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| Layout of Avengers Mansion. Double-Click to enlarge |
“Ah, nothing like a good night’s sleep,” said Hawkeye, coming into the conference room at Avengers Mansion to find the Wasp already there. “Not to mention a hot bath, a change of uniform, and a seven-course dinner. I feel great.
“Like a novus homo?” said the Wasp. “That’s French. for ‘new man,’ old. thing.”
“Look, Fraulein, don’t give me any of that linguistic guff the way Karzz does,” growled Hawkeye. Then he went on musingly. “I wonder if people think we Avengers never bother with life’s trivialities—sleep, showers, meals, trimming our fingernails, and such. I’ll bet they think I Wear my Hawkeye uniform day in and day out, without a change.”
“Don’t you?” queried the Wasp in wide-eyed innocence.
“Very funny. It so happens I have three full uniforms. two of them always out at the cleaners.”
He eyed the Wasp with a devilish glint in his eye. “Your elastic uniform has stretched from small to large so many times that your leotards have baggy knees.”
“Why, that’s pretty funny,” laughed the Wasp.
“Yeah?” said Hawkeye, startled and pleased.
“Yes, but it only proves,” said the girl sweetly, “that you’re a Hawkeye android. The real Hawkeye serves nothing but stale corn with mold on it.”
Hawkeye smote his forehead dramatically. “Why do I always play stooge for you?” he said plaintively.
They were bantering as usual, but only to coyer up the gnawing dread within. Multiple Earth dooms launched by Karzz the Conqueror...to crush this thought they had to play a game of brittle humor.
“Speaking of stretch uniforms,” put in Goliath, “shed a sympathetic tear for Wasp and me. Our special super-elastic costumes have to stretch and shrink from insect proportions up to human size—and to ten-foot tallness in my case—along with our bodies. They wear out in a month and it costs us plenty to replace them constantly.”
“And what about my arrows?” retorted Hawkeye, not to be outdone at hardships. “Each is made of special parts and tricky gizmos that I have to sweat over through long hours.”
“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, it 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 NASA satellites 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 US. 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 a 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 l 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...l almost said Ironic Man,” quipped Hawkeye. “But the thought is plenty strangeville. The joke would really he 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 Quinjet to the coast. Iron Man has already wired ahead for our deep-sea boat to be ready.”
Five minutes later a countdown sent the Quinjet 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 scientific 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. l’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 giant glowing tentacle!”
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 dryly. “Mr. Squeezer decided he had an appointment elsewhere.” His voice sobered. “I only hope that electrical display didn’t warn Karzz of our coining.”
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 lighted 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 to port,” 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 seabottom. 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 Ant-Man and Wasp, We’ll be invisible to Karzz, and will be waiting to do our bit when we see the chance.”
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