Original source material for Invasion story

Need a summary that notes that several other characters are going to appear, and gives bios for them

Chaos in the Valley of the Sun

Morning in the Valley of the Sun was usually beautiful, and this February day in 1961 was no exception. The air was thin, clear, and crisp, the sky a beautiful, cloudless blue, and the sun was quickly climbing the backs of the mountains to the east to spring joyously into its familiar home. The temperature was rising, quickly erasing the nighttime chill. And then the valley experienced something that was still new in its eons-long existence — hundreds of thousands of people heading to work.
Second City Construction had a contract with the City of Phoenix to add another new terminal at Sky Harbor International Airport, and work was proceeding apace. Early every morning, six days a week, Donal Regan, the job site administrator, held a meeting of the crew before they began the day’s work. Second City had been able to lease one of the big empty hangars, thrown up as temporary structures during World War II and now abandoned, for on-site storage. The crew was standing around waiting for Donal to speak, some of them interested, others bored. It was a fairly normal start to the day, but not for long.

There came the sounds of explosions and projectile fire, and shrapnel and bullets tore through the thin sheet metal walls of the hangar. Most of the workers rushed for whatever cover might be provided by the heavy machinery — bulldozers, road graders, and steam rollers — and a couple of brave but foolish souls sneaked peeks out of the various windows.

“I don’t believe it!” yelled a hardhat from a window that overlooked the deep pit where the foundation of the new terminal would be poured. “A #^@%!*& flying saucer, right outta da Sat’day movies!”

“It’s landing in the pit!” another one yelled excitedly. “Got some kind guns on the top, blasting ever’ting that moves out dere!”
It was a giant disk, flat on the bottom, curved on top, about fifty yards across, ten yards thick at the edge and thirty yards thick in the middle. Spaced evenly around the rim were hemispherical protrusions sprouting cannon barrels, rotating as required to acquire new targets.
There was a stem extending from the bottom, a cylinder some fifteen yards in diameter and ten yards tall. If the saucer landed, it would look like a mushroom. Donal peaked out a window, and was unable to stop an ironic thought from crossing his mind. Klaatu barada nikto! It was descending slowly, directly into the deep excavation Donal’s team had carved for the new terminal.
There was another loud explosion, intertwined with crashing and the shrieking sound of metal ripping as it crashed to the earth, followed by even more shattering explosions.
“That was a plane!” Donal shuddered — after a month on-site, he knew the flight schedules by heart. That was probably the direct flight from Chicago. He fleetingly hoped no one he knew was on the flight.
The airport already resembled a war zone, with wrecked planes and vehicles, shattered, smoking buildings, burning wreckage everywhere, and smoking craters in some of the runways. The hovering vessel had apparently fired on anything that was moving nearby, including birds, flags, airplanes, vessels, people, and animals. Now that there was no more purposeful motion nearby, the saucer hovered for several seconds, extending a ramp to the edge of the pit.
About thirty alien things streamed out of the saucer and took up guard stances around the edge of the pit. They were human in size and shape, completely covered in something silvery, and carrying what must have been rifles. They moved faster than a human could as they spread out. The ship then dropped farther, and Donal could feel vibrations through the ground as it landed in the pit, accompanied by a rumbling, crashing sound such as no one had ever heard, as the tremendous weight of the saucer drove the landing stem a yard into the exposed bedrock.
The workers behind him were muttering, and the volume was growing — there were probably people they knew in the burning wreckage scattered around the airport, and they were going to get revenge, or die trying. And without weapons, they would die. Donal made a painful decision; he had hoped to never touch this part of his past again, but he had skills that were needed right now, and he couldn’t just hide or do nothing.
“Listen up, ye!” he hollered. Many of the construction workers were ex-military, veterans of World War II or Korea (or both), and they recognized the voice of an experienced officer. The noise level dropped, and Donal kept talking. “If we just bust outta here and storm across the tarmac, we’ll all die for sure, and we won’t do any good for anybody! We need some weapons, and I can show you how to make ’em!”
That got them going. Donal started giving orders, and in short order, the hangar was abuzz with activity. As soon as he had all the men working, Donal gathered together some items from various locations in the hangar. He stowed them in a leather construction utility belt studded with pockets and pouches. Then he called over his construction foreman. He knew the man had been an army sergeant in Korea. “Zack, take over for me. You know the plan. I’m going to do a little recon.”
“You gotta be kiddin’, boss!” Zack started to protest.
“You have your orders, Sergeant!” he said firmly. Then he smiled. “I knoo wat’s oot there, laddie!” He tried out a phrase he’d just recently picked up here in Phoenix. “It’s nay me first rodeo, ye know!”
Zack had to smile at the way his boss had butchered that phrase. “Yes, sir! I’ll be gettin’ on with the plan, sir!” He watched Donal slip out of the side door, worry on his face, then turned back to the job at hand.
Turning back to the crew, Zack dispatched four men, who slipped out the rear door of the shed and moved quickly and cautiously across the airport with a mission in mind, keeping to cover whenever possible, and depending on speed and surprise to evade the bullets of the invaders when they had to cross open areas. Each carried rope and some tools, and they were looking for jet fuel tanker trucks.
***
Donal was out a side door of the hangar in an instant; he picked out a good observation point and was away instantly. He moved surprisingly gracefully for a man his size, using the wreckage on the grounds for concealment, and rushing unexpectedly across open spaces. He drew some fire, but managed to reach concealment in time, each time.
At his chosen destination, he stopped, took a few calming breaths, and concentrated. With a small sigh of displaced air, he vanished, to be replaced by the four ‘chauns (his pet name for the four smaller versions of himself, which resembled leprechauns, hence the super-hero nickname he had invented for himself but never yet used, of Quadrechaun). (*) At the same time, his mind and perceptions were momentarily overwhelmed by four sets of sensory impressions of the chaotic world around him.
[(*) Editor’s note: See America’s Greatest: Times Past, 1959: Fun Times Four in Chicago.]
Each of the ‘chauns was an independent being, with Donal’s personality and memories, but they were all in mental contact with each other. And somewhere in that mental network, a fifth mind emerged, which Donal called the overmind. Not exactly a part of any of the ‘chauns, the overmind was always aware of what each ‘chaun was experiencing — and could merge instantly with any one of them if the situation required it. The overmind usually integrated the sensory information coming from the four into a big picture, and usually coordinated their actions. It had taken a lot of practice for the overmind to learn to operate without a body — and to be able to understand and analyze four different sets of sensory data independently.
They split up the items Donal had collected earlier. One ‘chaun remained at the observation point Donal had selected, while the other three split up the rest of their equipment and headed off on their scouting mission.
This was the ‘chauns’ bread and butter. Their small size and superior agility, combined with Donal’s years of training, allowed them to be virtually undetectable in any terrain with even the slightest trace of cover. On chaotic terrain such as this, with piles of wreckage, craters, fires, and dust and smoke drifting everywhere, the ‘chauns were at their best. It almost seemed unfair to the aliens. Even if they had infrared sensors, the ‘chauns were using the various fires and hot spots to break their trail.
Passing between the alien guards to get a look into the pit was somewhat more difficult, but they had that covered as well. One of the ‘chauns, hiding behind a burning pile of wreckage, tossed some items through the air toward the nearest aliens. The aliens’ reaction was faster than a human’s, and they managed to blast two of the items in the air with their rifles, causing them to explode, while the other two bundles actually hit the aliens and exploded as well. As they were improvised grenades — bundles of nails and blasting caps wrapped in tape — they didn’t do nearly the amount of damage Donal had hoped for, but their main value was as a distraction, and the other two ‘chauns were past the scrimmage line and over the edge of the pit without being seen.
There were some kind of alien digging machines smashing away at the exposed bedrock, with other machines scooping up the shattered rock and carting it away. Already they had blasted their way another ten feet down into the bedrock. That was enough information for the overmind; he ordered the ‘chauns to withdraw.
***
Back in the hangar, they were ready. Several I-beams, one end slightly elevated, now lay on the floor and pointed at the saucer outside, the saucer end elevated on a crossbeam, creating troughs or missile launchers. In the down end of each lay a welder’s tank of compressed air, and a load and launch team stood near each beam, equipped with a sledgehammer and another tank. The bulldozers were arrayed near the giant hangar door, with many men crouched down behind them. Each man carried several bags, and there was a welder with a hastily altered acetylene torch riding just behind the blade of each bulldozer.
Zack watched the second hand on his watch sweep toward the chosen time; he hoped he wasn’t leading these brave men to their deaths. There had been some sporadic weapon-fire from the things lining the rim of the pit. Zack hoped those shots had all missed — whatever those things were shooting at, they were on Zack’s side. They had been ready here in the hangar a lot sooner than he had estimated. Donal had given them some ideas for other improvised weapons, but Zack had estimated that they didn’t have time for anything but the simplest. He hoped he wouldn’t regret it. Anyway, what they had now would sure surprise those aliens, who didn’t seem to be expecting any kind of coordinated counterattack. He hoped he and his men would be able to get some revenge, and that at least some of them would live through the coming attack.
Three… two… one… “GO, GO, GO!” he screamed through a bullhorn.
The valves were knocked from four tanks of highly compressed gas, and they blasted along the tracks the crew had set up for them, then tore through the thin sheet metal walls of the building. Four more makeshift missiles were quickly loaded and fired, and then the crews headed for the back of the building and the shelter of some road-graders and steamrollers, as the aliens were now firing back, and the walls of the building started to tatter. The bulldozers roared through the big hangar door, smashing it open just in time to see the first air tank missiles tumble, bounce, and roll through the line of alien guards and then smash into the side of the ship. The heavy bottles did more damage to the guards than the ship. Zack and his men then surged forward, close behind the bulldozers. Shots from the alien guards and the guns on the saucer fired into the massive blades, perhaps adding some dents and scars to the steel surfaces, but otherwise with only very minor effect.
As the heavy armor rumbled closer to the line of aliens, the welders let loose with long tongues of flame, using their modified torches as makeshift flamethrowers. They only lasted a few seconds each, but it was a fearsome sight, a wall of massive steel blades approaching inexorably behind intermittent bursts of flame. The bulldozer operators jumped, and the bulldozers continued, pushing a mass of struggling aliens into the pit. The men who were carrying bags threw them into the lines of aliens, and each bag exploded — they were filled with nails or screws packed around a timed digging charge, and literally dozens of the alien things were torn to shreds by the explosions and the improvised shrapnel.
The “things” turned out to be mechanical, though the construction workers weren’t in a position to care right now; with their armor gone, they were now scrambling to find cover. Then there was a series of explosions from the far side of the saucer — several of the other workers had managed to find jet fuel tankers, and they had tied down the steering and the gas pedal so that these trucks had accelerated into the saucer. The alien defenses had momentarily been distracted by the frontal assault, and they now paid for that lapse when the trucks exploded violently against the skin of the ship. Great gouts of hot, greasy fire consumed half the saucer as the jet fuel burned briefly. The explosions gashed holes and inflicted other damage to the far side of the saucer, and suddenly the aliens turned their attention from battle to escape.
***
One of the ‘chauns in the pit was cut off from retreat by flaming debris falling over the side. Instantly, he scrambled through the door that had just stopped disgorging digging machines, quickly finding cover among the remaining machines still inside the landing stem. The outside door slid shut, and all the digging machines, inside and out, immediately stopped moving.
The ‘chaun scrambled up a ladder into the ship proper. The inside of the ship resembled the inside of a submarine: narrow corridors, lots of bulkheads, and armored doors opening off each side of the corridors. The ‘chaun found an auxiliary control room and slipped inside. The room looked incomplete: the panels on the sides of the equipment cabinets weren’t closed tightly, the cabinets themselves were strapped to the floor rather than being built in or even bolted down, and there was a rat’s nest of cables, some of them taped together to keep them out of the way, rather than running them under the floor or through the wall. It was fairly easy to find a hiding place.
***
A low-frequency rumble started, coming from deep inside the saucer, then quickly climbed through the octaves, until it became a high-frequency whine that seemed to drill through listeners’ ears and tear directly into the brain, accompanied by a frantic hammering, something like piston slap. Anyone who heard it could easily tell that something was drastically wrong with the saucer’s engines. The whine shifted ever higher in frequency, and finally, thankfully, became inaudible. The frantic thumping steadied into something like a whir, and the ship lifted, wobbled, and slid horizontally first one way and then another, smashing into the sides of the pit and doing still more damage to its hull. Luckily, the other ‘chaun had made it out of the pit, as a virtual avalanche of shattered rock thundered down when the ship smashed into the walls.
The ‘chaun inside the saucer was stunned — Donal had never figured that the ship would simply cut and run when under attack. The ‘chauns had never been more than one-hundred yards apart, and Donal had never stayed in his multiple forms more than a few minutes before, and they had no idea what would happen next.
***
There was a cheer from some of the men who were pointing at the sky, and a flight of Air Force F-104 Starfighters roared past South Mountain toward the airport. Four jets thundered overhead, too low to go supersonic in safety, and then broke left and right, circling to come back for a second pass. The men on the ground realized the second pass would probably be a missile run, so they scurried for whatever cover they could find. The pilot of the saucer suddenly seemed to get the whole thing under control, and it lifted rapidly about a thousand feet, then shot off to the east, faster then the jets could follow. The damage was apparent — for a short time it trailed smoke, and the flight was somewhat erratic, but even with the major damage that Donal and his men had inflicted, it was easily faster than the F-104s that had been scrambled to respond to its attack.
All of the mechanical aliens stopped moving and dropped to the ground, and then suddenly flared into white-hot flames. A few seconds later there was nothing left of the invading robots except bubbling rock or tarmac wherever there had been a robot.
The ‘chauns quickly made their way together — then did something they had never done before, as only three of the four ‘chauns merged into one being, a man who looked much like Donal Regan, only a few inches shorter and sixty pounds lighter. They had driven off the aliens, but at what cost to Donal?

Meanwhile, In New York City

Lily Lovelace Martine had never been happier in her life. Last year she had married her longtime boyfriend Martin Martine in a May wedding, and life seemed to get better every day. Her acting career was taking off, too, as tonight was opening night for her first lead in a big Broadway play. As well, her confidence in herself seemed to grow every day, Martin’s new business was starting to take off, and, to top it off, by simply saying her magic word, she could magically change into her secret identity of Kali, an avatar of the Hindu goddess of creation and death, possessing the power of Shazam, making her the most powerful woman in the world. (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See Shiva: Times Past, 1958: The Birth of Kali.]
She knew she was beautiful as Lily, but she absolutely loved the powerful and exotic form of Kali, when she stood six-feet, eight inches tall, had four arms, a long mane of blood-red hair contrasting with coal-black skin, and yellow flame glowing from her eyes. Kali’s attire was just as stunning — she wore a dress of fine links of real gold, cinched at her waist by a belt of silver, with a flawless diamond the size of her hand inset into the clasp. Her sandals and the circlet that kept her hair back from her face were both made of braided platinum. She wielded the power of Shazam in the cause of right, and the best thing of all was that she could share her heroic life with her husband, for Martin Martine was the alter ego of Shiva. (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See Shiva: Times Past, 1953: The New Kid.]
Lily knew that, just as Kali was longed after by millions of men around the world, Shiva was drooled over by as many women, despite, or perhaps because of his exotic, almost bizarre appearance. Not quite seven feet tall, with light blue skin and four arms, muscled like a weightlifter, he had a third eye in the middle of his forehead, and a shock of red hair that stood straight up almost like a fire blazing around his head. He wore a chain-mail tunic and armlets of gold, and he was a perfect mate and match for Kali. Let them drool. There wasn’t another woman on the planet with a chance at her man.
She burst out laughing, drawing startled glances from the other diners, and an affectionate smile from Martin.
Martin Martine was also feeling good. His new business didn’t give him much time to get out and join Lily for lunch, but opening day for her first lead role on Broadway was a special occasion.
Over the years, Martin had discovered that his heroic responsibilities as Shiva made it impossible for him to follow someone else’s schedule in his civilian identity. This had caused him a lot of grief; coaches wouldn’t keep him on athletic teams because he was unreliable, and despite his quick intelligence, he did poorly in school because he was always missing classes. In college, he had realized that he wouldn’t be able to hold down a regular job after he graduated, so he decided to go into business for himself as an independent financial auditor. He’d had to start small, but his growing reputation for excellent service had finally landed a client from the Fortune 1000. Three or four others had recently made inquiries, and it appeared that Martine Financial Audit Service might have to start turning away clients soon. And he would be turning only twenty-three years old later this year, with most of his productive years ahead of him.
So the loving newlyweds had decided to celebrate today, meeting for lunch in the famed Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Martin poured the champagne, and they raised their glasses in a toast. But before he could speak, the midday sun darkened. A few people ran up to the windows to see what was happening, and the screaming began. A giant flying saucer had blocked the sun and was descending slowly on Central Park. Suddenly, the restaurant became chaotic as everyone started screaming and running.
Reflexes honed by years in the hero business spurred Martin and Lily to their feet, and they were able to escape the press of panicked diners fighting desperately to get off the patio and run toward the dubious safety of the buildings surrounding Central Park. Almost instantly, that panicked exodus left them behind as they had expected, and together they said their magic words.
“BVSSGG,” in a mellow baritone, came Martin’s word, calling on the powers of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Svargapati, Garuda, and Ganesha.
“Rakasha!” in Lily’s sultry voice, granted her the same powers as Martin, though the gods she called on were a mystery to the pair.
Their magical transformations were as different as their words — a mist of gently glowing blue raindrops rose from the floor, wafting past Martin, and he vanished, to be replaced by Shiva. Beside him, a hot red flame blasted from the floor with a deafening roar, engulfing Lily, then vanished, leaving her wrapped in oily black smoke that cleared to reveal Kali. And the two heroes flashed into the sky.
The giant saucer, almost as big as Yankee Stadium, continued to settle slowly toward Central Park. “There are people still in the park! We have to help!” Shiva roared, and the two heroes vanished, leaving behind twin sonic booms.
With speed of Garuda, Shiva crisscrossed the landing zone, carrying people to safety. When he realized that Kali wasn’t with him, he pressed his powers even more, and the bewildered citizens who had seconds ago been enjoying the crisp but beautiful day in the park were astonished to see literally hundreds of Shivas — as he moved from one place to another, leaving behind only a fading after-image in the eyes of the watchers. If there was an obstruction in his way, he didn’t waste the time to go around it; anything more than a few inches high was stripped away, as if Shiva was building a putting green for a giant.
Even at his most amazing speed, he had been sure that alone he wouldn’t have time to finish evacuating the innocent bystanders from the landing zone, but he finished easily. Puzzled, he turned his attention skyward and realized that Kali’s back was pressed against the bottom of the giant ship, and her arms and legs were splayed outward as she strained to slow its descent — and was succeeding. He was almost stunned by this incredible feat; he hadn’t even considered trying this himself. It seemed, though, that she had reached the end of her strength. When she saw that the area was clear, she relaxed somewhat. The aliens chose that moment to increase their downward thrust, and the giant ship slammed to Earth, smashing Kali underneath like the giant golfer’s foot smashing a bug.
The earth trembled like a magnitude four earthquake, and Shiva could hear people screaming and windows shattering. He hoped that none of the nearby buildings would collapse, but the civilian emergency crew were going to have to earn their pay without his help right now. Kali might be dead. He flew at the hull of the ship at terrible velocity, planning — if he had a plan — to tear it to shreds. So fantastic was his speed that when he bounced from the hull, the ship slid sideways a few feet, tearing a giant trough in the ground and producing more shock waves. Shiva was stunned unconscious as he was thrown up and away, and when he finally recovered, he found himself lying on the bottom of the harbor.
The wisdom of Brahma had been at work while he was senseless, and he realized that being smashed into the ground couldn’t hurt her, regardless of what was doing the smashing. She couldn’t be flattened against even the hardest bedrock; the rock would shatter, compress, or flow, and she would be forced into the opening that was created, just as a golf ball would be forced into the softer soil of the putting green if the giant golfer had stepped on it. She had probably been stunned, as he had been, but she had likely already dug her way free and was engaging the saucer at this very instant. He flashed skyward, and such was his speed that for a split-second he left behind a Shiva-sized tube of vacuum extending from the harbor bottom to the surface. He was back in Central Park before the waters could fill that tube.
He hadn’t been gone long, Shiva estimated. Kali was pounding on the saucer with little effect — no, as he got closer, he realized she was pounding on an invisible barrier about a hand’s span above the hull of the saucer, a nigh-indestructible force-field. She was trying to find out just how indestructible it was. He angled his flight to join her.
Abruptly, he was engulfed in something pitch black and fluid, like pudding or gel, or thick tar. It impeded his movements and slowed him down, but it was too viscous for him to shatter it, and he couldn’t grab it to tear it; it just oozed out of his grip. He drove downward with all his power, hoping to splatter it against the ground below, and he felt the results as he slammed into the force-field that was holding this goo around him. Good; here was something he could attack. He set to work finding out just how indestructible this field was.
And he had no luck at all. The gel interfered and slowed his every punch and kick to the point of being ineffective, and he couldn’t grab the force-field and tear it. He flailed about uselessly for almost a minute, which was a really long time for someone with the speed of Garuda, and then settled down to think. With the strength of Shiva and the speed of Garuda neutralized, he was going to have to rely on one of his most underused powers, the wisdom of Brahma, to escape this trap.

Abducted by Aliens

Kali figured that the best way to help the people in Central Park was to keep the giant saucer from landing, so she rocketed up under it, slowed, put her shoulder to it, and lifted — or tried to lift. It continued downward, not even slowing. She realized she wasn’t even touching the hull, though it didn’t matter, as the force-field she was pushing against was definitely solid. She rolled around until the field was resting on her back, then lifted again. The strain was incredible, so she pushed her powers ever harder, and she saw that she was having some effect. The aliens had been using their inertia-less lifters to slow the ship’s descent; now they shut the engines off entirely, and Kali was actually carrying the entire weight of the ship on her shoulders.
It was now just a matter of will — could she lift this tremendous weight? The calculating portion of her mind told her no, which just made her even more stubborn. She watched the ground, and as she strained, she realized that she was succeeding. Their descent was slowing. This encouraged her, and she strained ever harder, and she was encouraged even more as the ground below her started to slowly recede. She had done it — she was lifting this massive saucer. Straining her powers to their maximum limits, she then reached deeper, drawing on a supply of willpower and mental strength she had never before knew existed. And always, the calculating portion of her mind was warning her that something was wrong. She was Kali, world’s most majestic woman, but even her powers had limits — limits she’d fully tested before. How could she suddenly be this much more powerful?
Shiva was finally finished evacuating the landing zone, and she relaxed just the smallest bit. He would be here to help her soon, and together they would toss this alien back where it came from. Inside, however, the aliens changed tactics. They restarted the drive motor at high power, this time pushing toward the earth — and Kali, caught off-guard, was driven into the ground with the equivalent of a small planet smashing down on her. She was knocked into unconsciousness when she was instantly driven through forty feet of rock and soil, smashing into the underlying bedrock, with the saucer’s mass crushing down on her.
And yet, as Shiva had surmised, her invulnerability was proof against even this abuse. Her magical recuperative ability helped her regain consciousness in seconds. She almost panicked; she’d never before realized she had a touch of claustrophobia. But what human before her had ever had a better reason for claustrophobia? Probably none, she reassured herself.
The bedrock around her had actually melted due to the energy of her impact, then cooled off again quickly, and she was lying in a skintight, form-fitted abscess in the bedrock. Straining, she brought her arms down to her waist, shattering the stone around her. Then, forcing her upper arms back up above her head, she brought them together into a point. She used her lower arms to drive hand-grips into the cooled magma around her, twisted to start her body spinning, and then, combining her powers of strength, speed, and flight, she drove forward, spinning ever faster, like an invulnerable human drill bit. A minute later, she judged she had gone far enough, and she angled upward, and then she was free.
Kali roared into the air, arced back around, and slammed into the saucer — only to bounce off of the nigh-impregnable force-field. As she backed away to get a running start, she noticed that a portion of the hull had changed color, and then a large black bubble shot from the that hull section and engulfed her.
“Hey! Not fair!” she screamed, then quickly closed her mouth as the black goo around her started to creep inside. They can’t shoot things without a gun!
Kali struggled, but to no avail. The glop stuck to her, hampering her every motion. She couldn’t smash it, tear it, or even get away from it. She couldn’t see or hear anything. Her claustrophobia started to come back, and now she could barely think, such was her growing panic.
Still, somewhere in her mind was calculating something. There was one thing she hadn’t tried yet, something she’d never dared try before, though she’d considered it many times.
“Rakasha!” An incredibly powerful magical flame roared up from the ground below. The force-field surrounding the goo vanished instantly, the advanced technology that created it overwhelmed by the powerful, primitive magic in the flame. The goo burned instantly, and then Kali was wreathed in oily black smoke, and then she was gone, replaced by Lily Martine.
Realizing suddenly that she was several hundred feet in the air and falling, she shouted, “Rakasha!” The process repeated, replacing Lily with Kali — a Kali with newfound knowledge. She halted her fall and looked at the saucer, seeing that the hull section closest to her was changing color. She moved instantly, and when she stopped, she watched a black globe shoot out of the surface, almost faster than she could see, right through the place she’d just been. It vanished spontaneously, and then another section of hull began changing color.
Fool me once, shame on you… she thought smugly to herself.
Now that she knew the warning signs, she could easily avoid this weapon. She decided she was going to break through the force-field, so she moved in close and started pounding. She had to dodge several times, but she always came back to that same spot and continued pounding. It might have been her imagination, but she thought she could feel that spot becoming softer.
She saw the hull change color again, but this time, not under her. She turned to warn her partner, but it was too late — he was now caught in one of the gooey globes.
Kali thought that perhaps, working together, she and Shiva would be able to smash the globe and defeat the goo, but she would need to communicate with him to coordinate their efforts. It would be easier to burn him out of this globe and then show him how to avoid this trap. She positioned herself above the globe encasing Shiva and said her magic word.
“Rakasha!”
Once again, the magic fire blasted up from the earth, vaporizing the globe and the goo inside, and turning Kali back to Lily. Unfortunately, the aliens inside were now ready for this trick, and a tractor beam snatched Lily from the air, and a much-smaller vessel rocketed skyward, abandoning the giant saucer and dragging Lily after it. The speed of their flight was so great that Lily blacked out almost instantly, and the tractor beam dragged her aboard.
***
Shiva found himself suddenly free of the goo. He turned his attention back to the saucer and saw it shrinking, like a beach ball with a hole in it. The force-field was gone, and a quick examination did find the hole. The saucer was indeed a giant balloon, supported by the force-field, hiding something smaller inside, and whatever it was, it was gone now. There was a mist trail through the air, heading straight up — a phenomenon that Shiva recognized. When he moved at hyper-velocity, he carved a hole through the air, and when the air behind him crashed together to fill that hole, mist was formed. Of course, he wasn’t thinking about that, he was rocketing skyward at his highest hyper-velocity, leaving a much smaller parallel mist trail behind him. In femtoseconds he had reached the edge of space thirty miles up, and was forced to admit that he had lost the trail. Why couldn’t he have received the super-acute vision of Garuda along with speed?
It must have been a trap all along, a trap to capture at least one of the two world’s most magnificent heroes. And it had succeeded.

San Francisco Festival

Henry James once wrote, “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance… and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.” It was indeed art that made life for the thousands of art patrons visiting an art festival in Golden Gate Park on this late February day in 1961. The festival-goers were enjoying the mild San Francisco weather, the charm and uniqueness of the nearby neighborhood, centered around Haight Street, and the quality of the arts and crafts presented by over four-hundred exhibitors. It was a combination of Coney Island, a family picnic, a carnival funhouse, an art museum, a hobby house, a five-and-dime store, a jewelry department, a band festival, and an auction, all mixed together. If you added this to the Haight’s growing reputation as San Francisco’s most happening district, the festival was a must-see destination for tourists and locals alike. You had to see it to understand it; the full atmosphere was almost beyond description.
Wandering through the festival, a visitor could see open-air ballet, fashion shows, folk singers, sidewalk cafes, temporary open-air shops and boutiques, free concerts, dancing, and carnival games, without seeing half of what was available. Or the visitor could take a seat at one of the cafes and just watch people go by in this eclectic neighborhood, which had attracted students, artists, and other creative types thanks largely to how inexpensive it was to live there. One of the most striking things you would have noticed was how few unhappy faces there were. This was truly a festival enjoyed by everyone.
Alex Silverstone was one of the people who was really enjoying the festival. The Silverstone Art Gallery Annex, one of the hundreds of booths set up inside Kezar Stadium, was doing a brisk business, and inventory was just about all sold. There was another load in the back of her truck, a beat-up ’53 Studebaker 3R5 pickup that she had painted in an artistic style. “Tammi, I need you to watch the booth until I get the rest of the stuff from the truck,” she told her friend.
Tammi Paige was a stunningly beautiful girl who looked younger than her nineteen years, who stood at five feet, two inches tall. Today she was dressed like a pixie, all in sparkling silver, wearing leotard and tights with a tiny skirt, ballet slippers, and nearly transparent silver wings and a tiara to top it off, with her long brunette hair in braids; you could easily imagine her leaping into the air and flying away. She was obviously Alex’s favorite model, as many of the pictures and sculptures she’d sold today were clearly representations of Tammi. The young girl had a brilliant smile, and people who spent time with her often said she was so pretty that they could hear faint music whenever they were in her presence. But she wasn’t smiling now; instead, she was pouting.
“It’s time for Bryce to do a set. I promised him I’d be there, and you promised me I could go as soon as we sold out!” Tammi looked like she was about to stomp her foot. Bryce was their next-door neighbor, who sang and played guitar; he and several of his friends and fellow musicians had set up a booth as an open-air coffee house, and they were taking turns playing.
“I happen to know Bryce is scheduled for another set at five. You can go to that one. And I haven’t ‘sold out’ yet,” replied Alex. Tammi was about to continue the argument, so Alex put a little snap into her voice. “Watch the booth!” In response Tammi sighed loudly, letting the whole world know just how put-out she was, but she didn’t say anything else.
Alex hurried to the truck and quickly loaded two trunks onto her pushcart. They looked heavy, but Alex handled them easily. She was about five feet, ten inches tall, with short-cropped red hair and striking looks, though she was more often described as handsome than pretty. She quickly pushed the cart back to the annex, where she found Tammi in an argument with an older man who was standing next to a pushcart filled with books.
A quick glance showed Alex that there were at least six different titles, all mentioning aliens and invasions, and they all bore the logo of the same vanity publisher. An author named Eric Damien had spent a lot of money self-publishing his books, apparently attempting to warn humanity about an impending alien invasion. Alex guessed that this man was Damien himself.
“You can’t stand outside our booth and peddle your stupid books!” Tammi was furious, her pale skin now flushed pink. “You are scaring our customers away!”
Alex could see why. The old man had long, greasy black hair, tied back in a ponytail, which emphasized his receding hairline, and sported a bushy, Garibaldi-style full beard. His clothes were old, many times mended not too neatly, and mismatched, as if he’d rescued them from someone’s trash. His voice was a high tenor, and when he was excited, he sometimes squeaked; he was squeaking now. And he didn’t smell too clean.
“You must be one of the aliens, determined to stop me from revealing the truth! But I know everything about your plans — it’s all in my books! You can’t stop me!” He was shouting, and people nearby were moving away. Alex needed to stop this confrontation now.
“Is there something wrong, Mr. Damien?” she asked him sweetly, interrupting his tirade. She must have guessed right about his name.
“Our country is being invaded by aliens, even as we speak! I must warn everyone — you must all listen to me and prepare!” He shouted at the top of his voice. “Even now, they have begun their attack!”
At that very instant, Alex could hear people start screaming about something in the sky. She looked upward, and there was something hovering over the stadium — a flying saucer. A hatch was opening in the bottom of the saucer, and things were falling out.
“You see?!” screamed Damien. “All you fools ignored me, and now you will pay for your stupidity!”
“Tammi, warn everyone to leave the stadium. Make sure they know that you and I are here, and we’ll handle the saucer!” Alex snapped out a command.
Instantly, a very loud voice announced, “Attention! This is Miss Music! This is not a part of the festival. Please, quickly but safely leave the stadium. Palette and I will deal with the saucer. Please be courteous to those around you, and assist anyone who may need it.”
The voice continued to repeat the message, and suddenly, everyone in the stadium was rushing toward the exits.
The theme from The Twilight Zone was playing softly as Alex focused her eyes on the falling objects and exerted her powers, and suddenly she seemed to be only a few feet away from them. They seemed to be flares, and as they fell swiftly, straight down, the saucer followed more slowly. It seemed as if the aliens were giving the people below time to move away from the landing zone. The saucer had been hovering; as soon as it started to drop, the orderly exodus from the stadium became a mad rush, as terrified festival-goers suddenly panicked, even after the reassurance from the city’s greatest heroines, and fought to escape through the stadium exits, screaming and struggling.
The eerie background music changed to the opening theme from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Alex turned to her partner and suggested, “I think we ought to get into costume.”
Alex and Tammi ducked behind a partition in the booth, and for just a few seconds the background music played a few bars of an old burlesque song while the two women quickly changed into their heroic costumes. Then Alex and Tammi were gone, and Palette and Miss Music were on the case. Eric Damien had gotten an eyeful, and for a few seconds, he even stopped ranting about the aliens. The three watched the ship land, accompanied by Also sprach Zarathustra, with the climax timed to the landing of the ship.
During the whole time, Damien was muttering to himself. “Everything I wrote is true! Why, even their ship is exactly as I depicted it in my books! And now, they are coming for me, so I can’t reveal their invasion plans to the world.” When the ship landed, he turned to Miss Music and pleaded, “Everything is in my books! They may take me, but I’ve put all their plans in my books! Don’t let them take over the world!”
The ship was about forty feet from them, and a ramp extended outward. Three alien beings marched down the ramp, and the background music changed to The Ride of the Valkyries.
“Would you stop that?!” Palette snapped at her partner, and for the moment the background music stopped. In silence, the two groups examined each other.
The aliens were humanoid, with features similar to humans, except they were very short — none of them even reached Miss Music’s petite height — very skinny, and gray-skinned. Their heads were also much bigger in proportion than human heads. And they all carried pistols — very big pistols.
“They must be men — the smaller the guy, the bigger the gun he carries!” Palette chortled at her own joke, though Miss Music wasn’t amused.
“Crap! Space Monsters with Ray-Guns! We haven’t got a chance!”
“I’ll bet they’re saying, ‘Crap, it’s Palette and Miss Music, San Francisco’s AVant Guard! We haven’t got a chance!'”
“C’mon, Alex, didn’t you see that movie? The two beautiful girl extras get killed and dissected by the aliens in the opening scene!” Tammi was cracking wise to try to conceal her fear, but it wasn’t working. “And why do you get to be first? M comes before P!”
“Look, Tam, they’ve got eyes and ears, so our powers will work against them just fine. And we’re not the extras — we’re the stars!” Palette assured her partner, wishing she felt as confident as she was trying to sound. How could her power of casting illusions on solid surfaces help fight aliens? She knew a few tricks; hopefully they would pay off now. “Besides, they haven’t made any hostile moves yet; maybe they’re friendly.”
“They’re here to kill me!” Damien insisted, his shrill voice cracking with fear. “They know I know all their invasion plans, and they have to stop me from revealing them to the world!”
So far, neither side had moved. Then, before the humans could dodge, all three aliens pointed their pistols and fired. Pale gray beams reached out from the guns, and when they touched the human figures, they vanished instantly.
“I guess they are hostile!” Miss Music used her power to project the whisper directly into Palette’s ear, sure that no one could overhear. The three humans hadn’t ever been standing directly in front of the aliens; Palette had projected an image of them onto one of the walls of the Silverstone booth. Palette nodded and held up a single finger, which the two had defined as the signal for a particular attack.
The aliens appeared to be startled; somehow they realized that they hadn’t actually disintegrated the three humans. Suddenly, the stadium was filled with the sound of the 1812 Overture at the point just a few seconds before the first shot of the cannon, accompanied by some softly spoken words:
“This is the breakfast food that’s shot from guns.”
BOOM!
Miss Music exerted her powers to the utmost, strengthened by fear and adrenaline to a degree that she had never before attained, to amplify the sound of the cannon shot as much as she possibly could, and the epicenter of the incredibly loud explosion was in the middle of the small triangle formed by the three aliens.
KABOOM!
Miss Music had never put quite so much power into her projected sounds before, and even she was stunned by the results. The aliens were knocked through the air, as if there had been a real explosion. One staggered backward and slammed into the side of the saucer, then slid to the ground, stunned. Another was knocked backward and tripped, fell down hard, and rolled around on the ground, dropping his over-sized pistol as he clapped his hands to his ears — much too late to prevent damage. The third managed to roll into the door of the ship, and somehow retained his pistol. He fired wildly, but not a short burst like before, as he squeezed and held the trigger, sweeping the gray beam across everything he could see.
Palette was still using her illusion powers to hide the trio, but the randomly swinging beam was moving too fast to escape, and as it touched both Eric Damien and Miss Music, they vanished instantly. Palette’s powers weren’t much good for attacking, but rage consumed her, and she charged the saucer, running as hard as she could and screaming bloody murder. The door to the saucer closed just before she reached it, and she couldn’t stop — or perhaps she didn’t even want to. She crashed with a sickening thud and slid down the side of the spaceship, unconscious. The saucer rose into the air, its mission accomplished, leaving behind two wounded aliens and a devastated super-heroine.

A Cool Night in Pittsburgh

A church bell tolled midnight as a sleek, open-topped ebon-colored car purred its way up 40th Street and across the Allegheny River out of Pittsburgh. Once across the river, the car turned right onto the Blue Belt and sped away, quickly covering the distance to the small town of Millvale. As the name implied, the suburban town was home to a number of steel mills. Towering smokestacks belched forth clouds of black smoke and gouts of sparks that glittered along with the stars in the cloudless sky. The sports car wound its way between massive buildings where the night shifts continued to melt ore and produce the steel that was the lifeblood of Pittsburgh.
Veering down a road running alongside the river, the car’s destination soon came into view. It stood out very clearly in the darkness, the neon paddle-wheel visible from three blocks away. The Steamboat Club stood at the far end of a packed parking lot. The driver pulled in and drove up to the front door, exiting the car and leaving the engine running.
Inside the club, Monique Montague stood at the hostess desk, ready to greet any new arrivals. She saw the car pull up through the glass doors, and motioned one of the parking attendants to go and park the car. As the young man started out the door, the driver of the car held up one hand and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, son. I don’t plan to stay long.”
As he stepped inside, Monique was surprised and pleased by his appearance. He was a negro, of above-average height, standing perhaps an inch over six feet, and his body was slim, yet obviously athletic. He wore a dark gray overcoat over a burnt-orange suit, a matching tie draped down the front of his pewter-colored shirt. A dark, wide-brimmed hat with a similarly rust-colored band wasn’t enough to hide the most unusual part of his wardrobe, however: the dark gray domino mask on his face.
Before she could react to his entry, Gregor and Stan stepped in front of the man. “Dunno what kind of funny business you’re trying to pull here, mister, but you ain’t going inside,” said Stan.
“He’s right. We don’t allow no wannabe heroes in here.” Gregor, a dark-haired, brooding giant of a man stood head and shoulders above the dark-skinned masked man. He reached to grab the shorter man’s arm to escort him out, only to have his arm knocked to the side by a sweeping forearm block.
“Oh, so we got us a wise guy, eh?” said Stan, stepping up to flank the masked stranger. His move was cut short by a side-kick to the stomach. He fell back into a sitting position on the floor.
Gregor took a half-step back, crouching down into a fighting stance. “OK, little man. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The masked man stepped forward and to his right, then quickly stepped back and came forward again, this time to the left. The feint caught the big Russian off-guard, and the masked man moved in under his guard, striking the bigger man with a karate chop to the ribs, followed by an extended knuckle-punch to Gregor’s thigh. Neither blow was hard enough to do any real harm, but the big man reached for his leg as the muscles spasmed. Doing so, he brought his head down lower. A fist smashed upward into his jaw, snapping his head back. This was followed by a knee driving up into his groin; then that same knee smashed into Gregor’s face. He dropped to the floor, unconscious.
Monique stepped around her desk. “Well, now that you’ve gotten your exercise, sir, allow me to welcome you to the Steamboat Club. I hope there is no confusion, sir, but the Mardi Gras masked ball was last week. But I’ll be happy to take your mask if you wish to enjoy the evening’s entertainment.”
“The mask stays,” said the man, speaking in a rich-timbered baritone that filled the room without seeming loud.
“I see,” said Monique, snapping her fingers and waving a pair of red-jacketed bus boys to move the unconscious bouncers out of the lobby. “I’m afraid management has a rather strict policy regarding our customers: we prefer to see their faces.”
“Does that include the ones here for the gambling?” asked the masked man, looking her up and down. He smiled, appreciative of the expanses of coffee-toned skin revealed by her long, tight-fitting gown.
She moved closer, laying a hand on his arm and allowing a significant portion of her body to rub up against his. “You obviously have us confused with some of the… mmm, less-sophisticated establishments along the river. Perhaps, if you’d like, I can show you around the Steamboat, and let you get…” She paused a second, her eyes cast downward. “…better acquainted?”
“Tempting as your offer sounds, Miss…?”
“Monique. And your name?”
“You can call me Oxide. And I’m afraid I’m here strictly for business.” He reached inside his trenchcoat and pulled out a five-by-seven photograph. “Has he been in tonight?”
Monique looked at the picture and let out a light, tinkling laugh. “Him? Oh, forget it, baby; he’s much too pale to make it in the door here.”
“Sure he is,” said Oxide, putting the photo away and slipping a hand around her waist. “Like that would matter. Lou Misenti has his hands in every gambling operation in the Three Rivers region. If he’s not coming in here to check things personally, I want to know who is.”
Monique pulled closer, feeling the heat of his body against her own. She looked up into his hazel eyes. “I know everyone who comes in here, but information has its price.” She slipped her arms up under his, placing her hands on his shoulders and drawing him down to her. Her voice was a whisper in his ear. “So, what are you offering?”
His fingers played along the edges of her dress, where it fell to her waist in the back. “I’ve got plenty to offer, darlin’, but not tonight.” He eased himself out of her caress and moved gracefully toward the door. “Some other time, perhaps.”
Monique ran her hands down the slides of her dress, smoothing it out. “Come back some night without the mask and the guns, and I’ll show you the best the Steamboat has to offer.”
He raised a fingertip to the brim of his hat. “Oh, I’m sure I’ve seen the best already,” he said as he slipped out the door. Too bad the police can’t do a frisking like that, he thought, somewhat bemused.
Oxide vaulted into the car, slipping down into the seat of the modified Jaguar XKD racer. As he drove off, he toggled a switch on the radio under the center panel.
“You there, Dennis?” he asked.
A voice came back over the radio. “Colt? I was starting to wonder if you were going to make it out of there in one piece.”
“The two bouncers went down like bowling pins. I thought the Russian goon was supposed to be tough.”
“That’s what they told me. I don’t get out much these days,” his partner responded bitterly. He didn’t often let his confinement to a wheelchair affect him. He quickly continued, before Colt had a chance to become uncomfortable. “Any luck?”
“Don’t doubt I could’ve gotten lucky with the hostess. She lied about Misenti, but she might still give me a lead. That is, if Bruno’s gadget works.”
“Bruno’s gadgets always work, Colt.” Several miles away, in his estate in the hills of Duquesne Heights, Dennis David smiled. With the prices he paid, he thought, Bruno’s gadgets had better work. “You think she knows anything?”
“If she knows half of what she claims, she knows who’s making the pick-ups for Misente, and probably how much they are. But I don’t know what that’s got to do with this operation you heard about for tonight.” Oxide flipped another switch, and a smaller radio came to life. The sound of a phone dialing came out of the speaker. Oxide started counting the pulses.
“Lou, it’s Monique. Someone just came around looking for you.”
“It’s working, Dennis.” It was a button-sized microphone and transmitter that he’d slipped into her dress.
“You’ll take care of it? All right, then.” He heard Monique hang up the phone, then let out a sigh. “Too bad; he might have been fun.” Colt made a mental note to go back to the Steamboat sometime when he wasn’t on business.
“Satisfied?” asked Dennis over the radio link.
“That it works? Yeah. Local phone number, 732-9932; see if you can get anything from the phone company.” Oxide glanced in one of the rear-view mirrors and saw two pairs of headlights swinging in from side streets to fall in behind him. “Hmm, looks like Lou is a fast worker.”
“Trouble?”
“Nothing I can’t handle,” said Oxide with a smile. “Call Zeke; tell him I’ll try to drop this garbage off at his place.”
“Will do,” said Dennis, as Oxide turned his focus to his driving.
Oxide gunned the engine as he drove back toward the city. In a flat-out chase, he had no doubt the Jaguar was faster than anything Misenti’s men were likely to be driving. However, he wanted to lure these two down to the precinct house where Zeke, or Police Detective Lance Pautzke, was working. That meant driving the twisting city streets and watching out for pedestrians and other drivers. He had no illusions that the two drivers on his tail shared his worries about innocent bystanders. He stayed on the Blue Belt as it merged with Union Street, keeping well ahead of his pursuers while making sure they didn’t lose sight of him. At 16th Street he skidded into the intersection, the car turning to face south, then gunned the engine. The sleek black car leaped forward like the jungle cat for which it was named. By the time he reached the end of the bridge over the Allegheny, he spotted the first pair of headlights turning the corner to follow him, followed by a second.
“Zeke’s got men at the Grant Street station; wants to know how long till you get there,” said Dennis over the radio as the Jaguar turned right onto Penn Avenue.
Oxide glanced at a signpost as he passed. “I’m passing 14th on Penn; I’ll cut over at 11th to Grant, and it’s about three-quarters of a mile from there. Two minutes, unless some fool gets in the way.”
“Colt, watch those tracks by the train station; those back shocks are a little wonky.” Oxide smiled at the lilting voice coming over the radio. He could picture Mel in her grease-stained coverall, long hair carefully tied back in a braid, leaning over the desk to speak into the microphone.
“Don’t worry, Mel. I know what your baby is capable of.”
“That’s what worries me, you bloody Moor.”
Up ahead, Oxide could see the back side of the train station. The tracks crossed Penn Avenue on this side of the station, and 11th Street was on the other side. He saw a car start to pull out ahead of him from the station parking lot. “Damned idiot!” he swore as he stomped on the brake and swung the wheel to the right. The back end of the car swung to the right, and he cranked the wheel to the left as he hit the gas again, taking off across a parking lot. There was a twenty-foot-wide grass-covered embankment leading upward from the edge of the parking lot and the railroad tracks, and another embankment leading down into the back lot of the train station. “Hey, Mel, got a question for you,” he said as he floored the accelerator.
“I’m afraid to ask…”
“How are the front shocks?” The Jaguar was traveling just under eighty miles per hour when he reached the edge of the pavement. The smooth street tires slipped a bit on the grass, but sheer momentum kept the car moving through the weeds. At the top of the embankment, the car left the ground.
“Did you–? Are you–? Oh, bloody hell, please tell me you didn’t just jump the tracks!” screamed Mel.
The car came down just past the grass on the opposite side of the tracks, the back end of the car dropping down to strike the pavement, sending up a shower of sparks. “As you wish. I won’t tell you. And to answer my own question, the front shocks are just fine.”
Oxide hit the gas again, steering the car out of the parking lot and onto Grant Avenue. The back end was riding lower than usual, and the car was sluggish in the turn. He quickly calculated how much chocolate it was going to take to buy his way off Mel’s blacklist. Looking in the mirrors once more, he saw that one of the cars, which he recognized as a 1958 Corvette, had duplicated his jump, while the older Cadillac stayed on the road and was just turning onto Grant. “Don’t know what your guys have been telling you, Dennis, but Misenti’s hired himself some good drivers.”
Grant Avenue was deserted, so Colt floored the gas pedal and streaked through intersections, down to where he knew the police station stood. The Cadillac and the Corvette were racing after him, side-by-side.
“Aww, come on, you’re not going to catch me in a phalanx like that,” said Oxide as he swerved to the left and toggled a switch on an obviously handmade panel next to the steering column. There was an audible thump as a small explosive charge opened a compartment under the back end of the car, and several dozen spiked balls were released onto the road. He smiled as he saw the Cadillac slow down and fall in behind the Corvette just as he passed the police station. He saw a half-dozen uniformed officers coming out the front door as he hit the brakes and swung the steering wheel around. As the car turned one-hundred and eighty degrees in the intersection, he reached under his coat and pulled out one of two guns from his under-shoulder holster. Pressing a lever with his thumb as he drew, parts of the gun glowed a dim orange. He thumbed a dial, counting the clicks, then aimed and fired at the Corvette‘s front end. From a hundred feet away, he heard the grinding of the car’s brakes as the brake pads and rotors blossomed with rust. The brakes locked up, bringing the car to an abrupt stop right in front of the gathered policemen. The Cadillac, unable to stop as quickly, plowed into the back of the Corvette. The fiberglass body of the Corvette disintegrated to dust around two dismayed hoods.
Oxide tucked the pistol back into its holster as he gunned the engine and sped back up Grant Avenue, past the totaled cars and the officers trying to pull the drivers from the wreckage. Spotting Detective Lance Pautzke, Oxide touched a finger to the brim of his hat as he sped by.
“Colt! You there? I’ve got an address to go with that phone number,” crackled Dennis’ voice over the radio.
“Yeah, I’m here, rich kid. What’ve you got?”
“Address is 8843 Wharton Street. Matches up with the rumors I heard about something going down tonight.”
Oxide swung the car around a corner and started heading toward the Tenth Street Bridge. As the car sped up, he noticed that the rumbling he’d felt from the back after his jump disappeared. Then he realized that the road noise had disappeared completely, and he felt no resistance as he pressed down on the gas pedal. Stunned, he looked out and realized the car was rising above the surrounding buildings. He looked up, and he could vaguely see a circular shape in the sky above him. The car headed toward a darker rectangle set in the circle, and he realized it was an opening. He reached under his coat and pulled the oddly shaped pistol he had used moments before, slipping it into a compartment up under the dashboard. Flying saucers didn’t come along every day, and he figured the oxidizing pistol from which he’d taken his nickname was the most likely reason for this flying saucer to be interested in him.
Moments later, the car was sitting in a large bay, surrounded by robotic creatures pointing what appeared to be weapons at him. As he slowly got out of the car, he pulled the other pistol, a standard M1911 pistol, and laid it on the ground next to him, waiting to see what would happen next.

Do You Believe in Majique?

In St. Louis, Missouri, Valerie Coppersmith kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the radio knob of her cherry-red and white 1959 Corvette convertible. Even with the top down, the cold winter wind still tugged on her long, black hair, a trait that, despite her darker complexion, made some of her friends compare her to Morticia from Charles Addams’ cartoons in The New Yorker. As she headed northwest on Natural Bridge Road, music began to blare from speakers, so she spun the knob until she found another news broadcast.
“–ncisco, Phoenix, and New York City report encounters with what appears to be alien spacecraft. In all instances, the aliens have been repelled after facing either the military or costumed individuals. Officials are telling us that military bases all across the nation are on high alert.
“Hold on a second. We’ve got some breaking news coming in.” A pause. “It appears that one of the spaceships has been spotted in the skies over St. Louis. We have been told that the 131st Tactical Fighter Wing of the Missouri Air National Guard has managed to get a few jets into the air.”
Valerie looked up and spotted the aforementioned craft. “Looks like the oh-so-rich and even-more-generous Mrs. Riverdayle is going to have to wait for her fortune. It looks like the thing is head for Lambert Field.”
A few blocks later, Valerie made a turn and was heading north on Florissant Road. Vehicles were streaming toward her, away from the airport, and it wasn’t until she turned west onto Airport Road that she saw why. The police had set up a roadblock barring admittance to the airfield.
She hit the brakes and slid to a stop on the snow-covered road several yards from the police cars. One of the officers approached her vehicle, urging her to turn around and go to a safer location.
“If this really is an invasion,” Valerie asked, “where can I go that is safe?”
The officer looked down at the girl in the multi-colored, multi-layered skirt and white peasant blouse for a few seconds. “I’m sorry, Miss. You’re going to have to turn around.”
Valerie’s first instinct was to let the man know he was talking to someone important. After all, she was the one the police came to when they needed help. She was the one who had solved a half a dozen high-profile kidnapping and missing persons cases that the police had given up on. Unfortunately, this was not the time. Her intuition told her that lives would soon be in danger, and some of her more unique talents might be of some help. She flashed the officer a smile and put her car into reverse. As she turned around, there was no mistaking the sound of an explosion coming from the airfield.
Valerie headed back east until she spotted the turn off for Hanley Road. She had only gone a half a mile when she found what she had been looking for, an old dirt road that wasn’t listed on any of the maps. It had been years since she had been here; the last time was when she was a child.
Two and a half decades ago, her family had just arrived in the area as immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her Romany grandparents — people still called them Gypsies, even in this day and age — had camped here for almost a month before developers ran them off. Her father grew up and got a job, met her mother, also a Romany immigrant, and had settled down. Her grandparents had moved in with the newlyweds, and, almost a year later, she was born. When she was old enough to remember, her father and grandfather had brought her out to show her where they used to live.
After driving for a couple minutes, Valerie pulled to the side of the gravel road. Before turning off the engine she put the top down, since she feared that the white top might make the car more noticeable. Climbing out of the car, she headed for the field, and almost immediately stumbled into a ditch that hadn’t been there years ago. There was something unusual sticking out through the clay on one side of the ditch, no doubt uncovered by the recent rain that had melted some of the snow. Her intuition warned her not to ignore it.
She hated mud, especially mud that was half-frozen. Picking up a stick from the debris in the disk, she poked the object free. It was a wooden box; she immediately recognized it as Romany “treasure chest,” though it was rotting and starting to fall apart. She easily knocked the top off, and was startled to see a bag inside. Even from several feet away, she could feel the magic aura around the bag, magic that had apparently kept it completely clean even after years buried in the wet clay.
Picking up the bag, she examined it. “Where in the world did you come from?” It was made of heavy, dark blue cloth, about the size of a coconut, covered with magical symbols, and had leather drawstrings. Very “Romish” — a perfect addition to the image! she thought triumphantly.
Valerie opened the bag and looked inside. It was empty, or at least it appeared to be. Reaching inside, she discovered that it was much deeper than it seemed. The fact that the thing was magical didn’t really surprise her. She was no stranger to what those in the know referred to as the Arts. She had a few mystical abilities herself. She could affect emotions, and could manipulate mechanical objects at a fairly close range. She also had a collection of scrolls, but she had neither the time, nor the patience, to spend figuring them out. In all the time she had spent studying them, she had only figured out how to cast two spells. If she was going to deal with magic, this was how it should be done — with as much ease as possible.
“I don’t know where you came from,” she said, “but it would have been nice if you actually held something that could help me against the aliens. Something that could get me onto the airfield unseen would have been nice.”
Valerie’s eyes grew wide as she pulled her hand from the bag. Opening it up, she found a small ring that seemed a perfect fit for her pinkie. She slid it on and felt her body begin to tingle. Leaning into the car, she looked into her rear-view mirror. There was no reflection. She started to pull the ring off when she sensed that she should leave it on. A strong wave of intuition swept her: she was certain that if she removed the ring, its magic would be lost to her. She had other talismans of power that she wore, most of which appeared to be nothing more than costume jewelry that completed the Gypsy look she used when dealing with her clients, but none of them had ever given her this feeling. “All right,” she said to herself, “let’s go see if we can’t do something about those aliens.”
As she started toward the airfield, she saw a plume of black smoke rising into the air. There was a second explosion, and a second plume. Even from here, she could hear the sirens going off.
Five minutes later, Valerie was crossing an open field that bordered one of the runways. She made footprints in the snow as she crossed the runway, her eyes constantly scanning the skies, searching for the spaceship. A growing rumble drew her attention to the south. It wasn’t the sound one would expect a spacecraft to make, but then again, she hardly believed she would be hearing the musical whistling that accompanied those she had seen at the theater. She continued moving until she reached one of the airfield’s gray, arch-shaped hangars. She raced along the outside wall until she reached the other end. As she rounded the corner, she saw the spacecraft already touching down.
On the runway, two jets were burning out of control. Fortunately, she saw no signs of the pilots. Hopefully, they were already somewhere safe.
Valerie was about to cross the tarmac when the rumbling became deafening. She looked up and saw four of the 131st’s F-84F Thunderstreaks soar overhead. In a heartbeat, they were a mile away and splitting up the formation. Each jet performed a banking maneuver that was as graceful as any ballerina, and was quickly moving to make another pass over the airfield. She was halfway between the hangar and the spacecraft when the first of the fighters began a strafing run. She could hear what sounded like someone pounding on a bucketful of water as the bullets struck an invisible shield surrounding the ship.
One of the amulets she wore around her neck was supposed to offer her some protection from gunfire, but she wasn’t certain if it would protect her from what was starting to rain down from the sky. Her mind began to race.
“How could they be so careless as to shoot when there are people still in the area?” she cried out as she continued to run. She had only taken a couple of steps when she realized the pilots were firing because they didn’t know she was there. “Time to become visible.”
Valerie removed the ring from her pinkie. It turned to ash and crumbled into nothing. That confirmed the wisdom she had shown in keeping it on.
Overhead, one of the pilots had seen her sudden appearance and was alerting the others. The group leader immediately contacted his home base and reported this new development.
“This isn’t the first report of costumed individuals coming out of the woodwork to help repel the aliens,” was the reply he received. “Save the taxpayers a few bucks, and see what she can do. The minute that thing takes to the air, however, you know what to do.”
“Roger,” the pilot acknowledged. Since everyone heard their new orders, they withdrew from the immediate area and allowed the newcomer to take her shot.
Valerie was thankful for the reprieve. “Now, if I could just figure out what the aliens are after.” Before she could formulate a plan, Valerie was surprised to see the air around one section of the spaceship shimmer, and a panel slide open. That wasn’t the only thing that surprised her. Two small creatures emerged. Their skin was dolphin-gray, and they had two large black eyes that set in shallow recesses in their oversized heads. Long, spider-like fingers wrapped around the handles of what could only be guns of some sort. They moved with purpose into a nearby hangar.
While they were inside, Valerie spotted a group of soldiers rushing toward her. She waved her arms to draw their attention. One of the men pointed back, and they started toward her.
Valerie realized that, to reach her, they would have to pass by the opening of the hangar where the aliens were. She began to wave them off. Instead, she directed their attention toward the hangar. She held up two fingers to let them know how many aliens were inside. She also pointed her fingers at the soldiers like a gun to let them know the aliens were armed. The soldiers nodded and took up position near the hangar door.
Turning her attention back to the spaceship, Valerie decided there was nothing for her to do but get aboard and see what she could find. As she started toward the opening, the sound of gunfire erupted behind her. She glanced back in time to see one of the soldiers fall, a large hole burnt completely through him. The aliens were down an instant later. Valerie had to choke down the bile that rose in her throat. She knew there was nothing she could do for the soldier, but she could see if there was some way to prevent it from happening to anyone else.
Inside the ship, Valerie found herself facing a third alien. It, too, carried a gun and seemed just as surprised to see her as she was to see it.
She reached for the gun in an attempt to push its barrel away from her. As she did so, arcane words seemed to fall from her lips of their own volition. The shadows that lined certain areas of the hallway reached out and grabbed the alien by the arms. There was a sickening thud when it slammed against the wall. Valerie knelt and picked up the gun; if she couldn’t figure it out, then perhaps the military might be able to.
Valerie encountered no more aliens as she passed through the corridors. She was just about to round a corner and start down an adjoining corridor when she felt the ship jerk. She knew there was only one explanation; the ship was taking off.
She was halfway down the corridor when the ship lurched violently to one side, throwing her off-balance and in through an opening in the wall. The sounds that she could hear reverberating through the ship let her know that the Thunderstreaks were attacking with everything they had. She could only hope that the force-field she had witnessed while she was outside did its job now that she was inside.
“Sounds like we’re in a bit of a pickle.”
Valerie looked up from where she had fallen the instant she heard the voice — a human voice.
A man was hanging from the wall. Shackles built into the bulkhead held him firmly in place. He was a handsome man by anyone’s standards, whose strawberry blond hair was tousled, a sign that he had put up a fight when he was captured. He had build that could make any acrobat jealous, or any woman’s heart skip a beat, and was clothed in a skintight jumpsuit of an unknown red material. A mischievous grin seemed to highlight a boyish freckled face.
Valerie thought for a second, then began to recite the words to the only other spell she knew. There was an audible click as the shackles separated and began to recede into the wall. The man fell into her outstretched arms.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here, lady,” the man said, “but your magic is just what the doctor ordered. I’m Red Rocket.”
“Sure you are,” Valerie replied, somewhat skeptically, “and you can call me… Majique.”
“Sounds good to me.”

Stakeout in Chicago

Sometime earlier:
“Late at night, parked in a dark, lonely spot, nobody else around, full moon, just the two of us keeping each other warm…” she murmured into her companion’s ear, her husky voice barely above a whisper. “I could do with a little action about now!”
Todd Drake smiled at his wife agreeably. “Why not? It’s your turn to go for food. How about burgers?”
Bonnie Marlowe Drake looked at him with pained incredulity. “I thought tonight was pizza night — and your turn!”
He pointed at the calendar hanging on the wall of the panel truck. “Definitely your turn.” Her name was written in big block letters on the square for today. “I thought maybe we could try that new burger chain — you know, ‘five million sold’ — that place. They’ve got an all-night place just around the corner.” He pulled out his wallet and handed her a buck as he placed his order. “Two cheeseburgers, chocolate shake, fries. Keep the change — or buy yourself an extra fries.”
“Big spender!” she snorted as she reluctantly conceded. “I’m going. But just to be sure…” She picked up the pencil and wrote in his name on the next order-out night. So far, the twice-a-week order-out nights were the most interesting events during their two-week stakeout of the University of Chicago Nuclear Physics building.
Bonnie quietly slipped out of their customized surveillance vehicle, a nondescript panel truck that masqueraded as a U.C. delivery van during the day. She knew he’d watch her go with the night-vision scope, so she teased him with a little extra sway in her steps. He whistled silently in appreciation; what an assortment of assets she had: brains and beauty. Not for the first time, he marveled at how lucky he was to be her husband, and then turned back to the instrument panel and once more reviewed the case.
***
A month earlier, the DMT Agency had an unexpected visitor, Dr. Steven Perlman, president of the University of Chicago. Todd Drake and Tomas Thomas knew Dr. Perlman from their undergraduate days, when he had been the dean of the Atomic Physics Department (now known as the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering), but other than at U.C. Alumni fundraisers, they had only rarely encountered him since they had both finished school. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a social call. Nonetheless, they were pleased to see him.
“Mr. Thomas! Mr. Drake! How wonderful to see you again. Always nice to see successful U.C. alumni,” Perlman said, grinning. “Though I don’t quite see how degrees in nuclear science contributed to your becoming the most successful private investigators in Chicago! And, by the way, thanks for your most recent donations to the Alumni Fund!”
Todd didn’t tell him that their scientific training had been put to excellent use creating weapons, tools, and battle armor for Red Rocket, Lady Victory, and Tom Atomic; he just shrugged his shoulders. “That lab accident really took some of the shine away from the nuclear sciences for both of us, Dr. Perlman.” That was the accident that had almost killed Tomas Thomas, and, not coincidentally, had led to Tomas becoming Tom Atomic. (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See Whiz: Times Past, 1953: The New Adventures of Bulletboy.]
“Though, I must say, being a detective is often a lot like being a researcher. Anyway, what can DMT do for you?”
“Well… I need some investigation done, of course — but I need it to be kept quiet as well.” He gave them the whole story.
Some of the researchers at the U.C. School of Nuclear Science and Engineering suspected that someone was stealing their work and leaking it to the Russians. Several recent papers and newly publicized discoveries in Russia were eerily similar to some of the work going on at U.C., and the timing was extremely coincidental.
“We know that several people often hit on the same discovery at the same time, since most top researchers are working from the same body of knowledge. But one of our researchers made a mistake in his calculations — nothing major or dangerous and certainly nothing obscure, he just multiplied wrong. Fortunately, we always do several weeks of further research on any results before we publish them, just to catch this kind of thing. But during that time, an unknown physicist in Russia published his own research — and he made the identical math error. There are literally hundreds of mathematical expressions in that paper — it seems really unlikely that the Russian would make the identical mistake our guy made.
“Some of this apparently stolen research is classified. We need the investigation to be as quiet as possible. If the FBI, CIA, or police get involved, the publicity would do terrible damage to the university, and we would stand to lose millions in federal funding as well. We might have to close down the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department entirely!”
***
They had taken the case, of course — Dr. Perlman had been one of their staunchest supporters when Dr. Phillip Grenco, then president of U.C., had tried to have them thrown out of school, and both men still felt as if they owed him a favor. Not that he let them pay it back, though; Dr. Perlman insisted on paying their standard rates.
Todd had been hired by the department as a research assistant, and had taken the opportunity to bug the offices, labs, and common areas in the Nuclear Building. Bonnie had been running background checks on everyone who might have access to the research, including the administrators, staff, researchers, assistants, school police, maintenance and secretarial staff, frequent visitors, and correspondents with the researchers. Anything mailed through the university mail system had been surreptitiously monitored, and phones had been bugged. And every night they had been manning the stakeout.
So here they were, two weeks on the job, and not a nibble.
Todd was just starting to wish they’d agreed on pizza when the truck started to rattle and shake violently. He knew an earthquake when he was in one. He quickly opened a locked compartment under the control panel, but it wasn’t Todd Drake who stepped out of the truck seconds later — it was Red Rocket.
He didn’t have a lot of experience with quakes, but from what he did know, this was a big one, possibly magnitude five or perhaps even bigger. It seemed unlikely; he didn’t think there were any fault lines near Chicago, but he wasn’t the type to argue with reality. He was in the air and looking for people to help in only an instant.
There came a very loud smash from not far away, and then the sound of a car’s horn blaring, and then another smash even louder than the first one, and the whoomph of a lot of gasoline catching on fire. With the speed of a rocket, the hero arrived almost instantly at the scene, and he saw a car that had stopped in the middle of the street, and the car behind it had plowed into it. No, actually the first car had crashed into some kind of invisible barrier. There was a lot of dust in the air, plus smoke from the fire, and Rocket could see that the dust was constrained in a long, concave curve, but the air on the other side of that curve was clear — and he realized that the ground over there was still, while the ground on this side was still shaking. It was some kind of force-field, no doubt.
The folks in the cars were his first worry. He blasted the wrecks with compressed carbon dioxide, temporarily smothering the flames. He then started using his disintegrator and his magnetic powers to carefully cut up the cars and safely pull them apart. He used up the remaining CO2 in his small tank to keep the returning flames away from the victims as he helped them from the car, and his automated compressor turned on. Hopefully the tank would be refilled before he needed it again.
Cautiously approaching the invisible barrier, Red Rocket attempted to cut through it, first with his plasma-blaster and then with the more powerful short-range disintegrator, and when those failed, he launched some missiles at it. The plasma splashed, the disintegrator had no effect, and the missiles exploded harmlessly. He even tried to reach through it with a magnetic beam, but it seemed to block magnetism — and radio as well, as he couldn’t raise anyone off-campus. Bonnie must have been on the other side of the campus, or Lady Victory would surely have responded to his call.
Red Rocket took off and flew toward the center of campus, where he hoped to find the source of the force-field. Crowds of kids were streaming from the dorms, some of them in panic and some of them trying to help others. By now there were a number of alarms going off as well, adding to the chaos. Todd remembered evacuation drills from when he lived in a U.C. dorm, and he hoped all these kids had paid attention. He turned his external speaker to full volume and broadcast a warning at full volume as he flew.
“Attention! The campus has been barricaded, and there is no way off-campus. Please make your way quickly to the nearest open area. Please make your way to the athletic fields and other open areas!” He set it to rebroadcast, and continued his rescue efforts.
The campus police dispatcher came on the radio and directed him to the Bartlett Dining Commons, where one of the crenellated towers had been unable to stand up to the quake, and had broken off and crashed to the ground, with the other tower now threatening a repeat performance. He arrived just in time, and blasted the falling tower with his plasma-torch, vaporizing it before it could reach the ground. From here he could see the cause of all the current chaos.
A giant flying saucer had settled on the administration buildings in the Quadrangles, completely destroying them, and now hundreds of silvery forms were pouring from the alien vessel, chasing after the panicking humans. The aliens actually floated a couple feet off the ground, which made them relatively immune to the quaking earth, unlike the humans they chased, who often could do little more than frantically crawl away.
The flying aliens targeted the fleeing people with unusual weapons that looked like over-sized pistols, each with a hose extending from the base of the grip to a large bulb the alien was wearing like a backpack. When the pistol was fired, it drew an incredibly brilliant red line through the air, a line that seemed to pulse or writhe. When this narrow intense beam struck a human, it somehow wrapped that person, just for an instant, with a grid of seething red lines. Usually nothing further happened to the target, except perhaps being momentarily blinded, but occasionally the red grid would flash green, and then the alien would fire another beam, a larger gray one, and the green-wrapped target would simply vanish. This only increased the panic, and the aliens were able to float at will around campus, sizing up their victims with the strange flickering red light and then vaporizing those they selected, by whatever unknown criteria they were using.
Rocket was puzzled that the aliens would use weapons that left most of their enemies intact, but he pushed that puzzle to the back of his mind for now.
The aliens looked like the upper-half of a human body cut off at the waist, wrapped in chrome, and the movements of their limbs, while precise, were stiff and appeared to be mechanical. This was verified when one of the campus police shot one in the head; the head exploded, tearing open the body and exposing electronics and complex mechanisms.
Rocket tore into the alien robots like a fury. He couldn’t use his plasma-torch or his homing missiles; there were too many people around. So he flew at top speed through the crowd and used his disintegrator like a dagger, stabbing it into the heads of some aliens, slicing their necks as he flew past others. He was approaching a group of them; he aimed his magnetic beam at them and magnetized their bodies and everything in them. With their arms smashed to their bodies, the robots were unable to fend off their fellows, and shortly there was a group of robots stuck together. They were still able to fly, and they returned to their ship. Rocket managed to trap another group by enhancing gravity under them, and they were destroyed as they were smashed by the many-times-magnified pull of the earth.
Several times, Rocket managed to escape the seething red beams of enemy fire by moving quickly and unexpectedly, but the robots started to coordinate their actions, and soon caught him in a virtual cage of flickering red lines. But either his red battle-suit blocked their effects, or he didn’t meet the criteria for vaporization, and the beams stayed red.
“Damned ineffective weapons!” he noted for the second time, as he disemboweled the closest robot with his disintegrator and turned toward another. And then, without warning, his powered systems all failed at once, and hundreds of still-active robots swarmed over him.
Red Rocket was a superior hand-to-hand combatant — a collegiate boxing champion and highly skilled master of the martial arts skills originally taught to him by Minute Man — but without his powered weapons and his ability to fly, he had no chance against so many alien robots. They swarmed over him, and soon his defenses were overwhelmed, and he was battered into unconsciousness.

Two’s Company, Three’s a Team-Up

“So they’ve attacked St. Louis as well?” Red Rocket asked Majique. “Any idea what they were looking for? How’d you get free? Are there any other prisoners aboard?”
Majique didn’t immediately respond to his questions. “How’d you know it was St. Louis?”
“I’m a detective.” She’d already seen his face, so Todd Drake figured it was futile to try to conceal his civilian identity. He examined the room closely as he spoke. “I’ve heard about some of the cases you’ve solved for the St. Louis P.D. Pretty impressive, actually!”
Valerie Coppersmith flushed slightly at praise from the famous super-hero. Todd moved to the door, listened closely, and then continued his questions.
“How’d you escape?”
“I wasn’t captured. I sneaked onto the saucer to look around, and it took off.”
He shook his head slightly at that, but just asked another question. “Did you see any aliens?”
“Soldiers killed two of them on the ground. I only saw one, and… I think I — I think I killed it.” Val was not a violent person, and now that she had time to think about what had happened, reaction was starting to set in. She started shaking violently, and she felt as if she was going to throw up. Rocket touched her gently on her shoulder, but she jerked away as if from an electric spark. He decided the best thing he could do was be to keep her busy.
He picked up the gun she had dropped. It was something like a pistol, and there was a volleyball-sized globe hanging from the grip by a short hose. It was identical to those used by the robots that had captured him, except for the hose and globe, as the hose on the robots had extended over their shoulder into a backpack. Rocket was starting to wonder about these pistols. In Chicago they had been very ineffective weapons.
Red Rocket examined it closely, being careful never to point it at Majique. There was no obvious trigger. “Did you see any of them use one of these?” She shook her head. “We might have time to experiment later.” Reluctantly, he carefully laid the pistol down on the floor; the scientist in him wanted to figure it out right now, but the heroic adventurer knew there were other priorities. He hated leaving it behind, but even smashing it could be dangerous, and it was too awkward to carry.
“So, they took my combat suit when they captured me. Can you use your powers to find it?” he asked her, getting back to the business at hand.
“They don’t work that way. I can find people by sensing their emotions, but I’m not good at finding things.”
“How about a spell, like the one that freed me?” he interrupted.
“I don’t know any finding spells.” She shuddered again, thinking of how she had just used the only other spell she knew. And then she stopped, as her intuition gave her a possibility. “Hold on — I may have something that can help.” She pulled open the blue bag and reached inside.
I could really use something to help us out, here! she thought to the bag. Something to help the hero find his armor. She closed her hand, and there was a thin rod of some sort lying across her palm. Unlike the ring, whatever this was didn’t come out easily; she had to strain both physically and psychically to pull it forth. It turned out to be a smooth black rod about eight inches long and the diameter of a pencil, with some kind of gem mounted on the end — a small magic wand. Her intuition told her it could help — and also, not to put it down.
She held it high overhead and gestured grandly. “Wand, bring me Red Rocket’s armor.” Nothing happened. Angrily, she pulled it down and pointed it at Rocket, who immediately stepped aside. She turned slightly to adjust, and he moved again.
“Stand still!” she ordered him angrily, but he moved more quickly than she could follow, stepping in closer, pushing her arm aside, and slipping behind her. He reached around her with both arms, one arm clasping the wrist to prevent her from waving that wand around any further, the other clamping down over her mouth. She tried to bite him.
“Listen,” he whispered in her ear. “I don’t know you — no way am I going to let you use an unknown magic wand on me!” She started to retort, but all she could do was mumble. “OK, now watch the jewel!” he ordered, and forced her to turn through a wide arc. Partway through the turn, the gem started to glow; as they turned more, it glowed even brighter and then started to dim again. “Understand?” She nodded. He let her go.
“Don’t you ever touch me like that again!” she hissed sharply.
“Agreed,” he replied easily. “Unless you point a potential weapon at me again,” he added a bit more sharply.
She nodded reluctantly. “How did you know how to make it work?” she asked.
“Didn’t, actually. But I saw it start to glow when you were swinging it around, so I took a guess. I’ve had a little experience with magic.”
It wasn’t just an idle boast. He’d fought against Wizzo the Wizard, perhaps the most powerful mage on the planet since Ibis the Invincible had vanished. (*) Majique had studied the stories on those battles jealously; she coveted the many powerful magical artifacts Wizzo had used. A stunning realization came upon her. Through great luck, she was now closer than she had ever been before in her life to obtaining her secret desire.
[(*) Editor’s note: See Red Rocket & Tom Atomic: Times Past, 1956: Right and Magic.]
I’ve got to get Red Rocket to show me where those things are! she thought to herself. Finally! A chance at the power I’ve always deserved! Although, of course, they had to first get away from the aliens. Reluctantly, she brought her thoughts back to the present.
The rod pointed through the one of the walls of the room, so they were going to have to use the corridors. “The door to outside is that way,” Majique said, pointing to the left. “The corridor is narrow, and there are a lot of closed doors on both sides. Also, there’s a dead alien…”
“Did you see any cross-corridors going in the right direction?” he asked. She shook her head. “OK, stay here for a second.” Before she could ask why, he was out the door and moving to the left. An instant later he was back, carrying the alien.
“Hope he doesn’t have any broken bones, or it could’a messed him up carrying him,” he said, gently laying the alien body on the floor.
“He’s alive?” Majique was thrilled to hear she wasn’t a killer — and a little apprehensive being around a living alien.
“He’s breathing, at least,” Rocket replied. “I don’t want to carry him with us. Do you have anything we can use to tie him up?”
She thought for a second, then tucked the wand into the sash she used as a belt, feeling relieved when it didn’t vanish. “Turn your head!” she ordered him, then lifted her skirts and pulled a wicked-looking dagger from a sheath on her leg. A couple of quick slashes, and she’d cut some long strips from the bottom of one of her petticoats. They quickly bound the alien.
“OK. Time to go exploring!”

***

Master Man led Shiva several miles straight up, and Shiva was stunned to realize that they were in a gigantic cone-shaped room, now approaching the point of the cone.
“Yes — we are in my Sanctum, a giant hall carved from the living heart of Mt. Everest,” Master Man responded to his observation. “And this–” He directed their flight through a short tunnel in one of the walls into a very interesting room: two walls completely covered with books, and the wall between them a giant TV screen. “–is where I monitor the world, so I can fly to the aid of those who need me. Though you and Kali haven’t left me much to do recently!”
“So why the cold welcome down below?” Shiva wondered. “It sure looked to me like you were about to be overwhelmed by alien robots! I never got beat up by another hero before.” Not that there were any other heroes who could beat him up, except perhaps Kali.
“Sorry.” Master Man sounded sheepish, and Shiva knew the apology was real. “I was just a boy back in the 1920s when Shazam visited me under the guise of a kindly old doctor and gave me a magic pill he called the vitacap. (*) I didn’t even know who the doctor was back then, especially since it was over a decade before Captain Marvel showed up. But three months before Shazam created the Big Red Cheese, he revealed himself to me and provided me with my Troublescope–” He indicated the giant television-like monitoring device. “–and told me he wanted me to be his backup in case of problems with Marvel. Sort of a low blow, you see? I was first, and up until then, I’d had a pretty spectacular career, even if very few had heard about me. Why not have Marvel be my backup? But I accepted it. It was pretty tough for a while, mostly sitting around waiting for some disaster that Captain Marvel couldn’t handle alone.
[(*) Editor’s note: See Master Man, Master Comics #1 (March, 1940) and Captain Marvel: Master Race.]
“Originally, I made my home in a lofty castle I built atop Mount McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America. But with Captain Marvel more active there than any other place in the world, I decided to relocate to the world’s tallest mountain — Mount Everest. So I began building an even grander headquarters for myself here — the Sanctum — and bided my time.” He waved his arms, indicating the incredible cavern around them. “And then up popped the Captain Marvel Junior and Mary Marvel, and then the Lieutenant Marvels, and I could’ve slept for the next few years and nobody would have known the difference!”
Shiva was starting to see where this was going, so he spoke up. “And then the Marvel Family suddenly vanished, a situation Shazam had seemingly created you for, but instead he made me and Kali!” Master Man seemed a little uneasy, but nodded. Shiva continued. “Yeah, no wonder you were peeved! But you know, I never asked for my powers!”
“Look, let’s forget the whole thing for now.” Master Man was definitely uneasy. “I’ve kept myself busy, as you’ve seen,” he said, sweeping his arms to indicate the incredible museum within a mountain he had created. “We have an alien invasion to worry about. And we need to find Kali.”
As Master Man touched some controls, a montage of scenes began flickering across the Troublescope faster than any normal human could follow. Together they watched several alien attacks, and saw several heroes get captured, carried off, or vaporized while driving off those attacks. But none of Master Man’s various spy devices was able to make out where the alien ships went when they flew away.
“Those aliens are pretty tough,” said Shiva. “I think we could use some help — and there are a bunch of heroes searching for their partners. Why don’t we contact them all and see if we can work together?”
“I’m not normally a work-together type of guy,” Master Man said hesitantly.
“You don’t have to hide away inside a mountain just because Shazam told you you’re his secret weapon!” Shiva insisted. “Now’s a perfect time for you to go public!” Master Man looked indecisive. “Look, Shazam himself sent me here to get help.”
The older hero made up his mind. “You’re right. Let’s get started!”

***

Using Val Coppersmith’s dagger, Red Rocket was able to pry the chains loose from the wall, gaining two vicious weapons in the process. He then convinced Majique to use her powers in a new fashion — instead of blocking out all the ambient psychic impressions of living, thinking beings looking for a single person much farther away, could she locate any other thinking beings nearby?
She concentrated, and within a few seconds she reported, “More people — but no more bug-eyed monsters. Same direction as your battle-suit.”
“There were several hundred robots in Chicago,” he mentioned.
“If I could sense any robots, I would have said so.” She was a little testy, as she’d already told him her power sensed living things.
He held both hands up to fend off the argument and smiled. “Let’s get moving!”
They cautiously opened the door to the next room down the corridor, and inside there were two low tables, several cabinets and workbenches, and a lot of unknown equipment. One of the tables was covered with a pile of clothes, and on the other was a motionless human — a black man wearing only underwear. The light in the room was an unusual blue color. As soon as she realized the man was breathing, Majique rushed into the room. Rocket grabbed her arm to stop her, but she twisted free. Good technique! he thought fleetingly, as she got a step into the room and then collapsed to the floor.
Some cautious experimentation proved to Todd that he didn’t want to go into that room himself. He squatted by the door, leaned away from it, and stuck his hand into the room — only to wake up lying on his back, having tumbled away from the danger as planned. He couldn’t enter, and she was too far for him to lasso her with his chains. He was going to have to go on alone.
The next room was a control room, with a window looking into the blue-lit room. On a table, along with some other equipment, was his battle-suit. Before putting it on, he examined it closely — something had caused the power drain that had allowed him to be captured, and he found something. It looked like a flat artificial spider, squashed flat against the lower back of his costume, with legs outstretched and digging into the material, locking it in place.
Must not be metallic, or my force-field would have kept it out, he thought to himself as he carefully inspected the device. He stretched the upper-half of the suit out on the floor and smashed the device with his chains, then donned the boots and ground the remaining pieces to dust. The built-in system diagnostics showed that his systems were back to normal. Have to watch out for more of those things, he warned himself as he finished suiting up.
Red Rocket finished his inspection of the control room. The general appearance was of something hastily thrown together, not the shining perfection he’d expected from watching various science-fiction films. He paid particular attention to the many cables and bundles of wires criss-crossing the floor behind the various cabinets of controls. He assumed the thickest cable would be carrying power, and his electromagnetic sensors confirmed the presence of a powerful electromagnetic field around that cable. His disintegrator flashed, and both rooms went dark. Todd turned on his floodlight at very low power, and used the disintegrator to slice through the window. He could detect no power in the next room.
Majique began to sit up. “Geez, I have an awful headache!” she complained.
“Be glad you’re alive!” he replied. “You know what they say — ‘only fools rush in’!” As he was helping her to her feet, they heard a moan — the unknown captive started stirring. They rushed to his side.
His eyes opened, and his head snapped around — and then he moaned in pain, and he moved his hands to his head. “$#!*, that hurts!” More slowly, he looked around again. “I guess it means I’m alive, though. You’re Red Rocket, aren’t you? Are you the rescue team?” He started to sit up, and Rocket and Majique helped him. “Thanks!” He was breathing deliberate, long deep breaths.
“Not exactly a rescue. We were captured, too, so it’s more like an escape team. Not feeling too well, eh?”
“Terrible headache!” he agreed. It seemed to be painful for him to talk, and he continued his deep breathing.
“I have a pretty bad headache, too,” Majique said. “Must be some side-effect of whatever knocked us out.”
“It reminds me of sleep apnea,” he told her. “Whatever knocked us out caused us to have problems breathing, and there was a buildup of carbon dioxide in our blood. Breathe deep, and as soon as the CO2 gets flushed, you’ll feel better.” Majique looked dubious, while the unknown man continued to breathe deeply.
“Who are you, by the way?” the man asked Majique.
“Umm… you can call me Majique.”
“Oh, that fortune teller from St. Louis–” She bristled, before he continued. “–who’s solved so many ‘impossible’ cases for the St. Louis Police. Heard good things about you — nice to meet you. Never heard you were such a fox, though.” That mollified her somewhat.
“And just who are you?” she demanded.
“Hold on a second.” He hopped off the table, swayed a little bit, then regained his balance. Moving carefully to the table that was piled with clothing, he started pulling on an obviously expensive burnt orange business suit. “You can call me Oxide. I’m from Pittsburgh, and just getting started in the mystery-man game. Never expected to get caught up in a flying saucer, though.” While he dressed, he told them the story of his capture, carefully omitting any reference to the oxidation pistol. Within a few moments he was dressed, and he slipped his M1911 pistol, which had been in the pile on the table, into one of the empty shoulder holsters.
“You look like you’re feeling better,” Rocket commented.
“Yeah, I’m about good as new.” Neither man commented when Majique started drawing long, slow breaths.
At that instant, the sound of the saucer’s engines changed tone, and Red Rocket recognized the change. “We’d better get ready for action. We’re landing.”

The Frantic Four

“I imagine they’ll come looking for us after we land,” Oxide suggested. “I’d sure like to be able to get some stuff from my car before that.”
That was another chance for Majique to strut her stuff, she realized. Wand, show us the way to Oxide’s car! she commanded mentally. The wand changed instantly into a fine gray dust. Disgusted, she reached for the bag at her waist, then stopped abruptly as her magical intuition flared a strong warning of danger. She was rather flustered when Red Rocket turned toward her.
“Sorry — the items from the bag only work once, and the bag needs some time to recharge!” She was apologetic, and even her best attempt at self-control couldn’t keep her cheeks from reddening with embarrassment. How inept a mage did that make her sound? “I didn’t expect to be captured by aliens today!” She stopped when she realized she was whining, then snarled, “I’ll make sure I’m carrying more powerful tools next time.”
“It’s this way,” Rocket said, pointing at the bulkhead behind her. “I can detect the radios with my electromagnetic sensors.” He turned one of the heavy tables on its side. “You guys should take cover while I use my disintegrator.”
Red Rocket crouched down near the bulkhead, started the disintegrator, and started tracing out a circle on the floor a little larger than a manhole cover. The room was filled with flashing light and a wave of heat as the tough material of the floor resisted, but the incredibly intense heat released by the controlled fusion of hydrogen was more than any material could long withstand. In only a few seconds, the circular section of the floor fell into the room below. Rocket quickly blasted the hot edge with super-cooled carbon dioxide, then dropped through into the dark room below, and helped Majique and Oxide down.
Before they could explore, there was an uncomfortable thump that knocked them off their feet, and then the saucer’s engine noise stopped. They had arrived… somewhere.

***

Lily Lovelace wasn’t exactly sure when she regained consciousness. Absolute darkness, total silence, absence of bodily sensations, all without self-awareness, gradually gave way to absolute darkness, total silence, absence of bodily sensations, and slowly growing self-awareness. The change didn’t seem to matter; Lily knew she existed and was satisfied, and then the satisfaction gradually evolved as well, and she started to realize something was missing. And then she slowly started to remember another way of living — and then suddenly, as if a lightning bolt had struck her, she remembered everything. She sat up with a scream and opened her eyes.
Except she didn’t move, and there was no noise. She was able to see straight up, but she couldn’t turn her head, and she realized that she couldn’t move, but at least she could feel her body, and now she could feel pain. Lily hurt everywhere, as if someone had worked her over with a rubber mallet, not hitting her hard enough to break anything, but not missing a spot — the effects of the violent acceleration the aliens had used to capture her, no doubt. And then she realized that she could move a little, by wiggling her fingers and toes, and moving her eyes, but she was encased in a series of straps that held her firmly in place against a firm cushion. The straps made it difficult to breathe deeply, but she had enough breath to speak her word — so she did.
But nothing happened, not even a mumble. Lily tried to speak, she tried to sing, but nothing happened. She was still able to whistle, so it seemed as if her vocal cords were paralyzed. She tried using her whistle to form words, but she couldn’t make the R sound. Lily was well and truly trapped, she knew, and fought against her rising panic. Kali was not afraid of anything; she struggled to evoke the courage that was one of her powers in her heroic form, but she wasn’t completely successful — the panic was there, lurking in the back of her mind, but for the moment at least she could think. If the situation changed, even slightly, however, she knew it might leap on her like a hungry predator.
Lily found that, by straining, she could actually roll her head slightly to either side, and she examined her trap. She was in a large room, and there were all sorts of what appeared to be alien instruments arrayed around whatever she was lying on. The image of being abducted by aliens who might want to dissect her, like something out of a lurid sci-fi story, leaped into her mind, and for a few moments Lily went away, and a primitive wild animal struggled to escape from the bonds on the table. Lily’s mind only returned when her struggling body was exhausted.
Without the energy to continue struggling, Lily wearily examined as much of the room she could see. She could barely glimpse a couple of other tables, and at least one of them had another human strapped to it, also surrounded by alien instruments. Finally, she studied the bank of instruments surrounding her: a concave device like a radar dish, some mechanical arms with disturbingly human-like hands, some things that looked like flashlights mounted on other mechanical arms, and an array of what might be cameras — boxes the size of a deck of cards with a round tube sticking out of one end, hanging from the ceiling, the tubes all aimed at her. She hoped they were cameras, and not weapons, or something even more sinister.
Off to her right she could see what appeared to be a giant TV screen, and it was showing a picture of herself. Every few seconds the picture changed, and she could see herself from another angle. Then the picture would change again, and she soon realized that the next view was an x-ray, followed by a picture that seemed to show her body as if all her skin had been stripped away, and then other views that she could barely recognize. The apparatus around her was analyzing her as no human had ever been analyzed by human instruments, and details of her body were being shown on the TV. One view showed what could only be a schematic of her nervous system, and another showed what looked like a human shape made out of roaring flames. What could that possibly represent? Under other circumstances, Lily might have been fascinated, but she was currently alternating between terrified and humiliated.
Every few minutes, an alien being would walk through the room and make adjustments to the instruments, machines, and controls. They were humanoid, short, and spindly, with gray skin and heads much too large for their bodies, and they completely ignored the humans strapped to their tables. Apparently they didn’t care if Lily was conscious or not, and so effective were her bonds that Lily wasn’t surprised. She wanted to scream and swear at her captors, but the most she could do was flutter her eyelids. It was maddening. But, she realized, in her helpless condition anger felt better than helplessness or despair. She focused her thoughts on the revenge she would take when she got free.
Then circumstances changed. A horde of robots descended on her. She recognized some as being like the New York City attackers, and there were at least three or four other models. They all moved silently, efficiently, and relentlessly. She was unstrapped from the table, and then, despite her struggles, strapped upright to a wall, as efficiently and inexorably as she had been strapped to the table, and another human female was brought into the room.
The new prisoner was a very short brunette, who couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall. Her eyes were open, and Lily could see them darting this way and that, but the newcomer couldn’t speak, either, and soon she was strapped down in Lily’s place. The views on the TV shifted to show views of the newcomer’s body. After checking to be sure the straps were secure, the aliens left the room.
“Hello! Can you hear me?” a girl’s voice whispered in Lily’s ear — but there was nobody nearby. Who could it be?
“I’m a super-hero,” the voice whispered. “I’ll have us free in a moment.”
Lily didn’t say anything; she realized her vocal cords seemed to be paralyzed. Who could this female super-hero be? She must be invisible. She grunted, the only noise she could make.
“Good. I have super-hearing, you know.” Lily didn’t know, but she grunted again. “Hold on. I’ll be right with you!”
Suddenly, there came several muffled bangs, and the bindings on the wrists and ankles of the tiny girl on the table exploded. She climbed stiffly to her feet and tottered to the wall.
“This may sting a little,” the voice spoke in Lily’s ear, but the girl’s lips didn’t move. The brackets holding her to the wall suddenly started to vibrate, and then they seemed to just fall apart. “Good. I’m getting better at it!” the voice said in satisfaction, though her lips still didn’t move. “We’d better hurry before someone notices we’re free.”
But it appeared to be too late — a strange wailing sound, probably an alarm, was blaring, and the people on the other tables throughout the room were suddenly moving. Lily pushed the smaller girl to the floor and fell on top of her, and a rock smashed into the wall where her head had been just an instant before — a rock thrown by one of the throng of humans advancing their way.

***

Donal Regan awoke to pain and confusion. He felt as if he had been kicked in the head by a mule, following which he had rolled down several flights of marble stairs. And he quickly discovered that he was in the body of one of the ‘chauns, but his mental link with the others was broken. His memory started to return; as the saucer had sped away from Phoenix, he had felt that link stretching, and then it had snapped, and the recoil had knocked him unconscious. He realized he was lucky to have awakened at all — none of the ‘chauns had ever been this far away from the others before, and separation such as this might just as easily have killed him.

Each of the ‘chauns had Donal’s personality, but they never bothered naming themselves, as they never thought of themselves as independent beings — they were all part of the whole, and even though they could operate independently, they were always under the control of Donal’s overmind. But that wasn’t true now, and the isolated ‘chaun decided to refer to himself as Don. Don Chaun sounded perfect to him right then. He wondered briefly if he would retain his newfound independence after he rejoined the others, then decided that, for the moment, it didn’t matter. He had places to go and things to do — if he could figure out where he was, and what needed to be done.

The saucer he was in was quiet, but he could hear a commotion nearby — a lot of people screaming and sounding angry. He decided to check it out. Don moved cautiously out of his hiding place, and then to the door through which he’d entered the saucer. It stood open, and the clamor became louder. He couldn’t see the howling crowd yet, but they were nearby. He headed off in that direction, and then he heard another sound — a high-powered automobile, roaring toward him at high speed. There was the squealing of tires, and a sleek black car slid around the curve of the saucer and then straightened out, heading directly for him, not fifty feet away.

Any human observer would have said that Don must have acted instinctively, so quickly did he move, but what actually happened was this:

The black car started sliding sideways, and Don watched it closely. There were two people in it, a black man with a domino mask driving, and a white woman with a red scarf in her hair, hanging on tightly and yelling her approval of the ride, barely audible over the roar of the engine and the squealing of the tortured tires. Flying above the car was a human figure dressed mostly in red and yellow, a figure anyone who had lived in Chicago recently would be familiar with — Red Rocket. As soon as he realized that the black car — which looked like something he’d seen in a documentary on the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Grand Prix of Endurance — was going to drive right through the spot he was standing, Don started calculating his next move.
By now, the driver was standing on his brakes, but the vehicle wasn’t going to slow down very much in less than fifty feet. Still, Don didn’t move, and the car was close enough that he could read the manufacturer’s name from the symbol on the front — a Jaguar, he should have known — and then at the last possible microsecond, he jumped, and not as high has he could have, either. He tilted his body somewhat, and the car struck the soles of his feet — and he instantly jumped again, as hard as he could, pushing off from the hood.

It didn’t go as smoothly as he had hoped — the pressure on his legs was a little uneven, and he tumbled as he rose into the air — but he was a superbly trained tumbler, and quickly regained control. Seeing that the tiny person had somehow managed to get out of his way, Oxide hit the gas again. Just as Don reached the peak of his jump, Red Rocket caught him — as he’d intended.

“Where’s the fire, Red Rocket?” he asked the startled hero. “Would ya be needin’ a hand, now?”

Below them they could hear Oxide swearing. “He left a dent the size of a softball in the hood! Mel is going to kill me!”

The Gang’s All Here

They must be brainwashed, Lily Lovelace thought about the horde of people swarming toward them, screaming, throwing things, and waving improvised weapons. They probably don’t want my autograph!
Jumping to her feet, she pulled a large tray off a nearby lab bench, dumping the contents randomly. The top of the bench started to smoke as some of the glass bottles broke, spilling chemicals. Holding the tray in one hand as a shield against the things that were being thrown at them, she helped the smaller girl to her feet. She tried to summon the courage her powers gave her, and she started to realize the big difference between being fearless — which Kali was, given that she believed nothing could hurt her — and being courageous. Could she go on despite her fear? She had no other choice.
The smoldering table suddenly burst into flames with almost the force of an explosion, knocking the two heroines backward. They would have been badly burned if it hadn’t been for the tray Lily was holding; as it was, it burned her fingers, and she had to let go. The other woman stared at the approaching mob with a look of determination on her face, and suddenly, Lily was stunned by an incredibly loud explosion — it sounded like cannon-fire. The noise seemed to have been aimed away from them somehow, though — the effect on the approaching mob was even more stunning, as many of them were literally knocked off their feet, and the surge of people was blunted as those farther back tripped over the fallen in the front of the wave. There were a few seconds of relative silence — no, Lily could faintly hear the 1812 Overture through the ringing in her ears — and then another super-amplified cannon-blast, and then the two girls were running toward the door though which the aliens had wheeled the smaller woman on her gurney.
The door slid out of the way, and they rushed through into a short corridor, and as the door at the other end slid open, they kept running.
Lily was extremely frustrated that the best she could do was run. As Kali, she could easily have stood up to the entire wild crowd, or even just picked up her companion and flown away. She was almost helpless here, though, and she hated it.
Both women were startled when a red-clad flier flashed overhead, and a beam of some kind struck the door through which they had just passed. Lily quickly recognized Red Rocket, whom she had met before in her Kali identity. The smaller woman took her arm and pointed, and she saw a black car speeding toward them at high speed.
“The cavalry, come to our rescue, just like in the movies!” she said in her ghostly voice.
“Sorry, no,” Red Rocket had overheard as he landed nearby. “We’re actually escaping.” Oxide slid the Jaguar to a screeching halt not fifteen feet away.
“Oh! Well, so are we. Let’s go!” said the voice of the tiny heroine.
It was too late. The door that Red Rocket had flash-welded closed burst open, and the crowd of screaming people surged through it. “I think they are the bad guys!” the smaller woman’s voice said.
Red Rocket had been coordinating the group’s efforts with Oxide via his helmet radio, but as soon as the mob burst out of the large building, there was an incredibly powerful burst of static that had practically deafened him. He instantly switched off his radio, and realized at the same instant that his radar was being jammed as well. At that exact moment, he was surrounded by some kind of cloud that blocked his sight. And, an instant later, something slammed into him, and his armor stiffened to protect him. He thought that the cloud might be made up of thousands of illusory insects, as he couldn’t sweep them away, and the hurtling body that had slammed into him hadn’t disrupted the cloud at all. He couldn’t fly upward and out of this cloud, because he’d realized they were in a very large room, probably underground, and he didn’t want to knock himself out on the ceiling. So he dropped from his normal flying altitude of sixty feet to twenty feet and was able to see again.
And a woman rocketed upward from the ground with both hands above her head and slammed into him, spinning him upward and out of control. As he pinwheeled upward, he caught another glimpse of her and realized that she wasn’t flying — her legs had extended to tremendous length, and were now contracting again. And then yet another body slammed into him, something that looked like a giant beach ball with arms, legs, and a head, and then the ball plummeted downward, bounced, and slammed into him again on the rebound, almost too fast for him to follow, bouncing him high into the air and even more out of control. At least he was out of range of the next bounce by the human beach ball, though.
Another flying human smashed into him, though there was virtually no impact. This flier wrapped him in her arms, and suddenly they were plummeting downward as Red Rocket’s gravity flight controller was overwhelmed — this person suddenly weighed around five tons. Red Rocket flew by control of gravity, so he could adjust to this type of attack, but it would take a few seconds, seconds he didn’t have enough of, and they smashed into the ground, Red Rocket underneath, before he finished resetting his gravity flight controller to compensate for the extra unexpected weight.
Oxide pressed a button on the dashboard, and a slim rod rose from the hood of the car just in front of the driver’s window, and the top inch or so of the rod pivoted to become horizontal, while a small panel slid back on the dash, revealing a small TV screen above a smaller control panel. Val heard a whirring noise behind them and turned to see a small panel in the trunk slide out of the way, and some kind of small cannon on a round platform rose smoothly into view.
The screen lit up, and Oxide moved a small joystick next to the screen until the screen showed the approaching mob. The tip of the antenna rod swiveled back and forth, and steadied, pointing at the crowd. He deftly maneuvered the joystick until a red circle on the center of the screen started flashing, and then he pressed a button on the control panel. With a muffled whoomph the cannon fired, and a fist-sized projectile swooshed up, and then dropped on the crowd, exploding with a puff of smoke that cleared to show a large net, spinning rapidly. Before they could get out of the way, the net fell on the mob, ensnaring a dozen or so and causing chaos as more of them tripped over their trapped fellows.
I owe you guys dinner, Colt promised the absent Mel and Bruno. Many of the car’s gadgets hadn’t yet been tested in combat, but this one had worked like a champ. One of the people who hadn’t been caught in the net stopped and pointed at the Jaguar, and it stalled immediately, and all the lights on the control panel went out. Oxide pointed his oxidation pistol at that man, carefully counted clicks on the selector dial, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened — somehow the man seemed to have stopped the electricity in the car and his pistol. He vaulted out of the car. “Stay behind me, darlin’,” he said over his shoulder to Majique. “This could get rough!”
“Are you out of your #^@%!*& mind?!” Val Coppersmith snarled at him, using language she would never use in front of a client. “I can take care of myself just fine, thank you!” She wasn’t quite that sure, but nobody treated her like some helpless damsel in distress. Grabbing the bag from her belt, she spoke to it with quiet intensity. “You better stop playing games, buddy, or I’ll cut you up and use you to patch my blue jeans! I need something to help, right now!” She yanked the top open; she could feel it resisting, but her adrenaline was pumping. She reached inside and grabbed — and something slipped right into her hand. She pulled it out, ready to wield whatever mighty weapon her magic pouch had provided against the approaching enemy mob.
Only to find she was wielding a small, spiral-topped notepad, such as she had often seen used by reporters, with the capital letters L.L. embellished on the front cover. Snarling in the Romany language, in words that might cause paper to burst into flames, she threw it from her and hopped from the Jaguar, paying no further attention as it fluttered to the ground. She hopped out of the car, and when her feet hit the ground they shot out from under her, and she flopped hard on her tailbone. The air around her turned blue with curses.
The spot where she’d landed had been incredibly slippery, though it looked just like any other patch of stony ground around. She touched it, and it felt like any other patch of ground. She started climbing to her feet, and as soon as the sole of a boot touched the ground, it skidded out from under her, and she plunked down again. She checked, and the soles of her boots were as slippery as wet ice. The horde was getting closer, and some of them were waving swords and guns around. She had to do something.
Reluctantly, Majique reached up and undid one of her earrings. She always wore a number of magical items as part of her client-facing image — bangles, bracelets, rings, jewelry, and the like — and she was pretty sure she knew what this one did. Her earrings were carved from hard red wood, and they were very old and worn, with few distinct features, but they looked like they were probably supposed to be carvings of animals. Her great-grandmother had given her one of the carvings, and Val had worked very hard to carve the other, and then make it look as old and worn as the original.
She weighed the token in her hand. If she used it, it would be destroyed, and she had nothing else like it. On the other hand, nearly every magical artifact she had gathered was a singleton, and she wore them anyway, because she might need them. She threw the worn earring as hard as she could, and when it landed there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke — and suddenly there was a pack of wolves there as well — a howling pack of very large wolves, which snarled and charged the charging pack of snarling, charging humans. The human wave halted in confusion, and some of them turned and ran. Val made another attempt to get to her feet, and discovered that whatever had affected her boots before was gone.
While the wolves stayed in a pack and closed on the humans in the lead, many of the humans streamed out to both sides and kept coming.
Lily and the small unknown girl reached the shelter of the Jaguar. For some reason, Lily felt drawn to peek at the seats. On the driver’s seat, there were two glowing, pulsing bright white lights that grabbed her attention and wouldn’t let go — and she realized that whatever was glowing was in the shape of two Ls.
Why, those are my initials! And they’re even in my handwriting! she thought. For her signature, Lily had developed a distinctive style, and those two capital Ls were definitely in her style. Yet she had never seen this notebook before. Why was it drawing her attention so strongly? She wasn’t a damn reporter, and she wasn’t interested in writing anything down. She wanted to say her magic word and end this battle now. It has to be a magical message to me, Lily Lovelace! she thought.
Grabbing the notebook, she opened it, but to her great frustration it was empty. There was no message to her, magical or otherwise — besides the inexplicable initials in her own handwriting, it was just an ordinary notebook. She thought quickly, racking her mind for a few seconds, and then she got it. Yanking the pencil out of the spring binding at the top, she rapidly started writing and hoped her plan would work.
Oxide had been horrified to see the humans being attacked by huge wolves, but he was suddenly too busy staying alive to worry about his potential enemies. Something was rolling toward him, too fast for him to dodge. He waited until the last possible instant, then jumped as high as he could, and whatever it was rolled by. He could have sworn it was a girl, curled up as tightly as she could into a ball, though it had been moving too fast for him to be sure.
“Gutter ball!” he uttered, or tried to, but his words came out jumbled and unrecognizable. He had barely come down when a woman in a karate gi, wearing a black belt, set upon him. They traded blows for two seconds, and he quickly realized that she wasn’t anywhere near that good — and then the belt uncoiled and slammed him in the chin. She leaped forward and followed up with a kick to the chest, and he staggered backward until he slammed into the Jaguar and fell backward across the hood. “You’ve got a tail!” he tried to voice his astonishment, but once again, his words were scrambled.
Don Chaun, who had been standing on the trunk of the Jaguar apparently waiting for the fight to come to him, leaped forward, used the hood as a springboard, and slammed into the karate girl. She managed to get her tail between them just before he hit, and it cushioned the blow somewhat, but she was still knocked backward. A painfully bright light suddenly struck Don in the eyes, and he jerked backward, crashing down on top of his ally — and the two of them stuck together as if they had just been glued.
“Sticky wicket, wot?” Oxide tried to quip, and was a little dismayed when whatever had been scrambling his words had stopped.
“Nae so cute, ye bloody big Sassenach!” Don snapped back.
Val was screaming in pain. Her remaining earring had just been torn violently from her ear by some unknown force, and her dagger had ripped out of her ankle sheath and had gone flying as well.
What’s in Damien’s book
“It’s all in here.” She picked up a book and threw it at him. “If you really want to help, stop bothering me, and figure out where they took her.” She never looked up from her reading.
The title of the book was Alien Invasion, Coming Right Up! With the speed of Garuda, Shiva finished reading the book in seconds. It took slightly longer for the wisdom of Brahma to help him sort out the obvious untruths and embellishments. He was left with a series of unsupported claims made by the author.
An alien invasion craft had crashed in New Mexico in 1947. While most of the aliens died, the remaining few intended to complete the invasion plans. They used their superior technology to build a secret base underground in the desert, and started their fabrication machines, turning out robot armies. Each fabricator machine created a different type of robot.
They’d captured some humans and experimented on them. They used a collection gun that fired a beam at a person, who then was instantly shrunk to very small size, and sucked up into the storage cell attached to the gun, then restored to normal size back at the base. They had discovered that some humans, who had been exposed to radiation over fairly long periods of time, could be “encouraged” by the alien’s technology to mutate and develop super-powers, but these super-powers were virtually useless. One of the enhanced humans could freeze small volumes of water about one ice cube worth at a time, for example. The enhancement process also interfered with the humans’ mental capacity, allowing the aliens to brainwash them. Despite their limited super-powers, these humans were being trained to make use of their powers in service of the aliens. The author of this book, Eric Damien, had been one such experimental subject who had escaped and tried frantically to warn the world. Once he got away from the alien machines, both his super-power and the brainwashing had worn off.
The aliens had also developed technology that they hoped to use to copy more powerful super-powers from existing heroes into their slave population. Damien had predicted that the aliens would soon begin a four-pronged invasion strategy, first to collect humans who had high exposure to radiation in order to increase the size of their slave army, second to harvest existing heroes to try to use their technology to duplicate the heroes’ powers into their slaves, third to recover various Atlantean artifacts that had been buried all over North America since the fall of Atlantis
Somehow the saucers are tracked to Phoenix

Donal Heads to Phoenix

Donal Regan was in even worse shape than Alex Silverstone had been. A quarter of his body mass was missing, along with some unknown part of his mind and life energies. He was weak, his balance was poor, his concentration shaky. From time to time, with no warning or clear cause, he would be overcome by something resembling an epileptic fit — his limbs would stop working, and he would begin shaking violently. This seemed to be his body adapting to its new conditions; he’d had four or five of these fits over the last day, and they seemed to be getting less painful.

Fortunately, he’d been able to reach his car at the airport without anyone seeing him, and he’d made the ten-minute drive home safely. He had been in hiding ever since. He’d managed to contact Zack on the phone, and asked his foreman to keep people away from him for a few days, claiming that the trauma of the invasion had caused him to have flashbacks to an earlier, grimmer era in his life. Zack understood; he still sometimes had similar flashbacks to some of his experiences in Korea. Zack put out the word that Donal was among those people missing after the alien attack.

In a way, ’tis absolutely true! Donal thought wryly to himself, picturing the missing ‘chaun.

Donal was fighting through his illness, packing stuff and hauling it to his car, getting ready to drive to New Mexico, even in his current condition,

He dropped the suitcase he had been struggling to carry, and sat down on top of it, exhausted.
“Ye’d best have a good reason, breakin’ inta a man’s house that way, hero or no!” He tried to project anger and energy, but didn’t have enough energy to spare, and it came out flat, almost as a whisper. “What’s a big hot-shot New York City hero like ye doin’ here, anyway?” Even his accent was mostly drowned in his fatigue and illness.

“We’re looking for the aliens that have been attacking cities all over the U.S.,” Shiva replied. “Putting together a team of heroes to drive them away.”
“Shiva — look at this guy. What are we doing here?” Palette demanded. “He couldn’t last a round with Howdy Doody!”
Donal stared at her, but didn’t have the strength to reply. “You didn’t look much better this morning,” Shiva reminded her gently.
“Yeah, but what’s wrong with him? How is he going to help us, anyway?”

His anger lent him strength. “Bollox! D’ye ken where they be hidin’?” he asked. “I do.”

This tidbit piqued Alex’s interest. Shiva had indicated that he only had a vague idea where the aliens were — somewhere near Roswell, New Mexico. She hadn’t looked forward to spending hours searching through the desert, even at super-speed. Still, why should they believe him? “How could you possibly know that?” she asked scornfully.

“Those bloody cafflers took away a wee piece o’ me,” he replied, already close to worn out again. “Ye’ll have ta trust me now.”
“We should get moving before you get any worse,” Shiva said. “I think he’ll start feeling better as we get closer.” Palette looked unconvinced — but who would argue with Shiva? Shiva gently helped Donal into the carrier, and Palette got into the other seat, and they were gone.

Help Is on the Way
The attacking human group responded instantly to the threat of the large wolves.
“Manos, Moreau — stop them!” ordered the leader, a tall, thin woman.
One of the men stepped forward; he was of medium height and weight, and there was nothing distinctive about him other than his thick curly black hair and beard. That and the crackling noises that were coming from near his hands as they changed. He raised one into the path of the lead wolf, and it snapped its jaws shut — and instantly let out a wail of pain, as some of its teeth were broken off. Then the man swung his other hand, now a granite gray color, down on the back of the wolf’s head. Bones crunched, and the wolf collapsed to the ground, where it twitched feebly. The other man threw back his head and literally howled. The sounds were good enough to fool any human listener, and they seemed to be good enough for the remaining wolves, who came to a skidding halt, listened for a second, then turned and ran.
The leader pointed at another member of her group. “Sticky, go help Massy hold down the red one.” She pointed to where Red Rocket struggled to move, pinned to the ground by a small woman who had her arms and legs locked around the hero. Struggle though he did, she remained motionless and immovable. Sticky rushed up to the downed hero and started squirting some kind of gooey gunk all over him — stuff that seemingly oozed from his skin.
“RFI, you take a rest.” Deviser knew that using his radio and radar-jamming powers tired him tremendously, and if reinforcements showed up for the other side, they might need him again. “Fuse, keep that car offline; we don’t know what other kinds of weapons are in it.” Fuse could stop the flow of electricity in limited areas. “Legs, Kicker, Beach Ball, you take the guy in the trenchcoat!”
A large woman kicked a small, round man very hard, and he shot away like a cannonball, and bounced off of Oxide’s chest, almost before he could react. Each time the small man bounced, he seemed to gain energy. While Oxide was falling, another woman raised her leg from the ground, and as it rapidly stretched, her foot clipped him on the chin, causing him to spin as he fell. Meanwhile, moving like a world champion gymnast on a tumbling run, Don Chaun had launched himself at Deviser.
A portly elderly gentleman who looked like a college professor stepped between them, and just before Don could impact his new target, he struck some kind of powerful repulsive force that threw him strongly backward. “Like poles repel,” chuckled the older man, who called himself Chick Magnet.
Majique had given up trying to rise — every time she tried to move, the villain named Slick Rick turned one surface or another frictionless, and she would slip and fall again. She was frustrated, embarrassed, and extremely angry. She pointed her finger and repeated one of the two spells she actually knew — and he was battered by dozens of invisible fists. The spell drew power from her anger, and left her drained, but Slick Rick wouldn’t be bothering anyone for a while.
Lily Lovelace and the smaller woman had already raced past the battle to find cover behind the Jaguar. The smaller heroine — Miss Music, who was indeed still alive — then turned back to the battle and prepared to assist. Though she could only directly create audible sounds, she had a trick for creating ultra-high-frequency sounds. By simultaneously projecting several audible sounds with just the right difference in frequency, she was able to generate am ultrasonic beat frequency, and could achieve various effects with this ultrasonic frequency, such as shattering metal handcuffs. Properly tuned, she could even knock a person out, though the tuning was different for each person.
Meanwhile, Lily’s attention had been grabbed by something. She didn’t know why, but she felt compelled to look into the car — and, as had already been seen, her eye was immediately drawn to the reporter’s notebook on the driver’s side. After a moment of frustration, she had begun writing quickly in it using the pencil in the spring binding.
Now all she needed was to get Miss Music’s attention. Ducking out from the protection of the Jaguar, Lily ran over to the short heroine and grabbed her by the arm. The younger heroine shook her off, pointing at the fight. Lily looked up and saw one of the enemy humans fall over, thanks to the girl’s power. She shook Miss Music again, harder this time, and thrust the notebook in front of her face. On it was a short message:
I need to be able to say one word! Help me say “RAKASHA”!!!
Miss Music was busy, but Lily was practically frantic. Tammi Paige realized that it would be easier to do what Lily wanted, and then she could get back to the fight. She used her powers to talk. “OK, on three. One… two… three!” Lily mouthed her magic word, and Miss Music projected the word as if Lily had said it — and it worked.
To Miss Music’s great astonishment, a circle of greasy yellow flames burst from the ground beneath Lily’s feet, enveloping her. And then the flames faded, leaving a cylinder of thick, greasy black smoke — and Kali exploded out of the smoke as if someone had left a cannon-shell in a fire. She didn’t even glance at the battle; she already had a plan.
Flying to the nearest saucer, Kali started to rip it apart. She cut away part of the upper hull, then tore loose anything that had been attached, until she had a giant bowl. She then tossed it into the air and moved at super-speed throughout the battlefield, picking up the enemy combatants and piling them all in one place. She finished and moved out of the way, and the giant bowl came down over the piled-up enemy team. The edges dug deeply into the soil, and the bad guys were trapped.
Kali sat down heavily where she was and didn’t move. After she’d quickly recovered from the shock of Lily’s transformation, Miss Music had used the diversion to blast Red Rocket clear of the sticky stuff that had been holding him down, and he approached the motionless heroine.
“Kali, I presume?” he said ironically, for who else could it be? “Thanks for ending the fight!” She still didn’t move. “What’s the matter?”
She turned toward him. “I’m blind,” replied Kali in a small, toneless voice. He was stunned to see two small, absolutely black balls where her eyes should have been. “You should see about sealing the holes in the top of the cover I just made before they start getting out,” she said, then she ran down.
Red Rocket flew to the scrapped saucer and used his gravity-controller to pick up some scraps of sheet metal, flew them to the trap, and used his plasma-torch to weld shut some of the holes. Kali had made them so that the air trapped inside the shell when it had crashed down was able to escape to try to prevent injury to the enemy humans. Even with the holes, the instant increase in air pressure had knocked most of them out.
When he returned, Majique was inspecting Kali’s eyes. “No trace of magic,” she reported.
Rocket used the vision-magnification powers of his goggles, and his various sensors, to test for scientific causes. “It seems to be a local phenomenon, rather than a projection from somewhere else,” he reported. “As far as I can tell, your eyeballs have been turned black. There isn’t any detectable signal keeping them that way. I would say that the effect will wear off fairly soon — sooner, if we could get whoever did it to undo it.”
“But we don’t know who did it!” Majique protested.
“Someone in the trap!” Kali yelled, punching a hole in the shell, and then yelling through it. “Whoever did this to me had better undo it!” She banged on the shell with her fist, taking care not to break it. The noise outside was terrible; the heroes could hardly imagine what it was like inside the shell.
At that instant, a bullet glanced off the shell. Beam weapons started digging up the ground around the heroes, and falling shells began exploding nearby as well.
Don Chaun had climbed to the top of the shell to get a better idea of where they were. “Holy $#!*!” He yelled back to his companions. “We’re surrounded by robots! And they dinna look friendly!”
Somewhat surprisingly, the smallest hero present took charge. Don Chaun had already known quite a bit about Kali and Red Rocket, and he had been closely observing the other heroes during the current battle.
“What else can yon car do besides firing missiles?” he asked Oxide.
“All the standard spy stuff — smoke screen, oil slick, ejection seat, concealed machine guns — whatever my team could put in it, it’s got! One more missile, too,” Oxide boasted proudly.
Don turned to Majique. “Think ye kin handle it?”
“You bet!” she answered enthusiastically. She had secretly been longing to drive that powerful Jaguar since the moment she saw it. She wouldn’t trade her Corvette for anything, but this car was in a class by itself.
Before Oxide could object, the ‘chaun was giving orders. “Oxide, show her how ta release th’ oil slick. Majique, cut ’em off!” He swept his arm in a half-circle, indicating where she should drive. “Sorry, I dinna ken yer name!” he pointed at Miss Music. “Kali can’t see. We need you to guide ‘er. Kali, just go where yon bonnie lass tells ye to. Rocket and Oxide, wipe ’em out — and watch each other’s backs!”
“There’s far too many of them for us to fight ’em all off!” Red Rocket observed. “Maybe we should figure out some way to escape instead.”
“Gotcha covered, lad! Help be on th’ way!” He saw disbelieving faces around him. “Kinna explain right now. Trust me.” They didn’t have much choice, with what looked like thousands of robots swarming toward them.
“You’d better not wreck it!” Colt grumbled to Val as he pointed out the controls. “Mel and Bruno will kill me!”
Without a response, Val Coppersmith just hopped into the car and stomped on the gas. The black Jaguar tore out, tires smoking and squealing, and Oxide winced, even though that was his favorite method of departure as well. I’d almost rather face these robots than Bruno — and especially Mel! he thought ruefully.
Moving at high speed, Val swept along the face of the wave of attacking robots, and sprayed oil from the car into their path. She completed nearly a half-circle between the hordes and her allies before the oil ran out. Spinning the wheel and jamming on the brakes, she slid to a halt facing back the way she came. Oxide was alternately horrified and impressed with her skill. She had added her own twist to the plan. She grabbed the joystick, aimed, and fired the last remaining missile, and the oil slick flashed into flames as the missile exploded.
Protected from any attack in that direction by the roaring fire, the rest of the heroes turned their attention to the other robots. Miss Music watched the approaching hordes closely and projected words directly into Kali’s ears, and the big heroine smashed through the ranks of the enemy, blindly but not randomly, and to devastating effect. Red Rocket used his distance weapons, the plasma-torch and a powerful microwave beamer that caused robots to stumble and fall. And as Oxide swept the wave of oncoming robots with his oxidation gun, the front rank slowed and faltered as their joints stopped working, and the robots pressing forward behind them knocked their stationary allies to the ground, making further advances difficult. Still, the seemingly unlimited robot charge surged forward.
Oxide spared a look around, and realized that the Jaguar wasn’t nearby any longer. Majique was heading at high speed for the largest building in this vast cavern.
***
To speed up the flight from Chicago to New Mexico, Tom Atomic convinced Lady Victory to use a modified gravity controller built into a belt rather than a costume’s helmet. She normally got along fine without the ability to fly, but she wanted to reach her captured husband as quickly as possible. And besides, there was no dignified way for one of her two companions to carry her for thousands of miles.
During the flight, Tomas Thomas was quick to bring Master Man up to date on recent improvements he had made to the abilities built into his costume. For a short time after the Marvel Family had gone missing in 1953, Tomas had thought he was the strongest man on Earth, and had let it go to his head; ever since Master Man had revealed himself, though, Tomas kept making improvements to his powers that he could boast about whenever he encountered the older hero.
“Wrist-mounted TV transceiver I can use to communicate with my partners. Upgraded the communications gear in my helmet so I can tap into the phone system from wherever I happen to be, so people with my secret number can call me anytime, anywhere. Sometimes people in trouble can’t get to a radio.”
“Not bad,” admitted the marvel of the world. “There have been times when I–”
Tomas interrupted, too excited to realize what he had just done. “The latest is a position location device that will allow me to know exactly where I am, anywhere in the solar system by referencing the sun and some of the nearby stars! So I’ll be able to get home even if I get lost in space!”
“What about air and supplies?” Master Man asked dryly. Tomas reminded him of Shiva — both younger heroes were so competitive, boasting about their powers. “It could be a long trip home from ‘anywhere’!”
Tomas’ response was much quieter than his earlier boisterous tone. “Umm… I’m working on those now.”
Lady Victory winked at Master Man, though Tom Atomic couldn’t see it. Even his best friends were sometimes overwhelmed by his enthusiasm.
Battle Royal
“OK, then,” Master Man began, summing up the plan. “I, Red Rocket, and Lady Victory will join the group fighting the robots, while Shiva, Palette, and Donal will join Majique and Don Chaun and search for the aliens — and attempt to cut off the head of this invasion!”
The two teams had joined up in the sky over Roswell, New Mexico, the Shiva team guided by Donal Regan’s mental link with his disparate self, Don Chaun, and Master Man’s team by Tom Atomic’s magnetic tracker, which had locked onto Red Rocket.
“Good luck, all! Let’s go — now!” Lady Victory said, anxious to get to her husband’s side.
The two groups split up and dived toward the ground at different points. Master Man and Shiva weren’t even slowed down by the thirty-foot-thick rock ceilings over the giant, robot-excavated cavern below.
***
“There!” Donal pointed to the speeding black car, which was headed toward a building and standing out from anything else in this vast cavern. The closer he came to Don Chaun, the better he felt — though having one ‘chaun separated and the rest merged still felt weird. Before the three heroes could reach the car, it screeched to a halt at the door of the building, and Majique and Don Chaun hopped out. When Shiva landed, Donal and Palette hopped from the carrier.
“Reinforcements, just like I promised!” Don Chaun announced with the arrival of the heroes, glancing sideways to see if Majique was impressed. Instead, she seemed somewhat overawed to be in the presence of Shiva. Don didn’t realize it, but Majique was sensing the powerful magical aura that surrounded the Shazam-powered hero.
“OK, let’s check the place out!” Donal said, annoyed. He had summonsed Don Chaun to rejoin, but the ‘chaun had resisted — and then he had tried to split, but was unable to. It seemed that there were going to be two of him involved in this expedition, and he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.
They smashed through a big double door, charging into the building.
Immediately behind them, a massive panel slid down over the door they had just burst through, and they were blocked from the outside. The door, and the walls of the room they were in, were made of some kind of dull black metal, with no walls. There was a corridor, walled in the same material, extending farther into the building. And charging down that corridor toward them was… Captain Marvel?
None of these heroes had ever personally met Captain Marvel, but there was no mistaking the brilliant red skintight costume trimmed in gold, or the short white cape. Before the stunned heroes could move, Marvel altered course slightly and smashed into Shiva. The titanic collision produced a burst of noise that knocked the other heroes off their feet. By the time they had recovered, Marvel was pummeling Shiva — and Shiva was recovered enough to begin fighting back. The tremendous force of the blows of these two giants was producing stunning results in the small chamber — Majique, Palette, Donal, and Don Chaun scrambled to get out of the room in the corridor, battered as they were by the pressure waves that followed each super-powered punch.
“They must have brainwashed him!” Shiva yelled after his companions. “You go on — I can keep him busy!”
“er’uoY on hctam rof em!” the Big Red Cheese shouted — and Shiva understood. This wasn’t the real Captain Marvel, but a mirror duplicate who spoke everything backwards. Still, the duplicate had all the powers of the original — the same powers that Shiva possessed. He was in for the fight of his life.
As the other four heroes finally made it out of the entrance hall, another panel slammed down. They could still hear the fighting behind them, but the air itself was no longer battering them.
“We’d be better off if we were a little less conspicuous,” Palette whispered. “I can make us match the walls so we’ll be harder to see.”
“I can do better,” Majique sniffed. She finally had a chance to use her own powers, and she wasn’t going to let someone else show her up. She chanted and waved her hands. “Now we’re invisible.”
“I can still see you,” Donal pointed out.
“It would be a pretty poor spell if we couldn’t even see each other, wouldn’t it?” she sniffed again.
How do we know it worked, then? Palette thought, but said nothing as they continued on down the corridor.
Don Chaun ran ahead of the others, giving Donal an advance view of what they were approaching. Don came to a big room filled with equipment, where three of the alien beings sat in front of control panels. At least one was looking right in his direction as he slipped into the room, and there was no reaction that he could see, so the spell was evidently working. He quietly slipped across the room so he could see the controls in front of the aliens. One was watching a view-screen that showed the battle between the robots and the heroes. The second’s screen showed the human slaves, trying to get out of the dome in which Kali had trapped them, and the third showed the fight between Shiva and Niatpac Levram.
***
Shiva wasn’t faring well in his battle with Niatpac Levram. Growing up as Martin Martine, he had idolized Captain Marvel. So had every kid, of course (except his buddy Carter, who had always wanted to be Bulletman), but for Martin it had been more than just youthful hero worship. Every square inch of his bedroom had been plastered with posters of his hero. He wore a Captain Marvel watch, was never without his Captain Marvel decoder ring, and his most prized possession was a Captain Marvel giant kite, which the Captain himself had autographed. He had often wondered if it had been his childhood devotion to Captain Marvel and his ideas that had convinced Shazam to select him as the Captain’s replacement. And now here he was, going toe-to-toe with the world’s mightiest mortal, his ultimate hero. He was so overawed that he was unable to put up a good fight.
And so the mirror version of Captain Marvel battered him almost unopposed. A left to the stomach doubled him forward to impact an invulnerable knee, driven upward with super-strength, which straightened him up again, and a roundhouse right drove him backward, until he smashed partway the wall. As the mirror-image of his hero stalked toward him, an unstoppable behemoth, Shiva struggled to bring the wisdom of Brahma to bear on this situation.
This wasn’t the Captain Marvel he knew. Wizzo the Wizard had originally conjured this being from the Captain’s mirror-image in a glass window using powerful magic, apparently bringing Niatpac Levram, as he was called, out of a mirror-world and retaining full control over him. Since they had been equally matched, Captain Marvel had been unable to overcome Niatpac Levram with sheer power, so he had only been able to send him back to the world in the mirror by commanding him to leave with Wizzo’s own wand after using a ploy to get it from the wizard. (*) And now, somehow these aliens had found a way to bring him here again. This wasn’t Levram’s world, and presumably the red-clad being knew this.
[(*) Editor’s note: See “Captain Marvel Fights Captain Marvel,” Captain Marvel Adventures #139 (December, 1952).]
Shiva quickly turned his attention to himself. Despite the terrific battering he was taking, so far he hadn’t actually been hurt. His own strength and invulnerability were serving him well. He was much bigger than Levram and, he judged, somewhat stronger. And with four arms, he knew some hand-to-hand tricks he doubted Levram would anticipate. He just had to overcome his own reluctance to battle his hero.
Tearing free of the wall with the strength of Shiva, he dodged Levram’s next punch, slipping past him with the speed of Garuda. For the next couple of minutes, Shiva fought mostly defensively and conventionally, blocking Levram’s attacks and convincing himself that yes, he was at least a match for the other-dimensional counterpart of Captain Marvel. He used all four arms, as he didn’t want Levram to become suspicious that he was holding back, but beyond blocking most of Levram’s blows, and throwing some unusual combinations (such as a double-left uppercut aimed at the solar plexus and the chin simultaneously) he didn’t use some of the more esoteric techniques he’d developed in years of sparring with Tom Atomic, Kali, and others.
With his confidence restored, Shiva decided to take control of the fight. He backed away and lowered his guard for an instant. Levram turned, and with the deeps fo Yrucrem, launched another devastating right-handed haymaker at his chin. With his lower left arm, Shiva pushed the punch inward, and grabbed Levram’s wrist with his lower right arm and pulled, then stepped past him and grabbed Levram’s left shoulder with his upper left — and quickly spun the older hero around so Shiva was behind him. This allowed him to step in behind the surprised Niatpac Levram, and he quickly used all four arms to grab the smaller man in a choke-hold.
“niatpaC levraM, siht si ton ruoy emoh, dna I ma ton ruoy ymene!” The wisdom of Brahma made it easy for Shiva to speak the other man’s backwards mode of speaking. “uoY era rednu a lleps — esu eht modsiw fo Nomolos ot eerf flesrouy!” He had hoped this would end the fight quickly, but it didn’t appear to work
“uoY t’nac loof em, nomed!” Levram replied, and tried to stomp down hard on Shiva’s foot, but at that same instant Shiva arched his back, lifting Levram off the ground. What he was going to try now might be dangerous.
“GGSSVB!” he shouted, and a mist of gentle blue rain started to fall into the room, seemingly from the ceiling. With desperate speed, Shiva waved Niatpac Levram through the air, catching every drop of the mystical blue mist on the red-clad being’s body. He had no idea if this would work — after all, the magical effects of his transformation had no effect on Kali, or vice versa — but the blue rain had affected Master Man. If Levram weren’t changed, the fight would go on, and Shiva had a few other tricks, but if Shiva was changed back to Martin Martine, it could be the end of him.
Fortunately, there wasn’t long to wait. Niatpac Levram shuddered in his grasp and started to shrink, and Shiva quickly slapped a hand over his foe’s mouth. It was just in time, as the youngster he was now holding tried to say something.
Shiva used his lower left arm to bar the boy’s arms, and the upper right as a gag, and, working with the other two, was able to tear off some of the metal from the wall. He gently wrapped this around the lower face of his now-powerless captive, and sealed it. Sure now that Niatpac Levram wouldn’t be back quickly, he tore up some more of the wall and bound the youngster’s hands.
“ll’I eb kcab rof uoy yltrohs, dna ll’ew dnif emos yaw ot dnes uoy kcab hguorht a rorrim ot ruoy emoh,” he promised, and battered his way through the door that had sealed him off from the rest of his new team.
Stronger Together
Still invisible, Don Chaun and his larger self Donal Regan, along with Palette and Majique, watched the alien beings viewing flickering scenes on their monitors. Some of them were amazed to see that the four of them could be seen on the monitor still standing outside the sealed room where Shiva was battling Niatpac Levram — until they realized that this was a projection created by Palette, who was starting to look a little strained, as the wall where she was projecting the illusion was so far away. Don Chaun got her attention with a hand signal, pointed at the screen showing the illusions. He held up three fingers for all to see, then made a cutting motion with the other hand. The heroes moved into position, and the three fingers counted down: three… two… one… go.
On the display, the four illusory heroes disappeared, and the three aliens became agitated. Don gave the signal, and the real heroes attacked, becoming visible as Majique lost her concentration on the invisibility spell. Even at only three-quarters of his original size, Donal was still much larger than the alien he attacked, and his charge knocked the alien from its chair. The small, scrawny being fell to the floor, and before it could move, Donal kicked at its head. However, an invisible force-field protected the alien, and Donal’s foot instead slammed into the field several inches from the gray body. The field stretched and spread out the force of impact; to Donal it felt as if he had just kicked a sixty-pound sofa cushion. The alien started rolling away, so Donal rushed forward, picked up the field-encased alien, and ran as hard as he could for a wall. With the field to cushion the impact, it felt to him like a rugby collision, something he was quite familiar with. The field protected the alien as well, but it was frail, and the sudden jarring stop bounced it around inside the force-field like a pinball. The little being slumped unconscious.
The second alien was horrified when the monitor screen exploded with light so bright that he was instantly blinded. He staggered to his feet, and Don Chaun rushed in to batter him with punches and kicks. The alien was only a little taller than the ‘chaun, and probably weighed a little less. It was a new experience for Don Chaun, fighting someone his own size, and he was quite enjoying it. Even though the force-field around the alien protected him, between his blindness and the constant battering against his shield, he was unable to find his balance, and he continued to stagger backward. Palette slipped behind him and got down on her hands and knees, and when he backed into her, he fell over.
Don Chaun and Palette managed to roll the alien up against his chair, and, using a coil of rope the ‘chaun had been carrying since this morning in Phoenix, they bound him, force-field and all, to the chair’s support pillar. If the gray humanoid dropped the field, it would be able to work itself free, but surely they would notice before that.
Majique saw just enough of her teammates’ battles to realize that this alien was protected by something invisible, but they seemed pretty helpless otherwise. She smile nastily to herself; this was going to be fun. She unwrapped her sash from her waist and held it in her left hand, then pulled her dagger from the leg sheath and attacked. The sash was weighted, and she used it like a lash, keeping the alien off-balance by cracking at its face and arms, and then slashing with the dagger when he was open. She knew she couldn’t hurt him, so she was using the opportunity for a little practice, though not much when she quickly realized that her teammates were watching her.
“So, I’ve kept him busy — why don’t you tie him up?” she snapped at Donal.
“Boy, I don’t ever want you mad at me!” he responded admiringly.
“I saw her first!” shouted Don Chaun, startling all of them. The two versions of Donal glared at each other for a moment, then broke out into laughter.
Val Coppersmith was privately a little stunned. She’d learned to fight to scare off the boys who thought that a Gypsy girl was automatically a tramp; she’d never figured being a knife-fighter would make her more attractive to anyone. She looked at the two, identical except for size, with a new interest.
There was a loud explosion — a sonic boom, Palette realized — as Shiva appeared in the room. He took in the scene instantly, applied the wisdom of Brahma, and instantly smashed the control panels into smithereens. The force-fields surrounding the three aliens blinked out of existence.
***
Master Man, Tom Atomic, and Lady Victory flashed down from the ceiling of the giant, alien-excavated cavern outside of Roswell, New Mexico, and landed in the midst of the heroes who were encircled by attacking alien robots.
“Good to see you guys!” Red Rocket said, greeting his partners and Master Man. “We don’t have time for introductions, but we could sure use your help!”
“Master Man, robot fighter — that’s me!” quipped the wonder of the world as he flashed into action. Even though they were engaged in battle, Tom Atomic made a mental note of the concept — he’d find some way to work it into his role-playing game rules.
With two of the three most powerful beings in the world in this fight (despite Kali’s blindness), along with Tom Atomic (who thought he was probably fourth on the list and well below the top three in power level), the tide of battle soon turned. And then the battle abruptly ended altogether when Shiva, in the control room, destroyed the communications devices that had been giving the robot army its orders.
***
The super-powered humans in the dome that Kali had created had lost both their powers and their compulsion to attack the heroes at the moment the machine that activated and controlled them stopped working. Kali’s vision was also restored.
The woman who had called herself Deviser began explaining things. “The aliens have a machine that they can use to give super-powers to some humans. It can either activate minor powers, when used alone, or duplicate powers, if it has a ‘template.’ And it allows them to control the person with the powers. They kept trying it out on people they’d captured, hoping that one of us would have a major power that they could then duplicate, but none of us did. Finally, they decided to capture one or more of you super-heroes and duplicate your powers.”
“So you’re not super any longer?” a skeptical Oxide asked the captured humans.
They laughed. “We were hardly ‘super’ to begin with,” she replied. “Making ice cubes, bouncing, causing radio static — hardly what you think of as super-powers.”
Thinking of the trouble they’d had, Red Rocket replied ruefully, “You used them pretty effectively. Grounded me pretty good!”
“That was my power — getting the most effective use of everyone else’s powers,” Deviser explained.
“So how many of there were you, anyway, and what were your powers? I only got here in time to fight the robots.” Lady Victory was curious. Maybe her crime-fighting partner, Tom Atomic, could use these powers as part of his new role-playing game, Super-You! As Bonnie Drake, she had been his secretary at the detective firm, and although she was now a partner and a detective in her own right, she had learned to memorize details in the course of an investigation.
As the various formerly super-powered beings introduced themselves and explained the abilities they’d had, Bonnie began mentally compiling the list so she could type it all out later.
• Deviser — a woman who was a tactical genius at coordinating a group of super-powered beings;
• Damien — a man able to prophesy the aliens’ future actions;
• Minimirage — a man able to create a single, very small illusion (about the size of a quarter) and then make many copies of that small illusion in a small volume of space about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle;
• RFI — a man able to project static that interferes with AM radio and radar;
• Legs — a woman whose legs could grow to incredible length (but only her legs);
• Kicker — a woman who had super-strength in one leg only;
• Beach Ball — a boy who could bounce off of things, picking up kinetic energy as he bounced;
• Massy — a girl who could control her own weight, from virtually zero up through about five tons;
• Fuse — a man who could stop electric current in a limited area;
• Slick Rick — a man who could create small, friction-less patches on flat surfaces;
• Strike — a woman who could roll herself into a ball shape, and then roll at high speeds;
• Jambalaya — a man who could jumble the words spoken by others;
• Tamarin — a very attractive girl with a prehensile tail;
• Ferrite — a man who could exert magnetic attraction on iron, steel, and nickel equivalent to his own strength;
• Cold Spot — a girl who could freeze small volumes of water almost instantly, about one ice cube’s worth at a time;
• Manos — a man who could convert his hands into stone;
• Moreau — a man who could speak to animals in their own tongues;
• Sticky — a man who could ooze glue from his pores;
• Chick Magnet — a handsome older man with graying temples and glasses, whose body could exert a force that pulled females toward him while pushing other males away;
• Black Ball — a woman who could create ping-pong-ball-sized spheres of total blackness.
The more powerful heroes, Kali, Master Man, Tom Atomic, and Red Rocket, were somewhat amused by this list, but Oxide (who carried a gun that could alter the oxidation process), Miss Music (who was able to project her voice and recreate any sound she had ever heard), and Lady Victory (who carried an invulnerable shield) were pretty quiet; their powers were more akin to those on the list than to the powers of their teammates.
***
In the control room, Shiva, Majique, Palette, and Donal Regan and Don Chaun were interrogating the aliens. It turned out that the aliens were clones with a shared consciousness, and they and their species had recently — in the cosmic scheme of things — had a run of terrible luck.
The radiation from their sun had slowly grown fatal to all life, as the x-ray portion of the spectrum had become gradually more intense.
Their first plan, to send a robotic spaceship to another planet carrying a star gate through which they could escape, had failed when the robot had landed near Atlantis, and the star gate had sunken beneath the ocean, where it would lay until Master Man later recovered it and stashed it in his trophy hall deep beneath Mount Everest.
Their second plan, reducing most of the population to memories in a super-computer, then sending it to another planet in a second robotic spaceship, had gone awry as the robots and other mechanisms on the ship had started to fail, forcing the computer to restore one alien that cloned itself and barely managed to keep the ship from being destroyed when it crashed on Earth. There had been four clones who shared a consciousness; one had been killed in St. Louis, leaving only the three alive.
The aliens had left robots on their homeworld, and those robots had been manufacturing ever since. The plan had been to find the star gate, which would give the aliens on Earth instant access to thousands of years of robotic output on the home planet, including an army of powerful robots specifically designed for battle. Unfortunately, all these robots had materialized in Master Man’s trophy hall.
The clones had used the damaged machinery on the ship after the crash to manufacture fighting robots to conqueror the Earth. But their machinery would only build robots based on preexisting templates. The only templates they had were for labor robots whose use was for working in factories, gardening, forestry, mining, and the like, so they had modified the templates. But the clones weren’t military scientists.
And, of course, their plan to capture super-heroes and replicate their powers in slaves had also failed.
The only good thing was that the memory bank containing all the other survivors of their species was still intact.
“Why didn’t you just ask for help?” Shiva asked one of the clones.
“As we approached your planet, we observed that your species is always at war. The multi-part conflict you call World War I and World War II — as if the two episodes were somehow part of separate conflicts — the Korean War, the Vietnam War. And you are a paranoid, militant species, as shown by the McCarthy era and the Cold War. We were sure you would have responded by destroying us — and as the last of our species, that was a risk we couldn’t take.”
“There’s more than a little truth in what they say,” said Oxide, sadly. “I’ve experienced some of that paranoid militancy myself.” He thought of bad experiences he’d had with blatant racial discrimination throughout his life. “But not all humans are like that!”
“With our diminished resources and damaged ship, we couldn’t take any chances,” the aliens insisted. Miss Music thought they might be a bit crazy, though she couldn’t blame them after their terrible experiences. “All we really want is an empty world where we can settle — and restore our people!”
“I think I can help with that,” said Master Man, who had been thinking quickly. “I can take your ship with me to my sanctum, where you can use my instruments or your own to find a suitable world. And then I’m sure Shazam can transport you there.”
That was an offer even a trio of insane aliens couldn’t refuse.
***
The entire group of heroes gathered together to decide how to clean up the loose ends. There were several joyous reunions — Shiva and Kali, Lady Victory and Red Rocket, and Palette and Miss Music. Even Donal and Don Chaun managed to reunite after some initial reluctance. And, after using a magic spell to send Niatpac Levram back to his mirror-world, Majique finally made the suggestion that the rest were thinking about.
“You know, we all of us work for the same thing on our own. But sometimes there are menaces that are too powerful for any one of us. None of us could have defeated this alien menace alone, but teamwork allowed us to prevail.”
“Are you suggesting that we should work together in the future?” Palette asked her.
“What a great idea!” Miss Music agreed enthusiastically. “Why don’t we band together — form a club or society of our own?”
“Hmm… a league o’ super-heroes…” Quadrechaun mused thoughtfully. “Stronger together’n we’d ever be apart.”
“Our purpose will be to uphold justice against whatever danger threatens it!” Oxide added enthusiastically.
“It sounds good to me,” said Master Man. “Plus, it will be great to have some friends — it gets awfully lonely sitting up on Mount Everest day and night!”
“I propose that we call ourselves…” Tom Atomic began, pausing to build up the suspense, “…the Super Squad!”
After that, it was all over but the cleanup.