by Joseph Silva
The Rogers kid nodded. “I think I understand, sir.”
“To date my serum has been tested only on lab animals,” the doc continued, “with most gratifying results. We have not yet tested it on a human being.”
“You will today,” said Rogers. “I’m ready if you are. Dr. Erskine.”
The old guy chuckled. “Very well, we’ll proceed at once. Will you roll up your sleeve, please,” he said. “Colonel, if you and your party will join my other visitors behind the glass wall.”
Rogers noticed now that the far wall was made out of glass. There were three official-looking guys standing behind it, watching, each of them holding on to a fat briefcase.
While the colonel and the Secret Service guys got out of the lab, Doc Erskine filled a big hypo with a strange bluish fluid. “I’d like you, young man,” he instructed the Rogers kid, “to stand over here on this raised platform.”
Steve did as he was told, stepping up onto a small dais in front of the nozzle of a huge gadget that reminded him of an X-ray machine. Only a hell of a lot bigger, like something you might use to X-ray an elephant.
He was nervous and excited, so he hardly felt it when Erskine thrust the needle into his puny arm.
“You will experience various new sensations,” said the doc, his voice starting to sound faraway. “If you feel any severe pain in the chest, tell me at once.”
Rogers felt odd all right, like his blood was circulating twice as fast as usual and trying to shoot right out of his body. He felt hot, cold, dizzy, euphoric.
“Try to remain perfectly still,” instructed the doc as he stepped to the controls of the big ray gun that was pointing right at the kid’s scrawny chest. “You’ve passed through the first phase very well. If you survive the bombardment of vita-rays, the experiment will be a complete success. How are you feeling?”
The voice seemed to be coming at him from a long way off. So he shouted his answer. “Fine, just fine. Little woozy is all.”
“We’ll proceed. You will not feel any pain when the rays strike your body,” said Erskine, adding, “good luck.”
“Same to you,” His voice didn’t sound like it was his anymore.
There was a faint hum, and than he was bathed in a scarlet glow.
“. . . will surge with new power, new vigor . . .”
Apparently Doc Erskine was explaining the goings-on to the gang behind the glass.
Rogers didn’t catch much of it. He was yelling. At least he thought he was. With his head reared back, his arms spread wide, he was swaying on the pedestal. The scarlet glow abruptly ceased.
The room seemed to rush at him, to blare into his brain. He realized he was seeing everything with an incredible new clarity. He brought a hand up to rub at his eyes.
“Good lord,” he said.
His hand was enormous, his arm strong and muscular. He gazed down at his chest, saw that it had expanded so much that his shirt had been ripped in two. It was as though he was inside a brand-new body. He felt power, felt the new strength that filled him. “Dr. Erskine,” he said, laughing with joy, “it’s a success. It worked.”
Nodding, happy, the gray-haired scientist said, “Yes, young man, the process is beyond a doubt going to mean—”
A gun sounded. Once, twice.
Bullets had found the doctor’s chest, ripped into him, smeared red over his smock. He made a sad, coughing noise before tumbling forward into Rogers’s powerful arms.
“The experiment is over!” someone shouted.
Rogers turned around swiftly. He saw that one of the watchers, an ordinary-looking middle-aged guy, had come into the room. His briefcase was dangling open and he held a smoking Luger in his fist. And a look of incredible hatred in his glaring eyes.
“The Third Reich will overcome the world!” he cried. “Erskine’s work is finished!”
Rogers went striding toward the man.
The gun swung in his direction.
But he was incredibly swift, this new and improved Steven Rogers. He dodged the slug that came sizzling at him.
Then he was on top of the Nazi agent, delivering a terrific punch to his jaw, followed by a left to the ribs. It was as good as anything Joe Louis could dish out.
The Nazi agreed. He didn’t even try to fight back, instead he tried to run.
But Rogers wouldn’t let him get away. He caught the guy by the neck and lifted him up off the floor.
Then he smacked him in the face. The force of it sent the Nazi assassin flying—flying right into one of the late Doc Erskine’s machines.
There was a lot of electrical crackling, and sparks shot every which way. The guy screamed. When the smoke cleared there was a dead German agent sprawled out beside the body of the man he’d murdered.
By this time the colonel and the Secret Service agents and the other VIPs were all in the lab.
“What a tragedy,” said the colonel. “Erskine’s formula known to him only, and now he’s dead. We know the process works, but there’s nothing we can do.”
Rogers looked at him, long and hard. His voice was considerably deeper now, and when he spoke people listened. “You’re forgetting me, colonel,” he said evenly.
The brass hat said, “But you’re only one man. What can you do?”
“Plenty,” Steve Rogers assured him. “No man fights as well as when he’s battling to rid the earth of tyranny. And that’s going to be my purpose for the rest of my life.”
He meant it, too.
Right there in the ruined lab, with the body of the old scientist at his feet, Steve Rogers became Captain America.
Within a few days he’d come up with the costume, the shield, the new name for himself.
He’d always been a patriotic kid, and when he turned into a superior human being he held on to his faith. So his costume was built around the American flag.
Now maybe if Doc Erskine had lived, the U.S.A. would eventually have had a whole army of super soldiers. That didn’t happen, but Cap alone was plenty impressive. Spies, fifth columnists, Nazi agents, war profiteers—none of them had any reason to like that star-spangled crusader.
And today the guy didn’t look a day older than when he had first slipped into that chain-mail tunic. Well, there was a good reason for that. Because . . .
A red telephone on Nick Fury’s desk started to beep. His reverie ended and he picked it up.
“Yeah?” he boomed. “What’s hit the fan now?”
Ten
The corridor was long, shadowy, and cold. Its windows were completely masked by the heavy drapes. The thick somber carpeting muffled Baron Graff’s footfalls.
The stocky, hairless Nazi was still several paces away from the thick wooden door at the corridor’s end when a scream sounded.
It was soon followed by another bloodcurdling shriek.
The door burst open. A whimpering man came stumbling out, his pale face streaked with blood. He stumbled again, bumped into the wall, slid down to his knees. He rested his bloody head against the wall, sobbing. It was obvious he’d been struck several times across the face with some kind of whip.
Baron Graff stepped around the cowering man and entered the room he’d come staggering out of. Just across the threshold the baron clicked his heels together, raising his metal hand in a straight-arm salute. “Heil!”
The room’s sole occupant stood in the shadows beyond a floor lamp. The yellow light from the bulb illuminated the streaks of blood on the riding crop that the figure still held in his gloved hands. “I cannot tolerate fools,” he said in his guttural voice.
The baron closed the door behind him. “I assure you’re alluding to that wretch in the hall and not to myself, Herr Skull.”
The Red Skull gestured at his desk, where a tray of food rested. “I ordered a corned beef on Russian rye and he brings it on pumpernickel,” he said. “Unforgivable.”
“Unforgivable,” agreed Baron Graff, clearing his throat.
The Red Skull, making an angry grunting noise, move
d behind his desk and flung the bloody riding crop aside. It hit the immense globe which stood behind the desk, splattering several countries with red, then bounced away and was swallowed by the heavy shadows beyond the circle of lamplight.
Placing his gloved hands on the desk top, the Red Skull leaned forward. This brought his face into the light.
The baron’s self-control was such that he was able to suppress an impulse to shudder and avert his eyes.
In place of a head, a bright crimson skull rested on the other man’s shoulders—a distorted skull, with a perpetual mocking grin.
Baron Graff knew it was only a mask—and yet . . .
“Your interview with Klise was satisfactory?” said the Skull.
“Ja. It went very well indeed.” The baron moved closer to the desk. “The fool actually believes he’ll play an important role when the glorious Fourth Reich is established. He will cooperate completely.”
“Gut.”
The baron was, inwardly at least, not completely thrilled that his master was pleased with him. Because that pleasure produced a laugh from the Red Skull. And it was a horrible, mirthless, nerve-rasping laugh.
“Ja, Klise will be put in his place all right,” continued the Skull. “In a mass grave along with all our other dupes.”
“From now on we must move very rapidly, Herr Skull,” urged Baron Graff. “Is Dr. Crandell ready to assist us with the final installations?”
Seating himself, the Red Skull steepled his fingers against his scarlet chin. “A bit more persuasion is needed perhaps.”
“You’ve been much too lenient with that old hund,” the baron told him as he adjusted his monocle. “I’d run Crandell through one of our admirable torture suites. Then he’d beg you to allow him to do what’s needed.”
Another laugh that sounded like fingernails grating across rough slate. “The doctor is a very valuable machine, dear baron.” The Red Skull stood, turned to the globe and started it spinning slowly. “Rough treatment would ruin his ability to function well. I believe I have come up with a way, however, to give him the final nudge toward compliance.”
“And that is?”
“You will soon see,” promised the Red Skull.
Eleven
The private jet was zooming through the night. The extremely lovely auburn-haired girl who sat in the pilot’s seat suddenly tossed her head back and said, “Hooey!”
Jake Sheridan was hunkered down in the seat beside her. “I’m not up on all the latest juvenile slang, Amanda,” he said. “Is that a negative comment?”
Amanda Twain nodded. “You can bet your duff it is, Jake,” she informed him. “Conning Mixx into sending us off on this completely goofy mission just so you could be alone with me and make another of your feeble attempts at—”
“Listen, Amanda, if I ever decided, in some moment of complete and utter madness, to make a pass at you, it would not be feeble.” He scowled. “That is not the reason for this jaunt. And if you’d been anywhere near our managing editor’s office earlier today, you’d have heard my groans of pain when Mixx insisted I drag you along.”
Amanda’s lovely head bobbed up and down. “That I’ll buy. You loathe me, I loathe you.”
“Well put, especially from one who usually can’t string six words together without—”
“Sour grapes,” she cut in. “Because I almost got a Pulitzer Prize and you didn’t.”
Jake laughed. “Almost? Don’t tell me you believed that stringer from some boondock newspaper who claimed he had contacts on the prize jury? Hell, I saw the guy recently, peddling matches on a street corner in downtown Kansas City.”
“Tell me some more about this wild-goose chase we’re on.”
Jake folded his arms. “Let’s make a deal first, Amanda,” he suggested. “When this yarn has all America, nay, all the civilized world, awed, we’ll share on all the rewards and publicity. Okay? I mean, you don’t go on the Tonight show unless I tag along, and I won’t cohost with Mike Douglas unless you get invited.”
“This Dr. Crandell. Fill me in some more about the guy.”
“Don’t you read our magazine? Newsmag did an in-depth profile on Dr. Crandell six months ago.”
“C’mon, Jake. In our mag an indepth profile runs to about a thousand words,” said the girl, as she guided the jet toward their destination.
“Crandell is very big in sonic weaponry, the use of ultrahigh-frequency sound waves to destroy buildings. What you do is cause ’em to vibrate to pieces,” he explained. “Similar to the way an opera singer is supposed to be able to crack a wineglass with her voice. Only this kind of sound you don’t hear. Dr. Crandell was supposed to be developing a way to use ultrasonics on a grand scale. Grand enough to cause the sort of damage we’ve been seeing in Africa and South America lately.”
“You claim these quakes are fake, man-made,” said Amanda. “So far, though, nobody’s found any proof of that.”
“We’re going to dig up the proof, Mandy.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said. “Okay, here’s another thing for you to explain to me. How come no one else has suggested that the Crandell weapon might be responsible? I mean in the government and so on, some high government source or qualified expert.”
“C’mon now, Amanda, you think the United States government is going to come out and say, ‘Say, folks, we were developing this spooky weapon capable of destroying whole cities. Now it looks like some bad guys have swiped and are using it. Gee, maybe they’ll even use it on us.’ That’s not how to keep a low profile. Nobody official is going to talk. I know, I’ve tried to get ’em to. But I do know they’ve got agents from at least two cloak-and-dagger outfits hunting for Crandell right now.”
“What does that prove? Crandell’s an important man. Naturally Washington is anxious to find out what happened to him.”
“Funny coincidence, though, you’ve got to admit. Crandell disappears, then the fake quakes start. Here’s one more coincidence to consider. His daughter also vanished, a few weeks after he did.”
“But why grab her? He’s the one with the secrets.”
“She’d be very useful to them,” said Jake. “You want to put pressure on Dr. Crandell and get him to do what you want, you threaten to hurt his only daughter.”
After a few silent seconds Amanda said, “Sounds mildly plausible, Jake. But I’m still not convinced there’s a story here at all.”
“You will be,” he promised her.
Twelve
The night was ending; a thin gray light was showing along the horizon above the treetops. Captain America, again wearing a trench coat over his familiar red, white, and blue garb, lifted one hand from the steering wheel of the sleek sports car he was driving and flexed his powerful fingers. If everything went according to schedule, he’d be in Mottsville by sunrise.
Cap realized that Nick Fury thought he was obsessive about a couple of their problems. One of which was that consummate villain, the Red Skull. “Ya see that guy’s hand everywhere,” Fury had often said. “Bet ya expect to find him hiding under yer bed at night.” Be that as it may, Captain America once again had a very strong hunch that the infamous Skull was involved in this latest wave of destruction. Almost certainly he’d played a part in the abduction of Dr. Crandell and his daughter.
Captain America had been fighting the Red Skull for a good many years. It went all the way back to the early days of the Second World War. As he drove swiftly through the oncoming daylight Cap’s thoughts drifted back to the Red Skull and how he’d become what he was . . .
Germany had been the starting point, in those bleak years after the First World War.
He had never known his parents, this boy who was to grow into one of the most ruthless men of the century, nor had he ever received any kindness or affection. What he knew was poverty, and hunger, and brutal treatment.
To survive, he did what a good many others were doing then. He lived by stealing. But in those early years—he wasn’t more than seven o
r eight when he took to the streets—he was small and frail. So he wasn’t always successful, and it was a good day when he managed to scrounge up enough for even one decent meal. Many times when he did manage to steal something of value, the bigger boys took it from him. And beat him besides. Left him lying in those mean alleys, laughed at him. He never cried, not once. Inside, though, he made promises to himself. He would not always be weak and small. Someday he would be strong, someday he would have power. Then they’d have to watch out.
He managed for a time, when he was in his early teens, to fall in with a gang of housebreakers. He had become very agile by this time, so he was able to serve them well. He ate better now, worked hard at building up his body. Eventually he was caught by the police, and he went to jail. Once out of jail, he roamed free again. Then he went back to prison—and so on.
When he came out of prison after his longest time behind bars, he noticed that there had been changes in his fatherland. Adolf Hitler was in power, and growing stronger every day. A new Germany was in the making, a strong and powerful Germany that would no longer be pushed around by other countries. It seemed possible that someday Germany might well rule the whole world. And that, to him, was a vastly exciting thought.
He conceived the notion he might be able to bring off some successful burglaries if he was actually working inside one of the better hotels. There were wealthy people in Germany now, many more than there had been in the old days. And many of them traveled. It took some leverage, some lying, and some falsified papers, but the young man eventually managed to get a job as a bellboy—in a very fine hotel, in one of Germany’s largest cities.
