Odyssey

by Stan Lee

  The masklike visage finally cracked, and John sagged a little against her. “Okay, Peg. Take the woman. I’ll wait for you.”

  Peg rejoined her patrol with its twenty captives and beckoned over the single trooper from John’s unit. “We’ll take your prisoner in with ours,” she said. The trooper gratefully turned over a small matte-finish metal box and hurried off.

  Another of the marvels of Argonian civilization, Peg thought. They don’t use handcuffs, just a little disk attached to the back of the armor that slaves all the systems to these controls.

  Popping the box open, she maneuvered a small joystick to move John’s captive to the end of her line of similarly restrained prisoners. Moving in lock-step, they headed for the detention center the S-Force had established in the lower levels of the Citadel.

  The process of incarceration moved with typical Argonian automated efficiency, with the prisoners being “un-canned,” as Peg considered the removal of their armor. They were then identified by comparison with thousand-year-old records in the population database, and put in comfortable enough cells.

  Peg’s patrol had already taken off, and she herself was about to leave when she turned to speak to the single S-Force trooper manning the cell controls—the turnkey of this high-tech hoosegow. He was a tallish, raw-boned young man. Like Peg and most of the S-Forcers, he kept his helmet off in the Citadel. His thin face showed in odd contrast to the wideness of his armored shoulders.

  “Kaladel,” Peg said in a little surprise. “This isn’t your shift. You should have been off hours ago.”

  Since the formation of the S-Force, Harry had used Peg’s administrative abilities to help schedule the troopers’ activities. With him gone, she’d taken over the job completely. So she knew who should be where—and Kaladel was in the wrong place.

  “My relief didn’t show up,” the Argonian replied with a nervous smile. “With all the trouble going on outside, I don’t mind the extra shift.”

  Peg shrugged. “If that’s the way you feel,” she said, turning away. But as she reached the door, Peg’s dulled psionic powers, pushed to the limit over three shifts of warfare with the Deviants, registered—something—a sudden tension in the air thick enough to cut with a knife.

  “Kal—?” She swung around, to see the pale-faced Argonian bringing up a blaster from under the desk. Peg stared in disbelief down the barrel of the weapon, when the world abruptly swirled sickeningly around her. John suddenly Rifted in next to her, pushing Peg aside while snatching the helmet from under her arm. He himself was half-dressed, but his breastplate was on and one arm was still armored.

  The exoskeletal motors screamed as John hurled the helmet at Kaladel. It caught the rogue trooper in the chest, knocking him backward out of his chair. The blaster went off, a wild bolt blowing a hole in the ceiling. John vaulted over the console. His armored arm rose and fell.

  Peg heard a sickening crunch from behind the desk. She rushed forward to find John kneeling atop Kaladel, his face as set and hard as the plast-alloy of his breastplate and bracer. Blood dripped from his ungauntleted fist as he raised his arm again. Peg grabbed John’s wrist before he could land another blow, wrestling with all the strength of her armor.

  “John, stop!” she screamed in his ear. “Read him—please!”

  Kaladel lay back almost unconscious, one cheek smashed. His shields were totally disorganized.

  “They got to him by threatening his family,” Peg said, her voice pleading. “You can see it’s the truth.”

  A shudder ran through John’s body. His fist—and his face—unclenched. “Yesssssss.” He grudgingly hissed his agreement. “I read it.”

  He looked up at her. “Well, we won’t be leaving the Citadel for a while. Not until we’ve probed everybody in the S-Force.” Then he glanced from Kaladel to the console. “Can you put him away and hold the fort down here?”

  “Not until he’s been put through an automed,” Peg told him. “After the job you did on his face—”

  “I get first dibs,” John told her, grimacing. “I think I broke my hand.”

  Bob Gunnar stared in surprise. After removing all of his false hair, Harry Sturdley began divesting himself of the baggy suit and cheap shirt.

  “No, no, it’s not the naked truth,” Harry assured Gunnar with a grin as he removed new clothes from his messenger’s portfolio. Harry donned an expensive sports jacket, slacks, a silk shirt, beginning to appear like his old self, if a bit slimmer and trimmer.

  “How do I look?” Harry asked, brushing fingers quickly through his hair.

  “Like a million bucks.”

  A quick mental check showed that far from resenting the end of his authority, Gunnar greeted Harry’s reappearance the way a besieged city looks at the arrival of the relief column. But he had a lot of questions—questions Harry preferred not to deal with right then. However, there was an easy way to avoid that. Delicately, Harry pushed Gunnar’s attention to an upcoming event—the reason Harry had unmasked himself.

  Gunnar smiled. “You couldn’t have picked a better time. There’s a staff meeting right now.” Bob rubbed his hands together. “I can hardly wait to see the look on Burke’s face.”

  A glance at his watch showed that Gunnar was already late. But he had two additional delays, courtesy of his office phone. First it rang with a call from Gunnar’s assistant reminding him about the meeting. Then came a call from a rather huffy Wendy Wentworth whose package with Harry’s things was now ready for delivery.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait with that package,” Gunnar told her, grinning at Harry. “I have some business with this gentleman which won’t be finished for a while yet.”

  They stepped out into the corridor, past Gunnar’s longtime assistant who sucked in a big gasp of air when she saw Harry.

  He turned and put his finger to his lips. Then they were at the conference room. Even through the closed door, Harry could hear the hubbub inside. Laughter—one of the artists probably telling a dirty joke—side conversations, and the rat-tat-tat of a gavel punctuating Marty Burke’s petulant voice. “—got a lot to discuss here, like how could our whole inventory of Amazing Robert Number One disappear from the storage closet next to the mailroom?”

  “You blamin’ the mailroom guys?” a voice burst out.

  “If he bothered to manage instead of sitting in his office playing tin god ...” Gunnar said.

  Sturdley nodded. Mailrooms always bore strict watching and careful management. The staff there got the least pay—and watched the most expensive stuff pass under their noses. Pilferage was almost to be expected. It took a difficult combination of the carrot and the stick to keep them honest—a mixture Burke hadn’t yet mastered.

  “And what’s this crap about not being able to get paper anymore?” cried another voice.

  “I’ve discovered that staffers are taking too much of the company’s art supplies, especially illustration board,” Burke announced.

  “I’ll bet if you checked his studio, you’d find a couple of reams of the stuff,” Gunnar whispered.

  Burke’s voice persevered against a growing chorus of complaints. “Apparently some people are even selling it to outsiders. I’ve gotten reports of convention dealers offering blank sheets of illustration board with our margin marks and logo. It costs money to print up that paper, people. To prevent wastage, I’ve established a new system—”

  “Yeah, you’ve got some flunky sitting on the paper supply,” Zeb Grantfield’s voice protested. “I ask for thirty sheets for the next issue of Jumboy, and this clown gives me twenty-two, saying it’s only a twenty-two page book. And when I ask what happens if I make any mistakes, he says, all snotty, ‘Well, don’t make mistakes.’ ”

  “That’s a little extreme, and I’ll talk to Clarence,” Burke said. “But really, you should be more careful. Perhaps the strain of keeping up with a big project like Jumboy is beginning to tell on you. Maybe you could use a little rest...”

  Sturdley turned to Gunn
ar. “He really wants to take Grantfield off Jumboy?”

  Gunnar nodded. “He thinks the kid is past his prime. And to tell the truth, a lot of Zeb’s latest work has been winding up in comic store dollar boxes.”

  “Doesn’t he know how to handle—”

  “Burke has only two laws,” Gunnar said in disgust. “Older artists should get out of his way, and younger artists should stay in his shadow.”

  The decibel level inside had gone up again. Grantfield was yelling, “You know, I thought things were supposed to get better for the artists around here once an artist got in charge. Looks like I was wrong.“

  Burke was trying to drown him out with gavel pounding. “If you can’t take constructive criticism—”

  “Like your comments on the way I draw thumbs?” the slightly hoarse voice of Mack Nagel joined the argument. “I’ve drawn more thumbs than you’ve drawn comic books, you little snot. And if you got your own thumb out of your ass and actually tried to manage this place—”

  “Sounds like our cue to enter,” Gunnar said. He opened the door.

  “About time you showed,” Burke said curtly, glancing at the editor-in-chief, then bringing his attention to the list in front of him. “If I had a little more help managing things around here...”

  Burke suddenly became aware that the whole room had gone silent. He quickly eyed his clique of supporters, who were all staring at the door.

  When he turned to confront Gunnar again, he saw that his co-manager had stepped aside, revealing Harry Sturdley in the doorway.

  “Agh-ah ... homina-homina!”

  “The things you see when you don’t have a camera,” Harry said. “You could use a picture of your face in your photo-reference file—under surprise and fear.”

  “This is a typical Sturdley grandstand play!” Burke exploded. “Where have you been? Do you know the amount of extra work you’ve created by abandoning the company the way you did?”

  “I don’t know about extra work—although I hear you’ve put off Latter-Day Breed again.” Harry gave Burke a cool look. “If it’s such a burden, I’d think you’d be glad to see me back—unless, of course, you’ve been screwing up in my absence.”

  “I’ve had to run this company—with precious little help from him!” Burke pointed at Gunnar. “I didn’t even have an executive assistant until just recently.”

  “Which reminds me,” Harry asked. “Where did you pick up that dumb blonde? Bozo’s Topless?”

  Burke couldn’t even speak. He simply seemed to swell and get pop-eyed.

  “Five minutes back, and it’s just like old times,” Thad Westmoreland drawled. “What do we call this? Executive gridlock?”

  “Nice to see you, too,” Harry snapped back.

  “For myself, I am glad to see Harry,” Gunnar said. “And I’m sure we’d all like to know what happened, where he’s been ... and where are John and Peg?”

  Harry glanced over at his editor and friend. Bob was smiling, but his eyes looked like a prosecuting attorney’s.

  You’ve spun lots of stories before, Harry told himself. Let’s see if they buy this one.

  “To be frank, I’ve been hiding out,” he said in his most sincere voice. “After Thomas managed to get some cover for us by throwing that car—I guess he saved our lives—” Knowing his story would become public news soon enough, Harry had decided to plug one of the Heroes books.

  “Anyway, we used the distraction of the explosion to run for the docks.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to John and Peg after that. We got separated. For myself, I managed to get a ride down to Mexico on someone’s boat. And that’s where I’ve been ever since, hoping for news that the police had caught whoever was trying to kill me.”

  “You think someone was trying to kill you?” Gunnar said.

  “Well, they sure weren’t aiming at Burke.”

  “But the only one shot was John Cameron,” Burke put in.

  So they knew about John’s wound? When the kids came back from Argon, they’d have to work that into their cover stories. “Yes, he was bleeding when we got away. And that was the only bloodshed I wanted. The only problem was, the longer I waited, the less successful the cops seemed to be. I’m only too aware of my responsibility to this company ... and that’s why I’m risking my life to come back and take the helm.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise, Sturdley?” Thad Westmoreland asked.

  “Afraid of getting caught in a car-bomb blast?” Harry gibed.

  “So you just hid out and didn’t let anyone know about your survival—even Myra.” Gunnar’s face was full of disapproval.

  But Harry had a quick improvisation for that. “I didn’t know who was after me, or what resources they had. It’s really easy nowadays to intercept mail and tap phone calls.”

  Gunnar shook his head, his expression still sour. “Well, I’m sure the board will be delighted to have you back. But I’ve got to say one thing, Harry. I expected a better story than the one you just told us.”

  If I announced the truth, we could sell about a trillion comics, Harry thought. Aloud, he said, “Well, it’s what happened. As soon as I get some witnesses, I’ll let you know.” He tried to keep a straight face. “Maybe after John and Peg hear that I’ve resurfaced, they’ll risk coming forward, too.”

  In spite of himself, Harry grinned. “In fact, I’d almost guarantee it.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 16

  John Cameron dropped lightly from the nighttime sky over Kaldoa. His target was the terrace atop one of the skyscraping spires—or rather, the remains of that terrace. Once it had been a beautiful open-air restaurant. Now armored Argonians were helping dozens of burned and injured diners in the local equivalent of evening dress.

  As Peg dropped down beside him, John undid his helmet and dropped it to the scorched plast-alloy flooring, revealing sweat-slicked and tousled hair. His face was sickly pale, with dark, almost bruiselike stains under the eyes. After a few hours’ snatched sleep, he’d been fighting battles and running rescues for the past thirty-six hours.

  “These are the lucky ones,” John said as a flying ambulance swept in to pick up another load of injury victims. “Nearly a hundred more diners are missing after most of the terrace broke up from the explosion. Falling debris nailed more people on terraces farther down. Even some passing fliers were injured in midair.”

  Peg tore off her own helmet as if the armor were strangling her. “How—?” she began in a shaky voice.

  “As far as we can piece things together,” John said, rubbing his temples, “the bomb was in an unattended package left on one of the tables. The waiter who served there and the host are both dead, so we have no idea what the bomber looks like.” He sighed, looking at Peg. “This is getting dirty. The Deviants haven’t used bombs before. Yesterday, when they ambushed the S-Force squad, at least they were shooting at people who could shoot back. But this—senseless violence against civilians ...”

  “It’s called terrorism,” Peg said numbly. “I guess it’s all they can do after they took us on face-to-face—and you beat them.”

  “They don’t look beaten if they can do this,” John said grimly. “The only success we’ve had lately was keeping those bastards from setting their pals free.” He looked tentatively at Peg. “If you hadn’t spotted that guard they’d turned—if he’d opened the cells—”

  “We can’t be everywhere,” Peg said shortly. “Although God knows we’ve been trying.” She rubbed her eyes. With the unremitting attacks, she hadn’t gotten five hours’ sleep in a row, either.

  The remaining leaders of the S-Force—John, Peg, Tri-adon, and Melador—had been pushed to the limit leading the skeleton forces of resistance. Although the enemy had lost heavy numbers in their attack on the Citadel of Silence, so had the good guys. And the ruthlessness that had characterized the Deviants’ latest attacks had demoralized both Argonian civilians and the S-Forcers as well.

  “They’re really playing dirty,�
�� John whispered as he watched a pair of medics strap a screaming woman to a sky-going stretcher.

  “Yeah,” Peg said, deadpan. “It was never like this in the comics.”

  Stung, John swung to glare at her. “So we just let them rape and pillage their way through the planet?”

  “No,” Peg admitted. She turned away, replacing her helmet and flying away from the scene of devastation. John heard her final words over his radio. “It’s just that I was at this restaurant once. Mike took me.”

  Before she was even out of sight, John’s radio was beeping with news of a new disaster. With a tired sigh, John bent to retrieve his helmet. He wished Harry were still on Argon. For one thing, he needed advice. Even more, he needed a head of intelligence. Still worse, he needed a head of counterintelligence. It seemed that the enemy knew what the S-Force was doing nowadays even before the S-Force knew it was doing it.

  If only there were some way to get at the top of the Deviant organization.. .

  “As you see, this will let us get at the very top of the S-Force’s organization.” The high council of surviving Deviant leaders stared from the holographic plan laid out before them to the icily beautiful blonde providing narration. Unlike most of them, she didn’t wear Argonian armor, appearing for the briefing in extremely skimpy civilian wear instead.

  She saw the ultimate leader giving her the once-over, and gave him a cold smile. “You must forgive my attire, Scaladon. After this meeting, I have a rendezvous with our mole inside the S-Force. If my plan meets with approval, I’ll program him for appropriate action.” She gestured to the bandoleers of tiny darts which crossed her breasts. “The chemical preparations have already been made.”

  “As ever, Matavi, a cogent presentation,” Scaladon said, inclining his helmet. “One can see why you were renowned in the field of corporate espionage. However, your proposed plan would severely strain our limited resources.”

  He turned to glance at the other leaders. “Our robot-assembly capacity is extremely limited now, not to mention our manpower. And you would have us expose the results of our psionics research—no matter how much your own powers were helpful to us—”