The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker Read online

  “If we think we have it tough,” put in Goliath, pointing down the hall at a golden figure approaching, “what about Iron Man? That is, the man inside, whoever he is. All he ever told us is that he’s condemned to live in that steel suit almost twenty-four hours a day. Otherwise, for some unknown reason, he would die.”

  “That means if his iron tux ever cracked open when he goes into battle with us…” Hawkeye threw up his hands. “I withdraw from the poor-me contest. Next to him, who’s got troubles?”

  “Cap has,” murmured the Wasp, as their star-spangled leader strode in. “With his memories of a vanished past, and of Bucky. Plus the king-sized responsibility of working out the right Avenger moves. Just think, if the world comes to an end-assuming no miscalculation by Karzz—Cap will blame himself for some kind of ‘mistake’ he called for in Avenger tactics.”

  The three of them shuddered a bit.

  Despite this inner burden, Cap called out in his usual firm voice: “Avengers, assemble!” They sat around the table.

  He read from a news bulletin. “Scientists report several alarming and unexplained phenomena occurring around the earth. The Antarctic ice cap has begun melting mysteriously. Volcano eruptions have started in the South Pacific and are spreading through thousands of islands. The Tiros and Nimbus satellites of NASA have recorded violent wind currents unaccountably arising in the high stratosphere, plus the sudden appearance of a new satellite, assumed to be Russian, but this is denied by them. Even more baffling is the giant comet plunging into the solar system from outer space with a trajectory that may come alarmingly close to earth, though full computer data is not yet in.”

  Cap eyed the others around the table.

  “If we secretly hoped that Karzz was bluffing or was self-deluded, we know otherwise now. Unless by some miracle he has miscalculated the final results, earth will meet oblivion in just one week. The question is, do we inform the authorities of the machinations of Karzz, which so far we Avengers alone know about? Opinions, please?”

  Iron Man shook his head slowly. “It would leak out to the public and create needless panic.”

  “No emergency measures can be taken to save people from any of the dooms,” spoke up Goliath, “even if they were forewarned.”

  “Only a mass migration into space would save humanity,” added the Wasp. “And we don’t have the spacecraft to send even a dozen survivors away.”

  “Besides,” drawled Hawkeye, “who could do anything against Karzz if we Avengers can’t?”

  Cap tapped his gavel perfunctorily. “It is unanimously agreed to go ahead on our own without a word to the world.”

  Cap’s next remark startled all of them, except the Golden Avenger. “Iron Man informs me that he and Stark had secretly designed a manned spacecraft capable of moon-flight, in case the U.S. fell too far behind in the moon race. A few days of tuning up and it could take us from earth before the end. You will vote yea or no.”

  “Negative,” shot back in quick chorus from Goliath and the Wasp.

  At the same time Hawkeye sprang to his feet, his face livid. “Cap, that was an insult. Do you think any of us would be white-livered, spineless, cowardly worms and save our own miserable hides?” He caught his breath. “Wait…how do you and Iron Man vote?”

  “Relax, Boy Scout,” said Cap. “In private, Iron Man and I had already cast negatives in advance. So that’s out of the way.”

  His face became more serious. “Next is the matter of invading the undersea lair of Karzz. Anthony Stark, of course, previously assigned to us a suitable diving craft, among the many vehicles he has invented for our special missions,” He looked around slowly. “Now, if Karzz is on guard against us, he can probably spot our approaching craft like a sitting duck. On the other hand, he may be so confident we couldn’t locate him that he won’t expect us. We’ll have to run that risk.”

  They all nodded grimly.

  “Iron Man will take along his Z-ray,”’ resumed Cap, “to penetrate the personal force-field Karzz might be shielded by. We stand a good chance to capture him—for real this time.”

  They flushed at the thought of the episode in the Sahara, when they captured the android.

  “Then we can make a deal with him,” finished Cap. “His life for saving the world—if he can. If he can’t, that’s his tough luck.”

  Cap smiled crookedly. “That would shift destiny into a third kind of parallel universe, one in which Karzz, dying in the twentieth century, never exists in the seventieth century at all. Thus we would have saved twenty thousand other future worlds, if not our own.”

  “Yet nobody would ever know,” mused Iron Man softly. “All earth records would be destroyed.”

  “Right, Iron Man. Uh…I almost said Ironic Man,” quipped Hawkeye. “But the thought is plenty strangeville. The joke would really be on Karzz, caught in his own time trap.”

  “Some joke,” growled Goliath, “with the human race wiped out along with him. I say let’s get going against that world-wrecking wretch from the future.”

  “Seconded,” snapped Hawkeye.

  “Thirded,” said the Wasp.

  “Carried,” barked Cap, rising. “We leave at 1200 hours—five minutes from now—and fly by rocketplane to the coast. Iron Man has already wired ahead for our deepsea boat to be ready.”

  Five minutes later a countdown sent the Avenger rocketplane roaring into the sky. An hour later, at the Pacific coast, they made another countdown at sea and took off—straight down.

  Looking like some queer denizen of the deep, their special bathysphere plunged rapidly, passing through the “milk” zone of fading sunlight at 3000 feet, then dropping down into the lightless pit of stygian darkness that extended another six miles down.

  On top the hull, a swinging atomic searchlight stabbed through the inky waters, lighting up unearthly species of deep-sea fish that inhabited this sunless realm. As with the “Trieste’s” pioneering dive years before, they saw life forms incredibly existing at every depth.

  “Spooky,” said the Wasp with a shiver, looking out. “Like another world.”

  “The pressure down here is about five tons per square inch,” estimated Goliath with his Dr. Pym mind.

  “Almost enough to crush your thick skull,” commented Hawkeye.

  “You’ve got the bends,” sniffed the Wasp, “in your brains.”

  “Aw, you and Goliath are ganging up on me with the quips,” complained Hawkeye. “It’s hardly fair—for you two.”

  “Approaching sea-bottom zero,” sang out Iron Man tensely, at the controls. “We’re coming down over the spot where Karzz’s lair should be. I’m turning out all lights, outer and inner.”

  A click, and oppressing darkness struck them like a blow.

  “Eyes peeled below, everyone,” ordered Captain America. A faint fluorescent glow indicated the outline of the observation window in the floor, allowing them to grope their way to its edge and peer down.

  “Eek!” cried the Wasp suddenly. “A glowing tentacle of giant size.”

  And at that moment, as something huge wrapped itself around their craft with the squish of suction cups against the hull, they were thrown off their feet.

  “A giant kraken!” shouted Cap. “The deep-sea squid with tentacles a hundred feet long, like a creature in one of Jules Verne’s stories.”

  Iron Man had clung to his seat at the controls. Now he yanked over a lever. Lightning flashes sizzled through the water outside. Almost instantly, the tentacle’s grip unwound from the craft, and something thrashed wildly in the water and departed, leaving a wake of faintly phosphorescent bubbles.

  “I jolted him with five megavolts,” said Iron Man drily. “Mr. Squeezer decided he had an appointment elsewhere.” His voice sobered. “I only hope that electrical display didn’t warn Karzz of our coming.”

  Iron Man inched the craft down now, as they all resumed the downward watch. A faint glow below gradually brightened and grew bigger, until it resolved itself into a huge ligh
ted structure.

  “A lighted and aerated dome,” breathed Cap. “Karzz’s sea-bottom hideout seventy thousand fathoms deep. How did he conjure it down here? Talk about superscience….” His voice trailed away in awed amazement.

  “Does Karzz,” wondered Iron Man more practically, “have any detection or alarm system for approaching craft?”

  The answer came suddenly with sizzling rays spangling from the dome’s apex, stabbing through the water toward their craft.

  “Hard aport,” called out Iron Man. “Hang on, everybody.”

  They barely had time to grab hand-hold bars on the walls before the diving ship slammed sideways, swift as a leaping greyhound. Iron Man twisted and turned in the waters, but the rays followed relentlessly.

  Suddenly, the craft dived straight down.

  “I’m aiming for a sea-bottom landing,” Iron Man informed them tensely, “where we may be out of range of the rays.”

  Halting their downward plunge skillfully, Iron Man brought the ship to a curving touchdown in watery ooze. The rays stabbed a dozen feet above them, but no closer.

  “The curvature of the dome itself cuts off any direct-line beam toward its base. And look-a hatch door leading into the dome! It must be for Karzz’s own use, to leave the dome in a mobile craft. Therefore it must have automatic open-and-close controls for him to re-enter.”

  While talking, Iron Man had been guiding their craft straight toward the door. When within ten feet, some electrosensor trigger was set off and a huge round hatch swung open. Water rushed into an inner chamber, pulling their craft with it. Then the outer hatch silently closed, and the whine of a high-powered pump was heard, emptying the chamber. Finally, an inner hatchway opened into the dome itself and its artificial atmosphere.

  “All hands out!” barked Cap. “If Karzz is in a different part of this huge dome, he won’t reach here in time to stop us rushing in. And then, if luck is with us, we can stalk him through the dome. Come on.”

  The five Avengers dashed through the inner hatch into the lighted dome, upheld by massive crossbeams that defied the almost unbelievable crushing pressure at sea bottom. It was all mind-staggering seventieth-century technology.

  After a swift glance around, surveying details, Cap gave instructions. “Catwalks and stairways all seem to lead to a master control chamber at the apex of the dome, where Karzz probably is holed up. We’ll scatter now. Hawkeye,” the next catwalk left. Iron Man, the right one. I’ll go up the closest one. As for Goliath and Wasp….”

  “No need to tell us,” shrilled a thin voice from the shrinking girl. “As the Ant-Man and Wasp, we’ll be invisible to Karzz, and will be waiting to do our bit when we see the chance.”

  chapter 15

  Traps of Death

  The amplified voice of Karzz suddenly boomed from the apex.

  “Achtung! I constantly underestimate you Avengers. I did not think you would ever locate my undersea hideout in the first place, nor that if you did find it, you would cleverly invade it through my own automatic hatchway. So much is to your credit.”

  Then his voice changed, ominous with threat.

  “But now you will find yourselves facing the five Avenger dooms, picking you off one by one. Come after me…if you dare.”

  “We dare,” was Cap’s answer at the bottom of his catwalk stairway. It was almost a whisper. When he saw that Hawkeye and Iron Man had gained their catwalks, he waved a signal and all three began racing up the winding stairways that hung suspended from the ceiling of the dome.

  Iron Man did not dare try jet-flying in the dome with its many crossbeams and guy wires, affording him too little maneuvering room. He had to climb like the others.

  Most agile of all, Cap went up the fastest, keeping a wary eye on the globular chamber at the dome’s apex. He jerked back with hair-trigger reflexes as a blast-beam knifed down past his ear.

  Karzz’s aim was handicapped, however, Cap knew. He did not dare aim too close to the stairway itself, or disintegrating metal would bring about collapse. And he could not afford to weaken any part of his bracing system, for the macro-pressured water outside would then crush the dome as flat as a pancake in horrendous seconds.

  Karzz would have to try to pick them off with sideswiping shots from strategic angles. Cap took care to keep some portion of the metal catwalk-stairs between himself and the apex chamber.

  But why had Karzz been so confident they would meet Avenger dooms?

  Booby traps!

  As the thought sprang into Cap’s mind, he tensed, slowing his upward race. Now all his senses tautened to keen alertness, as they had so many times in his career in World War II when faced by Nazi booby traps that could only be called fiendish.

  The short hairs on the back of Cap’s neck bristled in instinctive warning. Something did not look right ahead.

  What was it? Then he noticed the slightly dull sheen of one step ahead of him, whereas the rest were shiny polished metal.

  Aha! One false step on that false step—Cap could not avoid the play of words in his thoughts—and he’d be a goner in some unknown way. Yet he wanted to set it off and make Karzz think it had worked, thus putting him off guard.

  Cap went back a few steps, then tossed his shield on the bogus step. It exploded with just enough force to kill a man, yet not enough to damage the stairway itself. Cap expertly caught the flying shield, which was unharmed.

  At the loud report, Hawkeye and Iron Man glanced that way across the dome through the latticed structure of the triple stairways. Cap made frantic pantomime motions, and they quickly caught on that he was warning them about booby traps.

  Iron Man tensed and wondered what lay ahead for him. Karzz would be too clever to repeat the booby traps, knowing that one sprung would tip off the presence. of the others. Deciding he needed keener senses than his own human ones, he jabbed studs on his chest-control.

  From his helmet issued a bat-like radar-beam, sharp and sensitive to anything untoward that might lie ahead.

  Then he saw it, through his radar-sensitive eye lenses—a poised mallet fastened to the railing, which could easily brain a man. Yet, by some science legerdemain of the seventieth century, it was invisible to the eye.

  Iron Man raised his right gauntlet, and one finger shot forth a shock-beam that touched the fatal step like a man’s heavy tread, and the invisible club descended viciously—on empty air. Brushing it aside, Iron Man went on.

  Hawkeye, climbing the third stairway, peered ahead warily, looking for the unknown. Nothing seemed amiss.

  About to step ahead, a high-pitched voice shrilled in his ear: “Stop, Hawkeye! That step ahead is triggered with death. Watch….”

  The Wasp’s tiny form flew down to the next step, shooting her sting-beam at full power and jarring the whole step. Instantly, a dozen long recessed needles sprang upward, their points tinted blue with poison. They would have pierced up through Hawkeye’s boots into his feet….

  Flitting between the spikes safely, the Wasp then swung up past Hawkeye’s face. “See?”

  “Thanks, Wasp,” Hawkeye managed to say, wiping his brow. He took a deep breath. “You had the privilege of saving my life,” he said banteringly, regaining his composure.

  “Oh, lucky, lucky me!” buzzed the Wasp. “But I condemned myself to hearing your cornville cracks for weeks and years ahead, unlucky me.”

  “Why do you admire my witticisms so much, Wasp? I must say something right all the time.” Hawkeye grinned, then raced upward again.

  Now all three Avengers—Cap, Iron Man, and Hawkeye—met at the top landing and converged on Karzz’s globular chamber. “Hsst,” said Cap, crouching beside the door. “You rush in first, Iron Man, using your Z-ray to knock out his force-shield. Then Hawkeye’s arrows can divert him from using his belt-rays, giving me time to rush in and crack him on the jaw. And it’ll only take one punch—my Sunday Special for supersinners.”

  Cap nodded his head for the signal, then kicked open the door. Iron Man sprang in. Karzz
turned in amazement. “But my booby traps…the signal lights said they went off!”

  “So we’re ghosts,” was Iron Man’s answer, and he aimed his Z-ray. The hissing beam sparkled all around Karzz, dissolving his invisible force-field armor. The sparks died. Karzz was now unprotected.

  His hand leaped for his belt-studs, which was Hawkeye’s cue to let his twanging bow speed an arrow across the room. Its bulbous point burst and sprayed itch-powder, which had been treated chemically to make it a maddening irritant, over Karzz’s hands. He fell to scratching them frantically.

  Cap was already plunging across the floor, fist cocked eagerly for its chin target. But Karzz, still scratching, leaned his shoulder back and closed a big switch on the wall. A whining drone like the skirl of bagpipes filled the air, and suddenly Cap stopped in mid-stride.

  Hawkeye, starting to notch an arrow in alarm, froze with his bow half pulled out. Iron Man, his hand raised to spray out weapon-rays, stood as if petrified.

  “My best booby trap,” leered Karzz triumphantly. The itch-powder was now losing its potency, allowing him to point at the projector extending from the wall and radiating the skirling beams. “I know you can hear me, though you are immobilized. This is my time-stopping ray. I am the master of time and all its tricks. Briefly, that ray stops time for any object or person it strikes. Since time is not ticking by for you, you cannot make your follow-up move of the next second—which never comes.”

  He waved at a monitor screen that showed the magnified flitting form of the Wasp darting into the doorway, holding Ant-Man’s hand, and skirting around the time-ray. Karzz tuned a dial.

  “A simple adjustment and the time-ray hits them too.”

  The two tiny forms froze, hanging in mid-air.

  “The Wasp and the Ant-Man caught in the timeless trap,” Karzz gloated. “That means Goliath can never appear.”

  “That’s what we wanted you to think,” boomed a voice outside. “If you look close, you’ll see that the Wasp dragged in some debris that looks vaguely human, while I resumed my giant size out here. And now….”