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#5
MAY 13 |
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“The Chase”
January 10, 1940
100 miles off the coast of California
The seamount almost touched the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The mountain below was riddled with dry caves. Very few people knew of their existence. Very few people had the resources to get there. It should have been the perfect hideout. It was, until he showed up.
A flickering torch cast deep shadows across the cavern and belched smoke that touched the ceiling. Voices echoed, especially his. It was deep and powerful. “But I saw you die, myself!”
“My assistants, finding my body, revived me with adrenalin,” explained the beautiful brunette. “However, it was clear that my recovery could be only temporary. And so, following my instructions, they kidnapped Delores Winters yesterday and placed my mighty brain in her young vital body!”
“It appears that we’re deadlocked.” Superman’s voice was hard and determined.
“Either you leave, or I’ll scorch the captives, at once!” Delores’s voice echoed, filled with hate and malice.
Superman stood a full ten feet from the former actress. She crouched in a fighting stance, his/her tall riding boots planted in the dust and the dirt of the cave floor. Superman watched passively, giving nothing away until he suddenly sucked in a deep lung full of air and then exhaled with such a blast that it snuffed the torch from where he stood.
“You blew it out!” Ultra-Humanite cried the obvious. He/she stared in disbelief as his/her only weapon was reduced to a charred stick in one hand.
“And here’s where I end your fiendish career of crime!” Superman announced. Confidently, perhaps too confidently, he strode slowly towards Ultra-Humanite.
“You’ll have to catch me first!” Ultra-Humanite shouted as he/she turned and dived for a nearby pool of water. His/her diving form was perfect, slicing the water and disappearing from sight in an instant below the murky water.
The pool connected to a wider network of underwater tunnels that honeycombed the mountain. The malevolent mind inside Delores knew of them and how they had been prepared for just such a contingency as this. When Superman might become involved, there always had to be contingency plans. Ultra-Humanite groped blindly in the water for a moment until he/she lucked onto the floating cord, then grasped it tightly and followed it up to the top where a small box with a single button waited. He/she wrapped the cord around his/her wrist, pressed the button, and held on tight while the cord began to retract quickly and pulled him/her through the water with it. The cord retracted into the mouth of a plastic tube attached to the cave tunnel wall and continued to retract. It pulled Ultra-Humanite along with it at such a speed that he/she would have been dashed to pieces on the walls of the twisting tunnel had it not been for the protective plastic tubing.
What Ultra-Humanite could not have heard was Superman shout, “You won’t get away this time!” as he dove into the pool after his enemy. The water was less murky to his eyes and he immediately spotted Ultra-Humanite being pulled into the plastic tube. Superman allowed his quarry another moment of head start as he rose to the surface and took a deep breath before diving down to the tunnel with the tube flowing through it. He resisted the urge to follow directly into the tube, in case it was booby trapped, and chose to follow the tube through the wider tunnel instead. The dragging weight of his red cape and boots were negligible to his fantastic strength, and he swam with such speed that he would have overtaken him/her easily had he not been wrong about the safety of the tunnel.
When he struck the first mine, it detonated on contact. Superman pushed himself back, taking most of the bruising impact from the explosion in his hands. But worse, the explosion caused the tunnel to collapse around him. Superman did not need much light to see by, but down here in the tunnel it was total darkness. He could not see how extensive the cave-in was or if there was still a way through. If he was able to brace himself, he might be able to lift 28 tons – 30 at the utmost, which might not be enough. For one startling moment, Superman had the scary thought that he might die alone down here, in the dark, buried underwater. Even he could not hold his breath forever.
But the moment passed. If there was one thing Superman always knew he could rely on, it was his strength. So he braced himself against the cavern floor and began to lift. It turned out not to be as bad as he had feared; it had been only a partial cave-in. The tons of rock yielded to his efforts to shift them and he could feel the way clear ahead. Superman swam clear of the wreckage, but slowed his pace through the rest of the tunnel, feeling his way in front of him cautiously.
Well up ahead, the emergency zip line dragged Ultra out of the water and up onto the dry dock of the underwater submarine bay on the opposite side of the mountain. He/she had run out of air three seconds earlier and now lay prone on the dock, vomiting water. As soon as Ultra felt well enough to lift his/her head, he/she took stock of the surroundings. Three of the men on the dock were Americans loyal to her, while two were Japanese sailors belonging to the Kaidai-class submarine of the Imperial Japanese Navy berthed there. The wooden dock and the small barracks for her guards looked tiny next to the 1,400-ton sub. Overhead lights mounted on the roof of the cavern reflected off the designation ‘I-68’ on the side of its hull.
“You!” Ultra shouted, pointing at one of the Japanese sailors as soon as he/she felt able to speak again. “Tell Commander Muraoka to launch at once!” Ultra struggled to lift his-/herself up against the weight of Delores’ waterlogged clothes. “He is not to wait for anyone but me to board! This is an emergency evacuation!”
None of the men on the dock moved to assist Ultra. Any instinct to help a beautiful woman in distress was suppressed by the knowledge of the cold and cruel mind in her body. Only one dared to even speak up in his/her presence. “What about us?” he asked.
Ultra glared a terrible stare at the man. He/she would have shot him on the spot for his impertinence but there was no time. “A man is going to be coming out of that tunnel any second now,” he/she explained, pointing to the mostly-submerged cave mouth at the rear of the cavern. “Kill him.” Without explaining further, Ultra ran for the submarine just as the last Japanese sailor went aboard. Ultra climbed in and took one last look at his/her men before shutting the hatch. Each man he/she left behind was armed with a sub-machine gun loaded with armor-piercing rounds. That might be enough to buy him/her a few more precious seconds from Superman.
“This way,” one of the sailors ordered Ultra, as he/she came down the ladder from the hatch. The small man waved a Nambu semi-automatic in Ultra’s direction as a not-too subtle threat.
Ultra ignored the man for now. He/she could feel the sub moving as it got underway. Ultra stooped, entered the next compartment over on the sub and found him-/herself in the control room facing Lieutenant Commander Muraoka. “Commander,” Ultra said in perfect Japanese, “you will need to reach maximum speed at once and then be prepared to dive deeper. Superman is after us. You will not be able to outdistance him, but we might be able to reach a pressure too great for him to follow us.”
“You presume too much,” Commander Muraoka retorted, aware that an American woman had just told him what to do in front of some of his crew.
“You understand too little,” retorted Ultra, switching back to English. “You haven’t faced Superman and I have.”
Then understanding flooded him/her. The little man had his back up and would not yield to her. Curse the luck, he/she thought, this female body won’t help me with the Japanese. Their gender politics is still stuck in the Edo period! Switching back to Japanese, he/she attempted to backpedal. “Our mission for the Emperor will be for naught if he reaches us! You must get us away!” she pleaded.
“There is no ‘our mission’,” the Commander retorted, drawing himself up ramrod-straight (an unwise reaction in the cramped quarters of a submarine). “My mission is to observe and report if you can be of any use to the Empire. Now you have jeopardized us both. From now on, do as you are told!” He turned and began issuing orders to his XO.
Delores’ face tightened into what would have been an ugly grimace on Ultra’s old face, but only made him/her look more sultry now. Inwardly, Ultra’s mind was disgusted by his own failure to anticipate that the body of Delores Winters could be as big a handicap as his old wheelchair. Mentally vowing to include this in his/her calculations from now on, Ultra removed him-/herself to an inconspicuous corner of the control room.
Back in the underwater tunnel, Superman managed to avoid touching any further mines. As he emerged from the water in the second sea cave, Ultra’s three henchmen opened fire with their submachine guns without waiting to see who was approaching. In the hands of these henchmen, the submachine guns substituted volumes of pistol-caliber bullets for both accuracy and skill. Indeed, had they waited until Superman was in short range or closer, the armor-piercing rounds might have had some effect. But the henchmen had panicked and fired too soon, giving them the impression that, when the bullets struck him at all and not the water, that Superman was truly invulnerable.
“Throw down your guns and surrender,” ordered the Man of Steel as he leaped up onto the dry dock. When they refused to listen he began picking up large wooden crates scattered randomly on the dock and heaving them in the direction of the henchmen. As the crates piled up, the henchmen found themselves with less room to dodge. The available space left made the dock seemed narrower and narrower until the henchmen had no room left to dodge but to jump off the dock into the water. “Game, set and match,” Superman joked when he was done.
Walking over to one side of the dock, Superman fished around in the water a moment and then lifted one of Ultra’s men up by the collar. Holding him at arm’s length, he disarmed the gunman and crushed the end of the barrel to render it unusable. Superman dropped the man back in the water and sought out the other two to disarm them as well. When he was done, he looked down at the criminals at his feet, thrashing about in their own puddles like caught fish, and addressed them. “The first one who tells me where Ultra went gets out. You other two will have to find your own way up.”
He didn’t have to wait long for an answer. Three “I’ll tell you” replies came up, mingled with “Get me out!” and “Get off me!” please. Superman picked out one at random and lifted him up with one hand off the dock. “So give…”
“That way,” the ruffian pointed. His arm pointed toward the empty dry dock on the other side of the cave. “They high-tailed it out of here and left us behind! They’ve got a sub, but we’re stuck!”
Superman refocused his vision beyond the dry dock and took in the underwater tunnel to the open sea. This time he looked carefully to see if this exit, too, was mined, but saw none.
Too easy, was Superman’s first thought. Turning his attention back to the dry dock, he noticed some wires from the gates going down into some chambers dug into the rock. Swiftly investigating, he found the wires led down through a crack to a timing mechanism. “It’s a bomb!” he shouted as he realized its purpose. He rushed across the cave and seized the wires, pulling them free. “No good!” he added, as the timer continued to run. Seizing a piece of steel used as a boom for a small crane, he broke it free and drove it down into the rock, following the drill hole for the wires. Then he braced his legs and used the steel to lever open the rock. Once the opening was large enough he picked up the steel boom and drove it directly into the timer.
“It’s OK, I stopped it,” Superman shouted back to the three men. In the excitement, he hadn’t had time to watch if the stool pigeon had aided his fellows or if the two men in the water had climbed out on their own. Apparently the cave had no other exit, since none of them had made any effort to escape once they’d gotten out of the water. They just stood there, like the half-drowned rats they were.
“I’m going after Ultra,” Superman told them. “I have to come back for the hostages. When I do, I’ll get you out of here too.” He executed a perfect dive into the seawater that now filled the dry dock and began swimming after the sub. When he reached the tunnel, he took a last, deep breath and swam out the exit to the open sea. When he reached the other end, he surfaced and gratefully breathed in the fresh air. He pivoted in the water, looking for a sign of the submarine on the surface. There was none. He again used his extraordinary vision to look for the vessel, and spotted it a mile away and over a hundred feet below the surface, still diving. He dove after them.
Ultra listened as the hydrophone technician aboard the I-68 was interrogated about anything following them. “It must be a dolphin,” the man reported. “It is too small to be a vessel, and it is alone.”
“No,” Ultra said quietly in the corner. “It’s him. He’s coming.”
“It must be that American choujin,” declared the Commander. “Dolphins always travel in pods. Ready aft torpedoes 5 and 6!”
“Ready torpedoes 5 and 6!” repeated the XO into the shipboard intercom. Through the rear access hatch to the control room they could hear crewmen using chain lifts in the electric motor room to transfer two of the Type 89 torpedoes to the aft tubes.
“Range?” called the XO to the hydrophone technician. Unnoticed, Ultra emerged from his/her corner and moved to stand next to the Commander.
“800 meters and closing!” replied the technician.
“Set 5 for 750 meters and 6 for 775 meters!” commanded the XO. Then they heard the sounds of two hatches being slammed shut and clamped.
“5 and 6 ready!” came back the reply from the torpedo men.
“Shoot 5 and 6!” ordered the Commander. The XO pressed two pushbuttons overhead. They heard the sound of the compressed air charge in the tubes force the two missiles out, then the kerosene engines fired and the torpedoes’ propellers churned the water.
“5 and 6 away!” reported the XO to the Commander.
“Reload!” replied the Commander. As the crew executed his orders, he listened for the sound of the torpedoes exploding. The hydrophone technician took the headphones off, knowing that the explosion would deafen him otherwise. “29…30…31…32” the Commander counted off the seconds under his breath. The first torpedo exploded. “33…34” the Commander kept counting. The second torpedo exploded. “Report!” he ordered the hydrophone technician.
The technician hurriedly replaced his headphones and listened intently. Everyone in the control room seemed to focus their attention on him. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he wiped it away impatiently.
“Still following us, sir,” he replied in Japanese. “750 meters and closing!”
“Set 5 for 700 meters and 6 for 750 meters!” the Commander instructed the XO. “Shoot when ready!”
“Set 5 for 700 meters and 6 for 750 meters!” the XO repeated into the intercom.
Again they heard the torpedoes tubes’ hatches slammed shut. “5 and 6 ready!” came the reply from the torpedo men. The XO pressed the two overhead buttons again. The twin engines of destruction departed with a whoosh. The hydrophone technician again removed his headphones and listened with the others.
“29…30…”counted off the Commander. The third torpedo exploded. “31…32” continued the Commander. The fourth torpedo exploded. “Report!” he ordered.
“Still following, sir,” the technician replied. “700 meters…and still closing.” He continued.
“Come about,” ordered the Commander. “We have 8 more torpedoes in the bow. Nothing could survive them!”
“I’ve had enough of this!” exclaimed Ultra. He/she snatched the Commander’s Nambu pistol from his holster and clubbed him on the head with it. As he fell unconscious to the deck, he/she leveled the pistol at the XO. “I’m taking command!” she told him in Japanese. “Belay that last order! Our only chance is to out-dive Superman. His lungs can’t last forever!”
He/she looked warily around the cabin, making sure no one had the idea to jump him/her from behind. “What’s our depth?” she barked at the pilot.
“60 meters,” replied the pilot.
“Maintain speed and inclination,” he/she ordered. “He’s already held his breath for over three minutes. If his lungs hold out, he’ll still have to deal with the pressure this deep.”
“You’re endangering the ship,” observed the XO as he began to ease slowly toward Ultra. “No submarine of this type has been tested below 80 meters. Surrender peacefully, and we will surface and negotiate with this Superman. If he refuses to deal with us, we still have 8 torpedoes and 1000 rounds for the deck gun. But I think,” he paused and then added, “he only wants you.”
“I don’t surrender to anyone!” screamed the Ultra-Humanite, and shot him in the face, twice. He/she turned the gun back on the Commander. “Keep diving!”
Once again the Ultra-Humanite was in a stalemate. If the crew decided to mutiny, he/she only had six more rounds in the pistol. If they didn’t kill him/her themselves, they’d turn him/her over to Superman to save their own skins. Superman would be on them in a few minutes, and the wretched fool just might have enough breath and strength to force them to the surface. There had to be another way. If Ultra had to die, he would take that wretched Superman with him! “Depth!” Ultra shouted in Japanese.
“137 meters,” the report came back. The sub may have been hijacked, but its crew was disciplined enough to still perform their duties. No one dared mention that the sub was well past its depth threshold, nor did they need to. They could all hear the hull of the sub creaking and groaning under the pressure.
When the knocking sound came, they all assumed at first that it was the hull buckling. But as it continued rhythmically, it became clear that someone was actually knocking on the hull as if it was a door.
“No…Impossible…” Ultra said, though he/she knew it was not so. No one human could have followed them this deep, but Superman had demonstrated time and time again that he was not human.
Superman leisurely followed the sub as it reversed and headed toward the surface. He followed and, an hour after the chase had begun, climbed onto the surface of the sub and boarded the vessel. Japanese crewmen were streaming out of the forward conning tower and the rear hatches. Over sixty men stood on the deck, choking and fanning themselves. “Does anyone speak English?” he asked.
“I do,” replied one of the Japanese officers between coughs.
“What happened?” asked Superman.
“We were hijacked by a madwoman!” replied the officer. “She held the Commander hostage and killed our executive officer. When it was obvious her plan had failed, she shot the batteries with the rounds remaining in her pistol. The battery acid, when mixed with sea water, released chlorine gas.
She tried to kill us all! After she passed out, we were able to surface!”
“This woman, what did she look like?” queried Superman. It must have been the Ultra-Humanite, but he had to be sure.
“She was slim, with dark hair. She was dressed in a red top, green pants and brown boots. She spoke perfect Japanese,” replied the officer.
Superman dove down the conning tower hatch and searched the ship. As the Japanese had claimed, the submarine was flooded with toxic chlorine gas. He held his breath and searched, but after repeated attempts he had to admit that the Ultra-Humanite was not inside the ship. Meanwhile, the ship’s fans exhausted the chlorine gas and replaced it with fresh air.
When Superman gave up the search, Commander Muraoka had regained consciousness. “I’m sorry this happened to you,” Superman told him. “The person who did this does not represent the United States or any of its citizens. We consider the Ultra-Humanite a threat to every civilized nation.” Though I do wonder about a Japanese Imperial Navy installation so close to the U. S. mainland, he thought.
“We regret we were not able to capture her ourselves,” the Commander replied. “If you have no further questions for us, we would like to get under way. This is going to be difficult to explain to our homeland, as I am sure it will be difficult for you to explain to your people.”
“By all means,” replied Superman. “Thank you for your understanding.” He turned and leaped off the deck, beginning the swim back to the hostages in the underwater cavern.
The Ultra-Humanite, dressed in the XO’s clothes, emerged from the crowd of men, the Commander’s pistol still pointed at him. “Well done,” she commended him in Japanese. “You dissemble quite well. I foresee a long career for you in the military!”
“I do not share that opinion,” replied the Commander. “I expect to be relieved of duty as soon as the Imperial Navy learns of this.” He shook his head resignedly. “Are we free of you, majyo?”
“Oh, I am so, so much more than a witch,” replied Ultra. “And I am so far from being done with Superman. He will pay for the indignities he has heaped on me, if it is the last thing I ever do.”
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Next: In Golden Age Action Comics #6: It’s the next round of Superman vs. Ultra-Humanite in “To Save Delores Winters”!
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