consensus, the airwaves had been buzzing with activity. Now the convoy of obsolete but traditional ground cars had reached the spire. When he reached the top floor, one of the main Argonian leaders would make a worldwide speech.
After weeks of discussion and soul-searching, Boradon had decided to face facts. His attempt to reach a peace with the Deviants had failed, so now he was coming out on the side of the S-Force. Boradon would tell his followers in the hall—and millions of Argonian citizens tuning in—that allowing the Deviants to wreck their society was a worse evil than fighting to protect themselves. Since Boradon was revered as one of the wisest in the Consensus, Triadon considered this turnabout a major boost, and Sturdley was prepared to make the most of it.
John had to admit that Harry’s public relations savvy had helped with Boradon’s conversion. The gaudy hero image of the S-Force splashed across 3-D was in the best tradition of comic books, and it had developed a following among the Argonian public. Citizens of this placid society were so entertained by a little excitement, they ate up the armored heroes. But Boradon and the S-Force fans would have fled in horror at John’s vision of total war against the Deviants. Certainly, Harry had made him downplay his beliefs. That’s why John wasn’t inside for the holocast. Harry and Mike would appear with the Argonian leader, with Mike giving interviews after the speech.
John’s lips compressed in a tight, angry line. Rationally, he knew he should accept his job of outside security as a necessary duty. But in his gut, bile bubbled like molten lava. Once again, Mike got the glory, acting as front man for the forces of good, while John did the dirty work and kept his mouth shut.
Another thing John had to contain was his growing competition with Mike. It had begun on the day of their first patrol. Without acknowledging it, each was trying to outdo the other in the superhero sweepstakes—John using his superior knowledge of comic heroics while Mike had the better grasp of Argonian culture.
Nor was it a friendly rivalry—not when John finally realized that the prize in this competition was Peg Faber. His blood boiled when he saw Mike playing up to her. Far more infuriating was the fact that Peg seemed to be responding to Mike.
John’s confusion and ambivalence had only given Mike a better shot at Peg. Gauntleted hands tightened into frustrated fists as John realized that Mike had another advantage—twenty-something years of experience with women. John only had two years of memory, and Peg was the first woman he’d ever fallen for—that he could remember. He’d found the process of getting close to her torturous, to say the least. By Peg’s own admission, Mike had seen more of her—literally—than John had. In fact, the bastard had nearly—
All thought was blown away by a psychic scream, a roar of horror that threatened to swamp his mental circuits. A moment’s effort strengthened his psionic shields. Then John got on the radio to his crew. “Something’s wrong. We’re going in.”
An instant later, he was sending a mental message to Peg, who was in the outskirts of the city with another reaction force.
Come here quick, he transmitted. Surround this place, and don’t let anybody out.
The topmost level of the tower was a single, huge room whose floor-to-ceiling crystal walls offered a 360-degree view of the Argonian capital.
Standing on a hastily-improvised dais, Sturdley inconspicuously activated his armor’s gizmoidal drive, rising up an inch or two to relieve any stress on the platform.
Boradon and Mike would both be appearing in the bathrobe-and-tights Argonian business costume to emphasize their civilian status. Harry still felt silly in that getup, and clearly preferred his armor. Dressed in Argonian “civvies,” he felt as if he’d been caught sneaking into the kitchen for a midnight snack. That was no way to feel if you had to confront TV cameras. No, full armor was the way to go.
Besides, it was a way to display the newly-designed heraldic seal of the S-Force. The Argonians had no knowl edge of the English alphabet, and to Harry’s eyes the lettering seemed a bit weird and squiggly. But there on his chest was a fluorescent blue 5 on a yellow blazon.
Now the cam
eras were on. Sturdley went into an archetypical pose: fists on hips, legs slightly apart, the planes and angles of his face set in a stern scowl as he backed up Boradon. The Argonian leader began his speech, with his most loyal adherents on hand to applaud. Harry had intended to make one more psychic security scan of the crowd, but had checked out the camera angles instead. Then, off at the edge of the assemblage, he’d noticed a striking blonde.
He also noticed that Mike had noticed. The young man had sucked in his stomach a little tighter and was standing slightly taller. Sturdley had to hide a smile when he saw that Mike had also adopted Harry’s hands-on-hips hero stance.
Suddenly, Sturdley frowned. Why was the blonde bombshell heading away from all the action?
Boradon was in full cry, at his most reasoned and sincere, when the first three rows of the crowd—loyal followers all—surged forward, not in applause, but in murderous fury.
Sturdley had just one second to scan them mentally before they overwhelmed the dais.
How could all these people suddenly become Deviants?
* * *
CHAPTER 10
Caught with the proverbial thumb up my ass, Sturdley grimly thought as all hell broke loose, the wave of attackers hurtling heedlessly onto the dais. It seemed like an impromptu lynch mob—old and young, male and female, representatives of all of Argon’s cities. Mere seconds before they had been normal, peaceful citizens.
Now they were acting like maddened tigers, engulfing the unfortunate Boradon, pummeling, clawing, stomping. Sturdley had hesitated to use the stunners built into his armor for fear of hitting the Argonian leader. But his fate now looked to be far worse than mere stunning.
“Take out the ones at the edge!” Mike yelled, vaulting into the fray. “I’ll try to protect the old man!”
At that moment the overstrained dais collapsed, sending the attackers staggering and giving Mike a chance to fling himself over the bloodied Boradon.
Sturdley began firing stun beams, at the same time shouting into his radio. Even as he did that, the crystal windows of the meeting room smashed, and armored figures came flying in, figures bearing the blazon of the S-Force. As the reinforcements’ stunners spat green fire, Harry went to the aid of Boradon and Mike, who seemed on the verge of disappearing beneath a clawing mound of assailants.
The exoskeletal strength of his armor allowed Harry to pick up would-be assassins and toss them across the room where they could be stunned by the others. Sturdley hauled out a woman attempting to bite off Mike’s ear and realized with a start that just moments before he’d been speaking with her. At the time, he’d considered her a gracious, civilized lady. Now she seemed to be some possessed harridan, spitting and cursing, hammering fists senselessly against his armor.
“Something has gone seriously wrong here,” Harry muttered as he tossed the woman aside. He sent her rolling in front of one of the 3-D cameras and realized that they were still recording.
We may not have given them a speech, he thought, but at least they’re seeing one hell of a rescue.
The disorganized, raving attackers were soon subdued, and they, along with Boradon, were rushed to the nearest hospital.
Triadon summed up the situation a few hours later in the command post they’d established in the wrecked tower room. “Boradon is comatose, but the doctors think he’ll survive.” The Argonian scientist was deeply disturbed. “All the people who sought to kill him have died, in spite of the best efforts of the automeds.”
Harry had seen several of these huge, cocoon-like medical machines at the Citadel of Silence. John had been popped into one on their arrival. That had been the reason for his quick recovery. If the top of the line of Argonian technology couldn’t save those people ... what was wrong with them?
Harry verbalized the question and got a concerned reaction from Triadon. “We found traces of a number of exotic chemicals in the attackers’ bloodstreams. Hormones, steroids, fragments of specialized molecules from hypnotic or psychoactive drugs.”
“The people were drugged somehow?” Peg burst out in disbelief.
Triadon gave a jerky nod. “We think it’s a case of C.I.D.—Chemically Induced Deviance.”
“My God,” Peg breathed. Then she snapped her fingers. “That guy we interrogated—remember what we read in his mind about a new weapon being developed? At the time we thought that had to do with the big, clumsy copies of the force cannon the bad guys had cobbled up.”
“This is quite worse,” Triadon said grimly. “The exiles now have the ability to turn our citizens into Deviants like themselves.”
“For a while,” Harry quickly pointed out. “Then this ‘evil juice’ seems to kill them.”
Triadon shuddered. “What kind of minds would develop something like that? I’d never have dreamed the situation could turn so bad.” His voice was dull with defeat.
“At least one good thing came out of all this,” John Cameron announced, joining the conversation. “Mike and I have been watching the news fallout. The Deviants may have overplayed their hand. Lots of people are shaken over the attack on Boradon. But many others are damned mad. We’re getting much more support than we had before the attack.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Sturdley said, “because I’ve got an announcement. From here on in, I’ll be staying behind to run things from the Citadel of Silence. I don’t mind fighting these guys, but the one thing this donnybrook taught me is that I shouldn’t be out in the field. If Mike had been in armor, or Triadon, or Melador, we might have been able to stop this before it started. I should be giving the S-Force my best strengths—strategy and administrative planning—instead of playing the hot dog and messing things up.”
He looked at his suddenly silent cohorts. “We’re also going to need regular units—three-person teams. As things stand now, we’ve got five team leaders—Triadon, Mike, John, Peg, and Melador.” John seemed about to speak, but Harry silenced him with a fierce glance. “I want you to think about the technicians you’ve worked with, and pass on to me the names of any with leadership potential.”
Looking away, he muttered, “We don’t have many troops for this scrap—but even more, we need officers.”
Robert lay in the shade of a clump of trees, his chosen “office” on the estate of the millionaire builder who had hosted his big Washington reception. The leader of the giants was still essentially an outdoors person, even if he had to do business with people who spent most of their days under roofs.
Besides, even more than was usual in the Lessers’ capital, his business was influence—gaining control of the military and political leaders who could plunge this world into nuclear devastation. For his plan to work, however, Robert needed the assurance that his people could survive the radiation storm he intended to unleash.
He had gotten his daily report from Dr. Thonneger, as circumspect as usual over the telephone. Robert had long suspected that the doctor might be stalling. He was loath to use a full Binding on the Lesser, for fear it might destroy some useful abilities, but.... He would consider that step when he returned to Heroes’ Manor.
Robert’s cordless link to the world now lay unregarded on the ground as he closed his eyes for a brief nap in the still-balmy Washington weather.
The bleating of the phone brought him bolt upright, scowling. No other reports were due. Thomas would be calling in with an account of the progress made on the movie in California, but that wouldn’t be for hours.
He brought the handset to his ear, expecting to encounter the oft-joked-about “wrong number.”
“Yes?” he said, omitting any identification.
“I believe this is my biggest friend.” The voice on the other side was slightly clipped, with a trace of unidentifiable accent. But the voice itself was identifiable—Antony Carron, erstwhile gun king of New York, then hunted criminal, and finally hired assassin furthering Robert’s plans.
“How did you get this number?” Robert asked.
“People can find out amazi
ng things when they’ve got an incentive,” Carron replied. “How come I haven’t seen my money yet? We had a contract.”
“The results are inconclusive,” Robert responded smoothly. He had hired Carron to eliminate John Cameron, hoping at one stroke to remove a potentially powerful threat and put a salutary dash of fear into Harry Sturdley. Instead of a clean death, Cameron, Sturdley, and a girl had disappeared, probably into that bizarre place of nothingness, the Rift.
As far as the most strenuous search had been able to ascertain, the trio was nowhere on Earth. Such negative assurance was cold comfort, however. Cameron represented a dangerous loose end, a para-psychic who conceivably could exile Robert’s people—or bring through the Rift enemies from their homeworld.
“What do you mean, inconclusive?” An ugly note crept into Carron’s voice. “Perhaps you didn’t see Unresolved Enigmas recently. Your problem is long gone, and I still haven’t been paid.”
“You won’t be until I have irrefutable proof,” Robert said.
“Maybe you think you’re a big deal because you’re down in D.C. But all those bigwigs sucking up to you might feel differently if they knew some of the things I know ...”
Robert sneered. He’d thought this Carron was of reasonable intelligence, for a Lesser. ‘Threats that can’t be carried out are so boring—not to mention potentially dangerous. You might bear that in mind,“ he added as he cut the connection.