by Stan Lee
Not daring to turn around, he checked the view behind him by taking a glance at a store window. The giantess had halted at the edge of the crowd, peering down in confusion.
Carron felt a spark of triumph which he quickly pushed down. Keep it calm, he told himself. Don’t give yourself away now. The freaks aren’t invincible. You can move up on them.
He gratefully scrambled for the safety of the subway.
The next question is—can we hurt them?
“Don’t look at me!” a thoroughly frustrated Peg Faber burst out at her boss. “If you can’t keep him in line, how do you expect me to do it?”
Harry Sturdley had returned from Washington in a bad mood. Peg knew he was probably going to vent off a load of steam when he called her into his office, but she was not about to suffer a Sturdley tantrum tamely. After falling through a hole in reality and living through attempted rapes, kidnapping, and murders, a tiff with her boss was the last thing in the universe to worry her.
“If he won’t listen to me, we’ll just have to double-team him,” Sturdley said. “I’ll try to talk sense into him, and you can keep him distracted from playing real-life Silicon Savage.”
“Don’t bet on that, Harry,” Peg warned. “Things are tough enough between John and me right now. What you’re suggesting—”
“I’m suggesting you help keep him out of trouble!” Sturdley shouted. “Is that too much to ask?”
Peg looked troubled, then her face set in firm lines. “I think it is.”
Sturdley strode around his office. “Great!” he growled. “I can’t keep John out of the superhero sweepstakes ... so I’ll have to figure some way to use him.”
He glanced at Peg, whose expression was still unfriendly.
“I mean, we need some way to divert him from revealing all the cards in our hand.” Harry sighed. “I showed off enough to Robert and Barbara this morning. What we need is a peek at what they’re up to—”
His voice trailed off, then Harry was abruptly every inch the decisive executive. “Give Quentin Farley a call. I want him to bring everything he’s gotten on Heroes’ Manor.” Sturdley raised a hand, stopping Peg’s progress for the door. “Especially any maps and reconnaissance photos of the place he might have taken.”
Peg’s expression went from unfriendly to wary. “What are you up to, Harry?”
Sturdley made whisking motions at his assistant. “You’ll see. Just get a meeting set up for today. And when you know the time, tell John I want him here then, as well.”
Quentin Farley arrived two hours later loaded for a complete briefing, which was just as well. That’s what Sturdley had in mind. He sat with John Cameron on the office couch while the detective set up an easel with blown up photos and maps.
What Harry hadn’t counted on was Peg striding into the office and sitting in a chair.
“What—?” Harry began.
Peg quickly held up a steno pad. “I thought you’d want notes,” she said in a demure voice.
Sturdley shut his mouth with a click, knowing Peg didn’t really take shorthand, but unwilling to lace into her for insubordination with Farley present. “Ah. Ah-hum. Yes.”
The room went quiet, and Farley began his presentation. “I’m not sure what you’re looking for in this briefing,” the detective said. “Your assistant wasn’t exactly clear.”
“I want you to run over the approaches to Heroes’ Manor, and as much as you know of the present physical layout,” Harry said.
John gave him a quick look, Peg’s eyebrows rose, and Quentin Farley gave an uncomfortable cough.
“Sir, right from the beginning of this surveillance, I tried to infiltrate people onto the grounds. The giants’ security—”
Sturdley no longer tried to correct the terminology to “Heroes.” He simply waved a hand. “I believe I’ve got a way around that, which is all you need to know.”
Farley now turned to John. “We’ve already tried experts—recon professionals. The dangers—”
Cameron looked at the detective. “I can handle myself,” he said.
Whatever Farley saw in John’s face, he stopped arguing. Instead, he went into a detailed presentation on what he’d observed and learned of the present state of affairs in Heroes’ Manor.
When the detective finished, John stepped up to the large map of the property resting on the easel. “From the sound of it, your best approach was on the water,” he said. “That brought you closest to the place.”
Farley shuddered. “It also resulted in some very nasty things being done to my head,” he said.
John ignored the warning. “Maybe coming in through the lake...”
“You think the water would block their mental detection?” Farley said. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“I can handle it,” John assured the man again. “The question is, where could I come out of the water without being noticed?”
His finger fell on a structure delineated on the map, a structure right by the water. “What did you say this was?”
Farley dug out a large telephoto shot of a ramshackle building. “It’s an old boathouse.”
“Right.” John nodded. “That might make a good point of entry.”
John and Harry continued to pore over maps and photos as Farley left, bearing considerably less than he’d come in with. Peg held the office door for him, but didn’t return inside as Farley set off down the executive corridor.
“Excuse me,” she said, stepping round to her desk. “Could you spare me a few more moments?”
“Yes, Ms.—” he paused for a beat, retrieving her name from his mental memory bank—“Faber?”
Peg opened a desk drawer and withdrew two things—a checkbook and an envelope. “You’re the only investigator I know,” she said. “I’d like to hire you.”
“My firm’s services don’t come cheap,” Farley warned. He quoted some rates. “If you’d like a referral to someone less pricey—”
Peg shook her head and began cutting a check. The retainer would eat into the months of back pay Harry had passed along to her, but she could pay for a couple of weeks. If more were needed, she’d turn to Sturdley—or to John.
“I want you to try and trace somebody,” she said. “I don’t have a name. All I can give you is a place, a face, and the possibility that it may be a case of amnesia. It’s all in here.”
She handed over the check and the envelope. Farley opened it and scanned the neatly typed two-page report, the boiled down version of Peg’s own attempt to check John Cameron’s background. “Kokomo, West Virginia. Formerly known as Cameron Corners,” the detective read. He glanced at the photo enclosed. It was one of the first publicity shots Sturdley had ordered when John started drawing the Amazing Robert comic.
In the picture, John looked very young and just a bit scared.
Farley’s eyes went from the photo to Harry’s office door. “This is the young man in there .. ?” The faintest interrogative lilt entered his voice.
Peg nodded again.
The detective replaced the material in the envelope. “He’s changed considerably.”
Once more, Peg nodded. “That was taken before—” She cut herself off. “I think that picture would be closer to his appearance two years ago,” she finally said.
“I’ve got a contact in Charlotte,” Farley said. “I’ll fax this information and see what he can dig up.”
“Yes,” Peg said. “Do that.”
Thirty-five blocks north and west, Leslie Ann Nasotru-dere yanked the flimsy sheet of fax paper from her desk and smiled. Then she caught her reflection in the newsroom window. Just a shade too predatory—this particular smile made her pearly, even teeth look awfully sharp.
Schooling her expression to broadcast standards, she scanned the fax message. Leslie Ann had known where Robert and Barbara would be this morning—at the Washington INC affiliate. She also had a contact there, who had waited until the publicity flack from Silikis Productions had been distracted by Harry Sturdle
y’s unannounced arrival. Then Leslie Ann’s friend had abstracted the giants’ Washington itinerary.
One fax later, and the schedule was now on Leslie Ann’s desk. She didn’t intend to act immediately on the information, she just wanted a look at who the giants were seeing during their Washington stay.
Her lips pursed in a silent whistle as she read. Four senators, a newspaper owner, two names known for generations as advisors to presidents, and three names that would mean nothing to the proverbial man in the street. Leslie Ann, however, recognized them as movers and shakers inside the Beltway.
Quite a few engagements before the giants sped away to the next stop on their publicity tour.
Leslie Ann flicked a finger against the schedule, baring her teeth again in that predatory grin. She’d have to ask Marty Burke about the connection between his gigantic proteges and these national bigwigs. That would be easy enough—Marty had been downright sweet lately, always asking about her work. It was as if he knew he was on borrowed time with this relationship. He had been ever since he’d lost out at the Fantasy Factory.
Marty had proven a blunt weapon against Harry Sturdley. So, for the nonce, Leslie Ann kept Marty around because of his useful connections to the giants ... and because nothing better had come along.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Peg Faber shook her head as she slowly drove the rented van down unlit West-chester byroads.
“We needed someone to get me close, someone whose mind wouldn’t be detected,” John Cameron said from the back of the van. He was climbing into his suit of Argonian armor, which boasted an ungainly addition on the back, another piece of supertechnology he’d carried to Earth in his backpack.
“I guess that means me,” Peg groused. “My mind hasn’t been detectable since we got back here.”
“I meant, a person with the mental shielding—” John broke off, his apology as ungainly as his appearance. “Look, I appreciate your help,” he said. “We’re beyond the range of Harry’s power broadcaster up here, and this Argonian battery we wired into my suit doesn’t have such a long operating life.”
“What I can’t believe is that you don’t know how to drive,” Peg said.
“Something else we’ll have to work on now that we’re back home,” John said.
All of a sudden, Peg didn’t have a word to say from behind the driver’s wheel. John finally cleared his throat. “I guess you should kill the lights now.”
With the headlights off, the darkness of the night became impenetrable—at least to normal eyes. Peg, however, had immaterial senses to guide her along. Even so, she used them sparingly, keeping her mental shields up and ready. The van slowed even more, rolling almost silently down the hillside to the lake that marked one boundary of Heroes’ Manor.
Peg brought the vehicle to a stop on the stony beach. John fiddled with the dome light. When he opened the side door, the interior of the van stayed dark. Peg twisted in her seat, extending a hand toward him. “You be careful in there.”
John yanked off his gauntlet and gently took her hand in his. Her shields were up at full power, but he could still feel her anxiety through the clasp of flesh on flesh. John didn’t know whether to feel annoyed at the attempt to hide something or to be touched at her concern.
“You be careful, too,” he finally said.
“I’ve got Harry’s magic wand of death,” Peg said, producing the fountain pen-sized rod that spat a stream of deadly fire. “Any giants come reaching for me, I’ll cut their fingers off.” She managed a half-smile, which faded as she looked at John. “You remember this is just a scouting expedition.” The smile was completely gone as she gave him a pleading look. “Don’t try to be a hero.”
Peg removed her fingers from John’s grasp, and he finished fastening his suit. He stepped from the van, activated his gizmoidal drive, and glided silently through the air until he plunged through the surface of the water.
John hadn’t tried much underwater travel on Argon. The lake’s early fall chill mucked up his infrared sensors. He focused on the giants by mental means, then set off at a sedate pace toward Heroes’ Manor, keeping as deep as possible to avoid leaving a wake.
As he got close to the far shore, John cast about for a few moments until his armor’s diminished sensors finally detected the pilings that marked the boathouse.
He rose up inside the enclosure, still submerged but sweeping with a psionic probe to ascertain that the structure was empty. For a second, he got a hint of a contact, but when he tried again, the boathouse seemed empty.
John rose above the surface. The lake water dripping from his armor sounded unnaturally loud in his audio pickups. Unhindered now, his infrared sensors brought the shadowy room to crystal clarity. John’s breath caught in shock as he discovered the antiseptically modern hospital setup, so at odds with the ramshackle exterior of the structure.
And then he saw the giant patient. The raw-boned, almost homely features were distinctive amongst the conventional prettiness of the giants. This was Gideon, the one who had tried to warn Sturdley of ulterior motives among his Heroes, then promptly vanished.
Considering the battered aspect of Gideon’s body, even after months of healing, John had no problem accounting for the smallest giant’s disappearance. He’d been savagely beaten into a coma, clinging to life with so tentative a grasp that John couldn’t contact Gideon’s higher mental functions.
John prowled the improvised infirmary until he found the file cabinet. Riffling through months of doctor’s notes, he had to credit the unknown Dr. Cedric Thonneger for a painstaking approach. Heart rate, breathing, temperature, all of Gideon’s physical signs had been charted. John came across a mention of semen samples being extracted, and nodded in grudging appreciation of Robert’s “waste not” approach. The head giant would want as much genetic diversity as possible in his little colony.
The more recent notes took a different turn, detailing odd experiments. John read of tests on how much protection the unconscious giant’s psychokinetic shields offered against radiation, of carefully inflicted radiation burns and how long they took to heal.
John frowned, an involuntary shudder running down his back. His hands clenched into fists at the thought of using a helpless invalid as some sort of laboratory animal. For one mad second, he considered confronting the giants, forcing them to see what their leader had done. Then John remembered Peg’s words. “Don’t be a hero.”
Silently, he returned the papers to their appropriate folders and closed the file drawers. With a final look at the huge, still form on the gigantic air mattress, John stepped back to the water and submerged himself. His scouting expedition had encountered more than he’d expected on his first probe. He didn’t like the implications of the Nazi-style research. This was a case for older and wiser heads.
Like a human torpedo, John arrowed toward the far side of the lake.
In this case, the only older and wiser head available was Harry Sturdley’s.
* * *
CHAPTER 23
Harry Sturdley shifted his lean frame on the understuffed seat of the hotel chair. It was bad enough that he’d been up half the night listening to the bizarre report of John Cameron’s reconnaissance mission up at Heroes’ Manor. To add injury to annoyance, however, he was now trapped in the armchair answer to the torture rack.
The blasted thing looked impressive, with its white and gilt frame and tapestry upholstery. Too bad it hadn’t been designed for human spines.
However, Sturdley was not going to lose his chance to catch Stuart Silikis. He’d spent weeks trying to speak with the producer on the West Coast, but Silikis never returned his calls. Then he read in the Hollywood Reporter that Silikis was visiting New York to sign an option on a Broadway play. Peg had been given the job of finding Silikis, and had tracked him to an expensive show biz hotel on Fifty-eighth Street.
Sturdley found Silikis in his suite, but was left sitting in the living room while the producer hid out in the bedroom.
Too bad the bathroom was on the other side of the door.
After leaving Harry to cool his heels for an hour and a half, Silikis was apparently convinced that his unwelcome visitor had no intention of leaving any time soon. At long last, the producer emerged.
“Harry!” he said, trying to make his buzz saw voice sound bright and cheerful. “Sorry about the delay. I had—er—something.” He gestured vaguely toward the bedroom.
Sturdley gave him a hard look. “That could be anything from a long-distance call to a brace of hookers.” He shook his head. “Look, let’s get down to cases, Silikis. Robert and Barbara have been traipsing around the country for the better part of a month, banging the drums for this Hero movie. But we still haven’t heard anything about a release date.”
“Right,” Silikis said. “That.”
“Maybe it’s just a little detail to you,” Harry said, “but I’m supposed to be scheduling a movie-tie-in book. I’ve got a final script, I’ve got writers and artists running with the project. You don’t have any post-production work to do, so why don’t you have a release date?”
“Well, actually, I was going to tell you about that,” Silikis said uneasily. “I knew we had initially considered a general release—”
“Considered?” Harry barked. “That was in the contract you signed with Marty Burke—in black and white.”
“Literally speaking, that’s true,” Silikis admitted. “The problem is, we don’t have the green.”
“Green?” Sturdley repeated blankly.
“As in money.” Silikis looked a bit shamefaced. “Burke thought he made a good deal with me, and I thought I had a good deal with the studio. The only thing I didn’t count on was the entertainment habits of the distribution exeps. They pissed away most of the budget for our film in a Beverly Hills cathouse.”
“I can’t believe this!” Sturdley exploded. Then he said, “I take that back. After what I’ve heard about Heidi Whatser-name, somehow it sounds all too likely.”