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#6
DEC 13 |
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“To Save Delores Winters”
February 18, 1940
The Journal of Terry Curtis
I dedicate this journal to the man I know only by the sobriquet of Superman, my personal savior from a madman’s ambitions, as well as the very one to suggest that I start keeping a journal.
It has taken me three days to get settled into Mexico City for this extended vacation. The hotel has a dearth of amenities, but the manager was suitably apologetic about the cockroach in the bathtub. I have seen cleaner, but I dare suppose I have seen dirtier. Nothing a trip to the market for a jug of bleach couldn’t fix.
My second purchase was a new camera. I have been to El Zócalo, Monumento a la Independencia and Templo Mayor so far and used up a roll of film at each. Tomorrow, Catedral Metropolitana…
February 19, 1940
Outside Cleveland, Ohio
Superman had not slept well. Not that he needed to, but he did prefer getting four hours of sleep a night to relax his mind. Last night he had tossed and turned, unable to take his mind off of what vexed him. The Ultra-Humanite – what he had done – troubled Superman deeply and made him restless. That was partly why, this Monday morning when he should have been Clark Kent and working on a story for the Daily Star, he was out here, in the woods in the rural outskirts of Cleveland, visiting a fire-damaged cabin. It was, of course, no ordinary cabin. It had been the lair of the Ultra-Humanite during his protection racket plot, the Cab Protective League.
Superman paused at the blackened door, still ajar. He touched the doorframe and some of the charred wood crumbled. His thoughts strayed to how far from these environs he had been, how far he had come from his early days of just planning on making Cleveland a better place. He had, in just the last few years, strayed to Ghana to raise funds for Kidtown in the gold mines there, Spain to meddle in the civil war there and, most recently, Ecuador in a thwarted attempt to finally bring the Ultra-Humanite to justice.* He had no regrets, as each had been a good choice. But…if he had stayed here, kept a better watch on Cleveland…would he have known that Ultra’s henchmen had spirited away the villain’s body for that horrible brain-switching operation? That was what he was determined to find out – if the clues had been here all along.
(*Only one of these is an untold tale. Can you guess which one? ~Scott)
He pushed the door open and saw the remains of the furniture inside and the stairs leading up to the upper level. He did not need to go upstairs for a look around, as riddled with holes as the ceiling was. There was similar damage to the floor that required him to tread lightly, though there appeared to be only a narrow hollow space under most of the floorboards. Superman knew this was not true under the entire cabin, as he recalled Ultra’s saw trap that had popped up from under the floor before. With concentration, he pushed his vision out of the visible spectrum into infrared and ultraviolet. He used this now to scan the room, looking for the secret door he knew was there, or any further traps.
With a gentle shove on the right section of back wall, Superman was able to push in the secret door and reveal the backroom laboratory of Ultra-Humanite, or what was left of it. Most of the room’s contents had been wood and were now charred beyond recognition of their original functions, but two metal cabinets by the secret door remained mostly intact. The drawers were locked, but that was a laughable obstacle for Superman. He casually popped each lock and rifled through the contents of the drawers. There were papers inside, but they were blackened with soot from the fire.
Superman was blowing the soot off of the paper when his keen ears heard a trapdoor opening in the floor of the room. Turning for a look, he saw what looked like a seven-foot tall, boxy robot coming up on a rising platform. Two ‘eyes’ shone like headlights from its oval-shaped head and it raised its segmented, overly long arms as it emerged from its secret elevator.
“Oh, left a toy for me to play with, did he?” Superman joked to himself as he stepped up to see what this robot could do.
It demonstrated by stepping forward and snapping its arm down like a whip, its fist striking Superman’s head like a hammer. All it did was muss up Superman’s hair.
“Once I dispose of you, I'm going to see what else Ultra left under this building!” Superman said for no particular reason other than, again, for his own amusement. A nozzle extended from its left palm, there was a hiss of escaping gas, an audible click and then a jet of flame was about to erupt. Superman could not risk the papers he had found, so he clasped his hands over the nozzle of the flame-thrower and held the flames back. He felt his hands grow uncomfortably warm before he pinched the nozzle closed. He seized the robot around its middle and lifted it off the ground. The machine kept thrashing at him with its arms, but to Superman it was like a game of patty-cake that had gotten out of control. He continued squeezing until he heard parts grinding inside, and then watched the robot's arms come to a halt. The lights shining from its eyes winked out. He dropped it and watched it topple over and collapse on the floor.
Stepping over to the platform where the robot had come from, he grasped it by one edge, then ripped it off the elevating mechanism underneath. The lift was visible by the light coming down from the lab, but whatever else existed below was hidden in darkness. Superman spied a few small red and yellow lights glowing on a metallic surface to one side, so he thought the building still had some power supply underground. He bent a few metal pieces aside to make his way down through the lift mechanism. A squint appeared around his eyes as he shifted to infrared vision. That revealed that there were many pieces of equipment still operating in the basement. The room measured 10 by 15 feet, with a single doorway in a position directly under the inside door of the lab upstairs. The space was packed with more infernal devices. Superman's infrared vision showed them glowing from within, so they were all still powered up. He picked his way through, heading for the panel of glowing lights.
When Superman reached the panel, he noted that one of the lights was modulating in a pattern that matched the amplitude variations of human speech. Below the light was a metal post, on which hung a telephone receiver with a three-foot loop of cable. He lifted the receiver and heard the voice of Dolores Winters. The voice was Miss Winters', but the words were the Ultra-Humanite's. Superman could feel his anger rising as he was freshly reminded of his crusade to stop the villain and restore the life he'd stolen.
“—survival was never in question!” he heard the villain snidely reply to some question. “Unfortunately the plans for Curtis's atomic disintegrator were lost when Superman destroyed my city, and the muscle-bound oaf took Curtis with him. My agents have located him.” There were several seconds of relative silence as the other party interrupted (that part of the conversation was not on the same circuit), then Ultra continued. “No, not Superman, you idiot! Curtis! Curtis is hiding in Mexico City. I have a team looking for a Curtis lookalike. When they find one, they'll substitute him for Curtis, blow up the building where he's staying and bring Curtis to me. Superman, and anyone else who investigates, will believe Curtis is dead and we'll be able to work on him undisturbed. In the meantime, another team is maintaining continual surveillance of Curtis. No one can speak to him, in person or on the telephone, without me knowing every word...”
Superman had heard enough. He hung up the receiver. Before he returned to the filing cabinet upstairs, he walked to the door and opened it. The door creaked on its hinges as it opened. The room on the other side did not contain any sources of infrared, making it as black as if he was using normal vision. He'd have to return with a flashlight or lantern later. He retraced his steps and leaped back up to the ground floor. Returning to the files, he went through them rapidly but carefully, wary of damaging the paper further. After 20 minutes and most of the drawers of the cabinet, he found what he was searching for: the brain transplant surgery Ultra had used to steal Delores's body. He wrapped the papers in his cape and folded it into a secure package, tucked it under his arm and began the journey back to his apartment.
Before he started studying the papers in detail, he phoned George Taylor to report he'd confirmed that the Ultra-Humanite was still alive. “Spike it, George,” he wheedled the editor. “That story is still developing. I just wanted you to know you're getting your money's worth.”
“Don't worry about it, Kent. Just be sure we get the story first,” replied the older man. “Did you get this from Superman?”
“No, but I know he knows Ultra is alive. Look, I have to go. I'll call when I can.” Clark terminated the call.
February 19, 1940
The Journal of Terry Curtis
Filled another roll of film today. I have not found someone to develop them for me yet. I wonder if I could set up my own darkroom here? I suppose it would be a poor substitute, but I miss my lab back home and need somewhere to putter. Perhaps I could work on a more efficient formula for developing solution…
I had a long-distance call from Superman today! It was nice of him to check on me and to share what progress he’s made in bringing U to justice. Apparently he found all sorts of notes about U’s brain transplant surgery. Fascinating stuff; I talked him through the notes for some time. U had apparently funded thousands of animal experiments; blackmailed surgeons, anesthesiologists and nurses; and even had taken control of a small hospital. The mechanical details of the transplant are not too different from a kidney's, but U had solved the two other problems with post-surgical survival. The blood-brain barrier actually made the problem of rejection easier to solve than it would be for other organs. Thoroughly flushing the brain with a chilled blood substitute prior to inserting it into the skull defeated the remainder of the immune system. The other problem was solved by a technique right out of one of Universal Studio's Frankenstein films: electrical stimulation of the cut nerves stimulated them to re-grow their connections to their neighbors.
U had forced his surgical team to perform dozens of transplants to prove he would be in no danger. The subjects were kidnap victims who would not be missed, and had been housed in a former mental ward to monitor their long-term recovery. Superman suspected the surgical team were little more than prisoners at the same facility, kept hostage to prevent the world from learning what had been done but too valuable to dispose of. He suspected the facility was in southern California, somewhere near Los Angeles. It must also have its own cemetery, we concluded.
This is how that fiend managed to possess the beautiful form of Delores Winters. I agree with Superman that taking another person’s body for your own must be the worst form of rape ever invented. I hope Superman catches him!
February 20, 1940
Los Angeles, California
After an all-night cross-country run, Superman was in Los Angeles by 8 AM and, after changing to Clark Kent, arrived at the office of the Daily News on S. Los Angeles Street. He walked up the three floors to the city room and waited at the desk of Carol Tiegs, science reporter. While Clark was waiting he walked down the hallway to the UP offices and said hello. When he got back, Carol was seated at her desk, looking over the competing morning papers. Clark introduced himself and explained some of the leads he was following that pointed to a medical facility disappearing off everyone’s radar in the past few years. Carol had an immediate suggestion. “Our Lady of the Snows was closed several years ago. It was a sanitarium for TB patients north of here, in the Tehachapi Mountains.” The mailing address was a little town named Keene.
“How far away is that?” asked Clark.
“One hundred-thirty miles,” replied Carol. “Now I have a question. If there’s a Superman story, it’s always with a byline from Lois Lane or you. Is Superman here, on this case?”
“Well,” replied Clark hesitantly, “I can’t say for sure. I suspect he is, but no one has spotted Superman in the area…”
“I’d know if he had,” confirmed Carol, with a nod. “I think I’d better check where Lois is right now.”
“Good idea,” Clark laughed. “Thanks for the lead. I won’t take up more of your time…”
“Check back with me on your way back,” urged Carol, turning her attention to the pile of rewrites waiting for her on the desk. “I’d go myself if I could spare the time. I haven’t had a good science story since Terry Curtis disappeared.”
The sanitarium proved to be a solid lead. It had been abandoned since Ultra used it, but specialized surgical tools had been left behind that would have had to have been specially ordered. It had taken the better part of a day to make enough calls to surgical tool suppliers around the country before Superman had found an order for those tools. The delivery had been made from a warehouse, also in Los Angeles. Superman’s only hope now was some clue had been left behind at the warehouse.
The warehouse was surrounded by tenement housing and the warehouse now appeared to be closed for business permanently. The doors and windows of the warehouse were boarded up already, a suspicious state of affairs given how recent the transaction to the sanitarium had been. Luckily, wood was never a barrier to Superman. This time, though, he carefully pulled the boards out, nails and all, so he could place them back in case this had been a false lead.
There was a terrible odor of rot coming from inside, with an air of chlorine too. It was dark, so Superman pushed his vision past normal limits again. The interior was mostly gutted. There were no more than a few crates littered about, so he spotted them quickly – six dead bodies stretched out on the floor. Superman raced to the nearest one and crouched down to check, but they were very clearly dead, probably two months dead. Flies buzzed around their discolored skin. They were well-dressed men, most wearing glasses, and it appeared that they had all died choking. Ultra’s assistants? Lured here with a promise of payment and then gassed?
“Likely,” Superman mused out aloud, “but how was it administered?”
It was then that his keen ears detected the sound of gas hissing, a moment before Superman saw the largest crate in the room explode. A robot, similar in design to the one at the cabin, popped up out of it with the sound of some heavy clanging and more hissing gas. The gas was visible, even to normal vision, as a greenish mist – the obvious source of the earlier detected chlorine.
The robot ratcheted back an arm to swing at Superman as he advanced on it, but Superman was faster and punched a hole right through the robot’s chest. He reached around inside, found a vacuum tube with his fingers, and crushed it. The robot slumped back and fell over, rendered inert, but then Superman heard something inside the robot suspiciously click.
Superman’s gut instincts told him to get away. He started to leap backwards just as the robot exploded. Superman was blown back into the far wall of the warehouse hard enough to leave an impression in the concrete. Shrapnel had scratched his near-impenetrable skin and tore his costume. The warehouse was cracked wide open, its windows blasted out and a large section of the floor just plain missing. Pieces of the robot were now scattered all over. Pulverized concrete dust filled the air like a giant snow globe.
“I’ll have to be more careful about that,” Superman reminded himself as he dropped to the floor, dusted himself off, and returned to the front door to put it back in place.
February 23, 1940
The Journal of Terry Curtis
I have inserted a few pages of notes on the new camera I want to design. I’ll have to check on patents when I get back home. Very exciting! I also received another call from Superman. I hope he can save Delores Winters after all. He found a warehouse in Los Angeles where the assistants who did the surgery stored equipment and he found a preserved brain. Superman wanted to know if I thought it could be Delores’ real brain, if the assistants might have kept it. I said it was certainly possible. Actually, I think I said, “Anything is possible for science”. I hope Superman didn’t think that sounded too cheesy.
The warehouse in Los Angeles was destroyed in an explosion, but Superman has asked me to leave Mexico and come back to see a lab he has set up back in Cleveland. Maybe together we can figure out how to restore the brain if we can get the body back. Superman even talked to me about reversing my disintegrator to recreate Delores as she was. I would have told anyone else that was complete fantasy, but if Superman says something, it seems eminently achievable. All so exciting! I think I owe Superman now, not just my life, but getting my love of science back too.
February 25, 1940
Cleveland, Ohio
As Clark Kent, Superman had spent the better part of two days fulfilling his obligations to the Daily Star, while on his off-time quietly renting an empty warehouse under another alias. He had purchased a table and some pharmaceutical supplies and set them up and even had some parts for a cyclotron on order.
Superman had read every book on science in the Cleveland Public Library after first meeting the Ultra-Humanite and, while he did not understand everything in Ultra’s notes, he was now no slouch on the subjects of biology, chemistry and even electrical engineering. And it really was nice to have something new and challenging to do in his downtime.
He had just taken a model of a human brain out of a box and walked it past the remains of the last two robots he had found in Ultra’s lairs when he heard a voice.
“Did I not make clear the nature of our rivalry on our past encounters?” a familiar woman’s voice spoke loudly with a cruel, evil tone. It seemed to echo from everywhere in the warehouse.
Superman put down the model on the table without showing any alarm. “Where are you broadcasting from? I searched this warehouse from top to bottom.”
“I am the brain. You are brawn. I do not lift cars, you do not dabble in science,” Ultra continued with Delores Winters’ voice. “Do you have the brain?”
“I thought you just said I don’t have the brain,” Superman said with a smirk. “But if you’re so smart, why didn’t you figure out why I suggested the journal to Terry Curtis? Because I knew you’d be watching him after the atomic disintegrator fiasco and I wanted a way to feed you information to lure you into a trap.”
“Who’s trapped who?” Ultra asked. “I have you right where I want you, in an inhabited neighborhood. If you have Delores Winters’ brain, I will stop destroying buildings as soon as you hand it over. And if you don’t have it–”
Superman did not bother to listen to the rest of the threat. His super-hearing had isolated the voice and it was somehow being ‘thrown’ electronically from outside. He took a running start, blocked his face with his arm and crashed right through the warehouse wall to get outside faster.
Once outside, Superman could see the black autogyro hovering over the warehouse. In an instant it was already shining bright lights on him and obscuring his view of the windshield. A rocket launcher, which looked big enough to house four rockets, was mounted under the autogyro. It swiveled and fired its first rocket.
Superman leaped into the air high enough to catch the rocket in mid-air, but the launcher was still swiveling and fired a second rocket in another direction. Superman was off-balance for throwing the first rocket at the second and had to wait until he landed on a nearby rooftop to orient himself and throw the rocket at the rocket. It was a perfect shot, but a close enough call that the double-rocket explosion shattered every window in a four-story tenement building.
The launcher was not slowing down, though, and had already fired its third rocket in the complete opposite direction of the first rocket. Superman took a two-step running start that included bending down to scoop up a brick. He took off in a giant arc, leaping directly over the autogyro. He could see the third rocket was about to hit its target and there was no stopping it, so he threw his brick straight down into the path of the autogyro’s rotor blades. He heard a blade snap from the impact behind him and at least had the satisfaction of knowing the autogyro would not still be in the air when he had time to deal with it.
Superman angled his descent lower towards the explosion that ripped through the third floor of a tenement building as the third rocket hit ahead of him. He gripped the sides of the hole to slow his descent and came for a landing just inside with two handfuls of wall. He would risk the inferno if there was anyone to save directly inside, but whatever room and its contents had been in here were already gone.
Superman dropped back out of the hole and fell to the street below where he looked for a fire hydrant and spotted one across the street and two doors down. It would be difficult to angle it just right…but Superman glanced back and forth with furrowed brow, working out the angle and the distance. It seemed to be the fastest way. He tore the hydrant from its moorings with one hand and with his other hand angled the erupting stream of water down the street and towards the gaping hole. A lot of water was lost, spilling out into the street, but quite a lot drenched the interior of the building, right where he had calculated it would.
The tenement dwellers might still be in danger, but the autogyro or its pilot might still pose a threat as well and Superman had been too busy to see where it went down. Nor could he hear the autogyro over the geyser of water from the hydrant he ruined, the background noise of the city, and the din of people leaving their apartments inside the damaged building. He needed a higher perspective, so he crouched down and launched himself into a spectacular high jump of 500 feet. From up there, he was able to look down between the buildings and see each street – and there was the downed autogyro.
After angling his descent, Superman came down for a landing right in front of the autogyro. He was hoping to see Ultra trapped in the wreckage, fearing that the villain had sneaked away during the distraction with the rockets. But what he found instead was that the autogyro was twisted and mutilated as if from the inside out. There was no way Ultra could have done that. Some wreckage trailed away from the autogyro heading – straight back towards the warehouse Superman had left unguarded.
“Ultra!” Superman shouted as he charged through the open entrance where the door of the warehouse was torn from its hinges. Inside, a six-foot tall robot turned towards him, a television screen mounted in its chest and Delores Winters’ black-and-white face visible on the screen.
“There’s no brain here, Superman. You never had Delores’ brain.” The voice was coming from speakers built into the robot.
“You’ve never been so scared to confront me before, Ultra,” Superman said as he walked slowly toward the waiting robot. “What was the matter? Afraid I was going to take your brain back out of her skull myself?”
“I’m simply too busy to bother with your silly traps directly. All you’ve done is make me angry. And aren’t you worried I might take out my anger on your dear friend, Dr. Curtis?”
“You can pretend you’re not scared, while broadcasting from a safe distance away, but we both know you’re going to stay away from Terry now.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll never know if I’m using him as bait in a trap for you. You’re the one who called him my dear friend, not me. I’ve already baited a trap for you, using him once. I can do it again.”
“Or I might just succeed in killing you this time,” Ultra said as bolts of electricity lanced from the robot’s hands and struck Superman. “I seem to recall you having a weakness to electricity…?”*
((As shown in Action Comics #13!~Scott))
It did hurt, as a strong enough electrical charge always did, but Superman charged towards the source of the electricity instead of away from it anyway. Gritting his teeth, Superman grabbed both arms of the robot and ripped them right off. The electricity stopped flowing. “You didn’t catch me by surprise this time. This time, I’m ready for you.” And before he was done saying it, Superman had already pulled a row of bolts off each side of the flailing robot with his bare hands. He popped the now-loose outer casing off the robot’s torso, reached inside, found the remote detonator and crushed it in his hands. “See? Use the same tricks too often and I figure them out, like you detonating your robots to destroy evidence. Suppose I’ll find some clues in how it was made that will help me find you? It doesn’t matter. I know you’re out there, Ultra. Now it’s just a matter of time until I find you.”
The television screen on the robot had gone dead, but Ultra was still broadcasting over the robot’s built-in speakers. Instead of having anything to say, though, Superman just heard Ultra growl like an animal before the sound went dead. Superman tossed the robot, now no more dangerous than an oversized paperweight, on the floor. He sighed and thought about how he could use a good night’s rest.
Epilogue
Superman stood alone on a roadside. The sky had a shade to it that looked like it was just after dusk or just before sunrise. The road stretched out to the horizon, but only in the direction Superman was facing. The road glowed with a light of its own, but behind him was no road at all, only darkness.
More disturbing still was that Superman had no recollection of how he had come here or where here was. It was just a place, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The road was glowing, maybe because it had been painted with phosphorescent paint? There must be answers, but his mind felt fuzzy and clouded and it was hard to think things through.
One thing Superman was sure of, though, was that he was being watched. He could not see anyone, but he felt the eyes on him somehow. He spun around again to see if he could catch someone hiding behind him, just out of his peripheral vision, but there was no one to see. Yet he felt the presence just the same, palpable and menacing.
“Who’s there?” Superman tried to shout, but it came out of his mouth only as a whisper. He tried harder to project, to shout loud enough to be heard out to the horizon. “WHO—”
And then Superman realized he was awake and shouting “WHO” out loud. And that a moment before, he had been in bed asleep.
The clock said it was 2:24 in the morning, the day after defeating Ultra’s robot in the warehouse. Superman felt an unfamiliar pain in his chest. It was somewhat like the jolt of electricity he had taken earlier from the robot. His pulse was quickened, as it had been during battle. His breathing was heavy, such as few exertions had ever made him do. It took a moment longer to piece it all together – he had felt afraid. It had been a nightmare. The first Superman had ever had in his entire life.
And that made Superman really afraid…
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Next: In Golden Age Action Comics #7: What is affecting Superman? More clues next time, as Lois and Clark travel to Poland as war correspondents and tangle with spies in merry ol’ England! It’s “The Dover Affair”!
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