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Post by Admin on Aug 11, 2022 23:48:20 GMT
In the second bedroom of his home, which he had turned into a laboratory, radio engineer Bruce King smiled in satisfaction he finished soldering the last wires to the leads of the power switch of his new device, a radio transmitter that would produce ultra short radio waves, shorter than anything yet generated by humans. He’d built the device into an aluminum box the size of a small suitcase, because the sensitive circuitry needed to be shielded from outside radio signals. It was battery powered for the same reason – any electrical generating device produced enough electronic ‘noise’ to disrupt the operation of his new transmitter. He closed and locked the box and set it on the lab bench next to his other recent invention – a radio receiver that would actually capture the incredibly short wavelength radio signals his transmitter would generate. He turned on the receiver, which was barely humming, as it picked up extremely faint natural signals in the frequency range Bruce was interested in, and then he flicked on the power to his new transmitter… and would have died within seconds, frozen solid, if he hadn’t been able to almost instantly turn it back off again! As it was, he was shivering and coated in a sheath of ice from just that barest instant of exposure to the radio waves from his new invention!
He almost died anyway – everything in his lab, including the floor, was covered with an inch of ice, created during that tenth of a second when his device had been turned on. He tried to move and crashed to the floor, which luckily shattered part of the icy sheath coating him. He scrabbled desperately and was barely able to squirm out of the lab. He struggled into the bathroom and with a supreme effort was able to crawl into the tub and turn the water on. Even the cold water felt scalding hot for a few minutes. When he could move a little more freely, he made the water warmer and turned on the shower, and just let the warm water cascade over him for several minutes… and when he finally felt a lot better, he took off his clothes and completed a long, hot shower – something that had NEVER felt so good before!
A week later, he was finally ready to try out his invention again. He’d made several modifications – in particular, he’d added a rheostat to control the battery power, and he planned to only allow a minute trickle of current to flow, until he was sure it was safe to turn it up. He’s also spent part of that week creating a protective outfit for himself… a skin-tight dark blue costume that covered his entire body and head except for the lower face. The costume was two layers of a thin, highly insulative material with a sheath of high resistance wires between the layers – wires connected to a battery pack he wore on his back which could be used to heat the outfit while he was testing it. And one other change, another dial on the box that would let him transmit even shorter radio waves.
“Finally, read for the REAL test!” he rubbed his hands in satisfaction. He turned the rheostat to the lowest setting and turned the transmitter back on – and almost instantly, even at the lowest possible power, he could fill intense cold around the box. He quickly stepped back and turned up the heat in his outfit, and then turned his attention to his detector. It showed that his transmitter was indeed producing the shortest wavelength radio signals every produced by a human! Apparently those radio waves also produced a zone of absolute zero temperature when they were strong enough!
An exuberant Bruce then turned off his device and twisted a 3 position rotary switch to the middle position. “Let’s see what effects the EVEN SHORTER radio waves will have!” He picked up a pair of goggles. “If my theory about light is right, I’ll need these!” He verified that a second rheostat was at the lowest setting and turned the power back on. Instantly the transmitter and his hand disappeared into a ball of utter blackness, darker than anything he’d ever seen before. “My theory is RIGHT! Just as the first signal band at 2 x 10-16 cm totally cancels heat waves, the second bad at 6x10-17 cm cancels light waves!”
He donned the goggles. “RIGHT AGAIN~” he shouted enthusiastically, though there was no one else in the house to hear him. “I can see through the blackness!” A pause for thought, then “I’ll call this my Black Zero transmitter!”
At that instant the phone rang. King snapped off his transmitter and spent the next hour talking to his mother. He found that his insulated costume was a little bit uncomfortable in normal temperatures, and he had a dinner engagement later on, so he changed into a green suit with double breasted jacket, then went back to the lab. “Now that I know I can turn the zero cold transmitter on and off separately from the blackout transmitter, I want to test the blackout transmitter separately. ”I’ll close this switch and test my portable Black Zero transmitter!”
At the instant he turned the device on, there was a loud ‘snap’ which sounded like a powerful electric spark. Bruce later discovered that a solder joint had failed and shorted across the rheostat terminals, sending the full power of the batteries to the blackout transmitter – and the room was instantly plunged into total darkness. Even though he had barely moved, it took him a few seconds of fumbling to find the power switch again; he flipped it off and the room was instantly filled with light again.
“It’s a darned good thing I didn’t turn on the Zero transmitter too!” he thought in relief. “A few seconds of full power, and the house would have been a glacier!” A few seconds later he was yelling, “Hold your horses! Stop your darned pounding on my darned door! I’ll be right there!”
A photographer and reporter for the Kerry, Maine Daily Tab were driving by King’s home at the time. Watts, the photographer, who was driving, slammed on the brakes in stunned awe as the house was enveloped in a pillar of darkness that reached high into the sky! It was darker than the darkest night, without even a single twinkling spot of light and it extended skyward as far up as either newsman could see.
“That’s the house of that whacko inventor, Bruce King!” Chambers, the reporter yelped in excitement! “I’ll get an interview! It’s a death ray, I’ll bet!” Almost before the car skidded to a halt, he jumped out of the car, but by the time he had the door open, the strange pillar was gone as if it had never existed. There had been no noise, and other than the vanished pillar itself, there were no traces that it had ever existed. He pounded on the door until King answered, then pushed rudely into the room.
“What was THAT thing, King?” he shouted breathlessly. “Have you invented a DEATH RAY?”
Bruce denied it vehemently, but Chambers wasn’t taking No! for an answer. He rapid fired a dozen questions, growing more excited every second. King ignored most of them, denied the rest of them, and grew more angry every second. Finally he reached his breaking point.
“If you don’t leave my home INSTANTLY, you’ll see what a death ray REALLY looks like!” he threatened.
Chambers pounced! “So, then, King! Can I quote you as saying you have perfected a death ray!”.
“No, you CAN NOT! Now, scram, I’m busy!” At that instant, Watts snapped a picture from the porch, and Bruce furiously shoved Chambers back through the door, slammed it, and locked it!
He was dismayed, and Kerry and the surrounding towns and cities were stunned at the headlines in the Kerry Daily Tab the next day:
Radio Wizard Now Denies Perfecting Death Ray
Bruce wasted a good part of the next several days refusing to talk to other reporters, most of them from much bigger papers in much bigger cities. Because Kerry was the site of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, a story with such an obvious relationship to national defense as a death ray carried more weight than a similar story is some crackpot local paper in some other town might, and eventually, foreign agents brought that story to the attention of a great dictator in a country across the Atlantic.
“So, America has a death ray! We must have it. Cable Agent Z1 in America to GET IT!”
Several hours later, a telegraph was delivered to a nondescript apartment in a non-descript rooming house in New York City. A hard-faced man paid the delivery boy, but gave him no tip, and then spent the next several hours deciphering the hidden message in the telegram. The next morning he met with two other similarly hard faced men in a dingy downtown office. Not long after, the three of them marched out of the office. “Orders from the Leader! We are to GET KING’S DEATH RAY! Come!” Agent Z1 commanded his fellow spies. They raced north and in a few hours, they pulled up to King’s home in Portsmouth, NH, and burst in, pistols drawn.
It took a few minutes for them to make themselves clear. Bruce, of course, denied that he had a death ray. “I tell you, I have NO DEATH RAY! But even if I did, you’d never get it!” he insisted stoutly.
Equally loudly, Z1 threatened him. “We have WAYS of getting things!” The three stepped closer, waving their guns at him.. “You have 3 minutes to show us, before we shoot you!”
Bruce was totally taken aback! “OH! Very well… I didn’t know…you felt so… strongly about it!” He walked to a lab bench where the Black Zero transmitter was and threw a switch. The blackout generator came on at full power, and everything inside the house and the yard around it was instantly engulfed in darkness, and from the outside, one could see a pillar of darkness reaching infinitely high into the sky!
The three agents started screaming! “I’m BLIND!” “I can’t SEE!” “Where’s the door!”
By feel, Bruce pulled open a drawer in the bench and pulled out his insulated outfit. “You guys ASKED for it!” he gloated as he pulled on the goggles. ‘Everything looks blue,” he thought, “but I can see PERFECTLY!” While the other 3 stumbled around in the dark, he could easily see to don his costume. “Now, you fellows, DROP THOSE GUNS!” he commanded.
“Shoot at his voice!” Z1 ordered his team.
“We’ll stop that!” Bruce laughed, then silently moved away from that spot. As the agents fired blindly, he touched a control on his belt, turning on the heater, then turned on the Zero transmitter at moderate power. Instantly, the agents were almost frozen; unable to control their paralyzed muscles, they fell helplessly to the floor. He turned the Zero power down somewhat – he didn’t want to kill them! Then, one by one, he dragged them to his car, also enveloped in the pillar of darkness, then went back for the Black Zero transmitter.
Everyone for miles around was awed and most of them a little scared to see a pillar of darkness, seeming pointing down from the highest heavens to the street in Portsmout, moving from the suburbs toward the police station. Still hidden in the pillar, Bruce left the three agents outside the police station with a note: “Compliments of the King of Darkness!” and then drove off. A few miles away, he turned off the Black Zero transmitter, and finished the drive home as a normal car with a normal driver.
Unknown to Z1 and his team, there was another agent of the dictator in Kerry, and he had received separate instructions to keep an eye on Z1 and his team as backup. He had seen the pillar move into town, and from a concealed hiding place, he noted when the pillar deposited 3 unconscious men on the sidewalk in front of the police station – men he recognized. “Carl, Hans and Fritz – they have FAILED. Well, there is only one reward for failure.” 3 shots rang out from a silenced rifle, and three enemy agents who had been unconscious and had hands and feet tied, were murdered, while the fourth enemy agent escaped alive and unobserved.
The instant reaction of the police who rushed from the station and found three dead bodies and a note from a new, unknown vigilante, was that this King of Darkness was a vicious murder. Sergeant Burke, who had seen the bodies jerk from the bullets AFTER the pillar of darkness had departed, begged to differ. "Murder, nothing! Those guys were shot after he... or it... or whatever that was, left. I SAW it!" The chief wasn't so sure. "Burke, you and Fox FOLLOW THAT er... pillar! And arrest this so-called King of Darkness!"
The pillar of darkness was causing near-panic in the citizens who saw it - nobody had ever seen anything like it before! It was like an infinitely long finger of pure black, reaching down from the sky and sliding along the road. Those that didn't instantly run and hide later swore they heard a car motor that seemed to come from the middle of the pillar. The police switchboard was flooded with frantic phone calls; the overwhelmed operators quickly got to the point where they aaked for an address and promised that there were squad cars on the way, and then relayed the address information to the radio operator who kept Burke and Fox informed - and it wasn't long before they were closing on the slower moving pillar. Bruce was still getting used to peering out of the pillar of dark into daylight, and everything being shades of blue, so he was just tooling along, until he saw the police car in the rear-view mirror.
"A police care following me! I'll freeze it out!" He adjusted the position of the Black Zero transmitter and toggled a switch - and ice started to form on the front of the police car, and the engine died as it froze solid, and the car slid to a halt. As he went around the next bend and lost sight of the stalled squad car, Bruce clicked off the Black Zero Transmitter and stomped on the gas and fairly flew the rest of the way home.
Fox was the suspicious type, and he read every newspaper he could get his hands on. "Say, Burke - you don't suppose that King guy is mixed up in this? Remember that story in the Tab?"
"Maybe you got somehin' there, Foxy! As soon as you can get this heap running again, drive there!" It took about 10 minutes before the car would start again, and it was running really rough, but Foxy babied it to King's address. He stayed in the driveway to work on the car, while Burke went inside to confront the radio engineer.
"Mr. King, I'm Sergeant Burke of the Portsmouth Police. What do YOU know about this mysterious Pillar of Darkness that just came out this way?" He was loud and belligerent.
King hoped he looked bewildered. "Should I know anything about it? Why?"
"Listen, King! The Pillar was moving this way, and the Tab story the other day reported a similar sighting right about here, and was all about you and your death ray!"
He stopped talking as the music King had been listening to on the radio was interrupted by a News Flash. "WPRT interrupts this thrilling rendition of "In The Mood" by Glenn Miller for this important News Flash! The three men found dead in front of the police station have been identified by local FBI agents as 3 wanted spies! The mystery..."
Burke didn't wait for the rest of the story. His tone was much more friendly now. "So THAT's the story! Well, vermin like that are better off dead, in my opinion. Results are what counts." He turned to stare at King. "So maybe you know somethin' about that Pillar, and maybe you don't... and maybe you ARE the King of Darkness and maybe you're not. I really don't care."
King nodded and played along. "And maybe I might find out who he really is, someday!"
Burke replied serious. "I don't really want to know. But I might want you to contact him for his help sometimes..."
King nodded again. "Well, I'll see what I can do, of course - anything to help out Portsmouth's finest! If I can contact him, probably he'll be glad to help you out!" With that, the two shook hands and parted company.
Back at the police station, Commissioner Jespersen wasn't quite as friendly. "I told you to bring back this so-called King of Darkness in cuffs! Even though those 3 were wanted spies, citizens should not act as judge, jury and executioner! I know you SAID he isn't the murderer, but until I get PROOF of his innocence, he's going to be a WANTED MAN in MY city!"
Burke could only sigh. Jespersen was his boss, after all... "Yes, chief. Of course, chief. Whatever you say, sir!"
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Post by Admin on Aug 11, 2022 23:49:16 GMT
Bruce King looked around his lab at all the instruments and fabrication machinery, much of which he had constructed and invented himself. ‘As a teenager fascinated by radio waves, I would NEVER have believed I’d ever be interested in semiconductor physics!” he thought in wonder. “But when I read the papers of Lilienfeld and Heil I realized that if the devices they described actually worked, I could make my own inventions both smaller and more powerful, I became obsessed.” He laid his hand fondly on one of the devices. “With this device, I can actually create the transistors that they only theorized!” He turned back to a small plastic board, about the size of a postcard, lying on a workbench. It was covered with electronic components on top, their leads stuck through small holes drilled through the thin plastic, while the bottom was covered with a myriad of tiny insulated wires running from one component lead to the other. Still more wires connected a small, flat battery pack from one end of the board and a long flat cable connected to a bulky bracer.
“I’ve replaced all the valves…” (which was another word for ‘vacuum tubes’ at the time) “…in my luggable Black Zero transmitter with transistors, which also allowed me to totally remove the bulky vacuum tube hear circuitry and lowered the power requirements by almost 90% – and… Voila! This…” he touched a box the size of a small suitcase which has a similar panel of switches and dials, the moved back to the plastic board. “… becomes…” As he expounded in his head, he placed the battery pack into a flat oval shaped container, carefully arranged the plastic board next to it, with the flat cables passing through slots, fastened everything into place to mounts already attached to the inside of the box, and then firmly fasted on a cover. “Ta DAH! The new transistorized Black Zero Transmitter!”
He removed his lounging robe, revealing a bare toros over dark blue, almost black, one piece tights that covered his feet. There was a belt mounted to the oval container; he donned the belt so that the transmitter was held firmly against the small of his back, he arranged the cable to lay flat against his back and then run down to his is right wrist, then he pulled on a skin-tight long sleeve blue top which held the pack and cables firmly in place. He slipped his hands through the bracers, then pulled on blue gloves, and pulled on a blue cowl that left the bottom of his face bare, and struck an heroic pose.
“With all the improvements I’ve made to the Black Zero transmitter,” he thought proudly, “I think I’ll adopt an improved name, too.” He struck a heroic pose for the imaginary crowds of admirers around him.
Still, he ought to do some testing first… he remembered how he had almost frozen himself solid when he had first discovered the Zero rays, radio waves in the incredibly short 2 x 10-16 cm band that totally cancels heat radiation, producing regions where the temperature could drop to absolute Zero, or when he had cautiously applied minimal power to his Blackout transmitter, but a carelessly soldered connection had snapped, dumping full power into that device, the radio waves in the even shorter band at 6 x 10-17 cm had totally cancelled light waves in a pillar that enveloped his entire house and extended as high into the sky as the eye could see. It was lucky he’d achieved full control over his invention by the time he’d discovered that the shortest band of all, at 6.02 x 10-24 cm, which totally cancelled gravity! He might have ended up on the moon before he’d even realized he was leaving Earth! So even though he wanted to rush right out and commit some heroic deeds, he took a few minutes to give his equipment a trial run.
With his left hand, he touched a dial oh his belt – and a black cone-shaped beam flashed out from the bracer on his right. It spread until it was about a foot wide where it touched the ceiling; he knew there was a cone of darkness now shooting upward from his rof that got gradually wider and became less dark the further it reached. “The Blackout ray works just fine,” he exulted. ‘Let’s test the power and the collimation!” He rolled first one knob and then another. The beam because less cone shaped, not spreading out at all by the time it reached the wall, and he knew it would spread barely an inch in a thousand miles, if he turned the power up enough. As he turned the power down, he could see the beam fade away before it reached the ceiling. “Perfect! Now the Zero ray”. He pointed at a pitcher of water in the sink and touched another control – and the water in the pitcher froze so fast it shattered! He carefully rolled another, and he could feel the room temperature drop around him. “If the Zero band wasn’t so dangerous, I could get rich by making air conditioners!” he joked. Actually it was something he thought about fairly often on those two or three days a year when the temperature in Portsmouth, NH, got above 85o. “Last test!” He touched another control, set fairly far from the Blackout and Zero controls, rose into the air, then floated cautiously around the room, and set down again.
He was satisfied. He headed towards the door, and as he stepped outside, he announced to the world around him: “It’s Black Zero, the King of Darkness. Time to watch my smoke!”
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Post by Admin on Aug 13, 2022 0:09:55 GMT
The King of Darkness had first appeared in public only last summer (you can read his first case here: The King of Darkness, see also the original in Amazing Man Comics #24, October 1941, starting on page 36). Since he had captured 3 notorious spies in his first case, he'd had a number of others, and in Portsmouth New Hampshire and nearby Kerry, Maine, he'd become quite famous, and sighting the tremendous 'Pillar of Darkness' that often accompanied his exploits sweeping down the street or even flashing through the air was no longer a cause for panic among the local citizens. Though Police Commision Jasperson still thought of him as a wanted man, most of the local police welcomed his appearances. He was in the good graces of Naval Intelligence for capturing a foreign submarine that had attempted to sink a British battleship which had just undergone repairs in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (see Amazing Man Comics #25, November 1941, starting on page 45), and he was even getting some national press for his rescue of famous Hollywood actress and pinup girl Gloria Glamour, who had been kidnapped from the on-location movie production "It's a Date". And he'd started a romance with Gloria, to boot!
But his famous 'Pillar of Darkness' was quickly becoming his greatest weakness. His allies and his enemies were all closing in on discovering his true identity, merely by observing were the Pillar was most often sighted... and some underworld genius had discovered the secret of seeing in the darkness he created, and that guy had sold that secret to the deadly Red Gang that was terrorizing the Portsmouth area, and probably other mobs as well. So it was more than time for a change in his MO, and along with that change, why not a change in his heroic identity?
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Post by Admin on Aug 13, 2022 10:34:40 GMT
Starman Foes
Starman's first recurring villain is the Mist, an elderly scientist who develops an invisibility potion that leaves only his head and hands visible in mid-air. He first appears in Adventure Comics #67 (Nov 1941).[8] Starman's rogues gallery also includes Astra the Astrologist, Cuthbert Cain, Dr. Doog and the Secret Brotherhood of the Electron, and the Veil.[9]
He was a frequent ally of the FBI
Gloria has set up a summer home in Maine. She knows Bruce, who has worked on the production of several movies filmed in Maine, and often compares him unfavorably with Black Zero.
How about an elderly scientist who invents a longevity potion and is transformed into something like Solomon Grundy... strong, stupid and full of anger.
He tries to combine the factors that give sequoias and tortoises long life and he gets some of the other characteristics. His body is made of very hard wood and he has a tortoise shell, his wood body is covered by scaled leather armor and his head resembles that of a snapping turtle complete with beak, and he grows claws on hands and feet. Tortisequoia
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Post by Admin on Aug 13, 2022 21:18:46 GMT
some kind of crime in progress, Black Zero responds. It is the Red Gang, which can see through his darkness, and they have some kind of protection against his cold beam, but with his new transistorized Black Zero transmitter he has some new tricks, he can better direct the cold beam and create ice where he wants it. How can he use new control of the dark beam to overcome the advantage of their goggles?
Tortoisequoia and a gang... Torty isn't there initially, and for a short while Black Zero is wiping them out, but then Torty shows up and he is immune to intense cold, he can somehow see in the dark, and he is strong enough to break through all the ice shields and armor that Zero can create. He is able to pummel Zero, but the police are arriving, so the gang escapes, taking Torty with them.
Sergeant Burke arrives first, and he helps Zero escape before the rest of the police arrive,
He'd had to invent a rechargeable battery and a charger, and he now kept a half dozen fully charged packs back in his lab, and made a habit out of swapping in a freshly charged pack once a day. He'd run out of power once during a battle with a criminal; fortunately for him, Sergeant Burke and the Portsmouth police had showed up at about the same time.
Black Zero was currently engaged in a pitched battle with a villain who was apparently an inventive genius.
Nightscreecher - extremely acrobatic, covered in fur which fangs and very long spindly arms, pointed ears, looks like a human sized bat with no wings or tail. His civilian identity is John Lambert...
His civilian identity is Jon Bertlam, and he was a biologist working for Allomer Chemnotech in Wayne, Maine, who was doing research on bats. He was all excited when he though he had isolated the hormone that allows bats to use echolocation and he created a serum to give himself that same power. And it worked! He now has the power of echolocation, and he can also use his sonic powers as a sonic attack. Unfortunately, he also grew a bit taller and much more spindly, he sprouted fur all over his body, his head morphed until it looks like a giant bat head with mickey mouse ears and fangs, his arms are now about twice as long as human arms and his legs are much shorter, and he has claws and wings - and can fly!The fur makes him immune to general low powered cold attacks, and he is able to escape directed high power cold beams. He can use his echolocation as a sonic attack as well.
And maybe he is stealing stuff from a scientific supply place because he needs it in order to turn back. He got fired from his job when he changed, so he doesn't have the supplies he needs to change back. And he has a grudge against his employer! (maybe the chemical company from Other Earth, in Wayne, Maine?)
In fact... maybe, the battle between him and the hero will put a kid in danger, and he'll risk his life to save the kid, and the hero will realize that he's not really a totally bad guy after all...
They are fighting in the Maine plant where Jon used to work.
Jon Bertlam used to work for Allomer Chemnotech in Wayne, Maine, until he created the formula that turned him into Nightscreecher. He is simultaneously trashing the Allomar manufacturing facility in Wayne and stealing the supplies he needs create an antidote when he comes in conflict with Black Zero.
there is probably an explosion or something caused by the fight, and a wall falls down, trapping Allomar's Chief Publicity Officer Trudy Fawn in the rubble, and Nightscreecher's super hearing picks up her call for help and he races to bail her out; she is one of the few Allomar employees who tried to talk the management out of firing him.
Screech might have a pair of trained bats...
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Post by Admin on Aug 14, 2022 15:06:07 GMT
Bruce King listened to the morning news on WPRT as he made breakfast, a 'loaded' omelet, toast slathered with butter and strawberry jam, and very strong tea. "Police in St. Louis yesterday reported another missing person, Sherman Leonard, the lead engineer for St. Louis's largest radio station, KSTL. This is the 4th similar disappearance of the chief engineer from a prominent radio station in a big city in the past 2 weeks. The FBI theorizes that these disappearances may be the work of some foreign power that wants to keep America out of the War, by disrupting the operation of stations where the the Editorial stance is that the US drop the current policy of neutrality and immediately enter the war on the side of the England and France." The announcer paused and listeners could hear him shuffling papers, then... "The FBI has no further leads at this time."
"All four of those missing men are members of the SREE!" Bruce thought. "I wonder if there's more to this than some 'stay out of the war' action?" Bruce was also a member of the Society of Radio and Electronic Engineers (SREE®) though he hadn't been to a meeting in several years. "I'll mention it to FBI Chief Ashley Zimmer the next time I talk to him as Black Zero. Can't see why being an SREE member might be a reason for trouble, but these days, you never know..."
*****
Late that night, in his otherwise empty brownstone home on Beacon Street in Boston, National Director of the SREE Dr. Michael Gazeele sat alone in his study, reading an article in the SREE Journal on 'frequency hopping' that had been submitted, surprisingly, by one of Hollywood's most famous and glamorous actresses. Near his pencil cup on the corner of the desk, he'd placed his latest knick-knack, a small, somewhat bizarre idol seemingly carved of solid jade, that he had only received today in the mail from an anonymous sender.
It took several seconds for a faint hissing from the idol to catch his attention, and then he swiveled his head to look. A cloud of green vapor was issuing from the idol. Alarmed, he pushed his chair violently back away from the desk and tried to get up and rush from the room, but it was too late - instead of rising from the chair, he fell to the floor unconscious. A figure wearing a handkerchief mask over his mouth opened the door and cautiously entered the room, then quickly dragged the unconscious body roughly out the door, meanwhile gloating aloud: "The booby-trapped idol Subducto sent him worked perfectly! The boss will be mighty glad to see this guy!"
*****
Gazeele awakened to discover that he was strapped to a very uncomfortable chair, though that was the least of his worries at the moment. He was in a room filled with fantastic apparatus, resembling nothing more than the lab of a mad scientist from a recent "B" monster move. A few feet in front of him, he looked up and could see a curved polished metal dish, several feet across, with a conical projection in the center ending in a sphere the size of a 9" softball, aimed at his head. This dish was set on the end of a sturdy tube; the tube as mounted to swivel on top of an even thicker pillar which stuck out of a metal box, one face of which was a control panel studded with switches, knobs, dials and gauges. Next to the pillar on top of the box were a pair of tall, thin antennae. Standing in front of the control panel was a bald man, once tall but now with a pronounced hunched back, with a white handle bar mustache and short, pointed white beard, his face deeply lined, his features twisted in malignant triumph.
"Greetings, my esteemed colleague," he spoke in a sneering tone, his voice high pitched and whiney. "I am extremely flattered to have you present to witness one of my humble experiments!" The sarcasm almost literally dripped from his voice.
"Who are you? You look familiar, but I can't place you. What do you want with me?" Gazeele asked urgently. "You had better let me go!"
"I no longer use my original name, which I barely remember, but I am now known as Subducto!" the other replied. "Years ago, you expelled me from the SREE. You and the other fools on the Ethics Panel disapproved of my experiments on humans, but I will have the last laugh. Behold! The Subduction Ray!"
Subducto twisted a rheostat violent through its full range and jammed it into the far stop, laughed an evil laugh when the needle on one of the gauges leaped off the left pin and quickly swept across the dial into the green region. Sparks jumped between the antennae with loud crackles, then a series of blue electrical arcs formed, sizzling as they rose to vanishing with explosive 'ZAP" noises when they reached the top of the wires. The room was filled with a deep, powerful hum that seemed to shake the very bones of the men experiencing it.
The bulb in the middle of the 'radar dish' began to glow, brighter and brighter, and Gazeele was instantly drenched in sweat from the tremendous heat the weird apparatus projected. Even with his eyes squeezed tightly shut, he was sure he would be blinded!
"The HEAT! I can't stand it! Turn it OFF!" he screamed and then collapsed unconscious.
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Post by Admin on Aug 15, 2022 11:22:13 GMT
Gazeele snapped back to awareness, with no clue how long he might have been unconscious, and gasped in horror at the terrifying apparition in front of his eyes. The giant leering face of Subducto loomed above him, and Subucto's maniacal laughter thundered against his ears. He closed his eyes and threw his arm across his face, and was instantly aware of differences in how his arm moved - it smashed into his face much sooner than he had expected it to, an impact that should have hurt, but he barely felt it. His eyes snapped open again and this time he took in the rest of the room. Everything in the room appeared to be MUCH larger than before - including the gloating giant Subducto.
"Yes, you are shrunken to the size of a child's doll, fool. Never again will you mock my Subduction Ray!". The giant reached out, easily picked up Gazeele, and squeezed. Almost instantly the panicked, bewildered engineer passed out again from the pain.
He awakened in confusion, and the first thing he saw was the certificates hanging on the far wall of his study, and for an instant, he thought it must have been a dream. But he glanced around and he quickly realized it must have been real - everything around him was huge! He stood on the chair; he could barely see over the top of the desk. "I must be less than 18" tall," part of his mind estimated, while another part gibbered in panic. "I MUST get help! Someone must capture that madman and force him to restore me! He must be stopped!"
He had to fight through the panic, the terror, and the feelings of hopelessness. 'If only I can get to the phone!' he thought desperately. 'Maybe the FBI can can capture Subducto.' Then 'I wonder if this is what happened to the others?"
He stood nervously on the edge of the seat of his chair. If he leaped, he should be able to get his hands onto the desktop and then crawl over the edge. He had never been an athletic man, even in his long-ago youth, but his terror drove him to the attempt. He crouched, leaped - and was astounded when he launched himself into the air, easily leaping far enough to land on top the desk rather than have to make a desperate climb over the edge. He could barely move the handset of the phone; he was forced to crawl beneath the ear end and then stand up, and he almost despaired again when finally he got the heandset out of the cradle and it started to slide toward the edge of the desk - if it went over the edge, he would NEVER be able to haul it back up. But it slid only a few inches. He gasped in relief, then grabbed one of the cutouts on the dial and exerted all his strength - and was relieved almost to the point of fainting when he was able to spin the dial.
The Chief of the FBI office in Boston, Ashley Zimmer, frequently consulted with Gazeele on cases that involved pretty much any kind of electrical technology. It took Gazeele a lot of effort to convince Zimmer that his call was on the level, but when Zimmer finally got annoyed enough at this prank caller who had the high pitched voice of a kid to have the call traced, he immediately dropped everything and hustled over to Beacon St, then brought Gazeele back to his office.
"This is astounding! If I didn't see you with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it! How is something like this possible?"
"Years ago, one of the members of the SREE claimed that ultra-short wavelength radio waves could cause matter to shrink, and he was performing experiments on derelicts he had kidnapped from the streets to prove it. Of course, we thought his theories were idiotic, and we immediately expelled him for his despicable ethical practices, but my condition proves that he must have been right!" Gazeele was emphatic, which sounded ludicrous in his high pitched voice, but this wasn't a laughing matter. "He's MAD! Who KNOWS how many other people he's reduced with his horrid ray?! We MUST stop him!" He paused, and his next words were softer, sounding defeated. "The awful part about it is I was unconscious when the brought me in and out of his hideout. I have no idea where he might be!"
"He captured you only last night," Zimmer reminded his guest. "He must be in the city or nearby. Don't worry, we'll scour the city, and find him. And I'll call in some special help... Black Zero. I've worked with him before, and he seems to know something about the radio sciences. Don't worry, Dr. Gazeele, we'll find this mad scientist and make him restore you, and all his other victims, to normal."
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Post by Admin on Aug 15, 2022 23:02:17 GMT
Black Zero fighting a bad guy when his gear gives him a warning that Ashley would like his assistance. He sends back the 'I'll be there as soon as I can' signal and finishes off the bad guy. It should be a ridiculous super villain.
Subducto is somehow able to monitor them in Ashley's office. He sneers that the miniaturized bug he planted on Gazeele allows him to zoom in with his super television (whatever it is called in the comic).
After he boards the blimp, Black Zero discovers Gloria is a captive as well. Subducto adds her to his gloating; adding that by incorporating her technology with his Subduction ray, he will be able to target and shrink anyone in the world, no matter where they are! He will shrink all the scientists and inventors and force them to work for him, or he will shrink them out of existence!
He turns the Subductor device on Black Zero, but the dark and cold of the Black Zero transmitter offset the bright light and heat of the Subductor and it is a standoff until the Subductor runs from the room and slams the door. Before Black Zero can give chase, the larger idol in the room hisses, and Black Zero passes out.
When he awakens he is shrunken.
The bracer has been removed from his right wrist and the ribbon cable has been cut.
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Post by Admin on Aug 16, 2022 10:52:58 GMT
A half hour ago, Bruce King had been sitting in the study in his house, deeply absorbed in this month's issue of the Journal of the Society of Radio and Electronics Engineers, reading a fascinating article by some radio science genius he'd never heard of before on the use of synchronized radio frequency-hopping between a paired set of radio transmitter and receiver used in a radio remote controlled vehicle - such as guided missiles and torpedoes - to prevent enemy interference with the signals. "This author's mind is astounding!" he thought in amazement. "I would really love to have a chance to chat with him!" Then, one of the lamps in his study had flickered in the way that indicated that Sergeant Burke of the Portsmouth PD needed to contact him. Burke had notified him of an attack on the big Allomar Chemnotech facility in Wayne, Maine, and the anti-gravity power of his Black Zero Transmitter had him at the plant location in minutes. Security had given him a few tidbits of confusing information, then directed him inside, and nothing had gone well since then! A flying creature was trashing the plant! It looked like a very large bat - about 6 1/2 feet tall, covered in dark fur, complete with bat ears, fangs, spindly 'arms' that must have been 7' long supporting big leathery wings, stubby legs, and vicious claws on its paws. It was as agile as a bat, able to make changes in flight direction faster than the human eye could follow, the claws were able to tear through wood and thin sheet metal like paper, and its high-pitched screech was a sonic weapon, producing almost instant disorientation in humans, and sometimes deafness through rupturing of the eardrums, while a good number of people who experience that attack were stunned into unconsciousness. The bat was searching the giant plant methodically, and whenever it found a specific treasure, it would carry that something out of the building at high speed and then return and continue searching. By the time Black Zero arrived on the scene, the employees who still retained consciousness had evacuated the plant, carrying their disabled colleagues with them whenever possible. None of the security guards had so far been able to shoot it, unable to hit such an erratically moving target. When Zero caught up to it, the creature was flying through a very large room which contained 9 giant vats, each filled with some kind of bubbling fluid, each a different color. "Hey, you! Land, right now!" he yelled. The bat was so far away he was surprised when it turned toward him, and then an instant later, he was blasted with a very loud high frequency screech that seemed to make his teeth warm and his ears instantly hurt. He touched a control on his belt and fell out of that beam and managed to get behind one of the vats while he thought hard and fast about how to combat such a sonic weapon. His headgear now included bulky radio earphones which practically cancelled any outside noises; part of the bulk was an amplifier that he could turn on when he actually wanted to hear things around him. He turned that off, and then zoomed back toward the ceiling, pointing toward the last position of the bat to aim his freeze ray. But the bat had moved. He twisted in place to try and spot his opponent again, and he could feel the effects of the sonic beam even though he couldn't hear it. Once again his teeth were getting warm, and his whole body was vibrating unpleasantly, and the effects were getting stronger. He aimed his right fist at the new position of the bat and fired both a beam of darkness and another of intense cold, and this time, they both struck before the bat could dodge. The sonic attack ended as the bat darted to one side, and then began again as soon as his enemy was out of the beam of darkness. He had to stop attacking to dodge; he could tell that a bit longer exposure to that sonic screech would start to have debilitating effects on him. They sparred this way for several unsatisfying minutes, each able to escape the most devastating effects of the other's power - but both taking damage with every exchange. Bruce realized that like a true bat, his opponent must be able to use echolocation to 'see' in the dark, even through the absolute pitch black of the Blackout beam - but he couldn't use his voice to attack and echolocate at the same time. And Bruce couldn't hold the cold beam on him long enough to have an effect. The bat's fur protected him from short exposures, and Bruce had to stop moving to take effective aim for longer hits, and every time he stopped moving, the bat would hit him with his sonic weapon. They were wearing each other down with this long range jousting but it definitely was not clear who the winner of the joust would be, or when the end might come. Suddenly the bat changed his tactics, and flew at Black Zero at high speed. Bruce waited until he got close, and then zoomed upward toward the ceiling, but the bat was incredibly agile and managed to slash Black Zero's leg as he flashed past. Bruce's two layer insulated costume was shredded across his thigh, but it prevented him from losing the leg. This was getting serious! Black Zero turned and fled, back through the much smaller clean room through which he had entered the vast vat room. The bat swooped after his fleeing prey, but when it entered the smaller room, Black Zero struck back! Ever since he had miniaturized and refined his original suitcase sized-luggable Black Zero transmitter and made the new smaller unit part of his costume, Bruce had also been refining his fighting techniques, using directional Blackout beams and focused Zero rays. He could still use the big, showy effects, like a Pillar of Darkness that covered an acre and seemingly reached up to infinity, or dropping a big room to 100 below zero in an instant, but the smaller battery pack he used to power his wearable transmitter still ran down faster than the bigger (and incidentally MUCH heavier) battery he used in the 'luggable' transmitter. Even with his new techniques, he made a habit of replacing the battery once a day. But he rarely got into battles where he used so much power in such a short time as this one. He needed to end this fight soon! Since darkness prevented the bat from using his sonic weapon, Black Zero would hit him with darkness; since his fur protected him from cold beams long enough to fly out of the way, Black Zero wouldn't give him any place to escape to... He slipped on his 'see in the dark' goggles, and turned up the heat in his heated costume, and as soon as the bat entered the clean room, Black Zero turned up the rheostats on both the Blackout transmitter and the Zero transmitter - and the room plunged instantly into absolute darkness and the temperature dropped to a hundred below zero. Every drop of moisture in the room froze solid in instants, and even the bat's fur didn't protect him as he was encased in a solid block of ice and crashed to the floor.
Outside, everyone within miles was stunned to see a new Pillar of Darkness envelope a good portion of the giant chemical plant. It actually heartened the viewers; over the course of his career as the King of Darkness, people had come to associate the Pillar of Darkness with the heroic deeds of the King of Darkness!
The 'low power' indicator on Bruce's battery beeped plaintively for a second until he turned the costume heater rheostat back down and shut off the beams. Every light bulb in the clean room had exploded due to the abrupt drop in temperature, but Bruce's goggles allowed him to see. He had spotted some firefighting equipment in the vat room - he zoomed out and came back with a fire axe and started chopping the bat's head free of the ice. When the head was mostly free, he made sure to hold the axe in front of his foe's head. "Can you see this? Do you know what it is?" he demanded. This creature was the size of a human, but there was no guarantee that it knew English - or ANY language. "If you struggle, I'll use this on your head! If you attack me again, I'll use it on your head!" The bat replied. His voice was screechy and high pitched, but he spoke perfect English. "Please don't use that on me! I won't attack you; you have my word of honor!" "Who are you? Why are you attacking this plant?" Black Zero demanded. "I am Nightscreecher!" the bat replied defiantly. "I once worked here, the lead chemist on a Top Secret government project, until an experiment I was performing went wrong, and transformed me into the sorry creature you see before you. The management blamed ME for the failure, and fired me, refusing to let me try to find an antidote to my condition. I don't have the resources to do the research I need to change back, so I was taking what I need. If you stop me, I may be doomed to spend the rest of my life as a monster!" That horror of that struck home hard... but before Bruce could reply, Nightscreecher turned his head as if focusing on something far away, and then spoke urgently. "In the clean room on the other side of the vat room - someone needs help! Can't you hear her screaming?" Bruce turned the amplifiers on his earphones to max - and he was sure he could hear a woman screaming, faintly, from across the room. "It's TRUDY! You must save her!" the bat insisted desperately. Bruce was torn, but then a louder screech convinced him. "I'll save her! But you will do no more damage to this plant, or the next time you may pay with your life!"
He zoomed away, and soon rescued Trudy Fawn from the wreckage caused by their battle that had trapped her. By the time he got back to the room where he'd left Nightscreecher encased in ice, the bat had used his claws to break free and was gone. But he didn't return to attack the Allomar Chemnotech plant again... at least not that day! Black Zero hurried back to Trudy and as he gently carried her out of the plant, she confirmed much of Nightscreecher's story. He had been a biological chemist named Jon Bertlam, working on a classified government project. She couldn't divulge the details, but she had heard that the military was really interested in any innovation that would allow a soldier to see in the dark. Just as he was setting Trudy down safely, the gauntlet of his Black Zero transmitter began to vibrate, in a pattern that told him Ashley Zimmer, Chief of the FBI office in Boston, needed to speak to him urgently. He zoomed back to his lab, swapped out the battery of the Black Zero transmitter, changed his shredded tights, and then was headed to Boston at his highest speed. ***** It only took Black Zero a few minutes to fly from Portsmouth, NH, to Boston, Ma. The weather changed drastically in that short distance; it had been bright and sunny in Portsmouth, but Boston was covered with low-hanging gray clouds. Zero swooped through the window into Zimmer's office on the top floor, and was stunned to see the 18" high man standing on the desk. He was even more stunned to recognize that tiny person as Dr. Michael Gazeele, Director of the Society of Radio and Electronic Engineers, someone he'd met several times through Bruce's membership in the SREE. If that really WAS Gazeele, he'd need to be careful not to give away his Bruce King identity. Of course, it really WAS Gazeele. Zimmer and the miniature Gazeele quickly brought Black Zero up to speed on a story we readers already know. Though they both asked him dozens of questions, Gazeele could only recall one other clue - he'd noticed the postmark on the anonymous package containing the insidious idol; it had been mailed from Boston two days before it was delivered. "It was probably hand-delivered to one of the branches," Zimmer theorized. "I'll send some agents out to talk to the clerks. It's a really slim chance - they probably get small packages mailed over the counter all the time, so unless the mailer really stood out we probably won't learn anything." He called in Damon Bodacious, one of the most dedicated 'Agents in Charge' in the Boston office and gave him the details, and sent Jim Varney, his best detective, to search Gazeele's brownstone yet again, this time checking to see if the wrapping for the idol package was still in Gazeel's trash. "If there's anything to find, those two will find it!" Zimmer declared confidently. "My theory is that this Subducto's base is somewhere near MIT... so I'm going to join the search team in Cambridge." Gazeele nodded; that made sense, Subducto might want to be close to the school where they were advancing radio technology every day. "I think he'd want to be isolated - I'm going to investigate the harbor islands," Black Zero replied. "I'll be he's set up shop in one of the deserted Revolutionary War Forts!" In his headquarters, Subducto sat in front of a screen, embedded in a control panel which had dozens of switches and dials. The screen showed the scene of Zimmer's office, rendered in black and white, taken from Gazeele's viewpoint. The villain roared with laughter. "My subducted camera planted on Gazeele, and my fantastic futuristic heterodynamic televisor are working perfectly... of course! The fools have no idea where to find me. But I have a surprise for THEM!" He rubbed his hands together, gave some orders to his henchmen, and turned back to the televisor screen. Zimmer made arrangements for his staff to keep Gazeele comfortable, and then he and Black Zero departed on their separate searches, Zimmer to the north and Black Zero flashing west. Zimmer's car was on the Longfellow Bridge when the road noises around it stopped suddenly and the engine started to race, as Zimmer could feel the car ascending into the air like an elevator cab. It soared upwards and vanished into the heavy cloud cover. When it rose through the top of the dark clouds into the clear skies and brilliant sunshine above, Zimmer was stunned to see a giant dirigible with a giant open door on one end of the gondola. The car was pulled through the door. Hoping he was going unnoticed, Black Zero followed the car closely, trying to remain concealed against the bottom of the chassis. |
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Post by Admin on Aug 18, 2022 1:12:56 GMT
The car was drawn into a large room in the giant gondola that resembled an airplane hanger. As it swept toward the far wall, Black Zero flashed from under the car to concealment behind what appeared to be a jet-powered bi-plane. It was quickly apparent, though, that his entrance to the dirigible had been noticed, when he heard a gunshot and a bullet crashed into a wooden crate that was standing near the futuristic biplane. "I'm not going to just flitter around and be a damn target," he thought. He adjusted power to the Blackout transmitter and the hanger was filled with darkness. "Hope they haven't got 'see in the dark goggles like the Red Gang!" There was a few more shots, but they were all loosely aimed at the area of the biplane, and Black Zero was not longer even close to that spot. He zoomed around the hanger, looking for targets, and whenever he spotted someone, he unleashed the Zero beam, the power set carefully at a level that his extensive past experience using the freeze ray against bad guys had taught him would usually take those minions out of action for 10 to 15 minutes, while minimizing serious damage from frostbite or being frozen solid. Sometimes someone hit by this beam would take months to fully recover, but Black Zero had little sympathy for people who were trying to kill him. He was pretty certain they would all live, at least... A powerfully amplified voice rang out through speakers set throughout the hanger. "You idiots STOP SHOOTING instantly; do you want to kill us all? We are in a hydrogen dirigible, you FOOLS! Black Zero, stand down, or I, the Subductor, will kill my hostages!" It wasn't exactly clear to Bruce how to 'stand down'; he stopped attacking the minions, but didn't drop the darkness. Several seconds later, Subductor's amplified voice rattled the hanger again."You will return our sight IMMEDIATELY or the hostages will die. You have 2 seconds!" The Blackout transmitter was turned off instantly. At the far end of the hanger, standing on a balcony, Black Zero could see the Subductor, microphone in hand, next to a minion holding a tiny squirming human figure. "Now, foolish hero, you will COME TO ME! Or the hostages die!" He turned and walked through a door behind him, followed by his minion, and left the door open. Hoping to be as difficult a target as possible, Black Zero zoomed through the air, and then slowed and floated through the open door only a few seconds after the master villain. Expecting nothing and everything, Bruce was still stunned and astounded by what he saw. He was in a well-equipped radio lab, perhaps as extensively and extravagantly equipped as his own. In one corner, he saw the Subduction Ray that Gazeele had described, and in another corner there was a big cage. The minion was just now stuffing Ashley Zimmer back into the cage, and one of the other prisoners was... Gloria Glamour? "You FIEND! Why have you captured Gloria Glamour?!" Zero yelled in anger. He was as stunned by the villain's answer as he had been to discover his love interest as a captive. "You recognize her as a sultry Hollywood starlet, but her genius in the radio sciences is second only to my own! When I combine her discoveries with my own inventions, I will be able to spay on and subduct ANYONE in the world without leaving my control room, and then it will be easy for my minions to capture them. No one will dare resist me! I'll shrink and capture all the world's geniuses, military and political leaders and they will work FOR me or remain shrunken FOREVER! BWAA HAA HAA HAA!"
The vision of the world at the mercy of this evil monster was too much for Black Zero. He brought his right arm up and triggered a cold blast, intense enough to freeze Subucto instantly solid - and the villain laughed as the beam splattered against a sheet of impervious cold-proof glass behind which he was standing. "You will pay for that!" He roared, and laughed again "BWAA HAA HAA HAA!"
Every door in the room slammed shut, and a stream of very high pressure green vapor blasted from the mouth of a large green jade idol that was sitting on a bookshelf not far from where Black Zero was standing - and within seconds, he and the shrunken prisoners were all unconscious.
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Post by Admin on Aug 18, 2022 11:16:43 GMT
Bruce was a little surprised to awaken at all, but less surprised that he was now shrunken to the size of the other prisoners and penned in the cage with them. Gloria was tending him while the others were discussing how they could escape - discussions that had so far proved futile.
He instantly noticed the difference in his body as he sat up... he moved more quickly than he expected, and he reached the seated position more quickly than he expected so his motion ended very abruptly and awkwardly, and then he became aware that his right hand was bare - and his hand whipped up where he could see it and the added speed of his movement actually caused him to hit himself in the face, and then he could see that his gauntlet was gone and the cable that connected it to his Black Zero transmitter had been cut.
"Subducto ordered one of his lackeys to remove it as soon as you passed out," Gloria explained. "He said you would be powerless without it. That bracer around your wrist - it contained a flexible antenna for ultra-short radio waves, didn't it?"
Surprise, astounded, stunned? "How could you know that? I've never told anyone!"
"We've canoodling every time we can make our schedules match up for over a year now, and you still think I'm just some brainless Hollywood bimbo" There was just the tiniest trace of bitterness in her voice. "I'm not even blonde!" She calmed down a little, and said reflectively, "I DO have to keep my brains a secret... most men seem to prefer their sexy, sultry actresses to be a little naive and a bit dumb. But..." she paused for a second, "... your powers and that suitcase you used to carry all the time reminded me for some reason of some obscure radio theories I'd read once, so I tried to figure out how they work. Ultra-short radio waves, transmitted through an antenna with unconventional characteristics, theoretically can produce the same effects as your powers."
Bruce nodded, dazed to hear this analysis coming from a woman who he had heretofore indeed considered naive and not very intellectual. He had a wild and not very generous thought: 'Could the shrinking process have made her a genius?' He quickly considered his favorite paradox - the infinite set paradox - "Which is larger, the set of all numbers, or the set of all even numbers?" and didn't have any new insights - so she really must have been this smart all along! He wasn't sure if that idea was scary or intriguing... quickly decided 'intriguing' would be safer, and then replied to her astonishing statement.
"You are absolutely correct. That unconventional antenna was in the bracer on my gauntlet. And Subducto is correct: without it, I'm powerless. It took me almost two weeks to build the first one. I've another, built into my first, luggable suitcase Black Zero transmitter - but that's back in my lab. It I could use the tools and equipment in this lab..." he pointed at the larger room outside the cage "...I might be able to make another one in a couple of days - assuming I could work any of the tools and equipment at this size!"
"Well..." she unbuttoned the cuff on her blouse and pulled up the sleeve to reveal an unusual bracelet on her write, "...would this work?"
"SAINTS BE PRAISED!" he yelled in unbelieving utter astonishment. "Where did you GET THAT?" The other men looked at him, then turned back to their escape planning.
"That" was a bracelet of unusual design. A flexible cylinder created by a woven crosshatch of heavy, flat wires, the wires were silver and coppery colored. At the top and bottom they were attached to rings, in some of the intersections, they passed through silvery colored beads, the size of pearls in a necklace.
"Do you like it?" she asked with a lazy smile. "As I worked out the antenna parameters for controlling ultra-short radio waves I thought the design would make a unique bracelet - and very expensive, too, the bands are gold, the beads are platinum, and the wires are silver and copper. So I made one. Lucky Subducto's idiot lackeys didn't search me!"
"You're a jeweler, too?" Bruce's jaw hurt from dropping so hard! But he was thinking fast. "There are some mechanisms in the bracer that let me change the shape of the antenna - compress it, stretch it out, twist it, that kind of thing, that allow me fine control of the beams. But if we can just attach your bracelet to the wires from the transmitter, it should work well enough for the big stuff! And then that SUbducto can just sit back and watch my smoke!"
The giant problem of escape was suddenly eclipsed by a smaller, urgent project. "Say, boys, does any of you happen to have a penknife?" Gloria asked their fellow prisoners. Zimmer was the first to reply in the affirmative. While Gloria removed the bracelet, Bruce attacked the ribbon cable, stripping off several inches of insulation from the two conductors embedded in the flat cable which led from his wrist to the transistorized Black Zero transmitter strapped to his back. Just them the door to the lab opened, and one of Subducto's minions stormed in, unlocked the cage and entered, then locked it again and dropped the keys through the bars about a foot way. None of the tiny prisoners was going to be able to reach that!
He waved an odd-looking pistol at the prisoners, who were now gathered in a bunch. "Time for a little fun with dolls!" he said in a malevolent tone. "Girly, get over here!" The male prisoners immediately moved to stand between the bad guy and the shrunken actress. The minion fired, and a bolt of electricity zapped one of the radio engineers, who immediately collapsed, hopefully and not dead. "No more foolin' around, I want the teeny tiny babe over here, RIGHT NOW!"
"I'll keep him busy; you finish the wiring!" she whispered to Bruce, then raised her voice. "Don't shoot any more of them! I'm coming!"
Black Zero didn't want to see what was about to happen with Gloria; he just knew he had to get his powers working as fast as possible. Instead of watching, he shuffled around behind the other prisoners, and while the minion's attention was on Gloria, who was doing her best to strut sexily across the cage, even at only 18' tall, he got back to work. He hastily wrapped one bare conductor around the 'top' golden ring of Gloria's bracelet and twisted it around itself into as solid a contact as he felt was safe - if it broke off now, he'd probably never get another chance to try this. He then repeated the operation with the other conductor. And then... disaster!
His hand was too big to slip through Gloria's bracelet! As he strained, the minion picked up the miniature starlet, and started to tear off her blouse!
"Hey! Cut it out!" she yelled, sounding almost like a chirping chick. "That's the only top I've got that fits!" He hesitated for just a second. "Here; I'll take it off for you!"
"I'll buy ya tons of clothes from the doll section of the Five and Dime," he finally replied. "Did is gonna be fun!"
Bruce grabbed his right hand in his left and squeezed, and squealed in pain as he forced it through the two too-tight golden rings. The scraped skin started bleeding, which helped lubricate it, and as the minion turned to the other prisoners, he forced it into place! The minion had been holding Gloria close to his head; she reached as far as she could and slugged in in the side of the nose as hard as she could. He dropped her, as she had hoped, when he reached for his nose with both hands - and suddenly he was blind!
As was every other person in the cage except Bruce. He activated the anti-gravity rays, and zoomed forward at full power towards the minion's midsection, and hit him HARD in the solar plexus. Quickly, while he was still touching the bad buy, Black Zero activated his Zero beam. He used the lowest power setting he could - without being able to adjust the antenna he had no fine control of the beam and he didn't want to drop the whole room to absolute zero! The minion was instantly frozen into immobility and Bruce turned off the transmitter before he killed everyone else in the room...
Now it was everyone else's turn to be stunned at their quick turnaround in fortune. Except Gloria. "We've got to get out of here - and find a way to disable that idol before Subducto finds out we're loose!"
"I could..." Black Zero started and then stopped. He'd been about to volunteer to shatter the idol - but would that just release more gas? Until they were out of the lab, they couldn't take that risk!
When he awakens, he also is shrunken. He discovers that the gauntlet that he wears on his right wrist is gone. The gauntlet contains the antenna for the ultra-short radio waves he uses to produce his Blackout, Zero, and anti-gravity beams; without it he is helpless. He is trapped in a mostly empty storeroom with the other 5.
The 5 prisoners start a discussion about how to get out. Gloria asks a lot of technical questions about Bruce’s powers, revealing an astounding understanding of the technology that he uses – even though he has never discussed it with her before, and in his presence, she’s never acted like anything except a Hollywood star.
They discuss in particular the function of the gauntlet; it is an antenna in the shape of a crescent instead of a wire because of the unusual nature of the ultra-short waves, and while it has a very specific shape, Gloria suggests that if they could connect the cable to HER copper bracelet, it might be enough to restore a fraction of his powers long enough to escape.
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2022 23:52:11 GMT
It wasn't too difficult to recover the keys. Zimmer took off one of his shoes, unlaced it partially, then threw it past the keys and pulled it back by the shoestring. None of the shrunken prisoners could reach the lock, but Black Zero could fly, although he had to be very careful without his fine tuning controls. And then, things went wrong again! The door opened and an enraged Subducto stepped into the lab, and instantly fired his lightning gun. Black Zero slapped at his belt control to fire a Zero beam and try to freeze the villain. But something went wrong; there was no intense cold... but something else went right, the lightning bolt from Subducto's gun was somehow deflected, and it crashed into the Subduction device. The projector was spun around and somehow the electrical bolt activated it - and the spinning beam swept across Subducto, and he instantly shrank - but didn't stop at 18 inches; instead he continued shrinking until he simply vanished. "In my rush, I managed to turn on all 3 of my ultra-short radio wave transmitters - the one that cancels light, the one that cancels heat, and the one that cancels gravity - at the same time, instead of just the Zero beam," Bruce spoke slowly, trying to figure out what had just happened. "But when I've done that in the past, I've always floated into the air, surrounded by darkness and cold. But none of my normal powers was activated, instead of all 3 at once. Instead, it's like somehow I have a new power - to deflect electricity..."
Gloria was already solving antenna theory 3rd order linear equations in her head. "I think..." she replied slowly, "... it's the way you needed to stretch the bracelet in order to put it on. You can probably able to modify your own bracer to replicate the effect once we get it back..."
Dark Zero simply nodded and hoped that his mask concealed his bewildered expression. He would have to use pen and several pads of paper to figure that out... but later! Right now they needed to escape.
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He zoomed to the open door - as far as he could see, Subducto had been alone. He zoomed back... "You guys go stand near the door in case this goes wrong!" he ordered. "If I get knocked out again, wait until the gas clears before you come back in for me!" When they were outside, he touched the bracelet to the idol and gave it full power. It was instantly encased in a thick block of ice that he knew would take hours to melt. He could see cracks on the surface of the jade, but until the gas could seep through the ice, the lab was safe. He called the others back in, and together they examined the Subducto ray. The controls were easy enough - a 3 position switch, labeled "Enlarge...Off...Subduct", which was currently set on 'Subduct' and a rheostat for controlling the power, with four labels as well: "Off...Low...Normal...High". "It's still turned off," one of the shrunken radio engineers noted. "Somehow, Subducto's lightning gun energized it." He reached out and flipped the Subduct switch to the Off position. "Good idea - don't want it shrinking us by mistake!" another radio engineer approved. "But, do we dare use it? What if it shrinks us even more, like it did to him?" the third wondered, sounding very worried. "Or, suppose it grows us to giant size?" "The don't write movie roles for living dolls!" Gloria spoke up, then paused for a second. "Well, actually, they do, don't they? They write roles for me all the time! What I mean is, they want their living dolls to be life size!" She clicked the switch to "Enlarge" and turned the power to "Low". "If it turns me into a giant, I'll be a natural for that horror movie script that's making the rounds in Hollywood now - "Attack of the Giant Woman". I've already read for the part - just think how they'll save on special effects!" Before anyone could stop her, she stepped into the beam... and expanded until she was about 3 and a half feet tall. "Well, at least we know it's set for 'Expand'." She stepped out of the beam and back in - and she was back to normal! "OK, fellas, your turns!" Black Zero went next - how could he hesitate after his girlfriend had showed the way? As soon as he was full-sized, he zoomed out of the room, looking for Subducto's minions and the crew of the dirigible who might still want to put up a fight. The others were all returned to normal when he came back into the room, carrying several lightning pistols and some regular pistols as well, herding a man in an overdecorated uniform. "This is Captain Turner. He and his crew will be happy to land this dirigible wherever we direct, and then surrender to the FBI. Isn't that right, Captain?" he prodded the uniformed officer in the back with one of the lightning pistols, and Turner nodded vigorously. He handed the pistols to the former prisoners. "All we have to do is keep them under surveillance until we're down and Zimmer's crew has them in custody. With my restored powers and command of all the weapons on board, that shouldn't be too difficult." It took several hours - Boston didn't have an airfield equipped to handle a dirigible, much less the largest dirigible in the world, but the crew was very competent - Subducto had shrunken out of existence any incompetent crew members; the rest had improved quickly! Zimmer opined, and many of them overheard, that a few of them would probably be recruited by the military, at least as closely monitored dirigible flight instructors, so they might escape prison time... which co-incidentally encouraged them to perform better. In a couple of hours, crews of men were tying down the descending airship to buildings, trees, blocks of cinder blocks, large boulders and heavy construction equipment at the nascent Boston Auxuliary Airport near Lexington, Ma, a facility that would be renamed "Hanscomb Air Base" during the upcoming war. After that, all that was left was the paperwork. Black Zero flew Gloria back to Boston hotel where she was staying during the on-location filming of her current movie. She promised to spend a few weeks in Portsmouth once the filming was over, and made Zero promise to fly to Boston every weekend ("It only takes you 10 minutes!"), and after the appropriate good-byes between the two, he zipped back to Portsmouth. Be sure to visit your newsstand next month for the next exciting issue of "Black Zero, King of Darkness"! On sale on or around August 1st. All in color, only a nickle!! |
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