Enemies & Allies (26 page)

J
IMMY OLSEN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO, AND HE HAD
nobody to talk to.

Clark Kent had chosen a particularly bad time for an extended visit to his hometown back in Kansas. Lois Lane had flown off to interview Wernher von Braun and his team of rocket scientists (though Mr. White was furious that she hadn’t called to check in). The other reporters in the
Planet
’s bullpen were in a feeding frenzy with so many major stories to choose from.

But Jimmy was most worried about Superman. Tensions remained high between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and no new footage had been shown of the captive hero in more than a day. He was afraid something even worse had happened to Superman. He had looked sick, defeated…. Jimmy had never felt so upset and helpless. He didn’t think the situation could get any worse.

Until a huge alien battleship appeared in the skies above Metropolis.

He bounded down the stairs rather than wait for the slow elevator. Thirty floors. He was out of breath by the time he reached street level and pushed through the revolving doors to join the astounded throng. He stared up into the sky, transfixed, his mouth open in shock.

A black shadow crossed over the street, like the edge of an eclipse. The interstellar engines did not so much hum as growl as the craft cruised overhead.

The angular battleship was studded with sharp spikes and gun barrels; jagged, unearthly lettering marked its hull plates in garish copper red. Arcs of blue-white electricity sparked from the spearlike prongs, traveling upward like a Jacob’s ladder from Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. Balls of static lightning bounced off the polished hull, shattering windows on the highest skyscrapers of Metropolis, blowing out power lines.

Jimmy stared. “Oh, my gosh!” Then he remembered his camera. He adjusted the focusing bed, pointed the lens upward, and took photograph after photograph until he ran out of film.

Police cars with wailing sirens wound their way through the stalled traffic. One squad car smashed the bumper of a Chevrolet and kept driving along; nobody seemed to notice, because both the policeman and the Chevy’s driver were too busy staring into the sky.

Overhead, like sentries taking position, four more incredible alien craft joined the primary battleship, looming above the Metropolis skyline.

Jimmy had seen enough movies to know exactly what was happening. This was a full-scale invasion—from Mars, or maybe even someplace worse! He had always known flying saucers were real! Despite his disappointments at Mercy Draw and Area 51, Jimmy had remained convinced that visitors were coming to Earth. Maybe they had been here all along in human disguise, gathering information, spying, like in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

When the alien commander transmitted his message, however, these extraterrestrial visitors did not remotely resemble human beings. Nor did they come in peace.

The space invaders had found a way to break into all television and radio signals. People gathered around a display model of a new color television in an appliance store to watch, shuddering in horror. Car radios all boomed the same message on every channel.

The alien leader’s face was a mass of rotting tentacles that surrounded a clacking beak. It looked even worse than the master Martian in
Invaders from Mars,
more hideous than the creature in
It Conquered the World,
more disgusting than the mutant in
This Island Earth.
In fact, this guy would have given nightmares to
The Thing
. It had a single glowing gelatinous eye in the middle of its warty forehead, baleful and eerily reminiscent of the haunting orb in
It Came from Outer Space.

Jimmy realized that he watched far too many sci-fi movies.

The inhuman commander’s demand was implacable and terrifying. “The planet you call Earth is now under our dominion. Surrender, or be destroyed.”

The alien voice bubbled and gurgled as though its vocal cords were composed entirely of phlegm. “We have monitored your radio broadcasts in order to learn your language. We have no interest in dialogue—you will hear only our demands. All inhabitants of Earth are now our slaves. Cooperate, and we may allow some of you to live. Your females may be useful for breeding purposes, since our males find them pleasing.” The alien paused ominously. “If we do not receive your unconditional surrender within one hour, we will level your cities, one by one.”

Jimmy heard terrified wails from the listeners; some people had actually fainted on the street. Staring at the immensely powerful ships overhead and their crackling weapons, he guessed that all governments would be helpless. He swallowed hard.

With Superman captured, who could possibly save Earth now?

T
HIS WAS HIS MOMENT OF GLORY.

Luthor sat in a swiveling executive chair inside the broadcast chamber on his island. Due to shielding and scrambling, no one would be able to pinpoint the origin of his signal. He smiled, drew a deep breath, and felt his chest swell with confidence. Yes, this time it would be Lex Luthor to the rescue. All humanity would cheer him. Finally, they would see who was truly important and who wasn’t.

Before giving the go-ahead, he studied himself in a hand mirror, not to primp and preen but to practice his expressions. He intended to show confidence and righteous indignation, the better to focus the anger that every human would be feeling. Anger and revenge had always been easy for him. Empathy, however, was a lot harder to manage.

His private makeup specialist spent a great deal of time applying pancake and special creams, using fine brushes to highlight his strong, stern features (and also to keep his bald pate from glistening under the spotlight). The cameras could not capture so much as a hint of perspiration on his brow.

He swiveled the chair, placed his elbows on the mahogany desktop, and folded his hands together. Indeed, he looked very presidential, although his aspirations went well beyond that. A large microphone stood directly in front of him; he gazed sternly into the camera lens and said, “Begin the broadcast.” The red light glowed atop the camera. He began speaking.

“Fellow citizens of Earth, this is Lex Luthor. I am broadcasting from an undisclosed location so that I can complete my vital task without interruption from these…horrific alien invaders.” He had already installed the systems he needed and planted the appropriate equipment. His broadcast, like that of the bogus alien commander’s, would appear on every television channel, every radio station.

“Many of you know my achievements. I am a man who does what is necessary, and I must do so again. President Eisenhower—do not fear, sir. America is safe. The world is safe.” He leaned closer. “LuthorCorp is on your side.”

He made his eyes blaze, intensified his expression, and raised his voice. “Know this, alien commander: The human race will never bow to invaders! Earth is
our
planet, and we are its proud people—
free
people who will never be your slaves. You will wish you had never come here!”

He had assumed Eisenhower would stall for time or, worse, make a pathetic call to Superman for help, even though he was still being held prisoner in the Ariguska gulag. General Ceridov had been silent since the previous day, but the KGB general had no further part in Luthor’s plan anyway. The American president was equally irrelevant. Lex Luthor would preempt everything else.

The loathsome alien commander responded to the bold challenge with outrage, tentacles thrashing around its face. The single eye pulsated. Static discharge prongs on the invading battleships crackled, preparing to unleash bursts of intense disintegrator beams.

Luthor continued his fiery speech. “Behold what LuthorCorp can do—what a
human
genius can do.” He raised a fist and called to his technicians, who were out of camera range. “Open fire!”

The giant alien craft loomed over Metropolis, where one of the tallest buildings was the main headquarters of LuthorCorp. Now rooftop panels slid aside, and towering dish transmitters rose up on hydraulic platforms—directed-energy cannons of the same type that should have vaporized the Soviet missiles, that
had
destroyed Sputnik once the sabotaged components were repaired. Their generators had already built up a full charge.

Before the alien commander could fire, Luthor’s directed-energy projectors targeted the primary battleship. Lancing rays blasted the huge interstellar engines, ripped a gaping wound along the armored hull, and blackened the bizarre alien inscriptions. Several explosions occurred on board. The invaders’ static weapons did not discharge but instead pulsed backward into the interior of the battleship and blew up the alien bridge.

Secondary explosions ripped sequentially through the interior. Concussions blew out bulkheads and spewed white-hot flame through the split hull. Like a wounded animal, the invaders’ command ship lumbered across the sky, trailing plumes of black smoke as it tried to flee. Reeling out of control, the vessel roared over Metropolis, sinking lower and lower.

It traveled just far enough to clear the center of the city. With a final gasp, it plunged with an enormous splash into the bay. Before the wreck had settled into the shallow water, before the first round of cheering from the humans on the street subsided, the battleship self-destructed in a white-hot flash that blew all components to pieces. Windows in warehouse buildings shattered for many blocks along the bayside, and a pillar of fire and steam shot high into the air.

Luthor didn’t think President Eisenhower would complain about what he had done.

But the rest of the ships wouldn’t be quite so easy. After all, Luthor couldn’t let this invasion look like a simple problem. The giant alien ships, obviously vengeful now, swooped down upon the city.

T
HE AIR IN HIS LUNGS FELT BRACING AS HE STREAKED ALONG
at top speed, and Kal-El’s muscles sang with renewed energy. Now that his powers had returned, his vision was filled with details seen across the entire spectrum in an intensity that made the whole world seem new.

He was Kal-El. He was
Superman.

And he was back.

Racing behind him like a night-camouflaged predator, the Batplane nearly kept up with him. Kal-El slowed just enough so that the two could fly in parallel. The dark aircraft’s powerful engines, no longer silenced, roared like Soviet R-7 rockets. Metropolis lay just ahead.

Superman listened in on the radio band, picking up panicked transmissions from around the world; Batman had his own receivers inside the cockpit. Both men were suddenly aware of the astonishing alien invasion fleet that had appeared over Metropolis. With Earth threatened by giant interstellar battleships, Kal-El’s inclination was to charge in and rescue humanity from the fearsome extraterrestrial enemies.

Batman, though, wanted to
understand
the threat first. He opened the frequency that connected him to Superman, who wore a compact listening device Batman had produced from his remarkable utility belt. “I’ve seen your fortress, Kal-El, and I am convinced that
you
aren’t from Earth…but forgive me if I remain skeptical about this alien invasion. Something isn’t right….”

They shot forward and got a look at the gigantic alien battleships that hovered over the city, preparing to fire their exotic weapons. The largest ship had just crashed and exploded in Metropolis Bay, but the remainder of the invasion fleet had powered up ominous weapons to commence their retaliatory attack.

A crackling discharge spat out of the pronged weapons and blew the roof off a skyscraper, showering rubble down on the people below. A flaming ovoid cannon set a second tall building on fire, blasting out windows and filling the interior offices with a poisonous black smoke. As the first three ships continued to strike, another group of five huge flying saucers arrived to join the remaining invader, strengthening the attacking force.

Streaking closer, Kal-El focused his intense gaze into the infrared band, and heat beams lashed out, strafing the underbelly of the lowest-flying alien craft. Immediately adjacent to him, the Batplane launched a brace of small rockets that streaked in and exploded, knocking out the weapons clusters on the jagged noses of two other alien craft.

“They’re not as powerful as they appear to be,” Batman said.

When the first incapacitated great ship began to plummet toward the crowded buildings, Kal-El saw that he had to catch the monstrosity before it caused more casualties. As he dove in to grab the reeling, out-of-control vessel, Kal-El focused his penetrating vision, shifted to the X-ray band of the spectrum, and peered inside the gigantic craft to see how many weapons the ships carried, how many alien crew members were aboard.

To his surprise, the extraterrestrial battleship was completely
empty
—nothing more than an exotically decorated metallic shell, borne on a sophisticated propulsion system.

A larger-scale version of the LuthorCorp prototype he had seen in Area 51.

“They’re not real!” Kal-El shouted at Batman. “There are no aliens aboard!”

“I thought that might be the case,” Batman replied. “These aren’t spacecraft. They’re
props,
empty constructs.”

Kal-El felt anger surge within him, mixed with confusion. “This is a scam—Lex Luthor’s scam?” He caught the hollow ship, hefted it like an empty wrapper, then hurled the hulk far out into the swampy and uninhabited barrens outside the city, where it couldn’t cause any damage.

“But why?” Kal-El shouted. “What could Luthor possibly want?”

“It’s a ploy to create fear. And fear creates lucrative defense contracts. Senator McCarthy has been raising the spectre of an alien attack, and now Luthor’s built these ridiculous artificial ships to create a planet-wide panic.”

Kal-El understood all too clearly. “He’ll demand new weapons to be used against the imminent threat, and he’ll promise to save us all—for a price. You were right about him.”

“You just aren’t cynical enough, my friend. I’ll break into the broadcasts just like Luthor did and send a signal to inform the world of what’s actually happening. This alien danger is not real. None of it is.”

A greater anger built within Kal-El. He had struggled against the public’s unreasonable fear of his own alien heritage. He had been accused of having a secret and sinister agenda. But alien visitors weren’t the real evil here. Lex Luthor was.

And now that Luthor’s involvement was exposed, he wondered what the man would do next.

Arms extended, flying swift and hard like a living projectile, Kal-El punched his way through the hull of another alien ship. Inside the core framework, he grasped a structural girder and ascended high into the sky.

Glad to find a satisfying outlet for his anger, he drove the fake alien ship as far and as fast as he could. Within seconds he had reached the edge of the atmosphere, and, pushing with all his strength, he shoved the false invader out into space to drift harmlessly…where it belonged.