Disaster in the Meadowlands

Prologue: A Quiet Afternoon

The tenth annual convention of the National Association of Licensed Private Investigators, Madison Square Garden, New York City, January, 1970:

Cody and Bonnie Mason were returning to their hotel room after a morning awards ceremony. Along with Tomas Thomas, they had received awards for their special contributions to NALPI as charter members, with special recognition to Bonnie as the group’s first president back in 1960. Their fourteen-year-old son Jack Mason (who turned fifteen next month), and their partner Tomas had decided to go on one of the group excursions that were part of the NALPI Convention package, a Circle Line boat tour around Manhattan. Cody and Bonnie were looking forward to some quality time alone together.

Jack hadn’t been interested in going on the tour until he saw who Tomas was escorting. Delia Lynn was a trim, attractive brunette from St. Louis, whose private investigator husband had been killed by gangsters ten years earlier. When the police weren’t able to track down his killers, she got into the private eye business herself and brought them to justice. Her fifteen-year-old daughter Janet, also a trim attractive brunette from St. Louis, was going to accompany them. Jack seemed to be sweet on Lynn, and all week long, in that shy, almost furtive way that most fourteen-year-old boys who were starting to become interested in girls but were still too embarrassed to admit it, he had continually found reasons to be in the same places as she.

In their hotel room, Cody noticed that the message light was flashing. He called the front desk, and found out that the call was from Victoria Waltyngfeld, who had left an urgent message for Cody or Bonnie. “Please check out the TV news ASAP!” was the message.

“Well, $#!*! There goes our quiet afternoon!” Cody complained. Bonnie smirked at him; she knew very well just how un-quiet that afternoon would have been. Victoria Waltyngfeld was the secret identity of the mystery heroine Zenith who lived in New York, and if she was calling them, it must be something that required the attention of their own other identities.

Cody switched on the TV. It didn’t matter what channel he selected, since they were all covering the same story. Some madman had crashed the kickoff ceremonies for the New Jersey Meadowlands Sports Complex construction project, and, using some kind of ray-gun, had disintegrated all of the construction equipment and had slaughtered all the workmen who had been poised to begin the massive project.

The perpetrator was currently holding several dignitaries hostage, including United States Vice President Spirit O. Badnews, New Jersey Governor Richard Huge, and Pendleton Maru, owner of the New York Goliaths football team. He was threatening to kill his hostages and then explode a super-powerful nuclear device that would turn the Tri-State area, including New York City, into a flat sheet of shiny glass unless he received guaranteed assurances, signed by President Richard Trixem himself, that this pristine swampland would never be despoiled by construction.

“Zenith must be busy with some other crisis. Guess I had better go bail her out!” Cody said as he started putting on his Red Rocket uniform.

“Hold on there, buster! You’ve got me ready for some action this afternoon, lover boy, and I’m gonna get it one way or the other! You go without me, and you might be very unhappy at what you find when you get back!”

Cody sometimes won arguments with Bonnie, but he knew this wasn’t going to be one of those times. “Oops! Did I say ‘I’? I meant ‘we,’ of course! Guess we better let Tomas know, too. You ready? Let’s go!”

Adventurine’s costume didn’t provide her with the power of flight; she didn’t want it, and almost never needed it. Red Rocket adjusted his gravity regulator to lift her as well as himself. He floated out the window, and Adventurine came behind. He took her right hand in his left, pointed ahead, and off they zoomed.

She did have a helmet radio in her costume, and immediately began trying to reach Tom Atomic. But there was no reason why he would have his helmet radio with him on the cruise. So Red Rocket made a quick sweep up the Hudson, then back down the Harlem and East Rivers, making sure to pass low over each Circle Line boat they spotted. With his visor’s telescopic vision he was able to make out Tomas and Jack on the third boat they overflew, and he made sure that everyone on that boat got a look at the two flying heroes. Then the two headed west at top speed. They had a madman to catch.

Chapter 1: Nuclear Threat

Tomas Thomas indeed saw the flying heroes, but there was little he could do right away. There was no easy way for him to sneak off the boat in the middle of the river, head to shore, then get back to the hotel and make a quick change to Tom Atomic. If they had needed him right away, they would have found some way to get his costume to him. So he would join them when he could. Still, he was going to be awfully antsy by the time he got back to the hotel.

***

The Meadowlands was only a short hop away, and Red Rocket and Adventurine were there in almost no time. The State Police had surrounded the construction site and were starting to evacuate everyone nearby, although it wouldn’t be much use if the villain really had a nuclear bomb. Observing the twisted, melted wreckage of millions of dollars worth of heavy construction machinery, Rocket was sure he wasn’t bluffing.

The two landed about a mile from the temporary construction building that was now being used to hold the hostages. Rocket leaped back into the air, and both he and Adventurine activated their battle-suits’ stealth mode. The bright green of Adventurine’s costume quickly changed colors to be a better match to the more subdued greens of the swampy landscape around her, while Rocket’s red and yellow changed to match the sky behind him.

As they had gotten older, Red Rocket and Tom Atomic had added more weapons and gadgets to their battle costumes. It was ironic, Rocket thought, that when they had met, Cody Mason had been the hand-to-hand guy, and Tomas Thomas had been the one who usually carried a weapon; now those roles were virtually reversed. He launched a small, remote-controlled, self-propelled reconnaissance drone that carried a low-resolution TV camera. He shared the drone’s transmission with Adventurine, and they both watched a small TV window on their helmet heads-up displays as the drone approached the target building.

The small camera didn’t produce a great picture, but they could see conventionally armed guards patrolling the outside of the building. Suddenly, the drone stopped transmitting. Adventurine asked through their private radio link, “Could it be equipment failure?”

“I doubt it; there wasn’t anything wrong with the telemetry. I’m going to try again.”

“OK. I’m getting closer, haven’t spotted any lookouts or scout patrols yet. I should have visual on the building in another ten minutes.” Adventurine had been moving the whole time. When she reached visual range of the target, Rocket would begin his attack.

Meanwhile, he launched his last two reconnaissance drones, the second one following several feet behind the first one so he could see if anything happened to it. However, he was still unable to determine why the lead drone failed at just the same spot where the original drone had been lost. All he could see from the trailing drone was the lead drone suddenly falling from the air.

“Careful, Adventurine. There is some kind of defensive barrier about a hundred yards out that caused my drones to fail. I’m not sure what it is, but maybe we shouldn’t get closer until we know more.”

“Roger. I’ll let you know when I reach my position. Keep me updated on what you find out.”

Red Rocket drove the remaining drone toward the target building at top speed. An instant before it reached the danger point, he shut down its systems. A second later, well past the danger point, he sent it another signal, and was pleased when it came back online. He updated his partner.

“My best guess is that there is some kind of electromagnetic field around that building that works like my E.M. scrambler, and bollixes any electronic equipment that passes through. We can probably operate on the inside OK, as long as we shut down everything just before we pass through the field.”

“Roger,” was all she said in reply.

Rocket moved in slowly, using his telescopic vision to examine the scene. Suddenly, his vision was blacked out, and an alarm blared; he had just been touched by a laser beam, and his visor had automatically cut out to avoid damage to his eyes. He flipped his goggles back so he could see and began moving very fast; this laser was clearly a target locator and was locked onto him.

A rapid repeat-fire anti-aircraft gun began shooting at him; he had expected guided missiles, but quickly realized that they would probably have the same problem with the anti-electronics field that his drones had experienced. His automated defenses snapped on, and a gout of plasma flared from the back of his wrist, vaporizing the incoming shells.

They exploded with a blast that was strong enough to send him tumbling backward through the sky, and his erratic motion carried him out of the targeting beam. The firing stopped. He began high-speed evasive maneuvers, and though the laser swept across him several more times, he seemed to be moving too fast for it to lock onto him again.

Unfortunately, even though he was still in stealth mode, whoever was in the building now knew somebody was in the air nearby. Red Rocket knew he’d better get moving, as he didn’t want to give the bad guys time to execute the hostages.

Still flying evasive maneuvers, he used his remaining drone to do some scouting. There were probably twenty guards outside the building, all armed with conventional rifles. As the drone circled the building, he was astonished at what he saw.

Someone had backed a tractor-trailer truck to the entrance of the building and then just kept on backing up, smashing through the flimsy temporary walls until about a third of the trailer was inside. The top and wall panels of the trailer had been removed, revealing a weapons turret on a hydraulic lift. On the turret, now raised above the level of the building roof, Rocket was able to identify the laser tracking system and the “ack-ack” cannon that had been firing at him. There was also a swivel-mounted beam weapon that must have been used to disintegrate the heavy construction equipment. A one-hundred-foot antenna was topped with a transparent sphere that was packed full of circuitry, which Rocket guessed was probably the projector for the electronic disabling shield. The turret immediately became his primary target. He needed to move fast.

Because the guards below were now firing into the sky each time the scanning laser happened to randomly touch him, the disintegrator ray was now being aimed toward the sky as well. If it could be integrated with the scanning laser beam, sooner or later it would score a hit, and he didn’t want to find out just what that weapon would do to him.

The intermittent shooting kept him out of range for his plasma torch, so he considered his other options. He had two small guided missiles, which would probably go out of control when they passed through the shield, so he saved those. He was sure his electromagnetic scrambler beam would probably disable the barrier, but it was a short-range weapon. The focused ultrasonic projector seemed to be his best bet. Still moving quickly to dodge the laser and the bullets of the enemy gunmen, he aimed it at the moving devices in the turret.

The ultrasound beam had a disruptive effect on anything organic. Within a few seconds, the lubricants on the moving parts in the platform stopped lubricating, and within half a minute, the laser motion had become erratic as the metal bearings heated and expanded. Finally, the whole thing just screeched to a halt, and smoke started rising as the hard-driven electric motors began to overheat. Now that the scanning laser could no longer target him, Red Rocket could move within range and use his plasma torch.

***

Thanks to Red Rocket’s distraction, which was working perfectly, Adventurine advanced unnoticed until she saw the two disabled drones. Now she would have to take a chance. She was going to have to shut down the electronics in her suit, dash forward until she was sure she was inside the barrier and turn everything back on. Sometimes she regretted the bright green colors of her costume, and this was one of those times. Her almost fluorescent green didn’t blend well into a darker green and brown background.

She circled the building, never getting any closer, as she looked for the best cover she could find. Suddenly, she heard artillery going off, and saw Rocket’s plasma torch explode the shells. She was relieved that Rocket’s body didn’t suddenly become visible and fall from the sky. When the guards rushed to the opposite side of the building, it gave her the opportunity she was waiting for.

Adventurine flipped the emergency power disconnect and ran as fast as she could toward the building, until she was sure she must be inside the barrier, and dived headlong behind some bushes, raising her shield between herself and the building. But it seemed that no one had noticed her. She powered up all her electronics, which seemed to work just fine, and continued her cautious advance. She could see the weapons turret, which looked like the perfect target for Red Rocket, so she focused on the building.

All the guards had rushed to the other side of the building and were firing intermittently at the sky. She hoped nobody would get hurt by falling bullets. Whoever these guys were, they had impressive weapons technology, coupled with a very poor grasp of tactics or discipline.

When smoke started to rise from the turret, she knew her confidence in her husband had been justified. Seconds later a massive stream of plasma, seemingly coming from nowhere, poured over the platform, and the cannon’s ammunition exploded. Adventurine made her way through an unlocked door at the rear of the building before the roar from the explosion had died down.

***

Red Rocket was shaken by the explosion. He hoped none of the bad guys had been killed by the shrapnel, but he couldn’t help but be pleased when some of the armed guards were hit, taking them out of the fight. These guys had participated in the slaughter of hundreds of construction workers, and he had little sympathy for them. He trusted that the walls of the building would protect the hostages. Anyway, with the electronic barrier down, or so he hoped, now was the time for top speed.

Taking out the tractor cab with one of his guided missiles, Rocket then zoomed toward one of the front windows of the building. His costume would protect him from the broken glass, and his smashing entrance ought to give him the advantage of surprise. Just before he reached the window, though, all his electronic systems shut down. It looked as if they had a backup barrier.

The Cavalry

The escalated threat of a nuclear explosion had been broadcast over radio and TV, and the population of New York City was suddenly in a panic. The captain of the Circle Line boat that Tomas was on decided to head out toward Long Island Sound rather than dock. Just before they passed under the Queensboro Bridge headed north, he made an announcement over the boat’s public address system.

“I won’t make your decisions for you, folks. It might be faster to go ashore and take your chances. Anyone who wants to go ashore, report to the rear deck. We’ll pass close to the dock and lower the lifeboats for anyone who wants to hop off and look for ground transportation. This old Circle Queen ain't the fastest tub afloat, but I think the roads are gonna be jammed. I don’t know how long we’ve got, but if we get an hour, we’ll be more ‘n’ twenty miles away, and I’ll bet most of the cars on the road will still be in Queens.” Apparently, most of the passengers agreed with him, because only a single boatload was filled. Tomas made a different decision.

“Dee, I've gotta go,” he announced to his date. He pulled her into an almost empty interior cabin, and pulled off his shirt, revealing his costume. “I'm Tom Atomic, and they need me!” He was cursing himself for not joining his partners earlier. But he couldn't just run off and leave his date.

Dee didn't seem very surprised. “Go, save New York! But you owe me dinner and the whole story after!” He didn't move. “What, you think you're that good at keeping your secret? I am a top flight PI, you know. Now GO!”

Adventurine Attacks

Adventurine found that most of this building was empty. As she crept slowly toward the front of the building, she heard one loud, angry voice, alternating between screaming orders and screaming curses. She couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, but she guessed that the man yelling orders was the leader of the group, and that he was angry.

She heard a crashing noise, with glass shattering, and she knew Red Rocket had made his entrance. Rushing forward, she hoped to reach the confrontation in time to join the fun. She burst into the front room, and had a quick glimpse of a tall, thin man with wild hair and his face twisted in anger, sitting in front of a big control panel, before she spotted Red Rocket lying on the ground with half a dozen bad guys pounding on him.

Screaming in rage, Adventurine threw her shield at the group as hard as she could, and followed it up as fast as she could move. She didn’t have time for subtlety, and the shield hit one villain on the back of the head, spun off and hit a second in the face, and spun past him and hit one more a glancing blow. The first two were down by the time she smashed into the rest like a bowling ball.

Unlike Red Rocket, who was a flying arsenal, and Tom Atomic, who was one of the three or four strongest men in the world, Adventurine depended mostly on her non-enhanced physical prowess and the extensive martial arts training she had undergone, first Army basic, then Sul Sa Do while she was in Korea, and most recently from her partners and teammates in the Alliance of Mystery Heroes. As a result, she rarely got involved with threats to the world, instead focusing on threats that affected normal folks, such as muggings, gang violence, and domestic disputes. If the six men she was facing had been trained fighters, she might have had some problems with them, but they weren’t — they were just normal men with guns.

Gaia Prime

She turned to the man at the control panel, and immediately stopped short. The man had moved and was now kneeling next to Red Rocket, holding an unfamiliar device with a pistol grip against the side of Rocket’s head. She was stunned at his looks - he looked exactly like a much younger version of the insane criminal scientist Dr. Daytona.

The man smiled. “Ah, I see I guessed correctly. Very well, my dear, you will allow my man to bind you, or I will disintegrate Red Rocket’s head.” The man who had been running returned, carrying some rope. He bound Adventurine’s hands behind her, and not all that well, she realized, then bound her feet and forced her backward into a chair. The position was very uncomfortable, but she didn’t complain, as it left her hands behind her, out of sight and hidden by her body. She had used a trick that Tomas had taught her, flexing her muscles as he tied his knots, hoping that when she relaxed, it would give her some slack to play with. She wasn’t surprised when it worked; she had been in similar, though somewhat less desperate situations before.

Adventurine examined the leader and his follower closely. He was about six foot two and wore a military surplus camouflage outfit, which had a patch sewed to his shirt pocket: a Mercator projection of the Earth, and the initials GGG. He seemed to be in his mid twenties, had long, thinning red hair and scraggly red beard, a beak nose, his teeth protruded and he wore thick glasses. She was stunned by the fanatical gleam in his eyes; she knew instantly that this was an incredibly dangerous man. The control panel where he’d been seated was built into the back of the trailer that had been crashed into the room, and she could see that it was mostly covered with flashing red lights.

The follower was a big surprise to her, as he looked like a hippie, having long hair, a beard, tie-died bell bottoms, a paisley-print shirt, platform sandals, and no socks, and he was older than she’d have expected from his dress, approximately thirty, she guessed. He was certainly not the kind of man she would have expected to find involved in an operation that had ruthlessly killed so many people.

She checked out the rest of the unconscious bodies on the floor, and they were dressed similarly. She noticed that each of them had the same GGG patch sewed somewhere on his shirt. It looked as if the entire male population of a commune had turned out to protect the Meadowlands from the evil capitalist despoilers. No wonder that they had no concept of tactics, or discipline. But who could have convinced a group of aging hippies to carry guns and kill people?

“Hold on, guys! The cavalry is on the way!” came Tom Atomic’s voice over the radio. She was surprised that, with the technology at their disposal, this group didn’t seem to be monitoring the radio conversations between the three mystery heroes. She switched her transmitter on, then started talking to her captor.

“You probably know who I am — Adventurine. And the unconscious man you were so bravely threatening is Red Rocket. But who are you?”

We Will Change the World

“Holy ambitious programs!” she exclaimed. “So you’re an idealist, are you? Protect the planet from mankind? I’m not sure killing people to make your point is going to win you any friends.”

The man drew himself to attention, and suddenly he didn’t seem wild any longer. He spoke with passion and absolute conviction, and Bonnie Mason was shaken by his charisma. She found herself wishing that he had a plan she could believe in, just so she could follow him. There was no doubt that this man could have been a great power in the world, and might still become that great power if his current plan succeeded. With each completed task, his legend would grow, and those who fell under the power of his will would recruit others, and she could help him change the world. Why, they ought to get started right away. Adventurine hadn’t even noticed the moment when she had gone from being his enemy to being an apostle.

“Adventurine, my brothers and sisters around us, with my help, have created an organization called the Guardians of Glorious Gaia! It is our mission to rescue great Gaia’s environment from the depredations of mankind.”

“Gaia is our home, the only home of all mankind! Do you destroy your house and expect it to continue to protect you? Do you drop trash in your own living room, poison the waters in your own kitchen, burn down your own bedroom, dig up your own property, and turn it into nothing more than an ugly, muddy gash in the ground?“

“You say no? And yet, isn’t this what we do to our beautiful Gaia every day? To oppose this is why I have been joined by my brothers and sisters! Our cause is right, and our righteousness will make us mighty. In the making of an omelet, eggs must be broken; in saving Gaia from humanity, many human lives will be touched, some more violently than others — yet none who are innocent will be harmed, and all will rejoice when we reach our goal!”

Fortunately for Adventurine, his mesmerizing speech was interrupted as yet another aging hippie, this one a woman, ran into the room.

“Prime, a flying man approaches us from Manhattan at great speed! He will be here in seconds!”

Explosion

Bonnie Marlow Mason’s head was clear, and she was filled with anger. She let it grow, and everything around her — the innocent workers slaughtered without remorse, the casual threat to kill eight million people over some swampland, including her husband and best friend, the sight of six men standing over the helpless form of Red Rocket, hitting and kicking him — added to that rage as she let it build.

Out-of-control anger could be your worst enemy in a fight. Strategy, tactics, and training deserted you, and a dispassionate enemy could easily manipulate your actions. But anger could be harnessed; it could get your adrenaline flowing, increasing your strength and speed, it could help you ignore pain and injury, and it could help you focus to an incredible degree. Adventurine, alias Bonnie Marlow Mason, wife, mother, mystery heroine, was so angry it scared her. She was going to attack soon, regardless of the consequences. All she needed was the tiniest distraction, an instant of inattention on Gaia Prime’s part.

Then, without warning, a red and blue cannonball smashed through the roof, a couple of walls, and then through the floor of the temporary building. “Oh, my God! That must have been Tomas!” Her anger peaked, and Adventurine uncoiled as if she had been launched from a rail-gun.

She had already worked the ropes loose from her arms, and from her sitting position Adventurine lunged forward and pushed off with her still-bound legs. Grasping one hand in the other and extending both arms in front of her, moving fast, she crashed into Gaia Prime like a missile — a foul blow, one that would have disqualified her for life if she’d been fighting under any rules at all. Prime was driven backward, and landed on the floor, where he started retching. Adventurine landed on top of him and slammed several deadly punches into his head and chest. She was still in the depths of her fury, and even when he stopped moving, she kept punching.

Bonnie to the Rescue

With an ultimate effort, Bonnie crawled to Rocket and checked his pulse. It was strong, and he seemed to be breathing without major problems. She reached into her boot, pulled out her survival knife, and cut the ropes on her legs. She then picked up her shield and moved to the hole in the floor, making a wide circle around the wrecked man on the floor, the once-proud Gaia Prime. Bonnie forced herself not to think about what she had just done, or what she would have done next if Rocket hadn’t stopped her.

Adventurine was starting to feel a bit more energy as she moved, so she carefully dropped through the hole in the floor. She had to find Tom Atomic! He must have been swooping down on the building when Gaia Prime fired his EM pulse and his systems, included the gravity controller that allowed him to fly, were crashed. No normal human could have survived smashing through a building at that speed, but Tom Atomic was far from normal. He had managed to roll himself into a ball before impact, and with the protection offered by his armor-cloth costume, and his superhuman strength and durability, perhaps there was a chance.

She found an incredibly frightening scene. By the huge dent in the side of a giant natural gas tank in the basement, Tom Atomic must have smashed into it to end his out-of-control plunge. From Tom’s position and the dent in the tank, she assumed that his back had smashed into it, and then he had slid to the floor. She didn’t like the angle that his legs made with his body. Without a doubt, at the very least he had multiple broken bones.

Moreover, Tomas was lying next to what had to be the nuclear bomb: a massive device with a control panel covered with lights and a digital display. She breathed a sign of relief, since none of the lights were on, and the display was dark. The electromagnetic pulse fired by Gaia Prime must have disabled the bomb along with everything else nearby that was electronic.

A Close Shave

Adventurine bent over Tom Atomic and gently touched his face. He was breathing. She wasn’t sure what to do, since she didn’t dare move him. “Tomas! Tomas, it’s Bonnie. Oh, Tomas, please open your eyes!”

Tom Atomic groaned, but didn’t open his eyes. He tried to talk but could only croak. He tried to move, and Bonnie almost screamed. “Tomas, I think your back is broken! Please don’t try to move!”

He worked his mouth for a few seconds, and finally tried to speak again, but could barely whisper, “Hi, Bonnie. Fancy meeting you… here…” He stopped talking, and lay there for so long that she was starting to think he had passed out when he continued, “I guess… I guess I’m alive, huh? I have to be alive…” He paused again.

Bonnie thought that was a strange thing to say. Reflexively, she replied, “Why do you say that?”

Tomas tried to smile; he’d set her up, and as usual, she’d fallen for it. “Because in Heaven… you’d be an angel…” He stopped and took some deep breaths. “…and in Hell, they couldn’t possibly… make me hurt this much!”

Bonnie took this as a good sign. “Are you saying I’m not an angel!?” she said with mock severity. “That’s worse than your usual bad jokes, but considering the conditions, not bad.” Her voice changed again; Tomas thought it sounded as if she needed to cry but wouldn’t allow herself to. “Oh, Tomas! This has been so horrible. First I thought Cody was dead, and then I thought you were dead. And that hideous man was going to blow up New York!” She put her head down and sobbed. Tomas tried to raise his arm to comfort her, but quickly thought better of it.

“What about Cody?!” Tomas managed to gasp out.

“He’s alive. Probably in better shape than you are right now. But not much better.” She sobbed again.

“So,” he said in a much stronger voice, “what happened after that E.M. pulse?”

She didn’t waste time asking him how he’d figured that out. “Well, you crashed through the building, which distracted the villain long enough for me to knock him out. You ended up smashing through the roof, a couple of walls and floors, and finally bouncing off that gas tank behind you.” She was slowly recovering. There were people around her who needed her help and help she would.

Tom smiled wanly. “Well, if you got him, I guess it was worth it, then. What about the bomb?”

Adventurine pointed to it. “I think the E.M. pulse got it, too. It looks dead to me.”

Tom Atomic coughed, hacking up blood, and Adventurine could hear how much pain it caused him. “Don’t move, Tomas! I’ll be back with an ambulance crew in a few minutes!” There had been several ambulances in the ring of emergency vehicles blockading the Meadowlands. She wished her helmet radio was still working, but she realized that the emergency teams’ radios were probably out, too. “Wonder if their cars will work.”

She was just turning to go find an emergency team, when all the lights on the bomb control panel flickered, and then flashed green. The nixie tubes in the display panel lit up and started changing. They showed what was clearly a countdown in minutes and seconds. It had started at twenty minutes and was already down to 19:55 when she looked at Tom Atomic, and he said, “Uh-oh! Remote-control arming circuit! Must have been shielded against the EMP.”

The two heard a motor starting, and a few seconds later what sounded like a small helicopter taking off, a very small helicopter. Gaia Prime must have had an escape planned in case of failure. Tom Atomic was quick to realize the implications. “Hey, if he thinks he can fly away in twenty minutes, this can’t be the super-nuke he said it was!”

“Even if it’s only a small nuke, Tomas, it’s going to kill a lot of people, including you and me, unless we can deactivate it!” She looked at the control panel and hollered in frustration. “Damn! There’s nothing here but the countdown display. No switches, no buttons, nothing but these damn lights.”

Tom tried to lever himself into a sitting position, and screamed in agony, then fell back to the ground. His face was ash white, almost totally drained of blood, and he was sweating; the pain in his back and legs was so intense that he was about to flash, but he knew he didn’t have the time.

And then, suddenly, the pain stopped. “Uh, Bonnie — I can’t feel my legs!” He thought about that for just a second, and once again, knew he didn’t have time. “Pull that chair over in front of the bomb and help me up, will you? I can worry about my legs later!” Bonnie was about to argue that he might do permanent damage to his spinal cord, when she realized it wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t deactivate the bomb.

Once again he levered himself to a sitting position, and then, assisted by Adventurine, he pulled himself to the chair, dragging his useless legs behind him. To Adventurine, it looked as if only his costume was keeping him from leaving his legs behind. She felt the urge to be sick as well. But she resisted, more for his sake than for hers. Between the two of them, they got him onto the chair with more than fourteen minutes left.

“Uh, Tomas? I don’t want to add any pressure, but do you smell gas? I think the propane tank is leaking.”

Minutes earlier:

Gaia Prime was in bad shape. He figured he must either have a concussion or be in shock, because he couldn’t feel much pain, but he could sure see places where he ought to be hurting. His face was bleeding, there was a piece of his ear on the floor, he had several broken fingers, and his face was so swollen he could barely see. And all that was without turning his head, which he couldn’t. For the moment he was glad he couldn’t feel any pain, although somewhere in the back of his mind, a part of him was gibbering, terrified that he would forever be denied physical sensations again. What he knew for sure right now, though, was that he had to get away.

Although he had never expected such a disastrous and humiliating retreat, he had prepared several different escape methods. He started dragging himself toward the rear of the truck once again. It seemed to be a thousand miles away, and he had to fight to impose his will on his broken body, fight every inch of that thousand miles. Finally, he reached his goal. On the underside of the truck was a control panel that contained a single button. He desperately needed to press that button, but he couldn’t lift his arms that high.

However, he could reach an axle, so he used the axle to try to lever himself into a sitting position. He refused to look at the trail of slime that he had left, or think of anything but sitting upright. Next to crawling over a thousand miles just to reach this spot, it was the single most difficult feat of his life. And yet, when he finished, he faced an even harder task, which was raising his arm to reach the button, now only inches away from his head.

He couldn’t fail now. He was Gaia Prime, first minister of the sentient planet Terra. Maybe, a stray thought beckoned at him, maybe I’m just crazy. But he ignored it; if he wanted to live, he had to believe in himself and his cause, whether he was crazy or not.

Finding that it was easier to lift his arm now, he touched the button. For a second, nothing happened, and he was afraid that his own electromagnetic pulse must have fried the electronics he was depending on, that the shielding he had counted on had been inadequate. Then a section of the track bed detached itself and was hydraulically lowered to the ground. In the middle of the lowered section was a seat — a pilot’s seat — and if he could climb into that seat, it would be raised back into the cockpit of a small helicopter. But he had never expected that he would have trouble wriggling into this seat, even in the confined area under the truck.

It actually turned out to be easier than he had expected, and he pressed the panic button on the arm of the chair. His work was done for now; either he’d planned his escape well enough, or he hadn’t — there was nothing he could do now to affect the outcome. His iron will had pushed him well beyond any normal human limits, and he finally submitted to the darkness that was trying to envelop him.

His mechanisms did their work well. The platform was lifted into the hull of the chopper, and massive bolts slid home to lock it in place. Small shaped explosive charges broke the thick electromagnetic shielding along prescribed, inscribed planes, and it fell away. The folded arms of the main rotor unfolded and locked into place. The clamps holding the skids to the trailer bed were released, and the motor coughed to life.

After a short warm-up, the programmed process paused and waited for human intervention. When it didn’t happen, the program continued. The chopper rose slowly, hesitated at about five-hundred feet as the radio direction finder located a specific beacon, then swung around to the west and started moving forward, accelerating as it flew away. This part of the program was designed to get the bird and its occupant as far away from ground zero as possible before the bomb went off.

***

The down-blast of air from the rotor blasted Red Rocket’s face and irritated him toward consciousness. He opened his eyes in time to see the small helicopter taking off. He thought he must be seeing things, since it looked almost exactly like a one-man chopper one of his friends had built with plans from the back of Popular Mechanics. Well, he couldn’t do anything about the chopper, but just before he’d passed out, he’d seen his wife, and he was now determined to find her.

But as he rolled over, Cody decided then and there that if he lived through this, he was going to retire immediately. He didn’t seem to have any broken bones, but he had pains in places that hadn’t even been places when he was younger and trimmer. His attention returned to finding Bonnie. He tried to listen, but now that the chopper was out of range, all he could hear was his own breathing, which was really just gasping, moaning, and coughing. Taking a deep breath, he held it as long as he could and listened carefully. He heard Bonnie’s voice, but when he tried to call out to her, he made almost no noise. He started crawling in that direction.

Someone had bled heavily here, and he realized that this was where Bonnie had terribly beaten the bad guy. He smiled at the memory — how many bad guys had Bonnie trashed over the years? He noticed some kind of device with a pistol grip. It was highly advanced technology, so he picked it up and kept crawling. As he came to the hole in the floor, he looked through it to see Bonnie and Tomas. Tomas was slumped in a chair, and Bonnie was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder. She looked very concerned, almost frantic.

Pushing his head down through the hole, he surprised the hell out of them. “Guys! The bad guy just ran away — looks like we win again!”

It was lucky for Red Rocket that neither of his partners was in any shape to attack. Adventurine jumped a few feet, but Tom Atomic barely turned his head. “Cody — this bomb is armed and counting down,” he said. “We’ve got twelve minutes left. Are your goggles working?”

“Nope… and not much else is, either. What’s wrong with your own?”

“EMP just about ten minutes ago. Fried all our systems. This bomb must have been shielded, because it started counting down just when that chopper motor started.”

Red Rocket slid his arm forward until it dropped through the hole, still holding the pistol grip. “Maybe this weird ray-gun can help.”

Adventurine’s voice perked up, and she yelled, “That’s the EMP gun! I saw Gaia aim it at you, Tomas!” She was suddenly filled with new energy. Moving quickly to her husband, she took the gun from his hands, aimed it at the bomb, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened; the nixie tubes kept counting down the seconds until their deaths. “Damn, I should have realized it was shielded!”

Now it was Tomas’ turn to be excited. “Bonnie, did you see any tools up above? Suppose I could get the gun inside the shielding?”

Adventurine didn’t waste time talking. She leaped for the ceiling, and even though it was ten feet up, she got both hands onto the floor above, and pulled herself up through the floor. She ran to a workshop she had passed on her way in, and grabbed a tool roll. In a flash, she was back down the hole and unrolling it. He grunted his thanks, and pulled out a couple of screwdrivers and some vise-grips.

“Don’t go ‘way with the rest of the tools — I might need something else!” he said ironically as he turned back to the panel.

“And just…” Bonnie began with all the dignity she could muster, which wasn’t much, though given the circumstances, she did pretty well, “…just where do you think I would go?”

But Tomas didn’t hear her; he was already working on the screws that held the control panel together. Tom Atomic rarely did anything that pushed the envelope of his enhanced speed, but he had never worked faster in his life. Within seconds, he had removed a half-dozen screws, and was pulling the side panel away from the bomb mechanism. The countdown stood at eight minutes. He grabbed the electromagnetic pulse gun, stuck it inside the control mechanism, and pulled the trigger.

The countdown stopped. All the lights and the nixie tubes went dark. Adventurine started to cheer exultantly. But then she remembered the propane leak.

“Tomas, can a regular explosion make that bomb go off?”

“Can’t see how, darlin’! Why?

“Gas leak — we gotta go!”

Red Rocket had recovered sufficiently to help her raise Tom Atomic through the hole in the floor. They didn’t have time to be gentle, and Tom couldn’t always bite back his screams. As soon as they were both out of the basement, Rocket and Adventurine were putting together a makeshift stretcher. They manhandled Atomic onto the stretcher, and started toward the outside door, moving as quickly as possible. In the wreckage in front of the building, Bonnie found a two-wheeled handcart. They wedged Tomas in the cart, and took turns pulling it.

They had gone about a hundred yards when something, possibly a random spark, in the now-trashed building ignited the air-natural gas mixture, and the entire building collapsed like a deck of cards. They hardly even felt the shock wave.

Epilogue: Retirement

The nuclear crisis turned out to be more important than whatever it was that had kept Zenith from investigating this issue by herself, and she reached the Meadowlands shortly after the construction shack exploded. Adventurine managed to get her attention, and she was able to carry the three heroes back to New York City, where Cody Mason and Tomas Thomas were checked into a hospital after supposedly falling down the stairs at Madison Square Garden during the chaos following the evacuation notice.

Several followers of Gaia Prime were still alive, and after questioning, the outlines of Prime’s story were revealed.

In 1958, a strange family had joined a commune situated in the Adirondack Mountains near Oil City, Pennsylvania. The commune was only a couple of years old at the time. The married couple told a story about how their thirteen-year-old son had used an experimental psychoactive drug that had completely erased his memory. He didn’t know how to walk, talk, or even eat. Over the next few months, much of his memory seemed to return to him, and by 1959, he was pretty indistinguishable from the other kids in the commune.

The commune members, being pioneers in their own ways, were very serious about their philosophy, one tenet of which was to protect the environment. This kid, who became known as Tad, adopted the environmentalist philosophy as his own, and by the time he reached eighteen, he was one of the accepted leaders of the commune. His influence over his comrades grew, and in the mid-1960s they began organizing protests and sponsoring rallies, civil disobedience, and even some well-hidden violence in support of their leader’s adopted cause.

That was, until Tad pushed some of them too far. A refinery in Oil City, Pennsylvania, decided to expand, and Tad encouraged his followers to protest. Some of them sat in front of the earth-breaking machines and refused to move, which led to a standoff, until police forcibly removed some comrades in cuffs. The construction crews got moving, but Tad convinced several more of his followers to once again attempt to interfere. This time, they threw their bodies in the way of construction machinery that was already in motion, and half a dozen of them died horribly, but the construction was halted.

This “victory” brought Tad more followers and more confidence, and he decided to make a grandiose entrance to the international arena by stopping the construction of Giants’ Stadium and the Meadowland Sports Complex, with the results we have already seen.

***

Tomas had indeed suffered a severed spinal column, and the medical opinion was that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He didn’t agree; he was sure that the anti-crime drug would soon allow his body to heal itself. Only time would tell.

Shortly after Tomas and Cody Mason were released from the hospital, with Tomas still in a wheelchair, the three returned to Chicago, where Police Commissioner Tony Spinelli called a press conference, suggesting that it concerned a matter of highest public interest. Reporters arrived, Spinelli greeted them, and a few minutes later, Red Rocket flew through the window carrying Adventurine, followed immediately by Tom Atomic. Spinelli introduced them, and Rocket took the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, we have asked you here today because Adventurine and I are announcing our retirement as mystery heroes.” There was a lot of chaos then, and everyone tried to ask questions. Rocket held up his hand.

“Please hold your questions; I believe our statements will cover everything.” He paused to shake his head and clear his throat; it was clear that this was a very difficult thing for him to do. Tears rolled down Adventurine’s mask.

“During several recent situations, I have made some very serious errors in judgment, and we have all been fortunate that no innocents have been injured. In addition, I’ve survived several serious injuries recently, and I no longer heal as quickly as I did when I got into the business. I simply find it harder to just ignore the aches and pains the way youngsters seem to do — the way I used to be able to do!” He chuckled ruefully, and several of the older reporters nodded their heads. Some of the younger ones looked smug.

“I feel strongly that a mystery hero should not be a danger to the people he is trying to protect. And so I’m getting out of the business while you are all safe, and I’m still relatively healthy. The Alliance of Mystery Heroes and Commissioner Spinelli can reach me in emergencies. In addition, my partner Tom Atomic will continue to respond in those situations where a mystery hero is required.

“As you are aware, I have shared many of my mystery heroic adventures with the beautiful Adventurine, who has her own announcement to make. Adventurine?”

He handed her the microphone. Several of the reporters tried to ask questions, but Rocket had the same answer. “Please let her make her announcement, then we will answer your questions.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here today for our announcements. Red Rocket flatters me — during my career I have worked with him often, but more often he dealt with national and global threats, while I concentrated more on street crime.

“I am also announcing my retirement today. I’ve been finding it harder and harder to stay in shape so I could wear this costume–” She twirled, leaving all of the men, and many of the women in the room breathless. “–without being embarrassed. You ladies can probably guess at the enhancements I’ve had to make to this costume in the past few years to keep things from sagging.” She punctuated her words with a wink, and most of the women in the room chuckled at this. “And, as Rocket says, the bruises and injuries are harder to overcome these days.

“I have also made arrangements with Commissioner Spinelli and the Alliance of Mystery Heroes, but I’m confident I won’t be needed. Ever since he came into office, the commissioner has been improving the police force, providing them with better training, better equipment, and better pay than ever before, and the number of cops on the street has gone up significantly. And, equally important, so has their morale! Over the past few months, there have been very few situations where my help was really required; in fact, I almost felt that I was already retired! So neither you nor I will notice a big change.”

Tom Atomic stepped forward and took the microphone before anyone else could speak. “While I am deeply saddened by the retirement of my long-time partner Red Rocket and my long-time associate Adventurine, I don’t plan to retire myself! When Tom Atomic is needed, there he will be!”

He gave the microphone back to Red Rocket, who finished. “OK, now we’ll take questions.”

The first question came from the noted gossip columnist, Liz Jones. “Adventurine, you’ve told us for years that you aren’t romantically involved with anyone, because it wouldn’t be fair to your spouse for you to be in danger all the time. Now that you are retired, you would immediately become the most eligible woman in Chicago. Do you have any plans for romance?”

Adventurine struck a pose — one hand behind the head, the other on her hip, hip thrust slightly forward, one leg in front of the other — and the younger men in the room gasped. “Why, thank you, Liz! I’m not planning to go looking just yet — I’m sort of hoping Red Rocket will be able to find the time to make me an honest woman! What do you say, Red?” She crooked her finger at him, and everyone in the room could see that he was sweating. He took back the microphone.

“Next question, please!”

The questions came thick and fast for about half an hour, and finally Commissioner Spinelli called a halt to things. “C’mon, you guys, you’ve got more than enough for your stories! Time to get back to the offices and start writing.” The heroes took their leave, and Tony Spinelli shook off the few reporters that remained. “Sorry, boys, even if you don’t have work to do, I do!”

***

Three visitors dropped in on Tomas Thomas’ hospital room: Cody and Bonnie Mason, and Ned Quest, alias Dr. Lambda.

As they shook hands and hugged, Tomas spoke to Dr. Lambda. “My thanks, Dr. Ned! If Tom Atomic had retired at the same time that Tomas Thomas was confined to a wheelchair, I’m sure someone would have figured out my identity.”

“No problem, Tomas! I’m always happy to aid a fellow champion for the cause of truth and justice!”

Tomas looked worried, though. “Are you sure you’ll have time to appear as Tom Atomic for a while longer?”

Ned smiled. “You know I’m pretty much retired these days. Kris will be glad I’m out from underfoot. She sends her love and she made me promise not to forget to tell you something… hold on!” He pretended to think for a moment, but nobody believed he’d actually forgotten... “Oh, yeah, big ceremony at the school today, awards ceremony for the first half of the school year. She has to present some of the awards, so she couldn’t miss it. But she said she’d fly out and see you soon!”

The four talked for hours. Tom Atomic’s friends had been worried that he would be depressed by his injury, but he seemed to be fine with it. “It will give me time to catch up on my reading!” He subscribed to virtually every scientific journal available, but most of them went unread. “And I have some ideas for turning our super-being tables into a new game, even better than SuperYou! I’ll be OK.”