“No kidding,” the masseuse said matter-of-factly, placing her hands on her hips. “Look, sister, I got eyes. I can see what’s shakin’. What I wanna know is why. I mean, the man said this wouldn’t happen again. He promised. But just look at my shop. Do you realize what it’ll cost to replace all that equipment? Why, the vario-vac alone could—”
“Say, is everyone okay?” The Beast loped onto the scene, followed in a more conventional manner by Captain America and Thor. When he saw the feather clad woman the others were talking to, he pulled up short and quite frankly stared. “Uh, let me rephase that: wow!”
The sultry masseuse was equally impressed, and her features visibly softened as she sauntered over and began curling her finger in the Beast’s fur, leaning close against him. “Well, well,” she cooed, “what have we here? I always did like a man with a strong toop fetish. My name’s Queenie Dimm, big guy. What’s yours?”
“The Beast.”
“Ooooo.”
Iron Man cleared his throat. “Um, excuse me, Ms. Dimm, but we have something of a problem here. And we think you might be able to help us, if you will.”
“Yeah, sure. Be glad ta,” Queenie said. Then, to the Beast, “Whatsay we have a little sit-down, huh, sweetie?”
“Anything you say, babe,” the Beast answered, immediately executing a triple handstand somersault that landed him butt-first on the fountain bench. He was rewarded by a squeal of pleasure from Queenie Dimm as she sat down on his lap.
Queenie then turned to Iron Man. “Okay, shiny-top, shoot.”
“You said something about ‘the man’ not allowing this destruction again,” the Armored Avenger began. “Could you tell us who that man is?”
“Well, Kang, of course. It was all on the news vids. You guys from outta town or somethin’?”
“You, ah, might say that. Would you mind explaining what Kang has to do with all this?”
“Sure. Why not?” Queenie Pimm adjusted her position on the Beast’s lap; the Beast swallowed. “It all started a coupla months ago. This Kang fella popped up on all the vid channels an’ said he was gonna take over the fortieth century. Not tomorrow, mind you, or a week from next Thursday, but the whole fliggin’ century! Naturally, everyone got a big laugh outta that. But then all these old-timey freakos started showin’ up. Y’know, dinosaurs, barbarians, an’ some big hunks with six-guns an’ floppy hats—I think they said they was the James Gang. Well, lemme tell ya, with all their wreckin’ an’ carryin’ on, they was ruinin’ business!
“So then Kang pulled another gig on the vid tube, this time sayin’ that he’d brought all those freakos from the past an’ that with his machines he could make ’em do anything he wanted. He said he’d have ’em squit the whole planet if we didn’t give in to his (how did he put it?) ‘benevolent rule.’ Well, to make a long story a little longer, things have been so peaceful in the Sol system lately that the Colonial Government’s army has shrunk down to a couple of armchair generals and a private who raises the flag in front of the capitol building every day. So, since Earth is the system’s favorite recreation spa and no one wants to lose it, we gave in.”
“What?” Quicksilver interjected. “You gave up your world, your planetary system, your entire century of time and everyone in it? Without a struggle?!”
“Well, what’d you expect us to do, Slick? Throw soy bagels at dinosaurs? Let the thirty-ninth century worry about it, I say.”
Iron Man started. “What’s that about the thirty-ninth century?”
Queenie Dimm leaned her head down on the Beast’s shoulder. “Oh, it’s just that Kang was raving on the vid the night after he took over, saying that we were real smart to make his first step an easy one an’ that he’d reward us with milk an’ cookies or somethin’. Then he said he was gonna go back an’ pull the same stunt in 3800 that he did here, an’ that he was gonna do the same thing in every century until he was king of the whole megillah, whatever that means. Good riddance, I say.”
The Avengers had grown somber—all but the Beast, who sported a silly grin. They now knew why Kang had been so generous in letting them leave. He had been afraid that they would discover his master plan and try to stop him. Then, when he had apparently decided not to take the chance that they already did know, he had plucked the tyrannosaur from out of time in an attempt to destroy them. The Avengers held no pretensions that the attack would stop there.
“Thank you, Ms. Dimm,” Iron Man said, “you’ve been very helpful. And you can be even more so if you’ll contact your ‘vid channels’ and have them warn everyone to stay inside for a while. In the meantime, Avengers, I think we’d best pay another visit to a certain demented time master.”
The Beast looked anxious. “Uh, how’s about if you guys go on without me, huh? I’ll catch up in about ten minutes.” He watched Queenie readjusting one of her feathers. “Fifteen.”
“Now, Beast,” Iron Man said, turning to walk with the other Avengers toward a side street. The Beast sighed, lifted Queenie Dimm up and redeposited her on the bench, then bounded off to join his teammates.
“Oh, flig,” he said under his breath.
Fifteen
The Avengers didn’t look so tough when they were only six inches tall, Kang thought to himself. Then he reached to twist a knob on the control console, bringing the image of the seven heroes up to where it filled the entire twelve-inch height of the monitor screen before him. They were all standing at the edge of the cosmic moat that surrounded his citadel, and without exception they looked set, somber, and determined.
They knew.
Kang sat back in his chair—actually, he sat back on his golden force field, which sat back in his chair—and smirked. He hadn’t really expected that frumpy old dinosaur to stop his perennial foes, but he did hope sincerely that the monster’s sudden appearance had caused at least one of them to dampen his or her leotards. And judging from their expressions, he had certainly come close.
But even then, even after a display of the awesome forces at his command, they hadn’t learned. They had still returned to do battle. Oh, well, Kang thought as he readjusted a switch on the console and rested a hand on the buttons at his belt, he hadn’t had a good play period in (snicker) ages!
“Then you’ve reconnoitered the area thoroughly? You’re sure there are no other entrances?” Captain America was looking across at the gray door that had been replaced in the wall of the glittering obelisk.
“That’s right, Cap,” Iron Man answered. “The Vision even checked out the possibility of coming up from below, but found that the moat goes on, literally, forever. We got in the first time by overcoming automatic defense mechanisms and smashing our way through the front door, but now that Kang knows we’re here, that could be a little dangerous to try again.”
“Aye. And thus the burden of gaining egress doth fall ’pon the shoulders of the son of Odin.” Thor squared those selfsame shoulders, placing his feet flat on the plastic pavement, a full yard apart. “Thou wouldst be well advised to stand thee back.”.
The other Avengers heeded Thor’s words, backing off to stand several paces behind the Norse deity. Thor then took a breath, concentrating, and pulled Mjolnir up and back over his helm, stretching until the stone head almost touched his back. And then he flung it forward, directly at the obelisk door, with all the strength his Asgardian muscles could muster—
In his subground headquarters, Kang sneered—“Cretin,”—and pushed a button.
—and the hammer disappeared. For an instant, Thor stood dumbfounded. And in that same instant the mystic Uru hammer reappeared directly behind him, making a muffled paff sound and continuing forward with all the speed and force the Thunder God had put into his throw. Before anyone could shout a warning, the hammer struck Thor directly between the shoulder blades, causing his shoulders to arc back, his chest to jut forward and his eyes to spin upward in their sockets. The Asgardian swayed, as if indecisive, and then fell forward, hitting the pavement like a slab of dressed be
ef.
Watching on his monitor screen, Kang scoffed, “Take that!”
The remaining six heroes rushed to their fallen friend, their shock edging into fear. But their worries were somewhat allayed when both the Vision’s scanners and Iron Man’s sensors confirmed that Thor was alive, that he was in a deep state of unconsciousness but would recover in time. It was then that their fear turned to anger.
“Beast, bring Thor along.” Iron Man rose, looking at the obelisk. “We’re falling back.”
“Wha—you’re not serious?” exclaimed Quicksilver as the Beast hefted Thor’s body. “You can’t be serious! We can’t allow that miserable, time-hopping deviant to get away with this!”
“We’re not,” said Captain America as he followed Iron Man down the street. “I believe what Iron Man has in mind is more of a regrouping than a retreat. It’s good strategy.”
When they had moved several blocks away and turned a corner into another deserted side street, Iron Man directed the Beast to prop Thor’s body against a building. And then the Avengers gathered around to listen to their leader’s battle plan.
“I think it’s rather obvious,” Iron Man began, “that Kang’s ready for us. He knew that no power on Earth, including himself, could stand up against Thor for long. So he was canny enough to use Thor’s own strength against him, apparently creating a space warp and focusing one end of it in front of the obelisk to trap Mjolnir, then focusing the other end behind Thor so that the Thunder God would be struck down by his own hammer. I believe that pretty much rules out our waltzing in the front door. Any suggestions, Cap?”
Captain America stood straight, his hand clasped behind his back just below the point where his shield was slung. “From what you’ve told me about Kang’s setup, Iron Man, I’d say that our greatest hope of success with the fewest casualties would be a division of our forces. So far as we know, Kang can’t watch all directions at once. So if we hit him from several points at the same time, there’s a chance that at least one of us could get through.”
“That sounds like solid logic to me, Cap. All right, then, with Thor out of the action, our best bet on breaking through the obelisk’s door is a dead-on repulsor blast. So I’ll go in last while, hopefully, Kang is busy with the rest of you. Wanda, there’s a possibility that one of your hexes could blast an opening if you can get close enough, so you’ll go in from the opposite side just before I do. Pietro, you go with Wanda.
“I’m afraid that leaves the rest of you as diversions. Vision, you go in from the left, in the air. Do what damage you can. Cap, Beast, you two take the ground route from the right and, well . . .”
“Don’t worry, Shellhead,” the Beast offered, “we’ll kick ’em in the shins and get their attention for you.”
“Thanks, Beast. Okay, Avengers, let’s do it. And good luck.”
Without another word, five superheroes dispersed in three directions, flying and running through the streets and alleyways of the plastic city. Iron Man watched them go, feeling a swell of pride at being the leader of such a noble band. Unfortunately, the noblest—and strongest—among them lay unconscious at his feet, and Iron Man regretted Thor’s incapacitation as much as he regretted not being able to leave someone behind to watch over him.
Then, shaking off all thoughts save those of the conflict ahead, the Golden Avenger took to the air, flying to the obelisk and to battle—and praying that they could confuse Kang long enough to fool him.
“So, they try to confuse me, do they?” Kang spoke aloud as he watched the Avengers approach his citadel on four separate monitors. “Those pompous meddlers forget that I am Kang the Conqueror! Master of Time! And soon I will show them that I am also the master of fate—their fate!”
Humming bemusedly to himself, Kang reached across the control console and adjusted a dial beneath a screen that showed the Vision flying through the city, and then pushed a button. He repeated the action with monitors that showed Captain America and the Beast, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, and finally, Iron Man. Then, finished with his preparations, he sat back, steepling his fingers and frowning with concern.
“I do hope they die well,” he said, resting his nose on his index fingers. “I shall be very disappointed if they don’t die well.”
The Vision soared silently through the streets of the city. Many of the buildings he passed were empty, awaiting, perhaps, seasonal residents. Of those he passed that were tenanted, few of their occupants paid him any heed as he swept by. He was glad of that; the fewer distractions, the better.
He was a synthetic being, a polystyrene android with a computer mind. But that mind had been fashioned after the brain patterns of a human being, and those patterns gave him a desire for continued life as strong as that of any flesh-and-blood man. And so he strove to keep his mind alert, free of extraneous function. He thought not of the danger his wife would soon be facing. He thought not of the barbed resentment her brother felt for him. Though the fact that such nonthinking was the result of a conscious effort did disturb him a little.
Thus it was that when his visual sensors spotted the slight blurring in the air in front of him, there was a microsecond’s delay before he acknowledged the message his memory circuits were feeding him: the Beast’s somewhat colorful description of this phenomenon was that the air turned “fuzzy” just before the tyrannosaur had appeared. Reaction relays then snapped shut, and the Vision banked left just as two gruesome shadows swooped from the blur, missing him by inches.
The Vision spun in midair, turning to see that the shadows were actually flying reptiles. Pterodactyles, his data core told him, from the lower Jurassic period. Kang had undoubtedly drawn the beasts from their home in the past and was, according to the pleasure agent at the fountain, controlling them with malevolent intent.
The pterosaurs had completed a wide, sweeping turn and were now gliding back toward the Vision on leathery, brownish-black wings. The solemn synthezoid had no doubt but that they meant to impale him on the jagged, bony sabers of their beaks. For the small, suppressed human corner of his psyche, that made the decision easier.
Wordlessly, the Vision waited, hovering in the air as the pterosaurs glided closer. Their wings, angled back to increase their speed, sounded like tattered leather sheets caught in a gale wind. Then, when he was certain that the reptiles were too near to change direction, he altered his density to the equivalent of hydrogen and rose swiftly some hundred feet. As the first of the flying lizards passed beneath, he altered his density once more, this time assuming the mass equivalent of lead, and fell straight down like a . . . lead android.
When he struck, the Vision snapped the pterodactyl’s spine like a stalk of ripe celery, and then his plummeting body continued to carry the bowed-back corpse on down to the planet’s surface. The impact was awesome, sending the Vision’s feet shafting clean through the reptile’s trunk and into the pavement below, literally nailing the creature to the street. As he stepped to stand beside the slowly-puddling remains, the Vision’s fists were clenched at his side.
The second pterosaur had already turned, and was diving on a kamikaze course straight for the Vision, wings folded back flat against its torso. The synthezoid didn’t move. The pterosaur fairly shrieked as it gathered speed, its beak a black rapier, pitted and deadly. The Vision still didn’t move—but when the lethal reptile was mere inches away, he did shift his density to that of air.
Unable to even think of slowing down, the second pterodactyl shot through the immaterial Vision like a cannonball through whipped cream. Its beak struck first, jabbing into the plastic pavement and sticking, ripping off with a hollow crack as the bulk of its body went hurtling down the street. When the carcass finally landed, it bounced, and bounced again, spinning and tumbling like a hamstrung marionette, spattering nearby buildings with bits of bone and green-black gore.
The Vision stood where he was for a moment, not turning, not looking at the results of his successful strategem. Had he been human, he might have taken
a long, deep breath. Instead, he subtly manipulated his density once more, rising to fly, perhaps a little too swiftly, on toward the glittering obelisk.
“Pity,” said Kang, watching the Vision’s departure on a monitor screen. “Perhaps I should have sent bats.”
Several blocks after they had left Iron Man, Captain America and the Beast had turned right, heading off at an angle and running for about a dozen more blocks before turning on an approach path that would bring them up to Kang’s tower. Now, as that jutting gem-stone finger came into view, the two Avengers skulked slowly forward, their backs pressed flat against the buildings of the alley they were following.
“Hey, Cap,” the Beast whispered, “do we really have to be this sneaky? I mean, I thought the whole idea was to make Kang notice us.”
“Affirmative, Beast,” Captain America whispered back, keeping his eyes on the obelisk plaza a block away. “But the closer we get before the enemy becomes aware of our presence, the more panic that presence is likely to cause. And therefore, the more disruptive our maneuver will be.”
“You’ve got a point, Cap,” the Beast said, no longer whispering. “There’s just one hitch.”
“Keep your voice down, Beast! What is it?”
The Beast stood up, looking into the sky in the direction from which they’d come. “It’s just that I’ve got a sick feeling that the enemy became aware of our presence a long time ago. Like about . . . two thousand years!”
Neither of the two heroes had seen the air blurring high behind them, and only the Beast’s animal senses had enabled him to hear the warning whine of engines in time. Now, as Captain America rose and faced the direction in which the Beast was looking, he heard the engines, too, and saw three sleek forms diving at them from out of the sun. And that sight sent an icy salamander slithering up and down his spine.
“Jets!” the Beast cried excitedly.
“More accurately, Beast,” Cap replied, his voice disturbingly calm, “they’re Me 262s.” Captain America had good reason to recognize the aircraft; he had seen quite a number of them in those last years before he tumbled into the frigid waters off Newfoundland. He was more than familiar with the smooth lines, the bullet-shaped nose, the tubular scoop-jet turbines under one wing. He was also more than passingly familiar with the precise, sharp-edged swastikas that adorned each side of the tail fin. Kang had chosen his black knights well, and Cap found himself struggling to choke down bitter memories.
Marvel Novel Series 10 - The Avengers - The Man Who Stole Tomorrow Page 15
