The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker Read online

  Goliath hesitated, his half-hypnotized mind still unable to think straight. With a curse, Karzz snatched up his hypnotic device and fumblingly tried to aim it at Goliath.

  The three advancing Avengers had stopped, and they withheld their death blows.

  “Goliath!” screeched the Wasp again, desperately. “You are an Avenger!”

  “Yes,” roared Goliath suddenly, twisting the weapon in his hands into a tangled wreck. Then he turned balefully toward Karzz, who was just shining the violet-green light in his eyes.

  A huge hand swept across the alien’s face, knocking him a dozen feet away. “Now I know who I am, and what you are,” bellowed Goliath.

  “Thank heaven!” sobbed the Wasp, flitting over him. Then she flew over to where Karzz lay groaning. “Ever hear of this expression—cherchez la femme.”

  “Vive la femme, I say,” boomed Goliath to the other three. “We’re back together, Avengers.”

  “Right, High Pockets,” said Hawkeye, getting there first. “Shake.”

  A moment later, Hawkeye sagged at the knees as a huge paw grasped his. “Me and my big ideas,” Hawkeye groaned. “Let go, Goliath, before you crush my superb arrow-shooting hand.”

  “But what’s this all about?” asked Goliath, puzzled. “The last I remember I was charging Karzz up in his room and he was shining some kind of light in my eyes.” Cap rapidly filled him in.

  Goliath’s face turned pale halfway through the account, at the tragedy that had nearly wrecked their group. Then, in black fury, he strode to Karzz and picked him up by the collar, dangling him off the floor.

  “You murderous little pipsqueak!” roared Goliath. “Now you’re in my power and I’m going to….”

  Karzz shrieked in terror at what he saw in Goliath’s eyes.

  But Iron Man called out, “Stop, Goliath. We need Karzz alive. He was the one who launched the four earth dooms….”

  The Avengers looked at one another, the joy of reunion wiped out by this stark realization.

  “…and he’s going to save the earth now,” finished Iron Man.

  They all stared. “You’ve flipped, Rust Pot,” said Hawkeye. “He started four destructive processes that even he couldn’t stop now.”

  “He can halt them very simply,” returned Iron Man. “Remember Karzz is the master of time. He used timeteleportation to travel into the past. He used the timestopping ray to ‘freeze’ us once. And….”

  Iron Man paused and faced the alien. “Karzz, can you turn time backward for earth…back to the day before your four dooms began?”

  “Yes,” nodded Karzz. “And I’ll do it if you promise my life is safe afterward.”

  “Agreed,” came from Cap immediately. There simply was no other choice, with the fate of a whole world at stake.

  “Time,” announced Karzz, “will now be reversed for earth.”

  They were in Anthony Stark’s laboratories the next day. Iron Man and Karzz had worked through the night, putting together a vast machine according to the alien’s blueprints. They were ready now to use it. Karzz pushed the master button. No sound came from the machine, no sign of anything happening. But on the wall, the hands of the clock began spinning backward.

  “Down in Antarctica,” said Iron Man, “the heat device has gone dead and ocean waters will recede until the ice cap grows back to its original state. In the South Pacific, all eruptions are ceasing and the molten magma is flowing back down as the crust heals itself of cracks caused by the Vulcan Machine.”

  He pointed upward.

  “Above earth, the super-wind is dying down as the Storm Satellite vanishes, whisking back to the future where it came from. And the giant comet, drawn by ultramagnetic attraction, is now being driven back into outer space by antimagnetic forces.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t ask me to explain it in any logical way. All I can promise you, from Karzz’s formulas and chrono-equations, is that in some weird way that twentieth-century science cannot yet understand, time is turning backward and healing earth of its mortal wounds.” The proof came via radio as a puzzled and joyful announcer said, “Amazingly, the four menacing phenomena that seemed to be building up to the end of the world have subsided…nobody knows why.”

  “Except us,” murmured Iron Man.

  “I have carried out my end of the bargain,” said Karzz, stepping toward the door. “In turn, my life is spared….”

  Iron Man blocked his way. “Agreed, chum. But you’re not going anywhere—except back to the seventieth century.”

  “Nein!…non! …nyet!” babbled Karzz frantically,

  his face reflecting stark terror. “Back there I was a defeated conqueror, hated and despised. An exile, a condemned man. They will hunt me down ruthlessly and execute me...”

  “That’s their business,” said Iron Man shortly, whipping the cover off a new apparatus. “I brought along your time-teleportation device from the sea dome. I’m setting the dials for the future, and now….”

  Karzz was still screaming in protest as a purling ray bathed him, fading him out of the twentieth century and whisking him to the seventieth.

  “The worst punishment he could have,” said Iron Man, “was to be sent back to the defeat, disgrace, and death he tried to escape from. Karzz the Conqueror won’t have a second chance to try to conquer time and change history.”

  “Oh, well, another job done,” drawled Hawkeye, patting back a false yawn. “I’m glad I saved the world…with the help of you other Avengers, of course.”

  “Knowing how modest you are,” said the Wasp, “I won’t tell the public you did it practically single-handedly, or you’d be mobbed.”

  Captain America smiled. All was back to normal.

  “Avengers, assemble!” he barked, and added, “For a celebration.”