The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker Page 12

  “This way,” ordered Cap, darting among a group of curved crossbeams, where they all converged. “Plenty of cover for us.”

  Following Goliath, Karzz shouted, “You won’t escape this dome alive, mes amis. You’re only prolonging the inevitable. Still, maybe it’s better this way. Through Goliath, I’ll have the excitement of stalking and hunting you down, like wild animals, for the kill. Thanks for giving me some fine sport.”

  The Wasp shivered at the alien’s fiendishness. But what could she do? Stinging Karzz would do no good, with Goliath on the rampage. As for Goliath…she fought against the thought of bringing even the slightest pain to her man.

  But then, tears in her eyes, she dive-bombed down and jammed her stinger into his shoulder. Goliath didn’t even wince. Again and again she stabbed the behemoth, but there was no reaction.

  “I should have known,” thought the Wasp, giving up. “He’s too big to feel my tiny pricks. It’s like trying to sting a dinosaur into submission.”

  “I saw that on my wrist-monitor, Wasp,” warned Karzz. “However, you cannot stop us. After Goliath takes care of the men, I’ll send him after you with a fly-swatter.”

  The Wasp turned pale and darted into a crack, trembling. Would it all end in this tragic way, down in this isolated sea-dome, where no power on earth could save them?

  Goliath went charging among the maze of converging crossbeams, but he was handicapped in swinging his club or in leaping, and his agile quarry easily evaded his blows.

  “Take a rest, Goliath,” ordered Karzz, hearing the giant wheeze from his exertions. “It is time for re-hypnosis anyway. Come back to me.”

  This gave the three Avengers a respite. Going into a huddle, they were joined by the Wasp, who settled on Cap’s shoulder.

  “There’s no protective aura around Karzz,” stated Iron Man. “We destroyed his force-field belt last time, and he has had no time to make another. Therefore he’s depending on Goliath to shield him from us.”

  “We’d be on more equal footing,” observed Cap, “if we could get that club out of Goliath’s hands. But that would be a miracle.”

  “Just what I specialize in,” boasted Hawkeye. “I’ll do it with my little arrows. A gold-plated miracle with a money-back guarantee.”

  “Good!” said Cap. “Then each of us will tackle Goliath in turn—Iron Man, Hawkeye, and myself, in that order—trying to weaken or defeat him. If all three of us tried at once, we’d get in each other’s way.”

  “Y-you won’t kill him?” begged the Wasp, with a sob in her voice.

  Cap shook his head reassuringly. “We’ll only try to knock him out, Wasp. But remember, the fate of earth, and of future worlds, is at stake. If we fail to defeat him alive”—Cap’s face went deadly grim—“then it will have to be the other way.”

  The tiny girl on his shoulder went white with shock. But she made no remonstrance against what plainly had to be. She flew off to find a quiet corner where she could sob, and relieve the pent-up emotion bursting within her. “It’ll break Wasp’s heart,” murmured Hawkeye, “if we have to use plan two against Goliath. She’s too swell a girl for that to happen….”

  He stopped, flushing in embarrassment as the other two stared at him in surprise.

  “Look,” he growled, “I don’t mind beating her brains out in repartee. But I steer clear of her heart.”’

  “Amazing,” said Iron Man to Cap. “That guy is human after all.”

  “Hardly the witty cynic he pretends to be,” agreed Cap. Then he went on: “Okay, do your stuff now, Hawkeye,” and gave him a pat on his shoulder.

  The archer crouched and crept away warily, peering over a beam through the interstices of a latticework cross support.

  Across the huge domed chamber, Karzz was ordering Goliath back into action, striding forward with his huge spiked club. Noiselessly, Hawkeye notched an arrow, pulled back the cord, and took aim with his hawk-sharp eye.

  Whunggggg.

  The arrow struck the club in the middle, and amazingly pierced half its length into the hard steel.

  “A tungsten-carbide knife-edge point,” whispered Hawkeye for the benefit of Cap and Iron Man behind him. “Harder than diamond, and with the sharpest edge ever honed. It cuts through steel like a knife through butter. And within its shaft is a proton battery, supplying a burst of current equal to a thousand lightning bolts. Watch.”

  Suddenly, a pyrotechnic shower of electrical sparks sprang from the tip of every spike. Goliath jerked and staggered, flinging the club away. It kept sparking.

  “It’ll keep charged for hours,” said Hawkeye. “Goliath got a jolt that would floor an elephant. However, he’s not an elephant but an Avenger, so he’ll recover.”

  Pulling himself together, Goliath strode forward, egged on by Karzz. “So they eliminated your club,” Karzz said, “but you still have two giant clubs left—your mighty hands. Smash the Avengers, Goliath!”

  “This is it,” breathed Iron Man, dashing out of hiding as the first one chosen to tackle the man-mountain.

  Iron Man’s death-rays were out of the question, of course, for this man-to-man struggle. Instead, he jetted off his feet and flew forward with head down, slamming into Goliath’s chest like a human battering ram.

  Goliath rocked back on his heels. That was all. Then he straddled his legs, waiting for more. Iron Man rheastated his power-unit to the proper value and then raised his hand to shoot forth blow-beams. They were balls of invisible energy that could be felt quite like a blow from a fist, but with transistorized power behind them like a dozen Jack Dempsey wallops packed into one.

  Iron Man aimed again and again, raining blows at Goliath’s face, chin, shoulders, mid-section, belt level. Goliath’s flesh quivered at each spot under the impact, but he was not knocked down, not even brought to one knee. He just withstood the storm passively, patiently.

  “Tough?” muttered Iron Man to himself. “That big lug must be made of iron harder than my suit. Hmm…I’ll try concussion.”

  He swooped around in the air and aimed a finger-beam downward, whose nuclear packet of ions detonated violently and blew a foot-wide crater in the concrete flooring of the dome, not more than ten feet in front of Goliath.

  The concussion blew him off his feet, and he tumbled backward into a crossbeam that bent under his weight.

  By all odds, the titan should have passed out from the bruising shock. But astounded Iron Man saw Goliath clamber to his feet, shake his head, then brandish his fists defiantly with all the massive power he had before.

  “Truly, this huge human is superhuman,” said Karzz, himself impressed. Then his voice rang out mockingly, “Come on, you champs. Try to defeat the champ.”

  Iron Man closed in desperately, utilizing his boot-jets to hover on even keel with Goliath and hammer away at him with his steel-gloved hands. But along with each blow went the transistorized power of his atomic batteries, geared into the levered mechanisms of his steel arms.

  Goliath slammed back, in turn. Iron Man’s armor, plus his powerful stabilizing gyros, kept him from being hurled back like a rag dummy. But within his suit, he began to feel the thuds of those hammering fists. And with one of Goliath’s fantastic blows, Iron Man heard a cracking sound.

  Then a wire snapped and power relays switched over, cutting off Iron Man’s gyro. Goliath’s next blow sent him scudding across the floor like a hockey puck, to end up against a steel post with a loud clang.

  As Cap and Hawkeye dashed up and helped him to his feet, Iron Man gasped, “He opened up a crack in my suit. A tiny one, but enough to put my suit partly out of commission. Let’s face it, guys…I’ve been licked.”

  “Don’t let it throw you,” said Cap. “Remember, none of us has ever had an all-out fight with Goliath, for keeps. We just never knew what a human powerhouse he was. Well, your turn, Hawkeye, and don’t spare the arrows.”

  “I’ve got a million of ’em,” boasted Hawkeye, then added wryly, “But only a few will shake up Goliath. I hope
.”

  Springing out into the open, with a clear shot toward Goliath across the floor, Hawkeye whipped the first arrow from his quiver to his bowstring and let fly, all in a second’s blur of motion.

  Straight and true sped the arrow, at Goliath’s heart.

  Watching from her aerial perch, the Wasp’s blood froze. Had Hawkeye broken the pledge and shot a kill-arrow at her man?

  But the arrow’s point opened out to release an instant—inflating bag under rock-hard pressure, and what amounted to a boxer’s glove slammed into Goliath’s chest. However, the arrow’s momentum brought the impact to that of a blow by the world’s heavyweight champion plus the kick of a mule and the blow of a sledgehammer.

  But it might as well have been delivered against the side of a battleship with twelve-inch armor-plate, for all that Goliath felt of it. He just started to walk menacingly toward his tormentor.

  Faster than the eye could follow, Hawkeye let fly with the stun arrow, the brass-knuckle arrow, the bone-blow arrow, and a dozen more, all aimed at what might be vulnerable spots on Goliath’s body.

  “He’s about as vulnerable as a brick wall,” Hawkeye growled to himself. “But maybe my bolo arrow will make him flop hard on his head and knock himself out.”

  The bolo arrow whistled through the air, its weighted cords swirling and catching Goliath around the ankles. He kept walking as if unaware of any entanglement, and the cords only whipped around and snapped apart like rotten string.

  “I see it, but I don’t believe it,” Hawkeye said with a curse. “That was beryllium-steel heavy-gauge wire he waded through. You’d better think of something mighty quick, bowman…or you’ll bow to defeat, man, and that’s no joke.”

  Watching, the Wasp tried to choke down unwilling pride that welled up in her. “My Gulliver is putting the other Avengers in the shade. What a man’s man’s man!” Her face went gaunt. “But we don’t want him to win, because then Karzz wins. Oh, Goliath, don’t fight your best…please…please….”

  But Karzz, re-enforcing his hypnotic control with another charge of the mental slave-ray, was exhortmg: “Battle your best, Goliath. Fight as you’ve never fought before.”

  “I obey, master,” growled the titan, caught in his spell.

  Hawkeye had one last arrow to try. Unlike the others, it flew leisurely, as if in slow motion. Then it began curving and looped around Goliath in circles, unreeling something invisible.

  “The plasma chain has to work,” prayed the archer. “It’s a form energized plasma particles that link up into a chain more rigid than a steel chain, or the heaviest rope. The arrow tightens this plasma-rope around the victim’s chest like a superbearhug. With his breath knocked out, Goliath ought to say uncle.”

  Goliath stopped short, obviously feeling the invisible rope winding around his chest and tightening like a python’s coils. He began wheezing and fighting for air. But then, he started expanding his chest, throwing every muscle into the effort until his face turned red.

  There was the faintest snapping sound and then his lungs gulped in fresh air.

  “Now I believe in miracles,” groaned Hawkeye. “He broke a plasma-chain tough enough to haul in a whale with a rod and reel. That guy isn’t human.”

  In one bravely mad last try at victory, Hawkeye ran close to the towering man, firing stun arrows, hoping the added force at close range would win out. Goliath shrugged them off with little grunts, then seized Hawkeye by the arm and flung him through the air like some debris that had gotten in his way.

  “He went up so high he’ll be killed by the drop,” gloated Karzz.

  Wasp put horrified hands in front of her tiny face. Oh, no…no! she thought…that big lovable tease…every bone in his body will break.

  But a breezy voice sang from the air. “Don’t count me out, anybody…not with my hook-rope arrow.”

  In mid-air, twisting agilely, Hawkeye was pulling his bow and shooting an arrow upward. From its tubular shaft unwound a thin cord with a hook at the upper end, which neatly caught in a beam higher up. With the other end anchored to his belt, Hawkeye’s downward plunge was halted by the tautening rope, with enough stretchiness to cushion the jerk and avoid snapping.

  Swinging down like a jungle man on his vine, Hawkeye landed neatly on two feet near Cap and Iron Man, who were still pale.

  “Did you quiverers,”, chided Hawkeye, “think I had reached the end of my quiver?” But his blithe tone ended and became terse dismay. “Two down, one to go…against Goliath, the human bulldozer.”

  chapter 18

  Destiny’s Decision

  Cap was already loosening the straps of his shield. Darting out into the open, he swung his whole body into a throw. The spinning steel implement sailed toward Goliath edge foremost, cutting through the air.

  “It would slice even Goliath in half if that edge ever hit him,” thought Cap. “But I put ‘English’ in my throw and now it’ll turn….”

  Obediently, the shield turned part-way broadside and arched upward, clanging against Goliath’s temple with the force of a falling meteorite. Then the ricocheting shield spun in a tight hairpin curve and circled back into Cap’s hands. It had taken him untold hours of practice to throw it that way, like a boomerang.

  Back in the old war days, the star-spangled champion had often laid low three or four Nazis at a clip with his skipping shield, or had smashed down thick oak doors, and even hammered machine guns into broken junk.

  Cap knew his eyes were lying. Goliath should be sprawled flat on the floor from the power-packed blow of the shield. It must be a delusion that he was seeing Goliath still standing there, only reeling a little and regaining his balance while rubbing his head a bit. But Cap knew it was no delusion when the massive man came charging toward him like a flesh-and-blood juggernaut.

  Cap slung his shield again, hoping repeated blows might at last do the knockout job. But Goliath was cannily watching and swiftly ducked. When the boomeranging shield returned and Cap swung it again at the giant’s middle, Goliath turned and took the blow on his broad back where it could do little harm. And that also made the shield drop there, out of reach of its owner.

  Tensing up every muscle in his body, Cap went into his famed crouch and then drove forward, his legs churning like steam pistons. The sheer tremendous force of his body plunge had often bowled over a dozen Nazis in the old days. And one time, in an exhibition football game for charity, Cap had carried the ball through eleven tacklers—the whole opposing team—for a touchdown. Not once, but four times. And when they tried to score, the opposing ball-runners had been stopped time and again by what they had sworn, in a punch-drunk state, was a solid stone wall that had suddenly blocked their way. The wall always had strange colors—red, white, and blue.

  But Cap was driving himself faster than ever in his life before—either life, in the past or present. He got up to better-than-Olympic speed and slammed his lowered head squarely in Goliath’s middle.

  Goliath grunted and sat down. Bouncing back, Cap also sat on the floor, head whirling. That was all he had done, pushed Goliath over with his bulldozing plunge.

  But he was otherwise unhurt and was about to clamber back on his feet.

  Cap quickly leaped up, his fists within reach of the sitting Goliath’s face before he could rise. Unmatched shoulder muscles and the world’s best biceps went into every punch that Cap pounded into Goliath’s face with the rapidity of a machine gun, hoping to knock him out by sheer brain-bruising slugging.

  Suddenly, the roof fell in on Cap. That was what it seemed like when a giant weapon—five huge knuckles—exploded against his chin.

  Cap’s arching body flew backward and landed in a heap against a steel post. Then his shield came sailing, propelled by Goliath. Cap ducked and it struck the post, cracking it in half, but with the weight of the dome above exerting pressure and keeping the broken ends pressed together.

  Cap limped back to Hawkeye and Iron Man. All three looked at each other with lips set into grim lin
es.

  The Wasp came flying down, eyes haunted with horror. She knew what they had to do next.

  “This is it,” Cap said flatly. “All three of us this time—to the death.”

  “Please,” moaned the Wasp. “Isn’t there some other way? Must Goliath…die?”

  Cap turned hollow eyes on her. “It’s either him, and Karzz…or all the people on earth…three billion souls.” His voice went gentle. “Sorry, kid. Don’t watch. Fly up in the rafters and wait till it’s all over.”

  As the insect-girl flitted away, a tiny tear dropped on Cap’s hand. He looked at it for a long, silent moment. Then he drew himself up, giving the command that only he could give, and for which he alone was responsible.

  “This time, men, it’s kill—or be killed. Let’s get to it.”

  Stepping out into the open, Cap poised his shield for a deadly throw at Goliath’s throat. Hawkeye’s drawn bow was ready to speed a fatal arrow at the giant’s heart. Iron Man raised both his hands to spew forth killer-rays.

  And now they noticed that Goliath held a weapon too, something that looked like a blunderbuss with a flaring barrel.

  “I signaled the future,” called out Karzz, “for them to send the death-beam gun, which Goliath will use to mow you down. Prepare for death, Avengers!”

  Fate seemed to hold its breath.

  But the Wasp was challenging destiny. The tiny winged girl darted down toward Karzz at high speed. Checking constantly in his wrist-monitor, Karzz saw the Wasp coming straight toward his face, snapping on her sting-ray.

  “Fool, girl,” he cried, “are you trying to blind me?” He flung a hand up before his eyes protectively. But arriving at bullet speed, the Wasp used her jabbing stingbeam to slice through the headband that held the hypnotic mirror. It clattered to the floor.

  The noise seemed to snap Goliath out of a trance. He looked at the weapon in his hands, bewildered. “Goliath!” screamed the tiny creature buzzing around his head. “Don’t obey Karzz any more. Those three men advancing are your friends. You are free of Karzz’s evil control. Throw the weapon away…throw it away!”