Marvel Novel Series 09 - The Marvel Superheroes

by Len Wein

  “I think that problem may take care of itself,” Cyclops assured him, with something akin to a smile. “Listen.”

  Now Nightcrawler could hear it, too, the faintly musical hum that penetrated the ice and air, growing steadily louder. About thirty seconds later, Banshee joined them on the surface of the avalanche.

  At Cyclops’ direction, he used his power like sonar, to take soundings of the snow around them. When he found an obstruction, all three of them dug until they reached whatever it was. In this way. they unearthed Colossus and Wolverine (the metal surfaces of their bodies still resolutely stuck together), debris from their crashed plane, and Storm. The girl was near panic at being trapped, but otherwise, none of them had suffered any serious ill effects or injury.

  When Cyclops said as much, Wolverine protested, trying to pull his hand away from Colossus. “I call this an ill effect! We’re still stuck, an’ Petey says he can’t change back to skin.”

  “That’s tough luck, Laddie,” Banshee sympathized, a twinkle in his eye. “From the look o’ things. Magneto’s made magnets of ye both, one with a positive charge an’ one negative, so ye’d attract each other. But cheer up. If I remember my schoolin’ properly, artificial magnets soon lose their charge. All ye have to do is be patient. Things should be fine in a day or two.”

  “Terrific,” Wolverine muttered. “Hey, Cyke, what are we gonna do about Magneto, anyway? Dig down an’ try an’ find the remains?”

  “No,” Cyclops replied. “I think we’ve all had about as much as we can take. When we get back to the weather station we passed before, we can radio the Canadian government and let them take care of what’s buried here.

  “Come on, X-Men,” he added, turning toward the southeast, “let’s call it a day. We have a long walk ahead of us.” With his teammates wearily following him, they began the long trek across the snowy wastes.

  And because their eyes were turned toward Canada, and rescue, none of the X-Men noticed when, behind them, some of the metal wreckage they’d unearthed began to move, slowly, painfully, digging its way into the mountain of snow and ice.

  Fortunately for the X-Men, none of the meteorologists at the drifting ice station were too suspicious of the six strangely garbed strangers who’d survived a plane crash and then walked unprotected across the ice floes, without loss of life or limb, aided by suddenly halcyon weather conditions. They gave the mutants food and shelter and let them use the radio to contact the government and verify their security clearance.

  Twelve hours after their arrival at the station, Xavier had arranged the X-Men’s transportation home, aboard an airline whose employees were very discreet about the fact that one of their passengers looked like a demon, and that two others were stuck together like metallic Siamese twins.

  On the flight home, Wolverine was morose and sullen, snapped at the flight attendant, and refused to talk to Colossus.

  “What’s wrong?” Storm asked him. “Are you sorry to be leaving Canada again, after all?”

  “Are you kidding?” Wolverine growled. “I’m sorry I came back here in the first place.” He addressed all of the X-Men, seated on the aisle in front of or across from him. “Let’s face it, what did we accomplish? We didn’t even beat Magneto. We don’t even know what really happened to him.”

  “No,” Cyclops agreed calmly. “We didn’t beat him. He defeated himself. But do you really think he’d have ever made a mistake like that if we hadn’t kept hammering away at him, together, every second? With a foe as powerful as he is, sometimes that’s the best we can hope for. The important thing is that the world is safe.”

  “Safe? Hah!” Wolverine snorted. “Sure. With an atomic bomb just sitting under all that ice, waitin’ for some other crazy to go up there an’ get it.”

  “Ye haven’t seen the mornin’ paper yet, have ye?” asked Banshee. He picked up a newspaper that the flight attendant had given him and passed it to his teammate. “Says here that the world was stunned when, early this morning, an atomic blast rocked the area northwest of the Boothia Peninsula.”

  “Then that is that,” Colossus remarked, satisfied. “The world is safe. Good.”

  “But they don’t know they’re safe!” Nightcrawler protested. “And no one knows that we are to thank for it.”

  “He’s right, Scott,” Storm said. “Don’t you think we should ask the professor to tell . . .” Her voice trailed off, and a smile lit her eyes. “I just had the most wonderful idea!”

  “Well, don’t keep it to yourself, Ororo,” Cyclops encouraged her. “Share it with the rest of us.”

  “All right. Didn’t the professor tell us that because no one knew what caused the missile accidents, all of the countries with atomic power were afraid to use their horrible weapons?”

  There was silence in the cabin as the rest of the X-Men pondered Ororo’s words. Then, one after the other, they began to laugh.

  “You’re right, Storm,” Cyclops agreed finally. “This is one victory that’s going to remain our little secret!”

  THE

  INCREDIBLE

  HULK

  MUSEUM PIECE

  by LEN WEIN

  He could not remember how it felt to be a man.

  Now, as he crouched on the grimy Belle Glade rooftop, bare feet grinding into the tar paper, bare back glistening with sweat, he felt only hatred and pain and uncontrollable anger—and those were the emotions of the beast.

  He could not remember how he came to be here, nor did it really matter. By now, one place of temporary refuge had become pretty much the same as the next, all of them blending together in a mindless miasma of shapes and shadows.

  With animalistic caution, he peeked out over the edge of the condemned building at the tiny figures filling the street below him, scurrying around amidst the incessant blinking of red police lights like so many insignificant ants.

  “You may as well surrender,” the mechanically amplified voice blared at him again from below. “We have the building surrounded. There’s no place left for you to run!”

  But that was not true. There was always another place to run to, always another shadowed corner in which to hide. But he was tired of running, tired of hiding, and most immediately, he was tired of being annoyed.

  Snarling, his great shingle of upper lip curled back over discolored gums, the brutish being rose to his full seven-foot height, his massive emerald-hued fists raised high over his tousled head in rage as he shouted down at his tormentors.

  “Go away, little men! Leave Hulk alone! Leave Hulk in peace! Leave now—or Hulk will smash!”

  The response to the man-brute’s anguished cry was regrettably predictable; a sporadic flurry of gunfire that struck jagged chips of brick and mortar from the edge of the roof. Several of the high-velocity slugs hit the raging Hulk himself, but they merely ricocheted harmlessly from his almost-indestructible green hide.

  The gunfire served little purpose except to enrage the roaring man-brute still further. Turning away from the roof edge, his huge hands clenching and unclenching in mindless frustration, the Hulk sought a means to revenge himself on his persecutors. And, off to one side of the roof, he found it.

  Lumbering across the peeling tar paper, the Green Goliath sank his thick, stubby fingers into the base of a large brick chimney. Then, with unnerving effortlessness, he ripped it free of its moorings.

  Two swift strides brought him back to the building’s edge, the crumbling chimney held high over his head. Carefully the Hulk peered out over the side once more. The little ants still scrambled about below him, pointing, shouting, filling the air with their irritating buzzing.

  “Hulk warned you, little men, but you would not listen,” the man-beast shouted, “and now you will pay!”

  Then, with a savage snarl on his misshapen lips, he hurled the chimney at the milling crowd below.

  Already weakened by the act of its uprooting, the chimney dissolved into a rain of brick and mortar even as it fell, scattering the police and the fe
w gathered spectators, sending them scrambling for cover. The crumbling chunks of chimney hit the street like monstrous hailstones, splintering the windshields of the gathered police cars into spiderwebs of glass, a particularly large chunk punching a hole the size of a medicine ball through the hood of an unfortunate Chevelle.

  For a moment, there was silence, punctuated only by the faint chink of broken glass falling to the sidewalk. Then, like rabbits after a rain, the police and the others stepped cautiously out from their hastily-grabbed cover. The monster still stood on the rooftop, railing against the sky.

  Crouched back down behind one of the battered police cars, weapons in hand, two uniformed deputies stared up at the raging behemoth in slack-jawed amazement.

  “Man, I ain’t never seen nothin’ like that brute,” said Jack Shackleford, an extremely overweight deputy whose belly hung over his gun belt like a bulging sack of flour. “What in blazes is it anyway?”

  “Don’t you ever read the papers?” replied his partner, Claude Hackett, who knew the answer to that before he even asked. After eight years as Shackleford’s partner, he knew the man’s interest in the fourth estate was devoted entirely to the racing forms on the sports page. Sighing softly, he continued.

  “That’s the monster they call the Hulk,” Hackett explained, with the patience of someone trying to clarify nuclear physics for a five-year-old. “Accordin’ to what I’ve read, he’s really some sort of scientist guy who accidentally got caught in one o’ them gamma-bomb tests they was makin’ a few years back. He turns into that ugly green-skinned thingie whenever he gets mad, kind o’ like that old Spencer Tracy movie—you know, ‘Mr. Jekyll an’ Dr. Hyde’?

  “Anyhow, they say he ain’t really responsible for what he does while he’s this Hulk screwball—but you try tellin’ that to the folks whose property he’s wrecked, or the people he’s busted up some.”

  “Yeah, pity the poor monster,” Jack Shackleford replied with disgust. “There’s always some bleedin’ heart somewhere, tryin’ to tell us there ain’t nobody who’s really rotten; they’re just all misunderstood. Hell, next thing ya know, they’ll be puttin’ Hitler up for sainthood.”

  To emphasize his point, Shackleford spat into the street, spattering his boot in the process. “The question now is, how do we get that big green gorilla down from there?” Shackleford added, after a moment’s thought. “Aside from burnin’ it down around his ears, I can’t think o’ nothin’.”

  “There isn’t much we can do, except wait for reinforcements,” Hackett said, glancing down at his watch. “They ought’a be here any minute.”

  “Well, they better get here fast,” Shackleford muttered, stifling a belch, “or there may not be much left for them to reinforce.”

  As if to add weight to the fat man’s comment, another chunk of roofing material suddenly came sailing over the edge of the building, to smash harmlessly into the center of the street.

  On the roof itself, the Hulk squatted, well back out of range of the futile gunfire that had provoked his violent actions in the first place, his feeble mind roiling in confusion. Why did the puny humans pursue him wherever he turned? Why would they never leave him in peace? And, most importantly, what was he going to do now?

  In mindless frustration, the jade-headed giant smashed his massive basketball-sized fist through the roof at his feet, then threw back his shaggy head to bellow at the moonlit sky—only to find himself staring straight into a miniature sun.

  Snarling in pain, the Hulk whirled away from the blinding brilliance, an arm thrown across his face to protect his piggish eyes from the glare. And, blindly, he scrambled across the rooftop. The sunlike spotlight followed him wherever he moved, pinning him to the roof like an emerald butterfly.

  “We have you covered, Hulk! Put up your hands and surrender—now!” The voice came from the sky this time, though just as mechanically cold and impersonal. Over the booming sound of the ultimatum, the blinded man-brute could hear the droning whupping of helicopter blades. So, once again the puny humans attacked Hulk with their flying machines.

  With a bellowing roar, the Hulk tore free a section of the roofing already weakened by his frustrated blow, and hurled it blindly in the general direction of the aerial drone. The slab of roofing sliced through the air like a scythe, shearing off the tip of one of the copter blades, and sending the chopper spiraling down to an awkward emergency landing in the middle of the street.

  But still, the light that was blinding the Hulk did not fade.

  From behind his clenched eyelids, the man-brute suddenly heard the stuttering sound of machine-gun fire, and felt a stinging spray across his chest. But the bullets did not penetrate his impossibly thick hide. They merely left pale indentations across his glistening pectorals, like thumbprints on a new sunburn. Within seconds, the faint marks had faded completely and were gone.

  “Ain’t nothing this side of an atom bomb gonna put a dent in that green monster,” said Deputy Malcolm Haywood to the pilot, as he squinted out of the second helicopter’s cockpit at the raging emerald fury below.

  “We’re not done tryin’ yet, Mal,” replied Paul DuPree, as he eased the control stick to the left, sending the copter into a graceful turn. “We still have those gasbombs we requisitioned from the Federal Armory. That ugly freak may be bulletproof, but even he has to breathe . . . I hope.”

  “Well, if these things don’t stop him,” Haywood said, as he carefully hurled one of the grenadelike weapons toward the roof at the man-brute’s feet. “We may as well just pack it in, and elect ol’ Jade-Jaws the mayor of the city.”

  The gas grenade struck the roof with a soft chuff, sending clouds of noxious gas billowing into the air. In an instant, the clinging fumes had enveloped the Hulk completely, sending him into violent spasms of coughing. Futilely, the man-monster waved his brawny arms before him, trying to drive the irritating clouds away, but his desperate efforts gradually grew weaker and weaker.

  “No! Gas will not beat Hulk! Nothing can beat Hulk!” The angry giant was ranting now, as if his words could somehow deny a fate his actions were helpless to prevent. Snarling low in his throat, the Hulk glared up at the helicopter circling high above him, the fumes from the stultifying gas serving to diffuse the harsh glare of the chopper’s mounted spotlight.

  “Machine,” growled the man-brute. “Always they attack Hulk with machines . . . but Hulk . . . will not . . . be beaten . . .”

  With the last vestiges of his rapidly fading strength, the monster hunched down, fists clenched at his sides, then leaped upward as if shot from a cannon, the most powerful leg muscles on the face of the earth propelling him high into the sky, even as the force of his leap collapsed what remained of the ravaged roof.

  “Get us the hell outta here, Paul,” Haywood shouted as he saw the savage shape hurtling relentlessly toward them. But it was already far too late.

  Even as DuPree swung the copter away, the Hulk’s viselike fingers closed around the landing runners on either side of the aircraft, leaving him dangling beneath the chopper, while giving the bizarre impression that he was holding it over his head.

  “For God’s sake, do something!” shouted the panicky Haywood, as he felt the copter lurch with the sudden added weight.

  “There’s nothing much I can do,” DuPree replied, “except try to shake him loose before he tears us apart.” And, with that, he threw the copter into an accelerated climb, its rotors straining against the extra effort.

  Below the whirlybird, the Hulk dangled helplessly, already all but unconscious from the noxious fumes he had inhaled, his sausage fingers still gripping the runners more from sheer stubbornness than any real show of strength. It was only the chill night air rushing past his face as the helicopter spun wildly across the city that kept the man-brute awake.

  “What in heaven’s name is that monster made of?” Haywood asked of no one in particular, as the copter headed south out of Belle Glade toward the sprawling Everglades, which spread out before them for
almost 4,000 square miles.

  “The copter can’t take much more of this,” DuPree said fearfully. “Unless we can unload that monster, we’re going down—and fast!”

  “Ain’t there anything you can do?” Haywood shouted over the roar of the aircraft’s straining engines.

  “We have only one chance,” DuPree replied, “and it’s a slim one. Just hang onto your teeth, Mal. We’re taking Greenjeans for a little ride.”

  Pushing the control stick all the way forward, DuPree threw the wounded chopper into a sudden dive, the swaying stands of cypress trees rushing up to meet them. Then, at the last possible instant. DuPree pulled back on the stick for all he was worth. The copter shuddered, the engine screamed, and then the craft snapped skyward again.

  The sudden wrench on his. already exhausted arms was more than the Hulk could endure. His numbed fingers lost their tentative grip on the helicopter’s runner, and like some monstrous wounded bird, he plunged toward the swamp below.

  Back aboard the copter, Paul DuPree finally regained control of his battered craft. He breathed a long, low sigh of relief, then brought the chopper around to search for some sign of his erstwhile passenger.

  “You see anything down there?” DuPree asked Haywood.

  “You’re kidding, aren’t you?” the deputy replied. “You could lose the entire Seventh Fleet down in that endless maze of cypress and buttonwood, and not find it for a thousand years. Even if that monster survived the fall in the first place, there’s not a chance in hell he’ll ever find his way out of there alive.”

  At first, the sounds were the familiar sounds of midnight; the monotonous croaking of a southern bullfrog, the piercing cry of a lonely heron, the soft slish of a crocodile slipping hungrily into the saw grass.

  Then, suddenly, a new sound rose amidst the mire, stunning the others into silence; it was the outraged bellow of a monstrous green-skinned behemoth, who had plunged into the murky waters of the Everglades in a gas-induced haze.