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

by Paul Kupperberg

  “May I help you, sir?”

  Bruce Banner brushed the melting flakes of snow from his coat. “Yes,” he said to the pretty young receptionist seated in the waiting room of the Institute for Radiation Research’s modern plastic-and-chrome office. “I’d like to see Dr. Irvine if he’s in.”

  The raven-haired girl smiled. “Do you have an appointment with the doctor?” she asked, reaching for the telephone on her desk.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Oh, well, then I’m sorry, sir, but the doctor is very busy . . .”

  Bruce rubbed his red, chapped hands together, a look of alarm spreading across his handsome features. “Please, miss,” he said. “I . . . I’ve just come into town and it’s extremely urgent I speak with Dr. Irvine. It’s about his research. Please.”

  “Well . . .” The girl chewed thoughtfully on her lip, looking at the distraught man in front of her desk. She lifted the phone. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to ask, would it?”

  Bruce breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

  “Doctor?” she said into the phone, “there’s a gentleman here to see you . . . Yes, I told him, Dr. Irvine, but he insists it’s important.” She looked up. “May I have your name, please.”

  “Banner. Dr. Bruce Banner.”

  She repeated his name into the phone and nodded. “Very good, Doctor,” she said and hung up. “Dr. Irvine will be right out, Dr. Banner. Will you have a seat?”

  Bruce sat down.

  Soon, he told himself. Soon.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Doctor?” the receptionist asked.

  “Yes, please,” Bruce smiled at her. He hadn’t realized how much he could use one.

  The girl got up and disappeared through a side door leading to the inner office.

  A moment later another door opened and a tall, gray-haired man in a white lab coat entered the reception area. “Dr. Banner,” he said enthusiastically as he extended his hand.

  Bruce jumped to his feet. “Yes. Dr. Irvine?”

  The older man nodded, shaking Bruce’s hand. “It’s a great honor to meet you, Dr. Banner,” he smiled broadly. “A great honor indeed. I’m what you might call,” he chuckled briefly, “quite a fan of your papers and books. And, of course, I’ve heard a great deal about you over the years.”

  “I’m sure,” Bruce said, laughing bitterly.

  Dr. Irvine shook his head in sympathy. “Yes,” he said, “a terrible thing, that accident of yours. It’s a miracle you were able to survive such a massive dose of gamma radiation—far more than any man I’ve come across in all my years of research.”

  “I suppose it does make me pretty much an oddity,” Bruce admitted.

  “Oh, no, Doctor,” Irvine said quickly. “Not an oddity, a victim. But a victim of a disease that now, fortunately, has a cure.”

  Bruce nodded. “I read of your work here at the institute. The papers reported you had discovered a means of reversing the effects of gamma radiation.”

  Dr. Irvine nodded.

  “Then it’s true?”

  “Indeed we have,” the scientist said proudly. “Of course, we’re still running a few tests on our findings, but I feel safe in saying that my conclusions will be borne out one hundred percent.”

  “I know. And I’d like to volunteer my services to the institute. As a guinea pig and a scientist.”

  “Why,” Dr. Irvine seemed pleasantly stunned, “we would be honored to have you on the staff, Dr. Banner. Your early research into gamma radiation was the basic foundation for all our work here.”

  “And my . . . condition? Can your cure help me?”

  “The Hulk?” Dr. Irvine smiled. “As I understand it, the gamma-bomb explosion you were caught in irradiated your body’s cell structure with a lethal dose of gamma rays, correct? But instead of causing death, the radiation caused a freak mutation that triggers the metamorphosis.

  “We’ve had success eliminating excess radiation in test animals with similar, albeit less intense cases of gamma poisoning in the past . . .” The doctor paused and squinted past Banner, thoughtfully stroking his chin.

  Without realizing it, Bruce held his breath.

  “Frankly, Dr. Banner, I can’t think of any reason why your particular problem can’t be dealt with as easily as those other cases.”

  Bruce Banner exhaled sharply. Suddenly, it felt as if a great weight had been lifted from his frail shoulders. A great, green weight of rampaging hatred. He laughed aloud, a natural enough reaction that the young scientist had not genuinely experienced in many long years.

  “Then what are we waiting for, Dr. Irvine? Let’s get started.”

  The secretary walked back into the room carrying a paper cup full of coffee. “Here we are, Dr. Banner,” she said pleasantly.

  “Ah, Miss Winters,” Irvine said. “The good doctor has graciously consented to join our staff. I’m sure he’s most anxious to tour the facilities and begin work. So if you would please call the airport and have them ready our plane for immediate use.”

  She handed Bruce the coffee with a smile and returned to her desk and the telephone.

  “Airport?” Bruce was confused.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Dr. Banner,” Irvine said. “I forgot to tell you. This is only one of several of the institute’s regional offices around the country. Our main research facility is located in upstate New York, just outside the city of Niagara Falls.” The scientist frowned. “I hope there’s nothing keeping you here?”

  “There hasn’t been much of anything holding me anywhere for a long time, Doctor. That’s why I’m here. To change that.”

  Bruce took a sip of the hot, black coffee while Dr. Irvine went into the inner office to prepare for the trip. The coffee tasted good. But then, everything was good.

  Now.

  Nine

  Chicago’s O’hare field has the reputation for being the world’s busiest airport. Each day, at this sprawling airfield some fifteen miles from downtown Chicago, more airplanes take off and land with more passengers than at any other airport on Earth.

  But as far as Bruce Banner could tell, squeezed uncomfortably between Dr. Irvine and Miss Winters on the front seat of the doctor’s Land Rover, O’Hare International was having a tough time living up to its reputation in the middle of the severest snowstorm to hit the midwest in five decades. Onto the seven runways that handled the traffic, snow blew and drifted faster than the exhausted maintenance men could sweep it aside with snowplows. The few flights cleared for takeoff were forced to wait hours at the end of the single runway that still remained operational. They stood with taxiing fights blinking in the dull-gray day while harried air-traffic controllers sought a hole in the storm through which to send them on their way. All incoming flights had been diverted to other airports outside the area of the blizzard that held the Great Lakes region in its icy grasp. Most airlines had canceled many of their flights, stranding in the terminals untold thousands of disgruntled passengers, unable to find either transportation into the city or rooms in the airport’s packed hotels.

  Soon, O’Hare International Airport would be forced to close for only the third time in its existence.

  “Are you sure we’ll be able to get a flight out of here?” Bruce asked uncertainly.

  Dr. Irvine kept his eyes on the snow-covered road as he maneuvered around cars stalled in the deep drifts. “Not if we were relying on the airlines,” he said. “But the institute maintains its own private plane. Ahh, here we are.”

  The doctor stopped the four-wheel drive vehicle in front of the main terminal and switched off the ignition. “No sense trying to fight our way into one of the parking lots,” he said. “Of course, our plane isn’t as big or as comfortable as a 747, nor does it offer much in the way of stewardesses,” he smiled, “but it will get us where we want to go. Shall we?”

  Dr. Irvine, Bruce, and Miss Winters piled out of the jeep and hurried into the main terminal.

  There were people everywhere; men, women, and
children filled the relatively few seats; the remainder of the people huddled in groups on the floor with their luggage. Outraged passengers crowded a dozen deep at the reservation counters, demanding the airlines end the storm and ship them off to their destinations.

  The trio weaved through the crowd, heading toward the rear of the terminal, just three more stranded, anonymous travelers among the tens of thousands there.

  “Dr. Banner!”

  The shout was heard by Bruce over the subdued murmur of the disgruntled throng. He stopped and looked around, his brow creased in puzzlement. He knew no one in Chicago . . .

  “Dr. Banner, please,” Irvine said, pushing him gently forward. “We still have a chance to fly out before they close the airport—if we hurry.”

  Bruce nodded. “I thought I heard . . .”

  “Banner!”

  The young scientist saw the man shouting his name now as the man pushed his way rudely through the crowd with others following close behind. The handsome young man wore a blazer with one of the television network’s logos stitched on the breast pocket and held a microphone in his outstretched hand. The mike was attached by a long wire to the hand-held miniature camera hoisted on the shoulder of the man behind him. Several of the others in the advancing group also held minicams or still cameras.

  “Reporters!” Irvine hissed angrily.

  “What are they doing here?” Bruce asked quickly.

  “Probably reporting on the blizzard,” Miss Winters said.

  Bruce felt his pulse begin to race. “I . . . I’d rather not have to talk to them.”

  “Of course, my boy,” Irvine said. “I completely understand.” He glanced around and pointed to a closed door just beyond the empty baggage-claim area several yards to their right. The door was marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. “Perhaps we can lose them in there.”

  They started for the door, but the reporters, all expert in cornering unwilling subjects for interviews, intercepted them. Bright lights were flicked on and shone in the agitated young scientist’s face as eager reporters thrust their microphones at him.

  “Dr. Banner . . .”

  “Could you comment on . . .”

  “. . . the army says you . . .”

  “. . . the Hulk demolished a special task force. Is that . . .”

  “. . . true, Dr. Banner?”

  “The New Mexican authorities . . .”

  “. . . comment, Dr. Banner . . .”

  “Please,” Bruce pleaded. “No comment—I . . .”

  He felt his chest tighten and he was gasping for breath. His heart was pounding and the blood seemed to rush to his head. He was dizzy. He tried to blink away the blinding lights, but they stayed on him. The reporters, clinging like leeches, would not go away, would not stop their incessant shouting.

  “Leave me . . . alone . . .” he pleaded. The blood was pounding in his ears like a drum.

  It was happening!

  “What’re you doing in Chicago, Dr. Banner?”

  “Can you comment on the army’s report?”

  “Has the Hulk . . .”

  “Leave me alone!” the frail scientist screamed suddenly.

  The world shimmered before his eyes, an emerald haze that clouded his world. He hunched over suddenly as if in great pain and the cluster of reporters closed in on him.

  The last thing Dr. Bruce Banner remembered as he crumpled to the floor was the sharp tearing of cloth, for, when he rose to his feet a moment later, he was no longer the small, frail scientist.

  He was the Hulk!

  Ten

  Two men, clad in bulky, white protective gear stepped from the larger chamber into the smaller room adjoining it. They carefully sealed the heavy steel door behind them before peeling off the oversized jump suits they wore and disposing of them in a chute set into the airlock’s wall. The suits, however, were not worn to protect these crew-cutted technicians from any hazard within the chamber; rather they were to guard the thing that rested inside from any risk of contamination from outside. Nothing that had not first been sterilized entered the heavily protected chamber, not a man, not even the pencil he wrote with. Even the air flowed through six separate filters and processing units before it was allowed to be pumped inside.

  The delicate instrument assembled inside the chamber was not built to withstand any other conditions on Earth, for a single speck of dust inside one of the microscopically tuned and calibrated mechanisms could sharply reduce its amazing accuracy and efficiency.

  Now wearing plain, unmarked jump suits, the two men left the small airlock and entered a vast low-ceilinged room lined with neat rows of computer terminals, each manned by a similarly dressed technician. Each man or woman wore headphone and microphone sets and was busily working at their keyboard and readout screen, entering complex data and testing various systems. Set in the wall at the front of the room was a large plate-glass window that looked into the chamber beyond the airlock. A lone, long console faced the window and half a dozen men, also wearing headphones, sat behind it. These men, generally older than the technicians, were clad in white shirts and ties, and clean white laboratory smocks. Behind the man in the center of the console stood two other men who watched the scientists work with their arms folded patiently across their chests.

  The man at the center console glanced up from his readout screen and flashed the thumbs-up sign to the two technicians. He was an older man with white hair that grew in a wild fringe around his otherwise bald head. Thick framed bifocals were perched on the bridge of his nose and the rest of his face was lost beneath a full, scraggly white beard.

  “It’s working fine now,” he said.

  The two men nodded and returned to their desks.

  “Well, Prof. Warner?” the taller of the two men behind him asked. He was a slim, handsome man with finely chiseled features and neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair. He was impeccably dressed in a dark pin-striped Cardin suit and shiny Gucci loafers. His eyes were a cold, hard gray. His voice relayed unquestionable authority in the subdued atmosphere of the control room.

  “We’ll begin in a moment, Mr. Pendergast,” the scientist said without looking up.

  The man named Pendergast nodded and looked into the chamber. There was not much to see inside, just a five foot by five foot square swathed in protective plastic wrapping in front of the window. A small tube protruded from the front of the box.

  A conveyor belt hung from the ceiling at the far end of the chamber. Clamps held a foot-thick slab of steel suspended in the air.

  Prof. Abraham Warner consulted his computer readout and nodded his satisfaction. “System M ready for testing,” he said softly into the microphone. “Stand by.”

  Warner flipped switches and pressed buttons on the panel before him. Green lights blinked on signaling the system’s readiness. Instantly, information flashed across the screen, changing every few seconds as the systems switched on.

  “On zero,” Warner said and began counting backward from five. When he reached zero he pressed another switch and the plastic-wrapped box began to hum ever so slightly. The lens at the tip of the protruding tube glowed bright red.

  The tube swiveled in line with the slab of steel. A pencil-thin beam of ruby-red light flashed from it and struck the steel dead center. Instantly, a hole appeared in the metal.

  Warner manipulated the computer keyboard and the lens swiveled around in a complete circle. The center of the slab fell to the floor with a clang, a perfect inch-wide circle of red-hot metal.

  The red beam disappeared and the conveyor belt started to move. A second slab of metal rolled into the room. As soon as it appeared, the lens seemed to lock on it, tracking it across the room until a wide beam of red energy flashed from it.

  The second metal slab disintegrated.

  Steel plates continued to roll by the black box and its deadly beam that blasted, melted, and shattered the heavy metal. One plate, with a series of fifty almost-microscopic sensors implanted in it, was bla
sted in perfect sequence by the beam in a span of less than two seconds.

  Pendergast nodded approvingly as he watched the demonstration. The short squat man dressed in a black suit behind him stared in rapt fascination. “Amazing,” he whispered to the taller man.

  “It is, isn’t it,” Pendergast smiled. “And this is merely the device’s secondary function. Quite a neat little toy, wouldn’t you say, Lloyd?”

  “Yessir, Mr. Pendergast,” Lloyd replied.

  Prof. Warner switched off his device and turned to the tall man and his assistant. “Well, Mr. Pendergast?” the aged scientist asked.

  “Very impressive, Prof. Warner,” the man said. “Now if the main mode is operating as well, I would say we were well on our way.”

  “It is,” Warner assured him. “The microwave transceiver is ready to be put into immediate operation as soon as the delivery vehicle is completed.”

  Pendergast glanced at his watch. “Then it should be very soon, Prof. Warner,” he said. “Even now, the remaining hardware we need is safely hidden away and should be in our hands within the next twenty-four hours.

  “And once we have StarLab, Doctor, our waiting will be over!”

  Eleven

  “Hulk said men better leave Hulk alone!”

  The giant green man-brute roared as awareness came to him. The Hulk was bewildered by the strange surroundings and angered by the thousands of people who seemed to be closing in around him in the O’Hare Airport terminal.

  He flung his thick emerald arms to his sides, swatting aside those reporters not swift enough to avoid him. Frightened, the other newsmen backed slowly away, but their instincts for a story pretty much overcame their fear of the man-monster. They held their ground. Photographers snapped pictures and minicam operators kept their video cameras rolling while anxious newsmen whispered tense, hurried commentary into microphones.

  The Hulk crouched with his wide jade back pressed against the wall. His dull-green eyes shifted constantly beneath his protruding brow, watching the reporters with the look of a wild cornered beast.