AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH-WRECKER "Chapter Fifteen: Traps of Death"

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Chapter Fifteen: 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 of 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 pace. 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 oft 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 saying 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 repulsor 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. “l 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 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....”

Goliath’s mighty form came crashing through the side wall, out of range of the time-ray. Picking up a huge  chunk of cement, Goliath hurled it at the time-ray projector, smashing it to bits.

The frozen figures came alive and continued where they had left off. Cap’s driving legs propelled him forward, and his rock-like fist clobbered Karzz on the chin, flinging him limply against the wall. Seeing Cap had things under control, Hawkeye and Iron Man relaxed.

“It looks as if one powerhouse punch by Cap knocked him colder’n a mackerel,” crowed Hawkeye—too soon.

For the sagging figure opened its eyes and spoke to them. “You forget my human form is only a disguise for...” His finger jabbed a belt-stud and they watched in revulsion as they saw the transformation that only Iron Man had witnessed before on Mount Everest.

“...for my true alien form.”

The hideous monster with purple-blotched skin, green lips, blue hair, and fiery red eyes stood before them on his hooved feet, looking like a nightmare that had somehow become reality.

“I can stand breathing your poisonous oxygenated air for a few minutes,” the ghastly creature mouthed. “And in this form we have one elusive attribute, that of turning into intangible amorphous material.”

With that, the monster turned milky in color and formed a cloud of smoke that streamed out the door. Goliath futilely tried to seize it, but he grasped nothing -solid.

Running out, they saw the smoke-alien pouring down through the dome without need of steps, thence into the water-hatchway and into its own deep-sea vehicle parked next to that of the Avengers. Evidently changing inside to solid form, and back t-o human-like Karzz, his amplified voice came to them as they all raced down the stairway.

“You have won a minor skirmish,” he snarled, “driving me away from my dome. But you will never. capture me when I vanish somewhere in your vast outside world, lost when I mingle among three billion people.”

The Avengers dashed up just as the inner door closed. On the other side, they knew, the sea hatch was filing with water as the outer hatch -opened to let in the sea. Then Karzz could speed away in his deep-sea boat, with a long head-start -on them before the hatchway could be put through its cycle again.

Panting, Cap called a hurried conference.

“Let’s size up the situation. Even though we didn’t nab Karzz, what advantages did we gain? For one thing, we got control of this undersea hideout of his. Will he have to come back for any reason?”

“I think so,” said Iron Man. “Up in his control room, I noticed another ray device that I think may be his time teleportation machine—his only way of returning to the future. If I’m right, he’ll have to come back for that sooner or later-or die when the world ends.”

“Good!” cried Cap. “Then we’ll leave one guard here. Let’s see...how about Goliath? He’s equal to ten other men.”

“Okay,” agreed the giant man. “Just let that weasel try to sneak back in and get past me.”

“The rest of. us back in the deep-sea boat,” waved Cap, as the inner door opened again, drained of Water.

Soon, after going through the egress process, they sped out through the outer hatch.

Iron Man tuned his long-range sonar, reading off measurements from its ping signals. “Just as I thought,” he muttered. “Karzz has a super-speed boat and is already surfacing.”

Cap looked around slowly, haggardly. “That means to find him We’ll have to search the world.”

“Every country?” gasped the Wasp. “Every city, town, and hamlet? Among millions and millions of people?”

“Talk about a needle lost in a haystack,” said Hawkeye bleakly-—“this is like trying to find. one grain of sand lost on a beach. 'It’s hopeless.”

“Not the way we’re going to do it,” spoke up Iron Man. “We’re going to hunt him electronically. I’ll show you what I mean back at headquarters.”

To Be Continued Tomorrow with "Alien Hunt" at Atomic Kommie Comics!

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by Otto Binder
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AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH-WRECKER "Chapter Fourteen: Destination Deep-Sea"

Layout of Avengers Mansion. Double-Click to enlarge

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Chapter 14 Destination Deep-Sea

“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.”

To Be Continued Monday with "Traps of Death"!

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AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH-WRECKER "Chapter Eleven: Underground Duel"

Art by John Buscema & Vince Colletta

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Chapter 11: Underground Duel

So was the Wasp ready. That was all she was waiting for—to know about those deadly buttons. That was what Goliath had previously whispered to her: “After I inveigle Karzz to spill the beans, keeping his attention on me, you do your stuff as the girl with the swinging stinger.”

And now, diving down from her perch like a miniature hawk, the Wasp aimed her sting-ray at the alien’s hand, poised over his fatal push button. But what was Karzz saying...?

“Your petite lady friend thinks I'm unaware of her,” and he looked at what seemed to be a wristwatch on his other hand. “But my wrist-monitor, which magnifies microscopic objects, has been following her all the time. And now she’ll have company.”

Karzz flipped a switch. A panel opened in his control board. Out flew a bug that made a peculiar metallic buzz, which rose in an ominous crescendo.

In mid-air the Wasp came to a halt, startled at what she saw coming. “A mechanical bug,” she gasped.

It was twice her size, and was made of gleaming metal, its wings operating from some tiny internal motor. In shape, it was like no one species of insect, but was a hybrid mixture of all types, with six jointed saw-edged legs. It had two huge mandibles that clanged as they opened and shut, and a long steel stinger like a knight’s lance. It was a formidable machine-powered robot insect against which frail Wasp had no chance.

As the entomological Frankenstein came buzzing toward her like a ferocious praying mantis, the Wasp frantically began twisting and looping in the air, hoping to elude it.

“She will. never escape that bug bloodhound,” promised Karzz, watching his miniature monitor. “It has target-seeking sensors like a guided missile, attuned to the Wasp’s human heartbeat. The pounding of her pulse is all the robot bug needs to hang on her trail and duplicate every maneuver she makes.”

And now- a deadly dogfight—between two pseudo-insects—took place.

No matter which way the Wasp darted, the miniature metallic monster followed relentlessly. When she tried a straightaway flight at top speed, the robot bug quickly began putting on steam and overtaking her.

An idea struck her. She flew toward the cave wall and darted into a crack in the stone. “It’s too narrow for him to squeeze in,” she breathed thankfully.

But outside the crack, the tiny tin. terror began extending a steel-spring “proboscis,” further and further. At its end were barbs, and Karzz’s jeering voice drifted to the Wasp’s ears as he watched all this on his wrist-monitor:

“Those barbs are poisoned, ma cheri, One touch and you shrivel into a miniature mummy.”

Wasp was forced to slip aside before the barbed nemesis could reach her, then work her way out of the crack. But now she was in the open again, at the mercy of the pursuing robot insect. Was there no escape for her?

“Coward!” said Karzz mockingly to Goliath, who stood helplessly. “Why don’t you aid your girl friend? Surely a great giant like you could defeat a mere mechanical bug.”

But of course, that’s just what Goliath couldn’t.. do—not as Goliath. As Karzz gloatingly glued his eyes on his wrist-monitor screen, he did not notice Goliath shrinking rapidly, and vanishing.

A moment later, the Ant-Man sprang into action, scuttling across the floor to the Vulcan Machine and swiftly climbing it, with many handholds available to him in his tiny size. When he was perched somewhere near the top, on a huge pipe, he cupped his lips and called: “Wasp! It’s me, Ant-Man. Lead that tin bug over this way.”

Hearing the shrill shout, Wasp swung up toward the pipe, the mechanical bug pursuing as he was programmed to do. Ant-Man’s shout was no warning to its one-track tape-operated computer mind.

So it was that Ant-Man was able to time a long desperate leap—and land squarely on the robot bug’s back. The force of the impact drove the artificial creature down to the floor with a metallic clank.

 “Hide, Wasp!” the Ant-Man shouted. “Don’t fly. He’s only programmed to follow your flying form. If he sees nothing like that, he will stay here and slug it out with me, whether he likes it or not.”

And with that, Ant-Man unwound a terrific blow.

“Right at your chin, if any,” he barked.

But the blow that had stunned a tiger beetle, and might have knocked other bugs cold, had no more effect on the heavy metallic bug than a love pat would.

Meanwhile Karzz started, and stared closely at his wrist-monitor. “So, Goliath assumed a tiny form to tackle my robot Wasp-killer, eh? Well, a twist of the remote controls, here beside the monitor, and he’ll turn into an invincible Ant-Man killer.”

The robot bug, indifferent to Ant-Man before, now turned toward him, its heady eye-sensors focusing on its new prey, according to the instructions impulsed from its alien master.

With a prodigious leap, it pounced on the Ant-Man before he could scramble back. It’s saw-edged legs raked across Ant-Man’s back painfully, and two vise-like mandibles clamped shut, barely missing biting off his arm.

Then Ant-Man wrenched free and swung around, crouching, and wondering what next to expect from his formidable foe. He did not have long to wait. The robot bug buzzed into the air and came down, stinger first, ready to impale Ant-Man through and through.

With trigger-touch reflexes inherent to his size, Ant-Man sprang back. But now, as he tried to run for hiding, the buzzing mechanical creature darted down time after time with its stinger.

“And if you try changing back to your Goliath size,” Warned Karzz, “I’ll sic -the killer--bug back -on the Wasp.” He hardly needed to add that it the Wasp took on human size, Karzz could instantly seize the helpless girl.

It was a deadly trap, no matter how Ant-Man looked at it. He kept running from the flying robot bug and its steel stinger.  before Ant-Man stretched the barren floor that to him was a mile long. Panting, he found it harder each time to avoid that aerial rapier, for his muscles were tiring.

Watching his wrist-monitor, like some Roman emperor at the arena while gladiators fought to -the death, Karzz used his fingernail to touch. a small switch that sent a new command to the robot bug.

“The coup de grâce,” spoke Karzz aloud. “Here it comes, Ant-Man. Don’t forget my mechanical flyer is really an attack plane in miniaturized bug-like form, so...”

And now, to Ant-Man's horror, a flap opened in the side of the flying robot and a snout poked out. A miniature machine gun began spraying tiny bullets at Ant-Man, kicking up dust at his heels.

But Ant-Man’s hair, sensitive to subtle vibrations and forces, like an insect’s antennae—an attribute that automatically came with his bug size—detected something nearby. He swung that way, toward a bluish stone lying on the cave floor.

The bullet-spewing bug now slowed down to set its sights carefully for the killing salvo. But suddenly, the robot was yanked through the air by another force, and was tumbling out of control.

Karzz stared at his -tiny monitor “Caramba! What happened? Why doesn’t it respond to my controls?’

“Because,” shouted the tiny Ant-Man, watching the killer-bug sailing at mounting speed, “that blue stone I ran toward is a lodestone, a natural magnet. And your mechanical bug, of course, has a steel body.”

Drawn inexorably to the lodestone, the robot bug crashed into it at high speed and burst apart into wires, wheels, and metallic debris.

Muttering what must have been imprecations in his native tongue, the alien poised his fingernail over a red button on the wrist-monitor. “There’s still one thing I can do...I can press the destruction button. Though the robot bug has already burst apart, within its head is a charge of radioisotopic explosive, enough. to blow you to eternity, Ant-Man.”

“No . . . no!” cried the Wasp. But she was waiting for this—if Karzz made the wrong move. Like a tiny dive-bomber, she zoomed down at his hand, aiming her sting beam.

She jabbed deep into flesh . . . but nothing. happened.

Momentarily diverted, Karzz saw the buzzing Wasp and grinned ghoulishly. “Why didn’t I yell in pain, my dear? Can you guess?”

“You’re an android,” gasped the girl, in realization. She couldn’t sting this insensitive carbon copy of Karzz and produce pain. But there was something else she could do....

The Wasp’s next dive aimed her sting-beam at the android’s wrist-monitor. All the drilling power struck home, shattering the screen to bits and scattering microminiature components underneath.

“My robot bug’s remote controls—Wrecked!” cried Karzz.

“Right,” sang back the Wasp. “You can’t set off the destruction button. now. Ant-Man is safe.”

Karzz the android—himself guided by remote controls and a monitor into which the real Karzz was staring, elsewhere on earth—seized an ordinary fly-swatter from a hook on the wall. “I’ll swat you myself. . . .”

Swinging the swatter, Karzz suddenly turned and stopped abruptly, seeing the giant man towering before him. “Ant-Man...back in Goliath form!”

“Yes, and my anger is as big as I am.” Suddenly his arms went around Karzz, force-field and all. “After all,” rumbled Goliath, “even with that invisible shield, it’s only ten feet around.”

Yanking the Karzz android and his energy bubble off the floor, Goliath hurled them straight at the Vulcan Machine with titanic force, aiming for electronic devices within. its heart.

A gigantic spark leaped forth, piercing the energy bubble and electrocuting the android into a blackened mass, It could hardly be called a corpse, since it had never been truly alive.

“Get out of the cave, Wasp!” roared Goliath now. As she ran into a side passage through which they had entered before, Goliath strode to Where two limestone columns in the middle of the big cavern extended from floor to roof.

By some freak of geological processes, through eons of time, two giant stalagmites from the floor and two stalactites from the ceiling had met and merged.

Crooking an elbow around each of these natural. pillars, Goliath strained mightily, knotting every muscle in his massive body. Stone creaked and groaned.

Suddenly, like a cannon-shot, both limestone pillars snapped. A ceiling weakened by ages of seeping waters now began to collapse, as Goliath had surmised would happen.

With a resounding roar louder than a hundred thunder-claps, the entire cavern collapsed. inward. Untold tons of rock crashed down on the Vulcan Machine, flattening it into a hissing, smoking ruin. Nothing man-made, or alien-made, could withstand that crushing force. Nor anything alive....

“Wasp,” Karzz spoke calmly at his unknown retreat far away, tuning his monitor screen to her. “Goliath didn’t accomplish anything. When the robot bug chased you away from my control board, I immediately pressed the final push button, sending the ultrasonic broadcast of trigger Waves down into the wor1d’s crust. Such sonic vibrations, as you know, follow rock strata everywhere. Thus, the destruction of my Vulcan Machine now was a futile gesture.”

Karzz’s voice rang triumphantly. “In nine days, along with earth dooms one and two, volcanic catastrophe number three will also happen, right on schedule.”

His frosty eyes stared straight at the Wasp now, and there was a curl on his lips. “But I think the end of the World, for you, has already happened—Goliath, of course, could never come out of the wrecked cavern alive.”

“You’re right,” murmured the Wasp. “Absolutely right, Karzz.”

She smiled and lifted up her palm, on which stood a tiny form. “But the Ant-Man could! No matter how many broken stones tell and piled up, there was plenty of space between then for an insect-sized man to huddle in safety, and then crawl out to freedom.”

Karzz cursed, eloquently, as he watched the Ant-Man shoot up and assume his human form, alongside the Wasp. “But l’m glad,” he said then, with a malicious grin. “It means that you will be around to die with the rest of the human race, nine days from now, when the world comes to an end. Now . . . aloha.”

His floating image faded away, as a last harsh laugh rippled mockingly through the air.

“That’s true,” whispered the Wasp. “We won against the Karzz android, but lost to Karzz himself.”

“Well, at least one thing we know,” muttered Henry Pym, “is that the real Karzz, who was neither at Antarctica, nor here in the South Seas, must he in the Sahara. Here’s hoping Captain America can settle that inhuman monster’s hash there.”

“Let’s get back to Avenger headquarters fast,” said the Wasp, “and rejoin Iron Man and Hawkeye there. They must be on the way back. Then we can all go to Cap’s aid in the Sahara. It looks as if the big showdown will be there.”

But Captain America is already engaged in combat with Karzz, as we'll see tomorrow at Atomic Kommie Comics in the chapter writer Otto Binder just had to call...
"Desert Danger"!
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Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker
by Otto Binder
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AVENGERS BATTLE THE EARTH-WRECKER "Chapter Ten: Doom Machine"

Art by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers

Read the Previous Chapter HERE!

Chapter 10: Doom Machine

Yet Karzz was still in Antarctica! And still driving his monstrous tractor tank at the fleeing figure of Hawkeye, dashing madly but hopelessly across the smooth snowfields with no slightest haven in sight.

And the Golden Avenger, diving at meteoric speed, had no chance to reach his doomed companion—at least not in person.

But from his right arm’s hollow metal sleeve shot forth a steel spring that uncoiled to its full length of a hundred feet. At its end was a hook that caught expertly in Hawkeye’s belt. The archer was yanked upward just as an enormous spiked tread rolled crunchingly over the spot he had vacated.

 Reeling in the steel spring, Iron Man said, “My timer shows that was just -three-tenths of a second before contact between you and the treads.”

“A closer shave,” said Hawkeye, only the slightest tremor in his voice betraying how shaken up he was, “was never claimed even by a TV razor advertiser.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry, Iron Head, for gypping you out of collecting my insurance.”

“What .insurance?” retorted the Golden Avenger. “You know quite well no insurance company would be idiotic enough to insure any of. us. The Avengers live the most dangerous lives on Earth. Even Lloyds of London reneged.”

Iron Man was just chatting to allow Hawkeye to regain his shattered composure. It was not easy for a man to be snatched from the jaws of. death. by a split hairline of time. But then he saw the bowman’s lip curling in his usual devil-may-care smirk.

“Thanks for the assist, Rusty Joints,” Hawkeye said. “I’ll let you hand me my arrows some time when I’m firing with my unfailing skill.” A black frown swept over his face. “Which reminds me, I’m going to get that outer-space thug right now. Ever hear of the old soft underbelly deal?”

“You mean . . . ?”

“Yeah. While I was being hounded by that coffee-grinder, I looked back and saw that where the drive-shaft for the treads extends up inside to the engines there’s a hole with an inch clearance. An inch is all an arrow needs to get through.”

“But if you stand below in front oft the machine again,” said Iron Man, “he’ll grind you into human hamburger.”

“He won’t see me,” said. Hawkeye mysteriously. “Just fly me a mile away and you’ll see.”

When Iron Man put the archer down, a mile off, Hawkeye first pulled something from his belt and attached it to his bow.

“My telescopic sights,” he said.

 Then he withdrew a thick—shafted arrow and notched it. Carefully he squinted through his sights until the cross-hairs were on that hole he had seen which was visible from any ground-level position.

When Hawkeye let fly, Iron Man was startled to see the back end of the arrow burst forth with fire. He had never taken stock of Hawkeye’s full repertory of amazing arrows.

“My rocket arrow,” crowed. the archer, as it sped at ever-increasing speed through the ice-cold air.

Watching through his telescopic sights, Hawk-eye suddenly exclaimed: “Bull’s-eye! But then, aren’t all my shots‘? There it goes up into the soft underbelly of the machine, up into the inner works, where—”

There was a muted boom from the distant machine and smoke squirted from its seams

“I gave Karzz a hot tip,” said Hawkeye, grinning. “An arrow tip armed with superthermite that makes steel burn like paper. He’s probably yelling for the fire department right now. Let’s go watch the fun.”

No less eager than Hawkeye to see the results, iron Man hauled his companion through the air for a mile, to land near the Infrared Beamer. It now ground to a stop and started wheeling crazily in a circle. Muffled explosions sounded inside, and a hole melted in the hull from the inside out. From the hole shot a lurid red glow, as of a dozen forest fires burning fiercely.

“It looks as if my thermite arrow was like a fuse, setting off various flammables,” chortled the bowman. “And here comes the cornered rat himself  out of his tinder box.”

Soot-streaked, Karzz came scuttling out of a hatchway down a ladder that suddenly burned off at the top, tumbling him the rest of the way into the snow. He stood up dazedly, staggering away from the huge pyre that his machine had now become.

But then he shrugged, facing the two men with his usual aplomb.

“You think you’ve won, eh? But before you destroyed my Infrared Beamer, I shot a boring rocket down through the ice, to come to rest a mile below. In that rocket is the heat-current radiator I told you of.”

He leered at them.

“In nine days, its temperature charge will have built up to where the entire Antarctic ice cap melts, flooding the world. It will happen the same day that the giant comet arrives from space, to deal earth another shattering blow. Two of my Earth dooms have been launched, and no power on earth can stop them.”

It was true, Iron Man knew. No digging machine on Earth had the capability of penetrating the massive ice sheet covering Antarctica, to reach and destroy the deadly device buried a mile down.

Karzz had won round two, after all.

“But at least you’ll die,” pronounced Iron Man, bringing up his right-hand gauntlet, “from a blast of my kill-ray.”

“Je suis sans souci,” said Karzz evenly. At Hawkeye's blank look, he translated: “I am without worry. Iron Man fails to remember that all his puny rays were stopped before by an invisible force-shield, which surrounds me now.”

“But since then,” hissed the Golden Avenger, remembering those hours in Anthony Stark’s superbly equipped lab, “I analyzed your force-shield’s likely structure and devised a way to break through. it with this Z-ray . . .”

And, as a poisonous blue ray sprang from Iron Man’s transistorized finger projector, there was a puff of smoke.

Then…nothing.

“Holy Jumping Hannah!” shrieked Hawkeye, eyes wide in disbelief. .“I thought you were kidding. But you did it...you destroyed Karzz!” His elation died quickly and a haunted look came into his eyes. “Of course, we still have two earth dooms to face, but maybe a team of the world’s best scientists can prevent them. Anyway, we won’t have two other earth dooms to contend with . . .”

“Oui, you will, mon ami,” came a familiar voice.

“Karzz‘?” choked Hawkeye, aghast. “But-but if he’s dead…?”

They looked up. Floating down in thin air was an image of Karzz, shimmering as if cast from a distance. The image spoke: 

“All you destroyed was my android double.”

“Android double?” echoed Iron Man.

“Namely, a biological robot made of synthetic flesh-and-blood. Naturally, I could not set off three earth dooms simultaneously by myself. So I called for teleportation of my waiting android. doubles from my aides in the future.”

Hawkeye still thought it was a bad dream. “You mean that android could think, talk, and act like you?”

“Down to the last tiny item,” gloated the Karzz-image. “As for me, I’m somewhere else on earth, utterly safe. I'm. projecting my long-distance image and voice electronically to you from thousands of miles away.”

“Then you’re either in the South Seas or in the Sahara,” conjectured Iron Man.

“Brilliant,” mocked Karzz. “Now that you two have failed to halt earth doom number two, may I turn my full attention to the other two dooms, s’il vous plait?”

“That guy burns me,” exploded Hawkeye, “with his foreign phrase-dropping! If he’d only talk straight Americanese.”

“All right,” leered the image, fading out slowly like the Cheshire Cat with a last grin. “You Avengers are called champs. Is that spelled c-h-u-m-p-s?”

Almost foaming at the mouth in fury, Hawkeye ripped an arrow from his quiver and shot straight at the image just as it blinked out.

“Wait’ll we meet next time!” he raged. “I’ll crown him champ chump if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Simmer down, Hawkeye,” admonished Iron Man. “Your shouts are scaring half the penguins in Antarctica. Come on, I'll fly you back to Avenger headquarters. l just hope Goliath and the Wasp have their situation well in hand in the South Seas.”

Down in the cavern on a South Seas island, at sight of Karzz and his rumbling Vulcan Machine, Goliath shot himself up to his ten-foot stature, while the Wasp swiftly shrank to insect size—their fighting forms.

As the tiny winged girl flitted near his face, Goliath rapidly whispered a plan to her. “Got it,” she murmured, darting away.

Stealthily, Goliath picked up a huge boulder among several. that lay scattered about. Karzz still stood before a huge control board next to the machine, as if oblivious.

Flexing all his muscles in one mighty heave, Goliath flung the boulder at the control board.

Karzz turned smilingly. “Rather futile gesture, Tall One,” he said, touching a stud on his belt. A hissing dis-ray accurately struck the boulder in mid-flight, and all that was seen of it was vagrant smoke.

“I knew you were here all the time,” came the mocking tones of the alien. “You and your female companion were monitored the moment you entered the caves. What now, Big Oaf?”

Goliath was already rushing forward with another huge boulder, sprinting at a speed surprising for his bulk. When Karzz shot forth his dis-ray, Goliath dodged with trigger-tense agility.

Then he was upon Karzz, the boulder upraised in his hands, bringing it down with shattering force on his head.

Goliath was startled. He had expected Karzz to have his personal force-shield around him protectively, yet the boulder did not bounce away. Goliath was even more stunned to see the body of Karzz. turn transparent under the blow and then. fade from sight. 

“That was amusing,” chortled a voice behind Goliath. Whirling, he saw Karzz, alive and unharmed, coming around the corner of the giant machine. “It was a little game I purposely played, planting my three-dimensional image out in the open, exposed. It quickly exposed your presence, eh, big one with the little brain?”

Goliath lunged and drove his fist at the second Karzz, but this time his blow bounced back from an invisible shell.

“Naturally, I’m protected,” gloated Karzz. “Now listen to another amusing story of how Iron Man and Hawkeye killed me down in Antarctica.”

Karzz related the details of that episode. “And so you see,” he finished, “it was only my android double they destroyed.”

Goliath squinted his eyes, looking Karzz over from head to foot. “What about you now? Are you another android—or the real thing?”

“Quien sabe?” leered Karzz. “We’ll leave that as a tantalizing mystery. I. enjoy feeling like the proverbial cat playing with the mouse—a gigantic mouse named Goliath.”

“All right, the joke’s on me,” growled Goliath, exasperated. at these ingenious tricks. .

“And the punch line is that I could ray you down. on the spot,” came the grim rejoinder from Karzz, his fingers straying toward his belt.

“Maybe so,” admitted Goliath, fine beads of sweat on his brow. “But tell me one thing first—I’m asking out of curiosity. Did your Vulcan Machine start off that string of eruptions of long-dead volcanoes?”

Android or not, Karzz’s face shone with. sudden pride. “Yes, Goliath. And I grant you reprieve until you hear the full story of Earth doom number three, being launched here in this cave.”

Perched nearby in a crevice in the wall, the tiny Wasp smiled to herself. It was exactly what she and Goliath had planned, getting Karzz to boast of his accomplishment. It gave him sadistic satisfaction to have his Avenger opponents know, before they died, what coup he had pulled.

“The Vulcan Machine,” began Karzz, “is a generator of seismic waves. That is, it creates ground vibrations which travel down through the Earth’s crust to the molten magma, lying some twenty-five miles below.”

Goliath nodded in understanding. As scientist Henry Pym, he was well-acquainted with geological data about the earth’s structure.

“Now, earthquakes, as you know,” resumed Karzz, almost as if he were lecturing a class, “send forth seismic waves as their calling card. The seismographs of your scientists can pick them up and pinpoint where any earthquake occurs. But what is the cause of earthquakes?”

He paused, and Goliath took" the cue. “They are caused by deep-seated slips of gigantic masses of rock inside the crust, which in turn are caused by leakage of molten magma through. huge cracks.”

“Da, da,” nodded Karzz, “earthquakes are often the prelude to volcano eruptions, allowing a stream of molten rock to work its way up through. an ancient weakness in the so-called solid ground.”

He waved at his rumbling machine.

“So the Vulcan Machine simply sends down high-powered seismic waves to rupture the crust at key spots. A boiling river of molten lava. rushes up from below and snakes its way to the surface, there to erupt into the air violently. I touched off the island chain of dead volcanoes. You saw the result.”

“And your aim,” guessed Goliath grimly, “is to set off more volcanoes, all around Earth?”

“It’s just a matter of broadcasting the seismic triggers,” agreed Karzz. “I’m using the shotgun method, scattering the vibratory ‘fuses’ in all directions, downward. through your planet. Eventually, all the volcanoes on earth, dead or alive, will erupt without let-up—a world-wide salvo that will devastate civilization.”

“When?” breathed Goliath, shaken at the mental picture of tens of thousands of Vesuviuses blowing their tops all over the world.

“Nine days from now,” gloated Karzz, “the giant comet my Mount Everest ultramagnet pulled down will smash into Earth when the Antarctic floods of the melting ice cap reach their peak. At that time, the worldwide volcano barrage will also open up, and three earth-wrecking holocausts in combination will start to render earth kaput.”

Karzz turned and poised his finger near his control board. “When I press that final red push button, the seismic broadcast will speed down through the crust, setting off that geological chain reaction. The Vulcan Machine has been warming up to its full ultrasonic power. Now it is ready. . . .”

To Be Continued Monday with "Underground Duel"!

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Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker

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