Marvel Novel Series 11 - The Hulk and Spider-Man - Murdermoon

by Paul Kupperberg

  Coswell blinked. “B . . . but, Mr. Jameson, sir—my wife . . .”

  “You can’t take your wife on a blasted aircraft carrier,” Jameson mumbled absently around a fresh cigar.

  “No, I . . . I mean, she’s expecting . . . how long will we, ah, be . . . away, sir?” the young science editor stuttered.

  “Not at all,” Jameson said glancing up angrily. “If you don’t get the lead out and make that ship, Coswell. Ms. Grant has your press passes.”

  “Hope you won’t miss me while I’m gone, Mr. J.,” Peter smiled.

  “I’d miss cholera faster than I’d miss you, Parker.” The Bugle’s publisher rose, glaring at the smiling young photographer. “Now, out!” he bellowed.

  Peter grabbed Coswell’s arm and pulled him toward the door. “C’mon, Tim,” he said. “There’s just no talking to the man when he gets this way.”

  Seven

  The massive deck of the aircraft carrier USS Alexander Hamilton was uncharacteristically alive with activity two hours before dawn. Uniformed seamen manned their stations across the length of the great warship, its decks alone larger than several football fields laid end to end. Jet helicopters landed and took off continually at the vessel’s fore, sweeping off into the sea of darkness that surrounded the brightly lit ship cutting through the frothy swells of the cold Atlantic Ocean.

  Peter Parker and Tim Coswell stood huddled in the salty cold of the ship’s bridge, leaning against a railing as they watched the activity below. Despite the warmth of the clothes they wore, both men shivered slightly in the cold sea air.

  “I wish they’d get on with it,” Coswell said through chattering teeth. “I don’t think I can take much more of this cold.”

  Peter unslung his camera from his shoulder and pointed it at the deck. He began to idly snap photographs of the men and machines being moved around below. “These things take time,” he sighed. He clicked off a shot of a sailor signaling a chopper in for a landing. “According to the last announcement, StarLab should be passing over us in its next orbit in a few minutes.” His telephoto lens caught a sailor in mid leap from the cockpit of a bulky cargo copter.

  Coswell rubbed his hands together. “Yeah, well, you don’t have to worry about filing a good story with Jameson. I do,” he said miserably. “Jeez, I don’t know what the man’s got against me all of a sudden, but . . .”

  “What makes you think Jameson’s got something against you?”

  “Come on, Peter,” Tim Coswell said glumly. “You saw the way he tore into me yesterday, didn’t you? Hell, I can’t figure it. I don’t think I’ve spoken two words to the man in my whole life before he called me into his office.”

  Peter slapped the unhappy reporter on the back. “Hey, if that’s all that’s worrying you, friend,” he smiled, “don’t. It ain’t you, believe me. Smiling Jonah Jameson hates everybody.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Coswell said, unconvinced. He turned to look at Peter. “If he hates everybody, what about you?”

  Peter poked a finger in his chest, looking surprised. “Me? What’ve I got to do with the price of hostile newspaper publishers?”

  “C’mon,” he said. “I see the way you stand up to him in the city room all the time. You’re not afraid of Jameson.”

  Peter laughed. “Boy, have you got the wrong number, man. I like to think that about the only people J.J. Jameson likes less than me are Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Spider-Man.” He brought his camera to his eye. “True, Jameson doesn’t scare me, but then I’ve been known to take midnight strolls along the waterfront, so you can’t go by me.”

  Coswell grinned. “The Easter Bunny?”

  The young photographer shrugged. “I know. Sometimes it’s really tough to judge a man.”

  A series of shrill whistles pierced the silence. Peter looked into the bridge housing and saw the white-uniformed captain standing in the dull-green light cast by the radar screens. At last! Something’s finally going to happen. Coswell’s a nice guy, salt of the Earth and all that stuff, but I’ve been playing Dear Abby to his “Miserable In New York Journalism” since yesterday morning and frankly, enough is enough.

  “Attention!” the captain said into a microphone, relaying his words throughout the ship on the public-address system. The sailors stopped what they were doing and waited. “NASA Houston tracking station reports StarLab I has left orbit and is in reentry stage. Trajectory and radar reports show her to be headed straight into our laps, men. Let’s get ready.”

  A cheer arose from the assemblage below and even before it faded, the seamen were all running to their appointed tasks. A large, hydraulically operated platform rose from the belly of the great ship, bringing more helicopters up to the deck. A few took off immediately, veering off into the slowly lightening morning sky.

  Coswell excitedly nudged Peter with his elbow. “It’s almost time,” he said enthusiastically, the prospect of the excitement to come making the blond science editor forget his worries.

  Peter, in the middle of trying to change the lens on his camera when the animated jostling began, scowled. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

  “We have StarLab I on our screens,” the captain announced.

  The young photographer squinted into the darkness, but it was impossible to see beyond the glare of the carrier’s lights.

  “StarLab coordinates, altitude 98 knots, downrange 11 knots, west.”

  “Ready, Peter?” Coswell had to shout to make himself heard above the deafening roar of the choppers.

  Peter flashed his companion the okay sign.

  “Altitude 85 knots, downrange 9 kn . . .” Without a sound, the public-address system went dead.

  Peter and Coswell looked at each other simultaneously.

  “Think maybe somebody cut the strings on their tin cans?” Peter asked after several seconds of silence.

  Coswell shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe something went wrong with StarLab?”

  “What could go wrong? It was up there and it was falling to here. It’s got to come down.”

  “But what if it wasn’t . . . ?”

  “Then I guess Isaac Newton was just playing a big joke on everybody with all that ‘what goes up must come down’ jive.” Peter stared ahead into the sky, frowning. “Still, they should have said something by now.” He looked over his shoulder into the bridge housing. The captain was no longer standing talking into a microphone. He was across the cabin shouting frantically into a telephone handset and pointing wildly at the radar. Something is most definitely not kosher in Denmark.

  Activity on the deck had all but stopped. The men stood in small confused groups, looking to the PA speakers for further orders. What was happening on the bridge could only be speculated upon in low murmurs by the bewildered sailors. For almost two minutes, there was nothing and then, “Attention, all hands! Operations reports a change in scheduling. We will maintain present position until signaled. That is all.”

  No it ain’t, brother!

  Change of plans, huh? I wonder how they plan to put about twenty-five tons of red hot, falling scrap metal on hold! And seeing as they’re not about to tell us anything until it’s too late to do any good—and besides, I’m just too gosh-darned nosy to wait—I think it’s time for me to take a little moonlight stroll around the deck and find out.

  Spidey style!

  Peter turned to Coswell. “Listen, Tim,” he murmured conspiratorially. “I think the navy’s trying to put something over on us.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah. Why else don’t they say anything?”

  Tim Coswell considered this for several seconds. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I think you might be right, Peter.”

  “We ought to check it out, don’t you think?”

  “Well . . . I dunno. What d’you think?”

  “Hey, I’m only the photographer around here, Tim. As the reporter on the scene, you, as we say in the darkroom, call the shots and I just take ’em.” Peter looked around as i
f making certain they were not being overheard. “But since you ask, I think we should. Think of what breaking a story like this could mean to your career.”

  “Yeah!” Coswell pounded his fist into his hand. “Okay, let’s go, Peter!”

  “Um, don’t you think we’d cover a lot more ground if we split up?” Peter asked as he started backing slowly away from the young science editor. “Y’know, talk to the sailors, officers, NASA people, like that.”

  “Right!” Coswell’s face was set in a look of determination as he hurried to the ladder leading to the deck below.

  Peter smiled at the retreating man’s back. Jeez, I probably could have sold him the Brooklyn Bridge just now if I’d wanted to. Tim’s just lucky I left the ownership papers in my other pair of pants today.

  Checking to make sure he was alone on the dark bridge, Peter walked briskly around to the other side of the deck. He kept close to the cold, damp bulkhead, ducking beneath open portholes to avoid detection. When he was safely in the shadows and away from accidental probing eyes, he stooped and quickly removed his shoes. Then, glancing around a final time, Peter Parker started climbing up the steel wall.

  The young photographer had spied an open porthole at the rear of the large cabin housing the ship’s bridge. It faced the open sea and a narrow walkway ran beneath it, shielding that section of the wheelhouse from view from below. Peter scampered up the wall and then cut across the top of the wall until he came to the small, open porthole located not two yards behind the captain’s back.

  Peter clung flat against the bulkhead, making certain his body was well hidden in shadows. He hung over the small circle of light in the dark metal. I wonder if Woodward and Bernstein got started this way?

  Inside, the captain was on the telephone, speaking anxiously to somewhere on the mainland while he stood over the green-lit radar screens. “Yessir,” he was saying. His face was tight with anxiety. “I fully realize NASA’s position in the situation, but . . .” He stopped, listening for long moments while impatiently drumming his fingers on the console before him. “No, sir,” he said quickly. “We’ve checked, rechecked, and re-rechecked all the equipment. It’s operating at peak efficiency. What does NASA get on their screens?” He took his cap off, scratched his head and replaced it. “Uh-huh.”

  The captain let out a long sigh of resignation. “Then what can I tell you, sir? The Hamilton, the Portsmith, and even NASA say the same thing and I seriously doubt that all our equipment would go out in the same way at the same time.”

  The agitated commander stared out a window at the rising sun. “Then I’m afraid we’re just going to have to face it, sir,” he said firmly. “Somehow, someway, StarLab I has disappeared out from under our noses!”

  And despite himself, Peter Parker whistled in amazement from his hiding place outside the cabin window. It was several seconds later that he realized his spider-sense had begun to tingle ferociously at the captain’s words.

  Eight

  “Snow, snow and more damned snow!” snarled the burly man sitting hunched behind the wheel of the tractor trailer, peering hopelessly through the white-blanketed windshield.

  Bruce Banner started and sat up sharply. The man’s angry mutterings had roused him from the light, uneasy sleep he had been drifting in and out of for the past several hours. Despite the comfortable warmth of the truck cab, Bruce was sweating heavily—the cold, clammy sweat of fear. He blinked and looked around, wondering what could have brought about his fear.

  Then he remembered.

  He had been dreaming—vague, shimmering visions of emerald-colored rage that seemed to have grown into a constant, horrifying companion to his every sleeping hour. In his nightmares, the young scientist was but a spectator standing on the sidelines of a brilliant green scene, watching in undisguised horror and revulsion the uncontrollable fury that was himself. The man-monster loped through the glistening fog, caught in a seemingly endless dance of mindless, wanton destruction.

  Gigantic tanks rolled toward him, only to be reduced to piles of twisted wreckage by battering emerald fists.

  Helicopters, distorted by nightmare, flew overhead to be smashed into falling debris.

  Jet fighters with hideous, flapping wings of metallic feathers swept through the sky, exploding into nova-bright balls of flame when struck by a missile of radiation-mutated flesh and sinew.

  Death was a heavy stink in the air.

  But Bruce Banner could only stand and watch, unable to move, to escape the rampaging engine of destruction that drew closer to the young scientist with each swipe of its sledgehammer fists. He was trapped, held as if by an invisible web, awaiting his end at the mercy of the giant spider that spun it.

  The creature drew closer, its features swirling about its face in an unrecognizable mass of jade. But the features started taking shape before Banner now. He stared in horror, his mouth opened to scream a scream that would not come from his dry throat.

  Blank, lifeless eyes stared from beneath the creature’s hideous, protruding brow at the shivering scientist.

  Bruce Banner recognized the eyes . . . that face . . .

  And only then could he scream.

  The face of death was his own!

  “I says are ya awright, fella?”

  Bruce blinked rapidly, drawing a shaking hand across his clammy forehead. It’s all right, he told himself. He was safe. The creature was far, far away.

  “And always with me,” he murmured, unaware he had spoken aloud.

  The burly driver tore his eyes off the snow-covered road and glanced at the pale young man seated next to him. “You ain’t sick or nothin’, are ya?” he asked. “Jeez, I hope ya ain’t sick. It ain’t that I wouldn’t wanna help youse or nothin’ like that, but, Jeez, with this weather, I’m awready a half a day behind schedule and if I don’t get these ballbearin’s to Toledo on time ”

  Bruce wearily shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “I’m fine. Really.”

  The driver turned back to the road, cursing the slow, snarled traffic along Chicago’s Edens Expressway. “ ’At’s good, ’cause I just ain’t got the time to help youse now.” He made an angry gesture at the road. “I mean, willya lookit that, for cryin’ out loud. You think they’d do somethin’, y’know. Plow. Salt. Somethin’! But, nah, they ain’t gotta drive in this crud . . .”

  Bruce tuned out the driver’s angry mutterings and stared silently out the side window. It had been nearly two days since he had left MacDermont Point, hitching rides along the way that finally led him into the nearly snowbound city of Chicago and his destination. The snow had started in the Windy City early yesterday evening and had continued unabated throughout the night and into the morning. Thirteen inches of snow buried the city now.

  The young scientist could see nothing through the steadily falling curtain of snowflakes. It was day, he knew, but only because a clock on the dashboard told him so.

  “Where are we?” Bruce asked, interrupting the driver’s running commentary.

  “Messed up, that’s where we are,” the man grumbled. “What, you think I wanna go this way, like it don’t add an extra hun’red miles to the trip goin’ through the city? But they’re closin’ all th’ highways ’cause o’ the . . .”

  “What I meant was, are we in Chicago yet?”

  “Chi? Hell, yeah,” the man laughed. “What’cha think we been ridin’ through the past couple o’ miles? Hoboken?” He laughed again at his own joke. “Heh, Hoboken.” He jerked his thumb to the east. “Lake Whatchamacallit—Michigan is over that way.”

  Bruce nodded even though he couldn’t see a thing.

  “Lookit, buddy, I’m gonna be pullin’ off o’ the expressway and try’n ta cut through the city. You got any place in particular ya wanna be dropped?”

  “LaSalle Street,” Bruce said. “823 LaSalle Street Do you know where that is?”

  The driver laughed and reached over and punched Bruce lightly on the arm. “Do I know Chi? You kiddin’ me? I spent six month
s here durin’ the war, y’know.” He smiled in fond remembrance. “Yeah, the war was great. Yeah, now, lemme see. 823 LaSalle’s right over by Water Tower Place, right?”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it. This is my first time in Chicago.”

  “Well, you sure picked a helluva time to come visitin’.” The driver slapped his hand down hard on the steering wheel. “I mean, ya ever see snow like this? Not in New York or Boston or Philly, nope. But Chicago, Jeez, it’s always snowin’ in Chicago.”

  The burly man turned all his attention to his driving, concentrating on pulling his tractor trailer off the highway through the stalled morning traffic and snowdrifts without serious mishap. Half an hour later, after a trip which normally took ten minutes, the driver pulled his rig over to the curb on Chicago Avenue.

  “Last stop,” he called as he jammed the gearshift into neutral.

  Bruce Banner reached over and shook the other man’s hand. “Thanks a lot, friend,” he said. “I really appreciate the ride.”

  The burly man dismissed Bruce’s thanks with a wave of his hand. “Aw, don’t mention it, buddy. Glad to have the company. And take it easy out there,” he warned. “The wind’s kickin’ up somethin’ fierce.”

  “Will do.” Bruce opened the door and jumped from the warm cab into over a foot of powdery snow. He waved to the man behind the wheel before turning and starting off through the raging storm.

  The young scientist hunched his shoulders against the battering wind that whipped off the lake. He tied his hood tightly around his head. The wind churned the snow into swirling whirlwinds that piled into high drifts against the sides of buildings, parked cars, and anything else that did not move. And the snow continued to fall, adding over an inch an hour to the heavy accumulation already on the ground. Bruce could not see more than a few feet in front of him.

  He hurried east on Chicago Avenue, then south on deserted LaSalle Street. 823 was not far away.