Post by Admin on Feb 7, 2021 23:07:16 GMT
The Whole Story
Carol Clews and Atom Blake - Crown Quest
Search for the Crown of Scales
Cold Case Revisited
"Say, Dan, do you remember our last case before our little... time trip? It's the only case we ever took that we didn't resolve." Beautiful blonde Carol Clews asked her partner in The Daring Duo Detective Agency, rugged, handsome Dan Dare. They were both sitting at their desks in their recently opened brand new office, reviewing records and files that were often close to fifty years old. The were still getting established in their new time frame, and their lives hadn't yet returned to the mile-a-second globe-hopping always-on-the-job pace of their late 1930s - early 1940s adventures. Neither was really sure they enjoyed the downtime - reading dusty files wasn't nearly as exciting as flying around the world at a moment's notice, gathering diverse and obscure clues and dodging fists and weapons before closing yet another impossible case - and collecting their big rewards!
"I DO remember it, doll..." He stopped as Carol frowned at him, started again. "I DO remember it, partner." She smiled. "But I haven't had much time to think about it. And it seems hard to believe that 45 years later, it might still be open..."
"Yeah, that Atom Blake Boy Wizard kid snapped us out of the spell, and we get dropped into a battle with a bunch of left-over Nazties, and then Jim and Sue helped us find an apartment and you took a case and tried to jump off of a speeding truck and broke your leg..." Carol was holding up a hand and ticking off her fingers. As she paused for a second, Dan chuckled and took up the narrative...
"And while I was laid up, marveling at the wonders of modern medicine and oogling the nurses..." (Carol frowned and Dan moved on quickly), "... you and Jim and Sue and Lance and Mr. Hogan got in trouble in the South Seas again, and you got your 'sunny side up' powers and then helped save the entire world from Battleworld along with a gazillion other heroes out in space near Mars... and then Jack Weston, who renewed your acquaintance on the Rock of Eternity, asks us to help him with a case in the Southwest..."
Carol ticked off the rest of her fingers, then opened her hand back up and joined in again, "And just when we wrapped that one up, we got hired as security for Lawrence Library and Doc Quentin, and then we fought Oya, the Orisha of Energy, and most recently, as we finally got our new Agency off the ground, we get attacked by that ancient whacko, the Spider Sinister... yeah, it isn't like we've had a lot of time to sit around and just relax. But now that we've had a few minutes of free time, I've had enough relaxing already..."
"So what did you find about our 'last case first time around'?" Dan asked.
"You remember, we were hired by the San Diego Natural History Museum to recover a stolen artifact, the Crown of Scales, reputedly a magical relic of the rulers of the sunken South Sea continent of Lemuria, and we decided to track the thief and flew to the island of Maloana in the South Seas to hire Lance O'Casey as a guide to the islands where we thought the thief had fled?"
"Actually, I DO remember all that," he replied, a little annoyed that she felt it necessary to recap the whole adventure. "So what's your point?"
"I checked with the museum - the Crown was never recovered. It's the only case we never solved."
"And you want to recover the Crown and return it to the Museum?" he asked, starting to sound mildly interested.
"No, I checked with the Museum, they don't really want it back at this point. While we were 'away', there has been a growing movement to return valuable ancient artifacts from museums and private collections to their places of origin where they were stolen from. So they would just as soon not have to go through the publicity involved in recovering it, and then the hassle of figuring out who it really belongs to. But I was thinking, maybe you and I could recover it, and finally return it where it belongs."
"Not our usual kind of case, b'you... partner - but since we got nothin' else on the docket..."
He was interrupted by a banging on the door. "Telegram! Telegram! Telegram for DAN DARE!"
An hour later, they got back to their discussion. Dan: "So we're agreed. I'm gonna take this new case to infiltrate the all-male Kerry Le Block Fan Club which is suspected by the FBI of subversive activity. And since there is no way you can get into the fan club, you're going to follow up on the Crown of Scales."
"You got it, Sherlock!" They high-fived, one of the newfangled social rituals they both approved of, and began making their separate plans.
Consult with a Wizard
Carol dug out all their records on the Crown of Scales case and spent some time refreshing her memories of that 45 year-old case, even though to her it seemed like it had happened only 3 or so years ago.
In the mid-1890s, the San Diego Natural History Museum had purchased a collection of artifacts from a famed archaeologist/adventurer/treasure hunter/island pirate named 'Skipper' Faber, artifacts he had collected (read: looted) from hundreds of South Sea islands during a half century career of knocking around from island to island. The most spectacular artifact in that collection had been the Crown of Scales. This collection had been a major draw for the San Diego Museum for around 40 years when a number of the artifacts, including the Crown, were stolen in 1939.
The Museum official who had originally hired Carol and Dan, almost 4 years after the theft, had suggested that a former employee named John Smith was the chief suspect - he had not reported to work since the Crown had been stolen, and he hadn't returned to his room in the boarding house where he lived in that time either. Dan and Carol had investigated. Smith's appearance and accent had indicated to everyone who knew him that he was of South Sea Islands descent, and he'd told people that he was an immigrant from Tahiti who had changed his name to 'fit in better'. They had never uncovered his original name. They'd found no photos of John, but they'd put together a composite drawing by Dan, who was a surprisingly good artist. They still had the drawing in their files; of course it was somewhat faded after over 40 years packed into a trunk! They had also determined that Smith had booked a commercial flight back to the South Seas and shipped a number of trunks, but instead of going to Tahiti his destination had been Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.
Carol had a friend who had vacationed in the Cook Islands a couple of years ago (early 1940s). Her friend had been fascinated by a handsome rogue sailor during her vacation, and for the past 2 years constantly she had frequently gushed over this wonderful, amazing, handsome, roguishly attractive sea captain, one Lance O'Casey. The detectives had decided that O'Casey might be a great guide to the islands. They flown to O'Casey's home of Maloana, and arrived only a few minutes before the island's shaman S'ville had unleashed his time-stop spell. (See The Castaways for more details of Carol and Dan's adventure with Lance O'Casey).
'The rest, as they say, is history! Now, though, how am I going to get to Rarotonga?' Carol mused. 'We're not going to be paid for this one, so as the Chief Financial Officer of Daring Duo Detectives, I'd prefer not to pay for a commercial flight. I'm not sure I can fly that far on my own; it would be bad news if I ran out of power over the Pacific a thousand miles from shore!' After a few seconds of thought, she had an inspiration. She opened a locked drawer on her desk and pulled out a 4 x 6 inch notepad of lined yellow pages, a gift she'd received from a young friend a couple of years ago. There was a handwritten message on the top page dated last December; she smiled at the perfect cursive penmanship as she re-read it.
"Thanks for the Christmas wishes, Miss Clews. School is going great; I'm learning a lot and me and my instructors think we'll figure out how to lift this darn curse soon. It would be great if you could drop in for a visit sometime, otherwise maybe I can drop in to see you on a school vacation. Love, Atom."
Six year old Atom Blake had developed a crush on Carol almost as soon as they'd met in 1985 (also recounted in The Castaways) and he didn't even try to conceal it. Well, he wasn't exactly six... and he was certainly not an ordinary boy!
She lifted the page as if to tear it off; the writing vanished as the page pulled away from the one below it, and when the page was completely clear, she released it, smoothed it down, and then starting writing her own note.
Atom Blake at School
Atom Blake, a small boy with black eyes and black hair, who looked like he might be barely six years old, leaned forward in his seat at the table in his dorm room in Samekh House at the Grimoire Academy of Applied Knowledge on Grim Island in the South Pacific, squinting and frowning in concentration as he glued another small plastic piece to his latest World War II airplane model, a 3' long B-29. Hanging from the ceiling on thin, almost invisible threads were another dozen models of WWII planes, though none was quite as large as the Flying Fortress. Almost every horizontal space in the room was covered with magical apparatus, the bookshelves were filled with mystic tomes, and incongruously, the desk was dominated by an advanced computer workstation. Atom jerked upright at a muted chiming, muttered and wiggled his fingers over the model, then moved to his desk where he pulled a small pad of yellow lined paper from one of the drawers. He started smiling as he read the message that was appearing on the top page of the pad. Back on the table, a plastic piece floated to the tube of glue which carefully discharged a small dab of glue on the floating piece, which then floated over to the partially-completed model, carefully fitting itself into place.
"Hi, Atom! Hope you're well and keeping up with your studies. Say, I need transportation to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands - wonder if you can help me out? Carol Clews"
"Sure, Miss Carol! Just tell me when you're ready to go! Today would be a good day; the wards around the school are relaxed today for Intramural Game Day," he cleared the incoming message and quickly wrote back.
After their years of working together, both Dan and Carol had learned to keep a packed 'go bag' in the office. The reply was almost instant: "I'm ready any time, Atom - just say when!"
"WHEN!"
Atom picked up a crystal from his desk, quickly crushed it with a mortar and pestle, and then, while chanting, he sprinkled the dust over the flame of a small oil lamp. There was a flash as it vaporized, and the popping of displaced air as beautiful blonde Carol Clews appeared in his room carrying a bulging backpack.
"Why are you going to Rarotonga?" he asked, and she told him the whole story.
"OK, I'm ready to go," he added when she was finished. "No classes today," he explained, sounding a bit sad. "Today's Intramural Class Athletic Day, with intra-grade athletic competition, no magic allowed. But I'm so much smaller than anybody else in the class, nobody wants me any of our athletic teams. So I was going to spend the day building some new models." Then he brightened considerably. "But going with you sounds like it will be a lot more fun than hanging out here all day!"
Even though he only looked six, and his curse forced him to usually behave like he really was six, he'd been twenty-five in 1950 when the demons Blaze and Satanus had cursed him with six-year old immortality. Adult male Atom was still living in his brain, and he really looked forward to spending the rest of the day with his beautiful crush.
"Well... sure, why not?" she replied. "Can you put us down at the Rarotonga Airport?"
"Yup. Here we go!" Atom sprinkled some more dust over the flame of the lamp, there was a soft "bamf" of displaced air, and the room was empty.
Carol Clews and Atom Blake - Crown Quest
Search for the Crown of ScalesAtom and Carol materialized in an empty concourse at the Rarotonga airport and headed for the airport entrance. "So I need to find out everything I can about this 'John Smith' fella. I expect that will be difficult; after all, everything I know about him is 45 years old, at least!"
"Well, actually, Miss Clews," Atom tugged on her sleeve, and she turned to look where he was pointing. "Isn't that him?"
In the middle of the airport rotunda was a statue; the statue sure seemed to be the man in Carol's sketch of John Smith. The plaque read "Amiri Matapo". He'd risen to fame during WWII, first when he'd returned to the government hundreds of Island artifacts and treasures he'd 'redeemed' from museums and collections around the world, then as a war hero helping keep the islands safe from invasion, and then as the Prime Minister for years, although he had passed away 5 years ago. And, he had claimed to be descended from the ruling family of Lemuria.
"Well, that appears to resolve the case," Carol commented,sounding a little disappointed. She thought for a few seconds. "I guess I'll just have to do some shopping, buy a new bikini, and hit the beach. Total bummer!" She sounded quite a bit happier, and she thoroughly enjoyed using modern slang. "What about you, Atom - do you want to stick around, or go back to school?"
"Actually, I'd like to see the artifacts on display. Some of them might be good topics for my next research paper," her tiny companion piped up. The plaque mentioned that all the artifacts Prime Minister Matapo had recovered had been on public display in a downtown museum called "The Museum of Mu" for the last 20 years. "Will you come with me? I really don't want to go back to school yet."
"I guess I'll take a photo of the Crown to put in our files," she agreed, and a few minutes later they were standing in front of the exhibit case which held the Crown of Scales.
"Wait! Those things aren't real!" Atom whispered to his friend in alarm. A little louder: "In fact, they're not even really there, everything in that case is just a magical illusion!" And then, he was yelling: "It's a TRAP!" And then there was the gentle "bamf" of displaced air, and Carol and Atom disappeared.
Carol Clews and Atom Blake - Crown Quest
Search for the Crown of Scales
"It's a TRAP!"
The Museum of Mu didn't look like the museums Carol had been used to in the States growing up - instead of a massive brick and cement multi-story fortress, it was a sprawling, airy, single floor veranda that looked more like a house. But there was something about it that raised her hackles - as soon as it came into view, she felt a chill, and as their cab got closer, she began to experience pangs of concern, as if there was something in that building that she should beware of.
'Stop it, Carol!' she ordered herself, mentally. She glanced surreptitiously at Atom, and saw no signs that he was experiencing anything similar, so she forced herself to continue smiling and acting normally. She missed his similar surreptitious glance at her... It was difficult to approach the building as if she was experiencing nothing out of the ordinary, but as they exited the cab, she forced herself to walk casually forward though her sense of danger was still growing.
'Damn it, Carol!' she scolded silently. 'It's only a museum!' But then she remembered some of the research she'd done; some of the artifacts in this museum were rumored to grant vast magical powers to those who possessed them. 'And you've had personal experience with vast magical powers... so take it seriously, lady, and be ready for 'sunny side up' at any instant!' She mentally strengthened the shield around her mind she now maintained continuously against mind control, ever since the Spider Sinister had tried to control her mind, and instantly felt quite a bit better. 'That proves there's something real going on. Stay on your toes, Ms. Clews!'
Both she and Atom were doing their best to act normally, so she was unaware that he was making similar mental, magical preparations. In the cab, he'd wiggled his fingers and drummed them on the tops of his thighs as he cast a silent, low powered warding spell. This worked quite well; he felt almost normal again as they entered the museum.
For now, they skipped past all the other artifacts on display and went right to the main display. It was the main room in the museum, a very large room, divided in half by a glass wall. Above the diorama was a sign: "Merodak Mu-paku, the last Emperor of Mu, wearing the legendary Crown of Scales", while behind the glass, an ornately but garishly decorated room dominated by an 8' throne apparently carved from coral. On the throne sat a majestically-robed mannequin wearing a massive crown of platinum, worked to look like it was covered in scales, and studded with gems and jewels - the Crown of Scales. Atom took a second to study it with his magical senses, and then...
"Wait! Those things aren't real!" Atom whispered to his friend in alarm. A little louder: "In fact, they're not even really there, everything in that case is just a magical illusion!" And then, he was yelling: "It's a TRAP!" And then there was the gentle "bamf" of displaced air, and Carol and Atom disappeared.
At the word "TRAP" Carol instantly created a shining yellow force field bubble around the pair, and Atom snapped the ring fingers on both his hands with his thumbs, the final gesture in a protective spell he renewed every morning, and an invisible ball popped into being around the two of them, just outside of Carol's yellow bubble. There was an instant of darkness and disorientation, and then they were falling through fantastically powerful flaring orange-yellow-white light that was so bright it was almost blinding through closed eyes. Even through their combined protective shells, they could feel incredible heat, growing as they fell. And they were assaulted by an awesomely powerful rumbling noise, louder than any thunder they had ever heard, shaking their protective shell like a rattle and actually causing their bodies to shudder - and then Carol screamed "UP" louder than she'd ever screamed before while she issued the most urgent mental command to her power that she'd ever given and the two were rocketing toward space faster than she'd ever been able to fly before.
The intensity of the light, sound, and heat diminished quickly; after about two seconds, the two were able to open their eyes. Carol squinted and looked down; they must already be at least 2 miles high and directly below them, through the left-over dazzle effects, she could make out the circular gateway to Hell! Still they continued to zoom towards space...
"That's the caldera of a giant active volcano!" Atom piped up in awe. "What a deadly trap!"
Carol didn't really appreciate the tone of approval in his voice. "Atom! That trap damn near killed us! If I hadn't flown us out of there, we'd be nothing but a vapor cloud of super heated atomic steam by now!"
Carol Clews and Atom Blake - Crown Quest
Search for the Crown of Scales
"Where the (BLEEP) Are We?"
"So where the hell are we?" Carol demanded, then looked abashed at what she'd said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Atom! Where the heck are we?"
"Listen, Miss Carol, no matter what I look like, in real years of living, I'm like 35 years older than you are! So cut it out with the kid stuff, huh?" Adam demanded back, his strong, stern words sounding strange in his high, piping, six year old voice.
"Oh, yeah, sorry! This 'magic mucking with normal time' stuff magically mucks up my thinking, too..." Carol replied, contritely. Then, "But the question is still the same - where are we?"
"Ummm... by now we're about 20 miles high and still going up like a rocket!" Atom replied a little nervously. "I think we've escaped from the trap; maybe you can take us a bit lower?" He pointed; below them she could see the curve of the Earth, and could tell that they were above the coastline of a continent whose shape she didn't recognize, and Atom was pointing at a group of small islands not far from the coast. The volcano was still directly below them, and the terrain around the volcano seemed to be rugged and mountainous. She could see the lights of what might be cities farther away on the coasts of that unknown continent. She canceled the "UP" command, and started flying back down toward the islands he'd indicated.
"I didn't know you were SUNBEAM?" Atom gushed enthusiastically. "That is SO COOL! You're my favorite hero, even more than Mary Marvel!!!"
"I'm trying to keep it top secret; please don't tell anyone," Carol asked. 'Top secret, Ms. Clews, only known to Dan, Lance, Mr. Hogan, and Sue and Jim Barr. And now Atom. Yup, utter tip top!' she snorted in her mind, while commanding her clothes to change to her action costume, a cute yellow long sleeved mini-dress with a short cape, sash at the waist, and a yellow domino mask over calf-high yellow boots. 'Who are you going to tell next? By next week, the whole world will know.'
She changed the subject. "Do you have any way to tell where we are? That land below us doesn't match any of the continents I know about. Maybe a new one popped up from under the ocean while I was taking my magical beauty nap?" she quipped to hide her nervousness. She'd been in space once before - but to a woman who'd grown up in the 20s and 30s, space travel still seemed like Saturday serial stuff!
Atom had pulled a handbag seemingly out of empty space, now he pulled out a couple of small glass vials, mixed the contents in the palm of his left hand using his right index finger, and then made a complex gesture with his right hand while pouring the dust from his left over his head.
"It's pretty hard to tell, Miss Carol... somehow my magic isn't working quite like I expect right now. But my best guess is that we're pretty much where we were in the museum, near the island of Rarotonga in the Pacific South Seas, only we're 25 miles straight up now, and finally not going any higher - but we're like 100,000 years in the past, and I'm not sure this is even our own Earth, it feels more like the one everyone calls 'Earth 2'." Grim Island, where Atom attended school, was accessible from the Earths of several different vibratory universes, and one of his classes had made short field trips to each of them.
Carol shook her head; she'd worked with super heroes who were allegedly from another universe when she'd helped stop Battleworld but she wasn't sure she believed in the concept. They hadn't seemed like they were from another universe; they acted just like everyone else! Shouldn't they be at least just a bit... alien, if they were from another entire universe? Combined with currently being in orbit and 100,000 years in the past, 'where are we?' was an almost overwhelming concept. She needed to concentrate on their current situation, and think about these outlandish concepts of time and space at some other time, in some other place. So...
"That was a pretty nasty trap," Carol mused, shuddering. "We were only a really short instant from death. I don't know if anyone else ever triggered it before, but we're probably the only ones who ever survived."
"I'm not so sure, Miss Carol - look over there." Atom pointed. Carol's gaze followed a magical pointer of white light that extended from his finger through their protective globe and across space; a few miles below them it touched a glowing yellow sphere that seemed to be a twin to the one that surrounded the two of them, and then outlined that sphere in a glow so she couldn't miss it. It was zooming toward space directly above the volcano but slowing rapidly.
Suddenly, the section of bubble they were looking through changed into a magnifying lens and the other bubble seemed to be only a few feet from them. The color of the bubble was very similar to that of Carol's protective shield, and it was just barely translucent; they could vaguely make out two humanoid shaped shadowy figures inside that bubble. "It blocks my magic, too," Adam reported. "Guess we won't know who it is until they drop their shield. My magic should keep them from seeing us, too, though."
"So, surprises all around," Carol announced. "Sometimes I HATE surprises!"
Carol Clews and Atom Blake - Crown Quest
Search for the Crown of Scales
"Hi-YO SILVER! Away!!"
"Uh oh!" Atom said in alarm. "Incoming!" He pointed in another direction. "Looks like surface-to-air missiles!" The magnifying lens shifted and many miles below them they could see a swarm of fat arrows aimed in their direction, spewing fire behind them. He reached into his bag and pulled out... a short broomstick?!?! Short as it was, it was way too big to have been in that bag. Then he touched the bag to his belt and it vanished. "Let me out, quick!" Carol hesitated, and he yelled, "In school they train us for just this kind of thing! I'm my class champ at missile tag!" She still hesitated. "They're going to be here in under a minute," he said urgently. "I can't zap them through your shield - and we'll each be way more maneuverable apart. And besides - I'm not 6, dammit, I'm 63 years old and I grew up dodging asteroids in space!"
Carol made her decision. "Good luck, Atom!" Her yellow bubble vanished, replaced instantly by a glowing yellow sheath that outlined her body.
Atom was already seated on his broomstick. His clothing had transformed as the bubble vanished; now he looked exactly like a tiny Lone Ranger, complete with gray shirt laced at the neck, leather riding boots, red bandanna at the neck, a white half-gallon hat and black mask - plus crossed gun belts, each with holstered pistols that seemed to be as big as his head! He pulled off the hat and waved it in the air. And his steed had altered form somewhat, from a plain broomstick, it now ended in the head of a horse and Adam was seated in a saddle, complete with saddle horn, stirrups and saddlebags. "Yah HOO! Ride 'em, cowboy!"
"Let's try and lead them away from that other bubble," Carol used her power to amplify her voice. She was startled at the response.
"Thank you, sister, but you needn't worry about us," another amplified female voice sounded, slightly above and behind them. "Instead, we'll join you in your battle with that pesky swarm!"
Carol and Atom turned and were surprised to see two flying women. A blonde, outlined in glowing yellow, dressed in a short-sleeved yellow miniskirt, with white belt and shoulders and thigh high yellow boots, floated next to the speaker, a woman with long, straight black hair, dressed in a simple tunic colored Kelly green and navy blue in flowing, constantly changing patterns, a tiara holding her hair back from her strong face, with massive brown leather belt and jeweled necklace. Atom was silent for just a second as he stared in awe, then he turned back to the approaching missiles. "Hi-YO, SILVER!!! AWAY!!!" and he zoomed down toward the approaching swarm. The path of several of the missiles started to bend slowly to track him.
"Hey, girls, we can't let him have ALL the fun," the new blonde yelled. "Let's sic 'em!" She darted down and away, and another sheath of missiles turned painfully to try to intercept her.
Carol Clews and Atom Blake - Crown Quest
Search for the Crown of Scales
One Shot Blake
Atom whooped and hollered as he rode his magical 'steed' directly at 'his' swarm of missiles. As they got closer, he changed his flight patterns, and kept changing directions every few instants. None of the missiles could change directions that fast, the best they could do was trend gradually in his direction. He pulled out his oversized pistols and started shooting first one, and then the other; the recoil of each would knock his wrist back and he'd yank it back down in line, almost as if he were playing a set of drums with the pistols as drumsticks. The pistols made funky noises when he pulled the triggers, "Pweewwwwww, pweewwwwww, pweewwwwww, pweewwwwww!" and with each shot, one of the missiles simply vanished with a loud, but not explosive "POP".
"Boyoboy, can I shoot, or WHAT?!?!" he yelled in excitement. "Wait till I tell the guys back at school!" Atom really was the reigning school champ at missile tag - although he was the smallest student in any of the upper classes, his magic was as powerful as any other student, and he was faster and more maneuverable than any of them. 'I've never enjoyed being left out of 'Class Athletic Play Day' so much!'
His attention was drawn to the shape of these missiles - after all, he'd been building model planes only a few hours ago, and he WAS obsessed with World War II era planes. 'They look at lot like tiny XS-1 rocket planes - except they have NACA ducts! They're not really rockets at all - they must be air-breathing jets! It would give them much greater range, but they wouldn't be nearly as fast as a rocket - and they'd be limited to lower altitudes where the air is thicker...' Suddenly he realized that one of the missiles had changed course and now was coming directly toward him - and it wasn't very darn far away. "JUMP!!!!" he commanded his steed, and rocketed straight up, and the missile was going to miss and pass directly under him and instead it exploded "kerBLAAM" and even though he was racing up, up, and away at high speed and surrounded by a magical force shield, the concussion shook the tiny Lone Ranger and his broomsteed Silver like a bean in a rattle, and he was woozy for several seconds, and he couldn't concentrate enough to keep flying and he started falling.
Not far away, a blur in the air unblurred to reveal the woman in the blue and green tunic. "Winds that also keep me aloft, catch the lad in arms so soft!" she chanted, and instantly, Atom slowed, and then stopped falling, and rose again to her level.
"My name is Zephyr. You are welcome - but we'd best beware, here they come again!"
"Boyoboy, can I shoot, or WHAT?!?!" he yelled in excitement. "Wait till I tell the guys back at school!" Atom really was the reigning school champ at missile tag - although he was the smallest student in any of the upper classes, his magic was as powerful as any other student, and he was faster and more maneuverable than any of them. 'I've never enjoyed being left out of 'Class Athletic Play Day' so much!'
His attention was drawn to the shape of these missiles - after all, he'd been building model planes only a few hours ago, and he WAS obsessed with World War II era planes. 'They look at lot like tiny XS-1 rocket planes - except they have NACA ducts! They're not really rockets at all - they must be air-breathing jets! It would give them much greater range, but they wouldn't be nearly as fast as a rocket - and they'd be limited to lower altitudes where the air is thicker...' Suddenly he realized that one of the missiles had changed course and now was coming directly toward him - and it wasn't very darn far away. "JUMP!!!!" he commanded his steed, and rocketed straight up, and the missile was going to miss and pass directly under him and instead it exploded "kerBLAAM" and even though he was racing up, up, and away at high speed and surrounded by a magical force shield, the concussion shook the tiny Lone Ranger and his broomsteed Silver like a bean in a rattle, and he was woozy for several seconds, and he couldn't concentrate enough to keep flying and he started falling.
Not far away, a blur in the air unblurred to reveal the woman in the blue and green tunic. "Winds that also keep me aloft, catch the lad in arms so soft!" she chanted, and instantly, Atom slowed, and then stopped falling, and rose again to her level.
| With a few instants to recover his composure, he reached shakily into one of the saddlebags, and pulled out a... red pull-top soda can with white lettering? He popped the top and downed the whole can in only a few gulps, and instantly perked up. "Ice Cold Energy!" Then he looked at his new best friend. "Thanks, ummm... say, who are you, anyway?" |  |
Carol Clews and Atom Blake - Crown Quest
Search for the Crown of Scales
Clear the Skies
Carol and the other blonde woman also zoomed towards the incoming swarm of missiles. The closer they got, the more dense the swarm appeared - there must be hundreds of them! "Somebody really doesn't like us," Carol mused. "I wonder if it's the same somebody who dumped us into the volcano? Seems like a totally different MO..." It wasn't long ago when she'd played 'missile tag' with two ICBM-sized rockets with anti-matter warheads... 'Maybe they can be distracted?' Another Carol appeared and then another, and some of the missiles corrected course to chase each of the illusions. Carol was surprised at how easily she created the duplicates, and how fast they moved. She realized she'd never felt so powerful before! In fact, the illusions were easily outpacing the missiles; she concentrated and forced them to slow down.
"Nice!" the other flying, yellow-outlined woman approved. "Where are you going to send them? Maybe you could fool them into diving into the volcano where they can't hurt anyone?" The illusionary Sunbeams broke sharp left and right, drawing some missiles away, and and then each slowly swerved towards the caldera, still several miles below them. A few instants later, there were two streams of missiles chasing two flying women, each stream pointed directly toward the peak of the volcano. A beam lanced out from the other woman's right hand, and two more illusions appeared, again swerving to draw more missiles away from the two yellow costumed flying women, and then aiming toward the volcano. Still, a few of the more stubborn missiles insisted on aiming at the real heroines rather than their doppelgangers.
"I'm Corona," the new blonde said. "Why don't we take care of the rest of these pests?" She waited for the standard response to her name, but it didn't happen.
"I'm Sunbeam," Carol replied. "Do you have anything fancy in mind, or should we just smash them?" She pointed at a missile, a yellow beam lanced from her hand, and the missile exploded. Corona swatted the next closest one with a giant yellow fly swatter, and another missile bit the dust.
"There's rather a lot of them," Corona noted. "Suppose we hover back to back so none of them can get behind or between us?"
"Sounds like a plan!" The two women hung in the air, back to back, and shooting and swatting every missile they could see. The pair spun slowly in place, so none of the sneaky missiles was able to approach them from the sides. Carol got more missiles, as she was able to fire spears from both hands while Corona was limited to fighting with her right hand. Sunbeam had been worried that she would tire rapidly, and after a while, she could tell that her lances were getting slightly weaker, but she wasn't tired in the least and she had never had this kind of power before.
They were able to keep the air around them clear, and they could see that it wouldn't be long before they'd finished off the last attacker, so they took some time to chat.
"So, Sunbeam, how do you do that? Do you have a 'magic' ring too?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing. No, I don't have a magic ring - I just think what I want to happen, and the yellow energy does it. But I don't know how I do it."
Corona just happened to be facing the volcano when they finished off the last of their missiles. "Say, Sunny, you ought to watch this. Those others of us are about to complete their missions!" Carol made sure there were no other missiles in her field of vision and turned to watch as 4 flying 'women' surrounded in blazing yellow dived fearlessly into the caldera, followed by what must have been almost a hundred missiles, which vanished without even a flare. At the same time another hundred or so missiles simply fell from higher up, no longer blasting but just falling freely. And then the skies were almost empty, but then, from even higher up, two human figures zoomed down towards Corona and Sunbeam, as their friends Atom and Zephyr flew to join them.
Carol Clews and Atom Blake - Crown Quest
Search for the Crown of Scales
We're not in Kansas any longer...
"We got them ALL!" Atom crowed as the four came together. "That is SO cool! Wait 'till I tell them at back at school!"
"Um, Atom... first we have to figure out how to get you BACK to school, before you can tell anyone. Which means we need to figure out where we are and how we got here!" Carol replied, sounding worried.
"You guys too?" Corona asked sadly. "We were hoping you guys might tell us."
"Well, why don't we land while we try to figure it out?" Zephyr suggested, and led the way down to one of the islands maybe 10 miles off the coast of the unknown continent. They scouted an island a couple miles across, which had 4 mountainous peaks at the center and determined it was unpopulated, so they landed on the beach. The first order of business was to complete the introductions.
"I'm Atom Blake, Boy Wizard!" Atom told Alex enthusiastically. Joanna continued. "I'm Zephyr, or Joanna." "Carol Clews, and I call myself Sunbeam."
"And I'm Alex DeWitt - a.k.a. Corona," Alex cringed internally as she introduced herself. 'Here it comes...'
"Like the..." Atom piped up enthusiastically.
"No, Atom, not like the beer," she spoke almost crossly. But before she could say more, Atom eagerly interrupted her.
"No, no, Miss Alex, I was gonna ask if you're named after the Advanced Laser Targeting System component of the new Star Wars Missile Defense plans?" He was still enthusiastic. "That is SO COOL!"
"Say, there's a beer named Corona?" Carol asked with interest. "I'm sort of a connoisseur of beer; my partner and I have visited all 48 states and all the territories and half a dozen foreign countries and I always check out the beer - and I've never heard of it. If it's any good, I'd love to try it some time!" She shook her head. "Oops, I mean all 50 states - I sometimes forget what happened while I was asleep!"
Alex was a little abashed. "I'm sorry. I get asked that - I mean, about the beer - almost every time somebody learns my name, and I'm SO tired of it... but you know, the next time it happens, it will remind me of right now, and I'll just smile about it. Thank you. Atom! So..." she turned to Carol and smiled to show she was joking, "Nobody ever asks you if you named yourself after the electric razor? Sorry, I couldn't resist!"
"It's kind of funny," Carol returned, very seriously, sounding more than a little puzzled. "You guys both speak fluent East Coast American, in fact, I'd say, somewhere near New York City, and I'm originally from Fawcett City, just outside of New York, myself - but I've never heard of either Corona Beer or Sunbeam Razors."
"We're from Gotham City, right next to New York City - and I've never heard of Fawcett City," Joanna replied, also sounding puzzled.
"I told you!" Atom almost shouted in his enthusiasm. "I said so! We're not on our own Earth any more! This really is Earth-2!"
Carol, Atom, Alex and Joanna
Space/Time Quest
A Quiet Moment's Discussion
"I don't know what you mean about 'Earth-2', but my magic senses tell me we're in the past. I'm pretty sure the continent we saw from the sky is Lemuria - which sank beneath the Pacific Ocean around 100,000 years ago. Er, I mean, 100,000 years before I was born!" Zephyr replied to Atom's excited pronouncement.
"See, I said that too!" Atom crowed triumphantly to Carol.
So of course, Alex, who had learned about vibratory universes and multiple Earths in her training with Green Lantern and the JSA Reserves, and whose yellow power ring had come from yet another vibratory universe, and Atom, who had learned multiple Earth theory early in his training at Grimoire Academy, spent the next few minutes bringing Zephyr up-to-date. Alex had just reached the part about the barriers separating the different Earths ever since the Crisis, when Joanna interrupted with a question.
"OK, so if these barriers are so impenetrable, and we're convinced Alex and I are really on our home Earth, and Atom and Carol didn't change Earths via Grim Island, then how did THEY get HERE?"
Carol had been feeling a bit left out of the discussion, but she realized that something she'd learned in the Battleworld Crisis could help everyone make sense out of the current information exchange. She was starting to realize that she'd almost sleepwalked through that crisis; afterward it had seemed like it must have happened to someone else, but with more experience, the memories were starting to make more sense. Anyway, "I heard Mary Marvel say that she'd found a way around those barriers." Everyone stopped talking and looked at her. "Ummm... Mary realized that if she traveled back in time to before the barriers existed, she could cross to another universe - and then travel forward through time back to the present and she was on the other side..."
"Novas and Meteors!" Adam piped up enthusiastically. "So the trap we sprung in the Museum of Mu not only threw us back in time, but it tossed us over to the vibratory universe of Earth 2!" His 'six year old tiny tot' appearance made it easy to forget that not only was Atom a super genius, he had many years more real life experience than any of they women around him, even though they were all in their mid-twenties.
"You guys were in the Museum of Mu on your Earth? That's where we were too, in the future," Alex told her companions excitedly.
Then, of course, she and Joanna had to explain why they had been in that museum together. Alex, a freelance photojournalist, had successfully pitched a feature series on the lost continents of Mu and Atlantis to Continental Geographic Magazine and the publisher of the magazine had enthusiastically accepted the proposal. Alex had recently attended a lecture on ancient Egypt by Gotham City University Associate Professor of Archeology Joanna Andre, who had mentioned the influence of Atlantis on Egyptian civilization, so Alex had arranged a meeting with the professor as part of her research.
"I almost didn't believe it when Continental Geographic accepted my proposal and decided to sponsor my investigations. And it was so great of Joanna to change her vacation plans so she could come with me to Rarotanga!" Alex ended her story.
"Well, you can't really say I had 'plans'," Joanna replied with a smile. "If I hadn't come with Alex, I'd probably be back in Gotham now, probably helping them catalog dusty artifacts in a dusty storeroom at the Gotham Museum of Natural History. If 'right now' actually means anything when time travel is involved, but you get what I mean!"
"I almost didn't believe it when Continental Geographic accepted my proposal and decided to sponsor my investigations. And it was so great of Joanna to change her vacation plans so she could come with me to Rarotanga!" Alex ended her story.
"Well, you can't really say I had 'plans'," Joanna replied with a smile. "If I hadn't come with Alex, I'd probably be back in Gotham now, probably helping them catalog dusty artifacts in a dusty storeroom at the Gotham Museum of Natural History. If 'right now' actually means anything when time travel is involved, but you get what I mean!"
Neither Alex or Joanna mentioned that at the beginning of their trip neither had known the secret heroic identities of the other, but keeping their identities secret had become a very minor issue when the trap had sprung!
"And you guys got caught in a trap similar to the one that caught us," Carol concluded sadly. She held up her hand, fingers outstretched. "So, all we have to do is..." she touched her fingers with the pointer of her other hand to enumerate her points. "Get back to our own time, find out who attacked us..." her voice turned grim with anger, "...let him know how we feel about people who try to kill us, dismantle the traps so they won't kill anyone else, and get me back to my own Earth and Atom back to Grimoire Academy."
"Well, actually..." Atom piped up, "I'd like to find out why this is called Earth 2, and what number our Earth is, too." Even given their dire situation, the others had to laugh at that.
Carol, Atom, Alex and Joanna
Space/Time Quest
What About... Sun Metal!
"Hey, wait a minute!" Atom suddenly yelled. "Don't you guys even want to know how Miss Joanna and I stopped OUR missiles? And what are we going to do about the guys that launched them at us, anyway?"
"Sorry, Atom - of course we want to know!" Alex concurred and Carol nodded vigorously in agreement.
"Well, it was Atom's idea originally," Zephyr started telling the story. "He noticed that the missiles must have jet engines instead of rockets, because they had air scoops to draw in air and compress it for use in burning their jet fuel. When he used the term air-breathing, it got me thinking - suppose we could take away their air source?"
"And then Miss Zephyr had a great idea - suppose we could block the scoops with ice? But she was worried that it would be like dropping hundreds of bombs on the ground and ocean below us if we just shut them down, and we have no idea who or what might be down there, so we flew higher and over the volcano before we attacked THEM, and they all followed us like a bunch of lemmings, and then Miss Zephyr made a poem..." His face twisted up as he tried to recall her words "Maybe like 'Great balls of ice, don't be nice, fill each scoop so they drop like poop!'" He stopped, terrified by what he'd just said. "Or at least something like that... geez, I'm sorry, Miss Zephyr, you guys know she really didn't say 'poop'..." He was turning red and almost pleading. When he realized the three women were just laughing and he wasn't going to be chastised, he brightened up again. "But we sure flushed them like poop, didn't we?"
"That you did, Atom, that you did!" Carol laughed. "Tell you what, though - I don't really care who launched them. If we get back home, by then, the people that sent them will be dead for 100,000 years or so, and we'll still be alive. So let's just forget about them and figure out how to get home!"
"You don't think our missile attackers had anything to do with bringing us here, then?" Alex asked.
"No, the trap that brought us here was magic, and the missiles were technology. I don't think they're related," Carol the detective was thoughtful as she deduced. "Totally different modus operandis usually indicate totally different perps..."
"In my studies, I've found some stories about the last years before the continent of Lemuria was destroyed," Joanna sounded almost as if she were giving a lecture. "The continent was being wracked by natural disasters - earthquakes, volcanoes such as we've seen, tremendous storms, over and over again. The people were all driven nearly insane by dread of what would come next, and it was tearing the Mu civilization apart. All the nations on the continent were engaged in a desperate arms race, paranoid over invasions from other nations. I think we triggered an automated alarm of some kind against aerial invasion, rather than that some particular enemy of ours launched those missiles specifically against us. But we had better not stick around too long - sooner or later, someone might come to investigate. And that someone might not be friendly!"
"So how do we get home, anyway?" Alex asked. "My ring doesn't include time travel. I tried when Green Lantern was training me, and I've tried over and over since then - but no luck." She sounded very sad; she had tried desperately to see her departed father just one more time, but no matter how she concentrated, no matter how urgently she commanded her ring, she never moved even a second through time. She had been shaken to her core when she'd discovered that her ring had altered her personality and her memories of her father, and even after she was sure she'd fixed the ring and restored her memories, she wanted to see her father just one more time, to reaffirm her memories.
"I've tried too, over and over, and nilch... nada... nothing..." Carol sounded as sad as Alex; her parents and sister had died while she was trapped in S'ville's errant time stop spell, and she really wanted to see them just one more time, to have closure to her loss. But she'd had no more luck than Alex.
"Time Travel is a ThD Graduate Study course at Grimoire," Atom chimed in. "I don't know anything about it yet..."
All three turned to Zephyr. "What, me? Well..." she spoke slowly. "I DO have control over natural forces - but I've never even considered time travel. I'd want years of practice before I tried a jump of 100,000 years. But I don't think any of us want to wait for years - and I doubt if we have that much time anyway, before someone discovers us - and that someone might not be friendly."
There was silence for a few minutes as they each thought urgently about their problem. And then suddenly, Atom shouted exultantly. "I got it! Sun metal!"
Carol, Atom, Alex and Joanna
Space/Time Quest
Wisar the One, Emperor of All
In an ornately decorated, heavily magically-warded and protected room in the long-abandoned city of Telos Under the Mountain, almost 11 miles beneath Mount Shasta in California on Earth 2, Wisar the One, Emperor of All, called to order the meeting of the Global Ruling Council of The Worldwide Empire of Mu. Seven gaudily-clad men and women sat along the convex curve of a crescent shaped table, facing a 3' high dais on which rested a massive throne. Most of the Councilors were wearing robes, many of them spangled with mystical symbols, and each of them had within easy touching distance at least 2 items often associated with the casting of magic, including several wands and scepters and various items of jewelry. An astute observer might notice that many of these items seemed to have an ocean-related theme - fetishes and jewelry in the shape of fish, snakes, and swimming monsters, a preponderance of pearls among the jewelry, with many of the other gems and jewels in ocean colors of green and blue, mother of pearl carvings of water creatures and water plants on the staves, a horn made from a polished-until-it-glows conch shell, decorations made from the shells of many different water-going creatures, and even a couple of items that shimmered like moving water.
The members of the Global Ruling Council were very diverse, comprising five men and two women. Two of the men were extremely tall, one wide and one scrawny, two more were very short, again one wide and the other scrawny and albino as well. The two women had exotic features and coloring, one the color of an old copper penny, while the other was more similar, perhaps, to the brass of an expensive saxophone. None of the Councilors looked particularly healthy, which wasn't surprising, considering that they had all been homeless on the streets of Los Angeles just over a year ago before when they had been
Dominating the room even while seated on the raised thrown, Wisar himself was an incredibly impressive figure, seemingly the archetype of the phrase 'Larger than life'. Physically, he looked like a burnished bronze statue of a world-champion bodybuilder brought to life, a few inches over 7 feet tall with bulging muscles on top of sculpted muscles. His brown-bronze hair was cropped short into a skullcap and he moved with the grace of a professional dancer. His upper body was bare with leather cords tied around his biceps, just below the shoulders and just above the elbows. Softly glowing white seashells dangled from each cord. On each bicep was a tattoo of a mushroom cloud which expanded realistically whenever he flexed his arms (which was very frequently), and tattooed across his chest and rock-solid abs was an incredibly detailed and realistically colored shark swimming through ocean surf, the mouth incredibly wide open showing hundreds of deadly teeth. When he moved, the shark's body seemed to thrash through the surf, and the teeth slowly rotate like some kind of deadly grisly meat grinder.
He was wearing khaki jodhpurs with a black leather belt with a massive silver buckle, shaped like a squid, and open-top sandals with no socks. Around his neck he wore a leather cord from which dangled a dinner plate-sized pendant made from a single, highly polished almost triangular tooth of a prehistoric megalodon shark. And on his head, he wore a massive, ornate, bejeweled crown made of shiny platinum, polished until it seemed translucent, studded with huge gems and jewels in the colors of the sea and worked to look like the scales of an armored fish. The Council had been told that this was the hereditary crown of the the Empire of Mu, the Lamina Crown, worn by each of the thousands of Emperors of Mu, the powerful advanced civilization that had dominated the continent of Leumuria for tens of thousands of years before it had been destroyed a hundred thousand years ago. His voice was deep, powerful, and perfectly modulated, and could shake the walls when he raised it in anger. His face was square-jawed and composed of planes, reminding observers of Robert Redford, though they always added 'much more handsome' to their mental descriptions. His powerful, almost hypnotic eyes conjured infinitely deep pools of ocean green and blue, and constantly swirled like whirlpools.
Before he could announce the first item on the agenda, his head jerked slightly and his eyes widened visibly as the softball-sized ruby half embedded in the arm of the throne as a hand rest under his right hand began to glow. He quickly lifted his left hand, and stared intently into the glowing white crystal ball, twin in size to the ruby, that his motion revealed. While the Councilors couldn't seen the details, they could see cloudy figures moving inside the crystal. A puzzled expression flitted across Wisar's face, then he shook his head decisively and stood, facing the Council table. When he could see that all eyes were upon him he spoke in a forceful, commanding tone.
"Behold!" the table shook slightly from the power of his voice. "Two of our enemies are eliminated even before they could move against us!" He waved his arm, and an illusion appeared in the air near the throne. We've seen the scene before, from a different point of view...
A tall blonde woman and a small boy holding her hand walked hesitantly into view and stood uncertainly facing a museum diorama behind a wall of glass: a gaudily-clad man sitting on a massive throne, similar to that currently occupied by Wisar, though not as large or as elegantly decorated with jewels and precious metal, wearing a crown similar to that currently worn by the Emperor of All. The sign over the figure read: "Merodak Mu-paku, the last Emperor of Mu, wearing the legendary Crown of Scales". Suddenly the youngster looked alarmed, and shouted something, and then the two disappeared.
"More sacrifices to our patron, Kunakarai Ino, the God of Volcanoes," Wisar rumbled in his deep, powerful voice, as he flicked his hand, banishing the illusion. "A good omen for our work here today. Let us begin!"
A few minutes into the first agenda item, the ruby began to glow again. Again, Wisar appeared to be startled, but this time, as he watched a scene in the crystal, he didn't show any signs of puzzled, but instead appeared extremely pleased. Again he stood, demanded the attention of the Council, and projected an illusion. We readers haven't specifically watched this tableau yet, though it was eerily similar to the one that had played out only minutes earlier. A pair of woman, one blonde and one with black hair, walked hesitantly into view and stood uncertainly in front of a museum diorama behind a wall of glass: a gaudily-clad man sitting on a massive throne, wearing a crown visually identical to that of the Emperor of All. The sign over the figure read: "Kumari Kandama, the last Emperor of Mu, wearing the legendary Lamina Crown". Suddenly the black haired woman looked alarmed, and shouted something, and then the two disappeared.
"Another excellent omen. With two such portentous omens today, let us wrap up our planning! It is time to take action!" Wisar was in a good mood. The councilor at the left end of the table, the brassy-colored woman, discreetly jabbed her neighbor with her elbow; the jab was passed along until it reached the scrawny albino man at the other end, who barely nodded his head one time in acknowledgement. The Council knew then that Wisar's good cheer was not destined to last for long!
Carol, Atom, Alex and Joanna
Space/Time Quest
A (Very) Quick History of Wisar the One
In a way, the story of Wisar started 100,000 years ago, so we'll start there. At that time, the Earth was wracked with a deadly series of natural disasters, which resulted in the sinking of the continents of Atlantis and Lemuria beneath the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the destruction of their respective civilizations. Some of the survivors of the civilization of Mu, on Lemuria, were able to reach the West Coast of North America, where they chose Mount Shasta, in what is now California, as the site of the gigantic city they built as a refuge for Lemuria survivors. Under Mt. Shasta, using Lemurian magic and technology, they created a city they called Telos Under the Mountain, more often referred to as just Telos. Telos extended more than 11 miles below the mountain, and over the centuries, the population grew to a maximum of at least half a million. But eventually, the citizens needed wider horizons and began leaving the city, and by 1900 it was deserted...
In another way, Wisar's story began in 1931, when a hiker in California discovered a secret entrance to Telos, partially explored the city, and wrote a book about that experience. He published the book, Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific, under a pen name. The book referenced Telos, but though the author described the location of the secret entrance in careful detail, no one, including the author himself, was ever able to locate that entrance again. For the rest of his life, the author was thrilled he'd used a pen name - he was able to retreat to his original identity and escape much of the ridicule that the book generated with the public.
In yet another way, Wisar began his adventures in 1970, when the author's grandson visited Mt. Shasta himself, determined to erase the cloud from his grandfather's legacy. Following the directions in the book, the young explorer easily located the same secret entrance to Telos, exactly where his grandfather described it, a cave entrance set on a small shelf partway up the western face! There was ample evidence on the small plateau that since the book had been published, many other people had visited this exact same spot and NOT been able to find the entrance, including a large hand-lettered wooden sign that was covered in mostly pornographic graffiti that almost obliterated the original words: "X Marks the Spot, but there's nothing here!". The shelf was littered with the remains of dozens of campfires and piles of trash discarded by the many pilgrims over the years who had visited this exact spot and been disappointed.
As soon as he entered the vast city of Telos, the young man had renounced his birth name and adopted another.
"Forevermore will I be known as Wisar Spenle Cerve, my grandfather's pen name!"
Wisar Spenle spent years exploring the city, and quickly realized that the ancient society of Mu had controlled great powers, and many keys to those powers were to be found in the deserted libraries and universities of Telos as well as in the private, long abandoned studies and libraries of the personal residences of many great wizards and technologists. He realized that he had been shown the secret entrance as part of his destiny, and the tomes and scrolls around him would provide him the power he needed to grasp his rightful destiny - Emperor of All!
Another beginning began when Wisar Spenle finally determined that his long studies were at end. Through his magical studies, he had learned that his own ability to create and cast magical spells was limited. But by collecting relevant spells, written long ago by powerful mages and recorded in their writings, and laboriously editing those spells, he could produce miraculous results. He humorously called his spells 'frankenspells' in his mind because he built them by drawing components from many pre-existing spells, and while they always did something, his frankenspells did not always function exactly as he expected!
Another beginning began when Wisar Spenle finally determined that his long studies were at end. Through his magical studies, he had learned that his own ability to create and cast magical spells was limited. But by collecting relevant spells, written long ago by powerful mages and recorded in their writings, and laboriously editing those spells, he could produce miraculous results. He humorously called his spells 'frankenspells' in his mind because he built them by drawing components from many pre-existing spells, and while they always did something, his frankenspells did not always function exactly as he expected!
More importantly, he discovered that many of the ancient mages had created artifacts which could store magical power for their use, augmenting their own natural powers to incredible levels! No such artifacts remained in Telos, but utilizing ancient clairvoyance frankenspells to spy on the world, he eventually discovered a trove of such artifacts - not in the closely-guarded possession of some living, jealous, powerful mage who Wisar Spenle was still unable to challenge, but in an unguarded museum display, open to the general public! He quickly made plans to gain possession of those artifacts.
In another sense, our introduction to Wisar begins with an announcement to the world, made in an empty room. In his study, surrounded by scrolls, mystic tomes and mysterious magical apparatus, deep below Mount Shasta in the long-dead city of Telos, last refuge of Lemuria, in late 1983, exactly 13 years to the day of his discovery of the secret entrance, Wisar Spenle announced to the world (though most of the world wouldn't learn of this announcement for some time yet): "From this moment forward, I shall be known as Wisar the One, for none following me shall ever again bear this name! And soon, I shall assume my rightful destiny as Emperor of All!"
He carefully cast a powerful frankenspell, which he had assembled from bits and pieces of ancient spells crafted by wizards long dead and carefully recorded by them on scrolls and in tomes. The magnificent spell reached out to the Museum of Mu on distant Rorotanga Island and pulled from there all the mystical artifacts on display; in a cleared corner of his cluttered study, a pile of artifacts appeared. He was a bit puzzled - there were more artifacts in that pile than he had expected to scoop up from the Museum, but he quickly congratulated himself - his frankenspell had proved even more powerful than he had expected, finding and returning things he hadn't even known about! He followed up with another spell that replaced the collected artifacts with illusions, in the dioramas in the mundane Museum of Mu, and finally, his most complex frankenspell - a trap spell surrounding the illusions in the museum - any who suspected they were less than real would be instantly transported through time and space into the giant volcano of Kunakarai, the dwelling place of Kunakarai Ino, the Lemurian God of the Fiery Underworld.
Wisar hurried to his new trove of artifacts, searching for the Lamina Crown, the Crown that had been worn by thousands of Lemurian Emperors, the Crown that would give HIM access to their awesome ancient powers. He was confused again when he saw two similar crowns - but quickly discerned that one must be an imitation. He grasped the real Lamina Crown and struggled to just lift it - it must weigh 40 pounds or more! He laboriously raised the heavy crown to his head and carefully donned it. And almost instantly screamed in exquisite agony as the spirits of the thousands of Emperors who had worn the Lamina Crown in the past, powerful wizards each and all, trapped eternally in the Lamina Crown, began a pitched battle for control of his mind and body. Only the fact that he had instantly collapsed to the floor and the Crown had been knocked from his head had saved him from either eternal possession by one or more of the dead Emperors, or death, or perhaps worst, eternally being trapped in a dead body controlled by another being as a zombie after his death. When he'd finally awakened, sore and sick but still alive and himself, he'd begun more years of tedious study - how to control the power of the Lamina Crown without having to wear it!
(What Wisar had never learned, but we can know, is that the presence of two large collections of similar and similarly powerful mystical artifacts in the same location at the same time, the History of Lemuria exhibits in the Museums of Mu in the Earth 2 and Earth S universes, created a temporary 'crossover nexus' between those two universes in the museums, similar to the nexus between Earth 1 and Earth 2 in Central City on E1 and Keystone City on E2 discovered by Barry (Flash) Allen. The powerful (but edited by a neophyte) frankenspells created by Wisar and cast on the Museum of Mu on Earth 2 somehow reached through that nexus and affected both displays! And we can know that this mystical nexus, which had only come into being a few years before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, had been closed and locked shut by the barriers between the universes that were created by some of the most powerful beings on the remaining Earths after the Crisis).
And finally, the story of Wisar the One, Emperor of All, begins with the scene you have just read previously - the gathering of the Global Ruling Council of the Worldwide Emperor of Mu, during which Wisar planned to kick off his plans for conquest of Earth!
In another sense, our introduction to Wisar begins with an announcement to the world, made in an empty room. In his study, surrounded by scrolls, mystic tomes and mysterious magical apparatus, deep below Mount Shasta in the long-dead city of Telos, last refuge of Lemuria, in late 1983, exactly 13 years to the day of his discovery of the secret entrance, Wisar Spenle announced to the world (though most of the world wouldn't learn of this announcement for some time yet): "From this moment forward, I shall be known as Wisar the One, for none following me shall ever again bear this name! And soon, I shall assume my rightful destiny as Emperor of All!"
He carefully cast a powerful frankenspell, which he had assembled from bits and pieces of ancient spells crafted by wizards long dead and carefully recorded by them on scrolls and in tomes. The magnificent spell reached out to the Museum of Mu on distant Rorotanga Island and pulled from there all the mystical artifacts on display; in a cleared corner of his cluttered study, a pile of artifacts appeared. He was a bit puzzled - there were more artifacts in that pile than he had expected to scoop up from the Museum, but he quickly congratulated himself - his frankenspell had proved even more powerful than he had expected, finding and returning things he hadn't even known about! He followed up with another spell that replaced the collected artifacts with illusions, in the dioramas in the mundane Museum of Mu, and finally, his most complex frankenspell - a trap spell surrounding the illusions in the museum - any who suspected they were less than real would be instantly transported through time and space into the giant volcano of Kunakarai, the dwelling place of Kunakarai Ino, the Lemurian God of the Fiery Underworld.
Wisar hurried to his new trove of artifacts, searching for the Lamina Crown, the Crown that had been worn by thousands of Lemurian Emperors, the Crown that would give HIM access to their awesome ancient powers. He was confused again when he saw two similar crowns - but quickly discerned that one must be an imitation. He grasped the real Lamina Crown and struggled to just lift it - it must weigh 40 pounds or more! He laboriously raised the heavy crown to his head and carefully donned it. And almost instantly screamed in exquisite agony as the spirits of the thousands of Emperors who had worn the Lamina Crown in the past, powerful wizards each and all, trapped eternally in the Lamina Crown, began a pitched battle for control of his mind and body. Only the fact that he had instantly collapsed to the floor and the Crown had been knocked from his head had saved him from either eternal possession by one or more of the dead Emperors, or death, or perhaps worst, eternally being trapped in a dead body controlled by another being as a zombie after his death. When he'd finally awakened, sore and sick but still alive and himself, he'd begun more years of tedious study - how to control the power of the Lamina Crown without having to wear it!
(What Wisar had never learned, but we can know, is that the presence of two large collections of similar and similarly powerful mystical artifacts in the same location at the same time, the History of Lemuria exhibits in the Museums of Mu in the Earth 2 and Earth S universes, created a temporary 'crossover nexus' between those two universes in the museums, similar to the nexus between Earth 1 and Earth 2 in Central City on E1 and Keystone City on E2 discovered by Barry (Flash) Allen. The powerful (but edited by a neophyte) frankenspells created by Wisar and cast on the Museum of Mu on Earth 2 somehow reached through that nexus and affected both displays! And we can know that this mystical nexus, which had only come into being a few years before the Crisis on Infinite Earths, had been closed and locked shut by the barriers between the universes that were created by some of the most powerful beings on the remaining Earths after the Crisis).
And finally, the story of Wisar the One, Emperor of All, begins with the scene you have just read previously - the gathering of the Global Ruling Council of the Worldwide Emperor of Mu, during which Wisar planned to kick off his plans for conquest of Earth!
Carol, Atom, Alex and Joanna
Space/Time Quest
Return to Lemuria
Working together, the four time-and-space-displaced castaways quickly created a place for Atom to work, a cave carved from the mountain in the four-peak range at the center of their chosen island. Alex was astounded at the raw blasting power Carol's yellow energy could generate, shattering tons of rock with each full-power blast, while Carol was jealous of the precision work Alex could produce with her own yellow energy by creating complex energy constructs such as hand and power tools. Of greater concern to Carol was the progressive weakening of her power as she made continuous use of it; after each hour's work she had to concentrate a little harder to produce the same effects as the hour before.
Alex had brought her power battery with her using a trick she'd been taught by Green Lantern Alan Scott when he had trained her, a trick he had learned from the Earth 1 Green Lantern Hal Jordan - causing the yellow power battery to float invisibly and intangible and always follow near her until she needed it. So she was able to recharge her ring as required. With Alex's amused approval, Carol tried placing her fist in contact with the yellow power battery in case their energies were the same, but she didn't absorb any energy.
"Well, at least it didn't blast me!" Carol laughed, a little dejected as she pulled her hand away. After they had finished their blasting and shaping, Carol sought out privacy, and did some of that detective stuff, heavy deductive thinking about her diminishing power.
Meanwhile, in their new cave sanctuary, Atom and Joanna were at work. They used their respective magical powers to smooth the floor and walls, and then to reshape some of the leftover stone rubble into tables and chairs. When they were finished, they discussed Atom's proposed project: creating enough Sun Metal to re-create the Sunergy Ring Atoms's father had given him almost fifty years ago.
"Sun Metal is a radioactive compound created by my father before I was born," Atom explained. "The radiation is called Sunergy, and it is incredibly powerful - and deadly dangerous. Dad combined samples from every known element together. So all we need to do is gather samples of every element and mash them all together!"
"With my powers over nature I MAY be able to somehow gather samples of every element... maybe. I'm not sure how long it will take, I'm not sure how we will hold them when they get here, and I'm not sure how we will 'mash them together' as you put it so elegantly," Zephyr said thoughtfully. "I'm also not sure if I will need to issue one command, or many, or even one per element..."
"Hold on a minute," Atom suggested. He had reappeared his traveling bag and it was open on one of the tables they'd created; he searched through it, pulled out several vials, one of which seemed to contain ground glass, mixed them together in the palm of his left hand, and then flicked the resulting power into the air with his right hand while chanting in an unknown language. The glittering powder formed into the shape of a large bottle (think a glass 5 gallon water cooler jug) which was sealed at the top. He mixed different vials, flicked the resulting powder over the new bottle, and chanted again. This time there was no observable effect. He then turned back to his friend.
Meanwhile, in their new cave sanctuary, Atom and Joanna were at work. They used their respective magical powers to smooth the floor and walls, and then to reshape some of the leftover stone rubble into tables and chairs. When they were finished, they discussed Atom's proposed project: creating enough Sun Metal to re-create the Sunergy Ring Atoms's father had given him almost fifty years ago.
"Sun Metal is a radioactive compound created by my father before I was born," Atom explained. "The radiation is called Sunergy, and it is incredibly powerful - and deadly dangerous. Dad combined samples from every known element together. So all we need to do is gather samples of every element and mash them all together!"
"With my powers over nature I MAY be able to somehow gather samples of every element... maybe. I'm not sure how long it will take, I'm not sure how we will hold them when they get here, and I'm not sure how we will 'mash them together' as you put it so elegantly," Zephyr said thoughtfully. "I'm also not sure if I will need to issue one command, or many, or even one per element..."
"Hold on a minute," Atom suggested. He had reappeared his traveling bag and it was open on one of the tables they'd created; he searched through it, pulled out several vials, one of which seemed to contain ground glass, mixed them together in the palm of his left hand, and then flicked the resulting power into the air with his right hand while chanting in an unknown language. The glittering powder formed into the shape of a large bottle (think a glass 5 gallon water cooler jug) which was sealed at the top. He mixed different vials, flicked the resulting powder over the new bottle, and chanted again. This time there was no observable effect. He then turned back to his friend.
"Unbreakable bottle filled with vacuum!" he said proudly. "We don't need very much of any one element, maybe one hundredth of an ounce of each, or around 10 to the 21st atoms of each, on average. Or in more rigorous technical terms, 'just a smidge of this, a pinch of that'. If you can make each smidge and pinch appear inside the bottle, we'll be all set. While you're working on collecting, I'll work out the 'mash 'em together' process like my father did long ago." Sometimes it was difficult to remember that Atom was a 64 year old super genius, regardless of his current appearance!
"You don't want anything difficult, do you, professor?" Zephyr smiled while shaking her head. "I'll need to think on this for a while!"
Meanwhile, Carol had made some deductions and come to some tentative conclusions, which she tried out on Alex. "Jim Barr, my super genius scientist friend, thinks my power may be recharged by absorbing energy from the environment around me, perhaps from sunlight. But he's not totally sure just what energy I actually use. Not very long ago - immediately after I arrived in this time, actually, I was exposed to an extremely energy-intensive environment - the light, heat, and sound created by the incredibly hot lava in the volcano. Suppose my power comes from absorbing light, or heat, or even sound - and the short exposure to that environment supercharged me?"
Alex had been exposed to that same energy-intensive environment, and it hadn't done a thing for her, other than terrifying her! "So what, you want to be dropped back into the volcano again? What if you're wrong?" Alex wasn't quite as incredulous as she was trying to sound - she already had an idea what might be leading up to. "It could be, instead, you got all charged up when you were zapped through time or pulled into a new universe and not related to the volcano at all, you know. That's a pretty dangerous environment to just play around in!"
"You're right," Carol acknowledged instantly and easily. "Either of those theories fit the facts that we know as well as my own theory does," she agreed. "A good detective can't get married to a theory without testing it! I can't easily test your theories, though - but I can test mine, pretty easily, and, I think, safely. Like you say - NOT by being dropped back into the caldera!" She smiled at her new friend. "I plan to fly, very carefully, overhead, and then drop lower, slowly and carefully, and see if my power starts feeling stronger again as I descend. If it works, I can hover until I charge up again; if it doesn't, I just fly away."
"Well, I'm coming with you, then!" Alex insisted. "Just in case you encounter any more missiles or other enemies - and besides, I want to see if it works!" They went off to tell their friends about their plan... and walked in just as Zephyr prepared to cast her newest and most powerful spell.
"You don't want anything difficult, do you, professor?" Zephyr smiled while shaking her head. "I'll need to think on this for a while!"
Meanwhile, Carol had made some deductions and come to some tentative conclusions, which she tried out on Alex. "Jim Barr, my super genius scientist friend, thinks my power may be recharged by absorbing energy from the environment around me, perhaps from sunlight. But he's not totally sure just what energy I actually use. Not very long ago - immediately after I arrived in this time, actually, I was exposed to an extremely energy-intensive environment - the light, heat, and sound created by the incredibly hot lava in the volcano. Suppose my power comes from absorbing light, or heat, or even sound - and the short exposure to that environment supercharged me?"
Alex had been exposed to that same energy-intensive environment, and it hadn't done a thing for her, other than terrifying her! "So what, you want to be dropped back into the volcano again? What if you're wrong?" Alex wasn't quite as incredulous as she was trying to sound - she already had an idea what might be leading up to. "It could be, instead, you got all charged up when you were zapped through time or pulled into a new universe and not related to the volcano at all, you know. That's a pretty dangerous environment to just play around in!"
"You're right," Carol acknowledged instantly and easily. "Either of those theories fit the facts that we know as well as my own theory does," she agreed. "A good detective can't get married to a theory without testing it! I can't easily test your theories, though - but I can test mine, pretty easily, and, I think, safely. Like you say - NOT by being dropped back into the caldera!" She smiled at her new friend. "I plan to fly, very carefully, overhead, and then drop lower, slowly and carefully, and see if my power starts feeling stronger again as I descend. If it works, I can hover until I charge up again; if it doesn't, I just fly away."
"Well, I'm coming with you, then!" Alex insisted. "Just in case you encounter any more missiles or other enemies - and besides, I want to see if it works!" They went off to tell their friends about their plan... and walked in just as Zephyr prepared to cast her newest and most powerful spell.
The Global Ruling Council
Escape From Telos
A Boring Presentation
In the Chamber of the Global Ruling Council of the Worldwide Empire of Mu, two of the councilors stood between the horns of the crescent-shaped Council table, giving a presentation to their larger-than-life Emperor of All, Wisar. A boxy device maybe the size of R4D3, the iconic droid from the popular Nebula Wars movie, floated next to them, and a beam of light from the top of the device projected illusions into the left half of the room. Wisar could easily see these illusions without changing position on his throne, but the seated Councilors had to twist far around in their seats - a casual indifference to their convenience that dominated all their interactions with the powerful Emperor of All. They didn't mind today, though, and in fact had counted on it - their skewed positions would conceal minor actions from Wisar.
Monja spoke a Lemurian Word of Power, and the room lights dimmed. As Telos was actually inside a mountain, if it weren't for magical lighting, the city would have been forever enveloped in darkness more complete than most humans had ever seen. Every 'inside' room in the city responded identically to four light-related commands, the Lemurian equivalents of 'Dark', 'Dim', 'Normal' and 'Bright', and any person in a room could issue any of those commands. 'External' lighting was a little different - the public areas of the many levels of the city all shared the same 24 hour magically-produced Daylight, Dusk, Night, Dusk, Daylight cycle, and the city's founders had set that magic up with powerful protections so that none could affect it. Neither the 'Dark' command indoors or the Dark cycle outdoors produced total darkness; there was always at least a dim light everywhere in the city.
Monja was about 5'6" and had a striking complexion, almost the yellowish brass color of an expensive saxophone, or about the same color as BB30, another droid from the Nebula Wars movie, with kinked shoulder length black hair; her face resembled a polished yellow kabuki mask. Skin color and mask face were side effects of the powerful magical artifact she wore around her forehead, the Eye of Tsujimoto, with which she could control emotions. The 'socket' of the Eye was cunningly wrought of silver and circled a flat, translucent white diamond as the eyeball, set with an unknown magical gem in place of the pupil which changed color and size depending on the emotion and magical power she chose to project, growing smaller and brighter as her projection became more intense. The Eye of Tsujimoto was so thin it barely raised a bump on her forehead, and was held firmly in place by powerful magic, unless she chose to remove it, which never happened in public. Those who knew Monja's power were always aware of the color of the pupil! Today it was flat grayish black and as large as a dime; and black indicated that her power was quiescent. No member of this group other than Wisar had ever seen her true appearance, and no one else knew her history. The others sometimes whispered that she once been a princess whose father the king had been overthrown in a revolution, but none of them knew the source of that rumor.
Theo had once been handsome, about 5'10" with wide shoulders and a narrow waist; he had been a powerfully built man before he'd become homeless, and after a year of living in Telos was on his way to regaining his healthy appearance. He was a former lawyer who had been disbarred for presenting alternative facts in a criminal case in which his client was clearly guilty. Wisar had collected both him and Andy together from the plastic tent they'd shared in a dump outside Los Angeles. While the other members of the Council always wore Lemurian-themed clothing, Theo always wore an elegant, exquisitely magically tailored, almost foppish three-piece suit that would be de rigeur for arguing a case in the Supreme Court. His magical totem resembled a walking stick with a large solid gold ball as a grip; by holding the stick in front of him and chanting in the Lemurian language of magic, he could entrance people into a deep sleep. Today his stick was back at the table and his hands were empty.
Theo was just beginning his presentation when the Emperor of All imperiously interrupted him. "What's that pin you are wearing? I've never seen it before. What's it say, 'Hahvahd'?" He initially sounded angry, but then his voice changed to amused. "We are all tired of hearing your stories and boasts about your incredible education. But what did it get you? Years of living in a garbage bag tent in a dump with a monkey, while I, with no 'formal' education such as you continually boast of, am now the most powerful man in the world, and soon to assume my throne." His expression changed yet again. "Yes, it is decided. Today is the day I demonstrate my power to the world and assume my rightful place as Emperor of All!" He pointed at Theo. "After the meeting, you will destroy the pin, and never again speak of your so-called, imaginary superior intellect or education!" His hand fell back to the arm of his throne. "Continue!"
While Monja remained silent, intently studying Wisar for any indication that he was interested in the plan the two were presenting, Theo continued his presentation. In a sing-song, dreary, emotionless monotone: "Many times have you mentioned to your loyal Council that after your ascension to power, which glorious event will occur today, hoorah! that each of us will be Satrap for you, each ruling a continent, though you have declined to indicate who will rule each continent until you evaluate the value of the support each of us offers you. Some of us feel that it might provide more incentive to us, if you were to divide the world into equal regions of population, and assign each of us as Satrap of one such region of equal populace."
This point of the presentation was deadly dangerous; it implied mild criticism of Wisar's plans, and on the wrong day, could have resulted in the instant incineration of some or all of the Councilors. Prior to the meeting, however, they had all gravely agreed that the potential rewards were more than worth the risk. Though they had also taken measures to minimize that risk! (And privately, most of them felt that it was much more likely that Wisar would zap just Theo and Monja, and leave the rest of them alone...)
Tommy's hand clenched into a fist, now aimed directly at Wisar's middle, and a powerful lightning bolt slashed out and exploded against the Emperor of All's massive silver belt buckle. At exactly the same instant, Andy snapped the fingers on both hands and there was a brief explosion on Wisar's face as his eyebrows, hair, and beard instantly vaporized with a brilliant flash of light and an instant of tremendous heat. Tommy's other hand pointed and clenched, and another powerful lightning bolt exploded against the Megalodon tooth pendant hanging on Wisar's bare bronze chest. While the larger-than-life figure of the Emperor of All was temporarily dazzled and confused, though largely undamaged, by the surprise attacks, Willie threw a brown ball the size of a softball at the Lamina Crown on Wisar's head. Just as it arrived, John John gestured with both gauntlet-covered hands, and two pale white, almost invisible bolts of pure force lashed out. One struck the Emperor a massively powerful foul, below the belt blow, while the other blasted apart the brown ball. While an invisible barrier at least partially shielded the unfortunate Wisar from the low blow, the ball disintegrated into grains of sand, which glittered as they fell to settle over Wisar's body - and he vanished in a cloud of tiny flashes of light!
While her fellow Councilors were attacking Wisar, Tricia, who had been the lead planner of the whole attack, raced to hold open the door to the room. As soon as the Emperor of all began fading from sight, the other six all bolted out the door. When they were through, Tricia spoke another Word of Power - a word the city founders had hidden deep in their most secret tomes, one that was never supposed to be used, and the magical spell that lit the Chamber of the Global Ruling Council of the Worldwide Empire of Mu was totally extinguished, leaving the room in total blackness.
The escaping Council zipped through another room, with Tricia extinguishing the light as they left, and were in the last 'inside' room in the Council building, when they the building shook to a massive explosion behind them.
"He's back!" Tommy yelled. "Five seconds isn't very damn long..."
"Abstain herewith from this endemic inconsequential palaver and perambulate at paramount haste!" Willie snapped back and the 7 run even faster, just barely getting through the double-wide door held open by the ubiquitous Tricia without getting jammed up.
"Shut up and run!" Andy translated under his breath in disgust as he raced through the 'outside' door. "Never use a little word when you can use three big ones instead, eh Willie?"
Waiting for them on the street was an unusual vehicle, what the citizens of Telos had used as a bus for thousands of years. A circular disk almost the width of one of the many identical streets in the city, with raised sides and comfortable benches in the hollow. The seven dove over the edge into a tumble in the middle, and again Tricia spoke a Word of Power. The 'bus' lifted maybe 6 inches and started zooming forward with incredible acceleration, though to the riders it felt absolutely stationary. Tricia took a moment to seat herself and then spoke another forbidden word of power, a Word that had taken the Councilors hundreds of hours of reading of ancient tomes to discover - and the magical light cycle that had lighted Telos Under the Mountain without failure or faltering for almost 100,000 years snapped off - leaving the city in total darkness, such as none of the Councilors had ever experienced before! It was an incredibly spooky experience, especially knowing that their vehicle was now zooming along the streets of Telos at over a hundred miles an hour! But they couldn't even sense the motion, and for sure they couldn't see the scenery passing them by!
A few seconds later, they heard another more massive explosion and Monja, who happened to be facing back along the way they had come, could momentarily see the front of the Council building erupt into the street. At that instant, the Councilors could feel a gentle tugging that quickly subsided as the bus made an instant 90 degree corner to the left.
Suddenly, a booming voice, louder than thunder, seemed to come from every cubic inch air around them, causing their vehicle to shudder and their bodies to tremble.
"You can run but you can't hide, you traitorous rats!" Wisar roared. "I can easily create my own light and oww!" the voice cut off with an expression of pain.
"I hope he's wrong," Monja whispered, almost too quietly to hear. "Shut UP!" Tricia whispered urgently back. An instant later, they were rocked by a massive explosion nearby - behind them, from the orientation of the bus, apparently exactly where the buss had been only an instant ago.
"You would have been my bride, Monja," Wisar sounded the smallest bit regretful, but none of the Councilors replied. Rescued you all from homelessness and gave you power, and this is how you repay me! You will all die horrible deaths!"
Monja spoke a Lemurian Word of Power, and the room lights dimmed. As Telos was actually inside a mountain, if it weren't for magical lighting, the city would have been forever enveloped in darkness more complete than most humans had ever seen. Every 'inside' room in the city responded identically to four light-related commands, the Lemurian equivalents of 'Dark', 'Dim', 'Normal' and 'Bright', and any person in a room could issue any of those commands. 'External' lighting was a little different - the public areas of the many levels of the city all shared the same 24 hour magically-produced Daylight, Dusk, Night, Dusk, Daylight cycle, and the city's founders had set that magic up with powerful protections so that none could affect it. Neither the 'Dark' command indoors or the Dark cycle outdoors produced total darkness; there was always at least a dim light everywhere in the city.
Monja was about 5'6" and had a striking complexion, almost the yellowish brass color of an expensive saxophone, or about the same color as BB30, another droid from the Nebula Wars movie, with kinked shoulder length black hair; her face resembled a polished yellow kabuki mask. Skin color and mask face were side effects of the powerful magical artifact she wore around her forehead, the Eye of Tsujimoto, with which she could control emotions. The 'socket' of the Eye was cunningly wrought of silver and circled a flat, translucent white diamond as the eyeball, set with an unknown magical gem in place of the pupil which changed color and size depending on the emotion and magical power she chose to project, growing smaller and brighter as her projection became more intense. The Eye of Tsujimoto was so thin it barely raised a bump on her forehead, and was held firmly in place by powerful magic, unless she chose to remove it, which never happened in public. Those who knew Monja's power were always aware of the color of the pupil! Today it was flat grayish black and as large as a dime; and black indicated that her power was quiescent. No member of this group other than Wisar had ever seen her true appearance, and no one else knew her history. The others sometimes whispered that she once been a princess whose father the king had been overthrown in a revolution, but none of them knew the source of that rumor.
Theo had once been handsome, about 5'10" with wide shoulders and a narrow waist; he had been a powerfully built man before he'd become homeless, and after a year of living in Telos was on his way to regaining his healthy appearance. He was a former lawyer who had been disbarred for presenting alternative facts in a criminal case in which his client was clearly guilty. Wisar had collected both him and Andy together from the plastic tent they'd shared in a dump outside Los Angeles. While the other members of the Council always wore Lemurian-themed clothing, Theo always wore an elegant, exquisitely magically tailored, almost foppish three-piece suit that would be de rigeur for arguing a case in the Supreme Court. His magical totem resembled a walking stick with a large solid gold ball as a grip; by holding the stick in front of him and chanting in the Lemurian language of magic, he could entrance people into a deep sleep. Today his stick was back at the table and his hands were empty.
Theo was just beginning his presentation when the Emperor of All imperiously interrupted him. "What's that pin you are wearing? I've never seen it before. What's it say, 'Hahvahd'?" He initially sounded angry, but then his voice changed to amused. "We are all tired of hearing your stories and boasts about your incredible education. But what did it get you? Years of living in a garbage bag tent in a dump with a monkey, while I, with no 'formal' education such as you continually boast of, am now the most powerful man in the world, and soon to assume my throne." His expression changed yet again. "Yes, it is decided. Today is the day I demonstrate my power to the world and assume my rightful place as Emperor of All!" He pointed at Theo. "After the meeting, you will destroy the pin, and never again speak of your so-called, imaginary superior intellect or education!" His hand fell back to the arm of his throne. "Continue!"
While Monja remained silent, intently studying Wisar for any indication that he was interested in the plan the two were presenting, Theo continued his presentation. In a sing-song, dreary, emotionless monotone: "Many times have you mentioned to your loyal Council that after your ascension to power, which glorious event will occur today, hoorah! that each of us will be Satrap for you, each ruling a continent, though you have declined to indicate who will rule each continent until you evaluate the value of the support each of us offers you. Some of us feel that it might provide more incentive to us, if you were to divide the world into equal regions of population, and assign each of us as Satrap of one such region of equal populace."
This point of the presentation was deadly dangerous; it implied mild criticism of Wisar's plans, and on the wrong day, could have resulted in the instant incineration of some or all of the Councilors. Prior to the meeting, however, they had all gravely agreed that the potential rewards were more than worth the risk. Though they had also taken measures to minimize that risk! (And privately, most of them felt that it was much more likely that Wisar would zap just Theo and Monja, and leave the rest of them alone...)
And so far, it seemed as if their gamble was paying off. Not only did Wisar not react aggressively to the implied criticism, he seemed incredibly bored by the whole presentation. He only looked at the 'slide' illusion of the equal population region for an instant, he seemed to mumble to himself "I don't really give a damn...", and his head dropped towards his chest. All the seated councilors looked at Tommy, at the end of the table, he slowly placed his palm on the table and the others leaned back slightly in their seats, with perhaps s wisp of disappointment flashing across one or two faces...
When Theo changed slides, Wisar's head jerked up and he examined the new slide intently - the Council was meekly recommending which equal-population slice of the planet each Councilor would be best suited to rule as submissive Satrap for the mighty Emperor of All. Then his head nodded again, and Tommy made his decision!
Tommy's hand clenched into a fist, now aimed directly at Wisar's middle, and a powerful lightning bolt slashed out and exploded against the Emperor of All's massive silver belt buckle. At exactly the same instant, Andy snapped the fingers on both hands and there was a brief explosion on Wisar's face as his eyebrows, hair, and beard instantly vaporized with a brilliant flash of light and an instant of tremendous heat. Tommy's other hand pointed and clenched, and another powerful lightning bolt exploded against the Megalodon tooth pendant hanging on Wisar's bare bronze chest. While the larger-than-life figure of the Emperor of All was temporarily dazzled and confused, though largely undamaged, by the surprise attacks, Willie threw a brown ball the size of a softball at the Lamina Crown on Wisar's head. Just as it arrived, John John gestured with both gauntlet-covered hands, and two pale white, almost invisible bolts of pure force lashed out. One struck the Emperor a massively powerful foul, below the belt blow, while the other blasted apart the brown ball. While an invisible barrier at least partially shielded the unfortunate Wisar from the low blow, the ball disintegrated into grains of sand, which glittered as they fell to settle over Wisar's body - and he vanished in a cloud of tiny flashes of light!
While her fellow Councilors were attacking Wisar, Tricia, who had been the lead planner of the whole attack, raced to hold open the door to the room. As soon as the Emperor of all began fading from sight, the other six all bolted out the door. When they were through, Tricia spoke another Word of Power - a word the city founders had hidden deep in their most secret tomes, one that was never supposed to be used, and the magical spell that lit the Chamber of the Global Ruling Council of the Worldwide Empire of Mu was totally extinguished, leaving the room in total blackness.
The escaping Council zipped through another room, with Tricia extinguishing the light as they left, and were in the last 'inside' room in the Council building, when they the building shook to a massive explosion behind them.
"He's back!" Tommy yelled. "Five seconds isn't very damn long..."
"Abstain herewith from this endemic inconsequential palaver and perambulate at paramount haste!" Willie snapped back and the 7 run even faster, just barely getting through the double-wide door held open by the ubiquitous Tricia without getting jammed up.
"Shut up and run!" Andy translated under his breath in disgust as he raced through the 'outside' door. "Never use a little word when you can use three big ones instead, eh Willie?"
Waiting for them on the street was an unusual vehicle, what the citizens of Telos had used as a bus for thousands of years. A circular disk almost the width of one of the many identical streets in the city, with raised sides and comfortable benches in the hollow. The seven dove over the edge into a tumble in the middle, and again Tricia spoke a Word of Power. The 'bus' lifted maybe 6 inches and started zooming forward with incredible acceleration, though to the riders it felt absolutely stationary. Tricia took a moment to seat herself and then spoke another forbidden word of power, a Word that had taken the Councilors hundreds of hours of reading of ancient tomes to discover - and the magical light cycle that had lighted Telos Under the Mountain without failure or faltering for almost 100,000 years snapped off - leaving the city in total darkness, such as none of the Councilors had ever experienced before! It was an incredibly spooky experience, especially knowing that their vehicle was now zooming along the streets of Telos at over a hundred miles an hour! But they couldn't even sense the motion, and for sure they couldn't see the scenery passing them by!
A few seconds later, they heard another more massive explosion and Monja, who happened to be facing back along the way they had come, could momentarily see the front of the Council building erupt into the street. At that instant, the Councilors could feel a gentle tugging that quickly subsided as the bus made an instant 90 degree corner to the left.
Suddenly, a booming voice, louder than thunder, seemed to come from every cubic inch air around them, causing their vehicle to shudder and their bodies to tremble.
"You can run but you can't hide, you traitorous rats!" Wisar roared. "I can easily create my own light and oww!" the voice cut off with an expression of pain.
"I hope he's wrong," Monja whispered, almost too quietly to hear. "Shut UP!" Tricia whispered urgently back. An instant later, they were rocked by a massive explosion nearby - behind them, from the orientation of the bus, apparently exactly where the buss had been only an instant ago.
"You would have been my bride, Monja," Wisar sounded the smallest bit regretful, but none of the Councilors replied. Rescued you all from homelessness and gave you power, and this is how you repay me! You will all die horrible deaths!"
'Yeah, you 'rescued' twenty of us, and slaughtered the other thirteen, and would kill the rest of us as easily as you blink. But we're escaping, you mindless monster!' Tricia thought savagely. But just as she'd warned the others to remain silent, she said nothing.
They now all remembered that they were protected by a very weak magic spell, too weak, they hoped, for Wisar to easily detect and locate, which silenced the noises of their breathing. But it was not powerful enough to muffle their voices, even if they whispered. Wisar's magic would locate them again, if any one of them made a noise louder than breathing. Theo suddenly hoped he wouldn't have to pass gas!
One again the felt a gentle tug as their bus made another abrupt turn, and though they could see nothing through the absolute darkness that enveloped Telos, the seven realized they had entered one of the vast spiraling ramps that connected all the levels of the City Under the Mountain. There were exits at every level, but they were going to the top, to the giant lobby behind the secret entrance to the cliff of Mt. Shasta. All seven were silently cautiously hopeful. Though Wisar had proved to them that he wielded incredible magical abilities, they had also observed that he was quite clumsy with those powers, and it took him longer than they might expect for him to adapt his powers to new uses. Until he figured out his alternative lighting spell, he was trapped inside the largest, most complex maze that humans had ever created in all of human history, in absolute darkness.
Once outside they had other plans to escape, and they figured Wisar would let them go - it would be easier to collect new minions from the ranks of the homeless to replace them than to range the world and search them out; in fact he had many times in rages threatened to incinerate the lot of them and do just that.
One again the felt a gentle tug as their bus made another abrupt turn, and though they could see nothing through the absolute darkness that enveloped Telos, the seven realized they had entered one of the vast spiraling ramps that connected all the levels of the City Under the Mountain. There were exits at every level, but they were going to the top, to the giant lobby behind the secret entrance to the cliff of Mt. Shasta. All seven were silently cautiously hopeful. Though Wisar had proved to them that he wielded incredible magical abilities, they had also observed that he was quite clumsy with those powers, and it took him longer than they might expect for him to adapt his powers to new uses. Until he figured out his alternative lighting spell, he was trapped inside the largest, most complex maze that humans had ever created in all of human history, in absolute darkness.
Once outside they had other plans to escape, and they figured Wisar would let them go - it would be easier to collect new minions from the ranks of the homeless to replace them than to range the world and search them out; in fact he had many times in rages threatened to incinerate the lot of them and do just that.
The Global Ruling Council
Escape From Telos
Oops!
Finally, above them and far away in the direction of their travel, they could make out a faint glow of light against the absolute darkness around them, and they realized they must be approaching the giant lobby behind the secret mountainside entrance. They would soon be returning to the outside world, much more powerful than when they had left it over a year ago. And all were beginning to believe in their hopes for new lives outside, determined never to return to being homeless and destitute again. Suddenly, Tricia was alarmed, and she broke the taboo against speaking.
"Where is that light coming from? Beware!" Such was the power of command in her voice that her companions instantly turned to face the light, and were horrified as, at over a hundred miles an hour, it grew from a small pinprick into the horrifying, larger than life and madder than hell demon-like figure named Wisar!
A voice as large as the mountain assaulted their ears, punctuated with demonic-sounding laughter. "Fools! You thought you could escape me by trapping me in darkness, but where else could such traitorous rats scuttle off to? And now, you approach me rapidly, perhaps you wish to regain my favor?! FAT CHANCE OF THAT!"
Tricia screamed in horror yet another Word of Power and the bus came to an instant halt, just short of the massive explosive blast Wisar launched. The car almost overturned, dumping most of the Councilors into a pile on the rock floor. Tricia managed to keep her seat, and as the vehicle dropped back to horizontal she repeated the same Word that had originally started the bus rocketing forward, then dove over the edge as it accelerated directly at the Emperor of All. He screamed in rage and waved his hand at the rocketing vehicle, which almost reached him before it exploded violently, knocking him backwards even through his magical protection.
The vast 'lobby', probably a third the size of the entire mountain, was crowded with vehicles, abandoned by the citizens who had left the city during the exodus that had left Telos abandoned over 80 years earlier. The various Councilors scrambled for hiding places in, under and around the abandoned vehicles. Meanwhile, Wisar was destroying those closest to him, moving ponderously, like the turret on a massive tank - turn slowly, target a magical vehicle, gesture, snarl in satisfaction at the resulting destruction, take a few seconds to boast about his great power vs. the fleas and rats who beset him, then turn and acquire a new target. Meanwhile, the various Councilors were popping in and out of their hiding places and using their various powers against their ex-leader.
Tommy's lightning and John John's force beams were the most effective, occasionally causing the Emperor of All to grunt in pain or stumble and pause in his own attacks, particularly when they were able to coordinate their strikes. Andy was causing small explosions in the clouds of dust and vapor surrounding Wisar, though these rarely did more than distract him momentarily. The more subtle and slowly acting powers of emotional manipulation and sleep induction of Monja and Theo were useless against Wisar's rage. Willie was unable to get close enough to the Emperor to cast a pinch of the Sands of Time over him, and he couldn't figure out how moving any of the things closer to him that he could affect a few seconds into the future would help in this fight.
As he was only barely affected by their attacks, Wisar eventually began using his own powers of destruction more strategically to herd his opponents by cutting off their avenues of movement and driving them into a corner. Tricia was feeling helpless; her power so far seemed useless and none of the Words of Power that she had learned during her pre-revolution research were working - no doubt nullified by the Lamina Crown seemingly perched securely on Wisar's head.
"I'll distract him; the rest of you, OUT THE DOOR!" Tricia demanded. She invoked the power of her talisman, the Pendant of Naatvird, to give her the appearance of their foe. The pendant, seemingly just a glob of clay, flowed out to cover her body, and her outline began to change as the thin coating of clay faded to invisibility... to reveal Wisar, Emperor of All! Except... the man that stood where Tricia had been was average in every way, and totally nondescript in appearance. Not over 7' tall, but instead a few inches under 6'; not massively muscled but with pipe-stem arms and a pot-belly; not bronze, but a kind of pale beige; salt and pepper hair with a receding hairline rather than a short metallic-appearing skullcap of hair; face partially hidden by huge glasses with thick lenses. Her new attire was identical except in size to that currently worn by the Emperor of All, with bare chest, leather cords around muscles, massive necklace and belt buckle, trousers and sandals except... the smaller Wisar was not wearing a copy of the Lamina Crown; instead the replica dangled from a cord from 'her' belt. "His whole appearance is an illusion!" she shouted, though with all the destruction thundering around her, it was unlikely that her companions could hear her.
But the costumed-in-illusion Emperor of All definitely saw her. He froze in place for several seconds, stunned to be facing his real self, and the Councilors surged from their hiding and launched a desperate attack, imploring their talismans to release their maximum magical powers. For a second, Wisar stood there and took it, though he was surrounded by fire, explosions, flashing beams of battering force, sparkling grains of sand which threw him a half second into the future, waves of mental energy trying to put him to sleep when he emerged from his forced time jump - and then he roared in rage, his magically enhanced scream causing the vast room to shudder, and he waved his hands, and a magical globe appeared and closed around the Council members, trapping them and a half dozen destroyed vehicles, and then the bubble vanished.
Wisar stood in the now silent room, surrounded by burning, smoking debris, the floor shattered and cratered from the magical battle, and laughed and gloated. "I am finally rid forever of those traitorous rodents!"
Atom Blake and the Heroines Three
Another Magic Ring!? Oh, My!
Carnivorous Butterflies the Size of a 747- Oh MY!
"My magical mystical elemental analyzer Sun Metal synthesizer, two incredibly complex scientific tools mystically merged into a single, easy to use magical appliance!" Atom crowed proudly, introducing the device with a theatrical sweep of both hands like a movie star or a famous athlete.
"It will magically analyze the contents of the bottle, and this light here will flash when it detects samples of ALL the elements. And then when they are all present, after I touch this button..." he pointed but carefully didn't touch, "...it will magically duplicate my father's scientific process to 'mash them all together' into the Sun Metal compound." He turned back to his friends, smiling proudly, and boasting - just a little. "It's a good thing I'm super smart and learned everything there is to know about science growing up, and my magical studies at Grimoire recently - betcha there isn't another person in the whole world who could have put science and magic together like that! At least, nobody back home on our Earth; who knows WHAT they know on Earth 2 Lemuria right now? And Atlantis?"
He paused, and an almost comical look of concern flashed across his face. "Say, what number does OUR Earth have, anyway? Are we Earth 3? And why is this one only Earth 2?" His friends just laughed...
"I'm ready!" Joanna told her friends after the laughter subsided. "This spell will set magic forces in action, searching out tiny quantities of each element and then sending them back here inside Atom's bottle. The common elements should be found and retrieved in only a few seconds, but it might take hours to locate sufficient quantities of the more rare elements to satisfy our requirements for 'a smidge of this, a pinch of that'.
Atom's tiny face screwed up in concentration, followed by flashes of other expressions: realization, dawning concern, and then near panic! "Hold on! What if we change history? Like, say, what if the carbon smidge gets pulled from the DNA of a butterfly, and the offspring of that butterfly are mutated instead, into carnivorous giants the size of bats, and the next generation offspring are even larger and more vicious, and they start attacking humans, and within a few years, every generation gets larger and more vicious and they take over the world? So when we get back we'd be the only humans and we'd have to fight off zillions of voraciously hungry killer butterflies the size of 747s!!!!"
The others didn't know whether to be amused or horrified... giant killer butterflies was too ridiculous a concept to take seriously, but more subtle alterations of history could be just as deadly to them - and as Atom pointed out, making a small random change to a living organism could have unexpected and fatal consequences, at least to that organism.
"Well," Zephyr responded slowly. "Suppose I limited the spell's 'draw' to only non-living matter? I can do that, pretty easily."
Carol's face brightened. "And, Lemuria is supposed to be destroyed by natural disasters pretty soon, right? It's supposed to be a BIG continent, as big as Africa - there should be 'smidges and pinches' of every element somewhere on Lemuria. Can you limit your spell to Lemuria, Joanna? It shouldn't make any difference if an ounce of matter is missing when it sinks!"
"And Atlantis!" Carol interjected before Joanna could answer. "If you can't find enough an element on Lemuria, well, Atlantis is doomed to sink at the same time!"
"Perfect!" Joanna agreed, and Atom's face relaxed to his normal, smiling self. "Thanks, guys! That should make it safe enough. I wouldn't want to wipe out humanity, just to get the four of us back to the future!"
Atom's tiny face screwed up in concentration, followed by flashes of other expressions: realization, dawning concern, and then near panic! "Hold on! What if we change history? Like, say, what if the carbon smidge gets pulled from the DNA of a butterfly, and the offspring of that butterfly are mutated instead, into carnivorous giants the size of bats, and the next generation offspring are even larger and more vicious, and they start attacking humans, and within a few years, every generation gets larger and more vicious and they take over the world? So when we get back we'd be the only humans and we'd have to fight off zillions of voraciously hungry killer butterflies the size of 747s!!!!"
The others didn't know whether to be amused or horrified... giant killer butterflies was too ridiculous a concept to take seriously, but more subtle alterations of history could be just as deadly to them - and as Atom pointed out, making a small random change to a living organism could have unexpected and fatal consequences, at least to that organism.
"Well," Zephyr responded slowly. "Suppose I limited the spell's 'draw' to only non-living matter? I can do that, pretty easily."
Carol's face brightened. "And, Lemuria is supposed to be destroyed by natural disasters pretty soon, right? It's supposed to be a BIG continent, as big as Africa - there should be 'smidges and pinches' of every element somewhere on Lemuria. Can you limit your spell to Lemuria, Joanna? It shouldn't make any difference if an ounce of matter is missing when it sinks!"
"And Atlantis!" Carol interjected before Joanna could answer. "If you can't find enough an element on Lemuria, well, Atlantis is doomed to sink at the same time!"
"Perfect!" Joanna agreed, and Atom's face relaxed to his normal, smiling self. "Thanks, guys! That should make it safe enough. I wouldn't want to wipe out humanity, just to get the four of us back to the future!"
Experiment Gone Right
It took Joanna a few minutes of deep thought to modify her spell.
"Here goes - don't interrupt me 'till I'm done, I need my best concentration while I cast the spell. After, it will run on its own until it gathers everything we need!" Joanna warned her friends, then when they nodded, she turned, raised her hands and tilted her face toward the ceiling, and chanted carefully:
Pinch of solid drop of fluid puff of gas,
One smidge of each, not all en masse,
Take not from the living, limit where found,
To Lemuria and Atlantis the search be bound,
Barriers of time and space bypass
Appear now in this shell of glass!
Almost instantly, a tiny puff of black dust appeared in the bottle, followed by other tiny puffs of other colors. "We've got samples of the most common elements already: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, the stuff that's found almost everywhere," Atom reported excitedly, examining a readout on the squid device. Another tiny explosion of glittering dust. "Aluminum..."
"I can sense that it may take hours for the last 'smidges and pinches' of the most rare elements to be found and transported back to the bottle, and I will know when my magic has completed the tasks we have set for it," Joanna noted. "Is there anything else you need, Atom?"
"If you guys want to hang around in the cave, I need some sheets of lead to shield the lab," the Boy Wizard replied seriously, instantly. "Sun Metal produces radioactive Sunergy, which kills most living things almost instantly. The lab and the rest of the cave could become a deadly environment after I make the compound unless we take precautions, and Dad once told me that only lead will block Sunergy radiation. And then, after I've finished making the Sun Metal and shaping it into a ring, I need to coat it in lead, too. Can you zap us up some lead, Joanna, and you guys use your yellow energy powers to shape it into sheets?" 'You guys' was directed at Carol and Alex.
Joanna couldn't 'zap up' lead while her other spell was still operational, but using a lesser spell, she was able to locate a deposit of galena in one of the mountain peaks on their island. Carol and Alex used their yellow energy powers to mine enough ore for their purpose, and Atom was able to cast a spell to remove impurities. Yellow energy pressed it into sheets, and more yellow energy, aided by Atom's spells, molded those sheets into the faces of the rock walls, ceiling and floor of the small lab room. There was a glob of lead left over, just enough for Atom to magically spread a thin coating over the Sun Metal ring he was going to magically create when the magically collected elements were all present in the magical bottle. They were all set; all they had to do was wait. Carol taught them how to play euchre, and they played enthusiastically for a couple of hours as Zephyr's magic scoured two continents for 'smidges and pinches' of every element.
Over the game, one of the topics of discussion was Carol's powers. Carol explained that she now felt back to her 'normal' power level; whatever extra power had charged her up was gone, but her original powers remained intact. This was something of a relief; she'd been worried that somehow she was going to use up all her original 'sunny side up' powers and revert to being a normal human! Still, the group determined to try Carol's proposed experiment and return to the volcano. Atom and Joanna insisted that they wait until Atom's ring was completed so that they two could come along - just in case!
Carol had just won all 5 tricks for an improbable 'loner' to close out the latest euchre game when Zephyr announced that her spell was complete. The collection was done; the bottle now contained 'smidges and pinches' of every element! They rushed to the lab; all they could see was some dust in the bottle
"Perfect, just over an ounce total!" Atom exclaimed proudly. "Just enough!" He was anxious to go on with the next stage, and practically pushed his friends out of his lead-shielded lab, then shut the door and turned to his synthesizer.
"Abra Cadabra, Please and THANK YOU!" he chanted theatrically as he touched a button.
There was a tremendously powerful flare of light, centered on the bottle, and when he could see again, there was a marble sized sphere, emitting an eerie, penetrating soft blue glow, sitting in the middle of the bottle. Atom could feel the blue glow pounding on his skin, and many of the items in the room instantly vaporized (including the bottle and the model aircraft!) while the rest began to change shape as if they were melting. The only things unaffected were Atom and the small glob of lead designated for coating the ring. And fortunately, the lead-infused walls, floor and ceiling seemed to be holding strong!
Atom had worked directly with Sunergy before (see Wow Comics 1 - 5). By concentrating on complex magical formulae, he could make it do amazing things. Flight, time travel, duplication, disintegration - he had used his original ring for 10 years, exploring space and time, and still didn't know what its limits were. He'd out worked the necessary formulas for molding Sun Metal into a new ring in advance; as everything else in the room vaporized, he concentrated, and a portion of the Sunergy emitted by the marble easily accomplished the task he'd desired. The marble itself was quickly transformed into a heavy signet ring, exactly the right size for Adam's finger, though he knew it would change size if required to fit another worthy finger. Another thought, and the glob of lead floated to the ring, deformed and dripped over it, molding itself into a thin coating - and the blue energy vanished instantly, now safely contained. A moment of concentration, and a tiny window opened in the coating over the signet, and a thin blue beam sprang out, another thought and it was again safely blocked.
"THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!" Atom boasted proudly to his now empty lab. "Recreated the Sun Metal ring my father gave me in 1940, and destroyed by the demons in 1950!" Then he stopped and concentrated on the memorized mathematical formula required for one last task, perhaps the most important to him. The blue beam sprang forth again, and a magical engraving appeared on the inside of the ring, a complex mathematical formula created by his departed super-genius father, Stuart Blake, that Atom had once, long ago, deciphered into plain English: "If the man in need or by evil oppressed can this message read, I will grant his request." Only those who could actually decipher the message themselves could command the power of the ring, a precaution Stuart had deemed necessary to protect the world should the ring fall into the possession of one unworthy of its vast power.
Atom paused for several long moments, filled with proud, sad memories of his father, before donning his new ring.
And an hour later, the four friends were flying towards the giant volcano we know as Kunakarai, eager to see if exposure to the energetic environment in the caldera could supercharge Carol's powers again. The were protected by magical shields created by Atom Blake and Zephyr, ring energy shields created by Atom and Corona, and yet another shield created by Carol's natural energy power.
While her friends hovered cautiously just outside and below the rim of Kunakarai's crater, Carol floated slowly above the rim and towards the center. She could see and hear the yellow-white boiling churning lake of magma miles below, and she could feel the heat, light and thunderous noise beating upwards from that hellish lake against the five-ply shield around her. But her power seemed unchanged. She flashed a signal to her friends, and one at a time, slowly, each withdrew one of the layers of protection around Carol. And finally, when Atom had reluctantly cancelled his Sunergy-powered blue field, it WORKED! She could feel her own power burgeoning! A few seconds exposure and she began feeling uncomfortable; another prearranged signal and her friends instantly restored their own contributions to her protection.
As she flew to rejoin her friends, Carol felt a mixture of triumph and sadness. "When I get home, where am I going to find a volcano like this to supercharge my powers?" she wondered. "It won't be easy - I had better enjoy it while I can - and remember how awesome it is to even BE 'ordinary' Sunbeam!" She cheered up at that reminder - only a small fraction of all of humanity since the dawn of time had been blessed to have super powers as she was did!
Suddenly, the tremendously loud rumbling of the volcano became exponentially louder, even through the five-ply shielding around the four companions. There was a massive explosion inside the caldera, miles below, and suddenly a magnificent, impossible geyser of white-hot magma blasted out of the throat of Kunakarai Volcano, a belch of millions of tons of molten rock that reached almost to orbit in only seconds. No shields created by humans, magical or otherwise, could possibly withstand that massive explosion for more than an instant, and in no more than an instant, even the partial protection of the wall of the crater would be destroyed. Atom had years ago worked out the required mathematical formula to use Sunergy for time travel, and earlier today refined it for their particular situation. He'd planned on doing some cautious research first, but now there wasn't time. "e^u du dx e^x dx!" he shouted, the mathematical code that triggered his ring, and instantly, the four companions, wrapped in their five-ply shielding bubble, vanished into the time stream!
Atom Blake and the Heroines Three
Encounter in Time
Traffic in the Time Tunnel
This trip through time was different than the last trips the four had experienced, perhaps because it was powered by the scientifically based Sunergy rather than magic. Rather than being in the Museum of Mu one instant and falling into the hellish lake of magma in the caldera of giant Kunakarai Volcano the next, this trip had duration.
"Or perhaps our consciousness was magically suppressed during the magical trip as part of the trap, so we wouldn't have time to make any preparations, and then restored at the last instant so we would know our fates before we were incinerated, a cosmic finger to the doomed one by whoever set the trap?" Carol attempted to analyze the motives behind the observed facts - in a difficult detective case, deducing the motivation of the perp was often invaluable in solving the mystery!
In any case, regardless of why, this trip had duration. The four remained enclosed in their protective five-ply sphere and after a few moments of disorientation, they found themselves moving through a circular corridor, wide enough to accommodate perhaps two bubbles such as theirs. They knew they were moving because the wall of the corridor was striped black and white, and the pattern was moving towards them when they faced one direction and moving away from them in the other. However, with their eyes closed, it was impossible to detect any sensation of motion. The speed of the passing stripes increased, and the apparent width of the strips narrowed until the alternating black and white stripes merged into a uniform gray color, the color of a cloudy day a few minutes before the storm broke.
Shortly after the stripes merged, Zephyr, who was intently studying the corridor 'ahead of' them, spotted something approaching. A 'bubble' enough larger than their own that, when they came adjacent to it, they were certain to bump into.
"Are we overtaking it, or is it moving in the opposite direction as we?" Alex asked.
"I think..." Joanna responded uncertainly, closing her eyes and concentrating on her mystical senses. "I think it's headed for the past..."
Unlike their own bubble, it was gray and barely translucent, and though they could make out darker shadows inside, no details were discernible. No one could guess what the consequences might be if they crashed into another bubble in this seemingly infinitely long corridor through time, but no one wanted to take the risk of finding out!
"Shrink your protective shells!" Alex suggested, and suddenly, the comfortably roomy sphere surrounding them was tightly cramped. Now it seemed likely that they would miss the other, but each continued to try to use his or her power to avoid a potential collision. "Move to the left!" each commanded their bubble, and again, it seemed as if their efforts might be succeeding.
Atom aimed his hand at the fast approaching bubble and mentally opened the tiny window through the lead coating on his ring, then began to exert his will over the tiny beam that speared out. "Grab it!" The blue beam splashed against the approaching bubble and spread out to envelop it "...and push it..." but before he could complete the second half of the command they were past each other and and then he felt a viciously painful mental jolt, as if something was trying to pull his mind out from his head, and he was jerked around so his arm was pointing out the back of the bubble instead of the front, and then whatever was pulling him broke like a rope snapping, and the mental recoil felt as if a stray asteroid had just struck him in the back of the head - a pain he remembered all-too-well from one of his younger, 'Adult Atom in Space' adventures from over 30 years ago (which he planned to put in a book of his memoirs, if he survived long enough to write it!). He lapsed into semi-consciousness; when he became fully aware again, he was on his back, his head was cradled in Carol's lap, and Alex and Joanna were fussing over him, chaffing his wrists, wiping his forehead with a cool, moist cloth, and making soft, cooing noises as they all tried to make sure he was well.
In the back of his mind, Adult Atom smirked, 'Say, a guy could get used to this!' but of course, the impatient six year old in the front of his mind wanted none of it. "Aren't we THERE yet?" he asked petulantly as he sat up. "I wanna be there!" The three women pushed him away pointedly, and he suddenly realized that the deadly blue Sunergy beam from his ring was still active, fortunately pointing out the 'back' of the bubble, and instantly thought the command that sealed off the tiny window and cut off the deadly ray. He was contrite: "Say, you guys are sure lucky that beam didn't hit you! I'm sorry I didn't shut it off, I hope none of you are hurt!" but Carol cut him off.
"We all saw your lab, back 'in the day', so we were very careful to stay out of the beam, Atom. We're all OK."
"What she really means, Atom, is that we scrambled frantically and crawled all over each other to get away," Joanna corrected with a snarl. "But Carol's right, we are all OK - you missed us all!"
Atom noted then that all their costumes were somewhat mussed and askew; that must have been more of a frantic fight than a scramble! He was almost sorry that he'd missed it, but he was smart enough not to say so.
"But don't let it happen again, buster, got it? That ring is downright DANGEROUS!" Alex demanded sternly. They all smiled as Atom nodded meekly. Then she pointed outside; the gray color was changing. "I think we're about to arrive, it looks like we're slowing down." She looked back at Atom. "But, where are we arriving at, Boy Wizard?"
"Um, well, you see... actually... well..." he hemmed and hawed for a few seconds, as he realized that maybe he should have said something before, then, very hesitantly... "Actually, I'm not really sure. The command I gave to the Sunergy was 'Take us across time and space to the precise space and time location of the bad guy who sent us into the past.' So when we pop back into the present, I expect we'll surprise the villain in this adventure, beat him up, and then all go home."
"And you didn't tell us until now? Holy Crap! Everybody get ready for the fight of our lives!" Carol yelled. Once again there was a scramble for position in the sphere; this time Atom was part of it, and he found it much more unpleasant that he'd expected, as they all jockeyed for the best position to see in front of them!
For a brief instant during their jostling, far 'behind' them, Zephyr could barely make out a shadowy figure in the tunnel through time... Then the gray blur of the walls gradually resolved into narrow black and white stripes whipping past them at incredible speed, and then the stripes began slowing and growing wider and wider, as they apparently approached the end of their eventful trip through time and space.
Atom Blake and the Heroines Three
Major Fight Scene
Round One
The black and white bands continued to grow wider and pass by them more slowly, and then one of the white bands settled to a stop around them and then the 'tunnel through time' simply vanished. They were plunged into darkness, though not total - they could see flickering red-yellow of flames in intermittent patches all around them, revealing that wherever they were, the air near them was filled with dust and smoke, and the stone floor they stood on was littered with mixed stone and metallic rubble and shattered by dozens of small and large craters. Carol and Dan had taken one case that had led them to France early in World War II, the floor around them resembled a field they had seen that had recently been the target of a massive artillery barrage. The smoke was so thick it might prove almost impossible to breath outside of their protective five-ply shield.
Directly ahead of them, cutting through the smoke and dust in the air, was a cone of brilliant white light, projected from an invisible source high above them, illuminating a massive, ornately decorated, familiar-looking throne. Seated on that massive thrown was an almost equally massive being, the man we know as Wisar, Emperor of All. Floating in the air in front of him was a massive book, perhaps 4' x 6' when open wide, as it was now, with pages stacked at least a foot deep on each half. This book was filled with the frankenspells Wisar had painfully translated and transcribed through his many years in Telos. In particular, at just this instant he was looking for a spell to restore light to the City Under the Mountain.
Wisar's attemption snapped from the book at a muffled yelp of intense pain from Atom; pain caused by feedback when the blue ply of their shield snapped out of existence as his Sunergy ring simply vanished. Atom wasn't currently prepared to work magic, as he'd wanted to put his new ring to use; he scurried behind his companions and brought his travel bag back back into existence, then yanked it open and began frantically pulling out small items of magical apparatus and even smaller phials and tubes of material spell components - and then shouted wordlessly in satisfaction when he pulled out his broomstick, followed by a red soda can.
Zephyr stood taller and strode forward imperiously, drawing on every bit of 'presence' and dignity inherited from her ancestress and patron, Hatshepsut, the Fifth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, augmented by her own anger and indignation at the way this being had treated her and her friends. She could sense the aura of mystical power surrounding the being in the cone, rivaling the power she'd sensed from Set the Disturber himself. Mentally she started gathering her own power ever more strongly about her.
"Wicked one!" Her magically amplified voice shook the vast hall under the mountain. "My companions and I are here to visit you with retribution for your deeds most foul!"
"Three girls, against the power of Wisar the One?" the air in the room laughed back, with even more power than Zephyr had imbued into her warning. "I have just bested the combined might of the seven traitorous rats of the Council of Mu; I have nothing to fear from three puny slips of girls. BEGONE! Back to Kunakarai in Mu, and then to vapor!" He rolled his hands, one over the other twice, then suddenly flicked them at his foes, fingers outstretched, and energy of an impossible indescribable color sprayed towards them.
"Mighty shield, do not yield!" Zephyr chanted and gestured forcefully. Meanwhile, Sunbeam commanded her energy to form a barrier between them and Wisar, and Corona issued a similar command to her ring, and the spray of energy splattered against the mighty invisible barrier the three had created. The barrier cracked and then shattered like plate glass, but none of the deadly energy reached the women.
"Tigers to the air!" Atom yelled from behind his friends, and with the life-sized roar of a powerful World War 2 fighter, a small airplane shot into the air, straddled by Atom, now dressed as a fighter pilot from the famous Flying Tigers squad, as millions had seen on the famous TV show in the 50s. His miniature P40B Warhawk, complete with the famous 'mouth of the Tiger' painted on the air scoop, zipped past the women and raced forward toward the figure on the throne, twin wing-mounted machine guns roaring and spitting a stream of mystical bullets - which exploded with noise and flash similar to a string of July 4th firecrackers against the invisible shield surrounding the Emperor of All. Seemingly unaffected, he flipped a heavy pile of pages to get to nearly the front of his book and then began rapidly turning single pages as he searched for another appropriate frankenspell.
"By the power of the Lamina Crown...," he spoke; it sounded like he was beginning a chant.
Zephyr chanted at the same time. "Forces of weather stern and fair, cleanse this foul and poison air!" A blast of wind roared through the vast room, gone almost before any of the combatants noticed it, and, for the moment at least, the air was free of smoke and dust.
"Pin my foes to the ground!" Wisar finished, and the apparent pull of gravity beneath the three women increased, dragging them to the rocky floor beneath. Atom was apparently outside the range of the spell, as he momentarily continued his strafing run, but when he realized it was being ignored, he sheared off, thinking desperately of other ways he could use the limited magical resources currently in his bag to continue the fight.
The women were being crushed against the rock, as if a giant was stepping on them and grinding his heel, and the pressure was growing; none of the heroines could move, let alone fly! "Down!" Corona was barely able to whisper. Not wasting any energy on a reply, Sunbeam screamed a mental command, unleashing every iota of the supercharge of power she'd absorbed from the tremendous energy in the caldera of Kunakarai Volcano. A pit opened beneath them as thousands of tons of rock simply vaporized, and they fell into the pit. They had no way of knowing about the many levels of Telos extending 11 miles deep below them; Corona was ordering her ring to stop their fall and Zephyr was composing a spell to tunnel through rock when they broke through into the next level, and continued to fall through total darkness. As they passed completely into the air space of the new level, the deadly pressure produced by Wisar's spell vanished and Corona's ring stopped them from falling. They hovered, unable to see anything, but somehow sensing the vast open space around them.
"Sunlight pass through earth and stone; show us what is now unknown!" Zephyr commanded, and suddenly, the vast first level of Telos was illuminated with natural light, for the first time in its thousand-century existence!
The three were awed at the vast landscape of a city hewn from stone revealed far beneath them. "This must be Telos Under the Mountain, the legendary last refuge of the survivors of the Sinking of Lemuria," Zephyr spoke softly, awe in her voice; the others could hear her vocal emphasis. "I learned of it in my studies of Lemuria, but all present-day experts and authorities agree that it is only a myth. Many have searched for it over centuries and it was never found. But all our texts and authorities and experts must be wrong; it is a legend indeed, but surely NOT a myth!"
"Time to advance the science of archaeology later," Sunbeam reminded her friends. "The bad guys can kill you if you get distracted in the middle of a case!"
"We _could_ just pop back up out of the hole above," Corona suggested. "But would that just land us back in the pressure cooker?"
"Barriers of stone, slide aside, the three of us through you would glide!" Instead of replying directly, Zephyr chanted and gestured, and a passage opened in the rocky ceiling above them.
"Had that one ready, might as well not waste it," she said to her friends and pointed upward. "Up, up, and away!" Corona flew them up into the new passage above them, as Sunbeam mentally tested her powers - she was once again back to normal power set; that tremendous rock-vaporizing blast had totally drained her supercharge.
Atom Blake and the Heroines Three
Major Fight Scene
Reinforcements
"I'm the best flier in the school!" Atom shouted in his head as he banked around and began another strafing run at Wisar's head. The bullets exploded harmlessly. "I need more power!" Then, a light bulb appeared in the air above his head, and the light came on! "Got it!" His plane banked and he scoured the floor for a view of his friends. He spotted them emerging from a new hole in the floor, and zoomed to them. "I'm going to drop a bomb on him!" He warned them. "Protect yourselves! Then, I'm going to see if I can get us some help if that doesn't work!" As he banked to head back at the villain, the shape of his broomstick-plane changed form again, morphing into a duplicate of the B29 Superfortress he'd been building at the beginning of this adventure. As he neared the villain again, the plane dropped a bomb - a short, fat bomb. It then morphed again, into an X15, and X-plane and boy rider zoomed away to temporary cover in the pit Sunbeam had created.
Carol had been reading a lot of history recently, catching up on the 40+ years she'd missed, and the B29 and short, fat bomb struck a chord. "Radiation!" she yelled, and ordered up a shield with a characteristic she'd learned during the Kooba Kola case - it would block radiation as well as physical assaults.
"Wrap us in a mighty shield, protect us all and do not yield!" Zephyr chanted.
"Hey, Ring - wrap us up good and solid!" Corona ordered.
There was instant darkness as their powers complied cutting of the dim light of the vast room. There was a brilliant flash of light as the bomb exploded, leaking even through the opaque shields, and they could feel the heat and the impact of concussions, and then their shields dropped and they could see Wisar, sitting on the shattered remnants of his throne, unmoving and drooped, but apparently whole. He struggled to sit upright and groped for his floating book, which seemed similarly undamaged.
"C'mon, ladies, are we going to let him have ALL the FUN?!" Corona shouted excitedly. "Get HIM!" Beams and bolts flashed out and exploded against the dazed Emperor of All, actually seeming to revive him somewhat, and he started scrabbling through his book of spells. But something had happened, perhaps he no longer had the energy to spare to maintain an illusion, but Wisar's visible form changed, his giant, larger-than-life aspect melted, revealing once again, the real, not-quite-so-impressive appearance we've seen before, a half-naked middle-aged man with receding salt and pepper hair, non-athletic physique and a pot belly. The heavy Lamina Crown sat not on his head but in his lap, attached to his belt by a heavy leather cord.
Neither side was defeated yet, though all the combatants were weary. All four continued to attack and defend, and it became a war of attrition, and it was a war that Wisar seemed destined to win, eventually, as the Lamina Crown seemed to have an unlimited supply of mystical energy to recharge him, while each of the women was weakening. But Carol had been observing him keenly (after all, keen observation is a defining characteristic of a good detective) and she noted that before each spell he cast, he let his hand rest on the Lamina Crown - and no matter how slow and tired his movement seemed before that touch, he seemed instantly refreshed afterward.
"OK, Ladies, here's my plan!" It wasn't as easy as that - every time they tried to talk, they were interrupted by attack and defense, shooting and parrying, and just plain panting to recover their breaths after strenuous exertions. But they worked it out...
"Awesome lightning strong and fast strike my foe a mighty blast!"
A short instant later, Sunbeam launched a bolt like an arrow, and just another instant later, Corona launched another.
Wisar was momentarily dazzled, though uninjured, by the most powerful lightning bolt Zephyr had yet launched, and wasn't able to see well enough to block the twin yellow bolts, which weren't even aimed to strike him. Sunbeam's bolt snipped through the leather cord, and then Corona's bolt blossomed into a boxing glove which struck the Lamina Crown and knocked it tumbling. With his source of power ruthlessly torn away, Wisar collapsed instantly into unconsciousness.
At that instant, the wall to the outside exploded violently as some type of missile blasted through it; once inside, that missile was revealed as a humanoid figure: seven feet tall, light blue, with four arms, golden tunic and armlets, and red hair more closely resembling flames flashing on his head.
"Crap, that's all we need, a flippin' demon... I'm exhausted," Corona sighed.
At that instant, the demon landed at their feet, and the small figure of Atom Blake, now mounted on a short broom, zoomed in to land between his friends and the demon.
"Guys, I'd like to introduce you to Professor Shiva, one of my instructors from Grimoire Academy!"
Atom Blake and the Heroines Three
Epilogue
Meeting at Grimoire Academy
The meeting had originally been scheduled for the cluttered office of Grimoire Academy Headmaster Gareth Gallowglass, but they'd moved it to a conference room to make sure there was enough room for the additional interested parties. Gareth sat at head of a big table, staring sternly at the assembly through his single, icy-blue right eye. He was flanked by Adam Frankenstein and Shiva, and around the table sat Carol next to Alex, with Atom next to Joanna and at the far end of the table... Wisar? Atom looked apprehensive; Wisar looked terrified.
"After completing my investigation, I find no violations of Grimoire Academy rules and regulations, so, Mr. Blake, you can relax." And Atom did, almost sliding out of his chair as he slumped in relief. "Mr. Lewis!" Wisar looked up startled; his birth name, which he had renounced years ago when he had discovered Telos, had been "Harvey Spencer Lewis" - but he hadn't told anyone in this group his renounced name.
"Our options with you, Mr. Lewis, appear to include remanding you to one of several governments for criminal charges, though there is some difficulty determining who has jurisdiction. There is some concern among my administration about remanding a powerful wizard such as yourself, with demonstrated anti-social inclinations, to the custody of mundane authorities, or if there is any other authority in one of the worlds who would be able to imprison you. Mr. Frankenstein has proposed an alternative; that you be offered a chance to enroll in Grimoire Academy's 'Social Remediation' program. If you accept this offer, pending your successful completion of the program you will be released with a degree from Grimoire, an accomplishment few can claim. In the event of your failure, or violation of any of the terms on the program, we will revisit the decision on how to deal with you. You will be required to offer your parole at the beginning of your enrollment, and Mr. Frankenstein and Professor Shiva will be responsible for your behavior while you are a student." Wisar looked interested and hopeful; he'd heard talk of punishment and execution prior to today.
"Ms. Clews," he continued quietly, turning to Carol. "It is strictly against Academy rules to allow anyone to cross between universes through Grim Island. We have made exceptions in the past for exceptional cases, and your petition appears to be an exceptional case. We need someone to perform an errand for us, returning the Earth S Lemurian artifacts to the Museum of Mu. If you would be willing to undertake this errand on behalf of the Academy, I would be pleased to grant you a one-time exception to exit from Grim Island in your original universe of Earth S."
Carol thanked him, and Gallowglass sat back in his chair, a pleased look on his normally stern features. "Any other questions?"
"After completing my investigation, I find no violations of Grimoire Academy rules and regulations, so, Mr. Blake, you can relax." And Atom did, almost sliding out of his chair as he slumped in relief. "Mr. Lewis!" Wisar looked up startled; his birth name, which he had renounced years ago when he had discovered Telos, had been "Harvey Spencer Lewis" - but he hadn't told anyone in this group his renounced name.
"Our options with you, Mr. Lewis, appear to include remanding you to one of several governments for criminal charges, though there is some difficulty determining who has jurisdiction. There is some concern among my administration about remanding a powerful wizard such as yourself, with demonstrated anti-social inclinations, to the custody of mundane authorities, or if there is any other authority in one of the worlds who would be able to imprison you. Mr. Frankenstein has proposed an alternative; that you be offered a chance to enroll in Grimoire Academy's 'Social Remediation' program. If you accept this offer, pending your successful completion of the program you will be released with a degree from Grimoire, an accomplishment few can claim. In the event of your failure, or violation of any of the terms on the program, we will revisit the decision on how to deal with you. You will be required to offer your parole at the beginning of your enrollment, and Mr. Frankenstein and Professor Shiva will be responsible for your behavior while you are a student." Wisar looked interested and hopeful; he'd heard talk of punishment and execution prior to today.
"Ms. Clews," he continued quietly, turning to Carol. "It is strictly against Academy rules to allow anyone to cross between universes through Grim Island. We have made exceptions in the past for exceptional cases, and your petition appears to be an exceptional case. We need someone to perform an errand for us, returning the Earth S Lemurian artifacts to the Museum of Mu. If you would be willing to undertake this errand on behalf of the Academy, I would be pleased to grant you a one-time exception to exit from Grim Island in your original universe of Earth S."
Carol thanked him, and Gallowglass sat back in his chair, a pleased look on his normally stern features. "Any other questions?"
Alex did have a question. "Does anyone know why Atom's Sunergy ring just vanished? That was pretty dangerous to us - and now i'm worried about my own ring. Could it be a consequence of time travel?"
The question hadn't been important to the Grimoire Academy team, but Atom had investigated that on his own. "You could say it was a consequence of time travel, but it isn't likely to ever affect your ring, Miss Alex. It has to do with the natural decay of elements. You see, back in Lemuria, 100,000 years ago, there were some elements that no longer exist on Earth - although they do exist in other places in space, and then can sometimes be synthesized in nuclear reactors, but here on Earth, they have all changed through radioactive decay to other elements lower down on the Periodic Table. There were 123 elements back then - Ms. Joanna's magic counted them! But there are only 118 elements on Earth now. That's also why my sample of Sun Metal worked differently than my original ring - my dad only knew about 93 elements and he only used those 93 in his own compound. Anyway, I think what happened is when we popped out of the time stream, those 5 missing elements somehow just disappeared - and the rest of the compound just fell apart. "I'll have to do some more experiments to be sure, but that's my theory right now."
Gallowglass looked around, a bit amused by the confused expressions on some of the other faces. "Very good, Mr. Blake. You have clearly been keeping up in your science classes! Now, I believe that closes our current business." He was ready to end the meeting, but Atom again spoke up eagerly.
"Please, sir - do you know why they call my home Earth S - and why the Earth we just came from is called Earth 2? Who named them all, and what made them think the one called Earth 1 'came first'?"
Gallowglass considered for a moment, then leaned forward. "Tell me, young Blake, do you have several hours to hear a story?"
"Please, sir - do you know why they call my home Earth S - and why the Earth we just came from is called Earth 2? Who named them all, and what made them think the one called Earth 1 'came first'?"
Gallowglass considered for a moment, then leaned forward. "Tell me, young Blake, do you have several hours to hear a story?"