The Brave and the Bold: Lily DeLuna and Doris Knight
Times Past, 1949
Super Girls’ Knight Out
by Dan Swanson
(Super) Girls’ Knight Out
Part 1 Take me out to the ball game
(sometime near the end of baseball season, 1949)
Lily Deluna was leaving for Europe tomorrow, on a quest to find her missing brother Eddie. Ted Knight had volunteered garage space for her Cord and her Harley while she was overseas. Lily was sure Ted would take great care of them, as she knew he loved fine machinery as much as she did.
Her recent award-winning recap of Vic Valor’s career had given her greater national name recognition than her baseball career, and she had capitalized on her new-found exposure to line up several free-lance travel writing assignments for some national magazines. Her first such article was to write about day-to-day life on an ocean liner, and her editor on this story had even picked up the cost of the transatlantic tickets. Of course, she had to write about first class travel when only going third-class herself, but those are the kind of hardships a journalist thrives on!
It just happened that the Red Sox were in town to play the Opal City Skysox today, and Lily decided to take up Ted’s offer to introduce her to the great Ted Williams. She invited her police corporal friend, Fred Johnson, to join her as guests of the Knights at the ball game that night. Even with the uncertainty of Eddie’s fate still bothering her, she couldn’t conceal her excitement. She hoped Ted had remember to asked Williams to autograph a bat for her. She hoped it would be a fast game.
She was driving the Cord, one last time before she left. She would spend the night at stately Knight Manor, and Ted and Doris were going to drop her at the airport tomorrow. She thought once again that for rich people, they really seemed like regular folks. The rich families who had lived near Redcliff, Ohio, her home town, had never ever mingled with anyone from town – they had servants to do all that. The Knights had servants, of course, but they never let their servants isolate them from the ‘regular’ world. She wondered if all of the mystery-men and women were nice people in their civilian identities?
She picked up Fred on her way. She liked him and she planned to look him up when she got back from Europe, but she had no idea how long she’d be gone, and she didn’t want to leave any commitments behind. Fred was a big Skysox fan and would be rooting against the Red Sox, but he, too, looked forward to meeting Ted Williams.
Fred had known that they were going to be attending the game with Ted and Doris Knight, and he knew that the Knights were rich, but he apparently hadn’t realized exactly how rich. He couldn’t believe it when Lily drove up to the gate and greeted the gatekeeper like an old friend. The grounds were huge, and every inch was carefully tended and manicured. Half a dozen of the landscape staff were occupied trimming and weeding and planting, improving little imperfections that were invisible to Fred and Lily. Some of the Knights’ society peers were having a tennis tournament that day, and there were attractive, richly garbed folk on all 6 of the Knights’ well-maintained clay courts. There was another group around the pool, and some of the women were wearing suits that made Fred blush.
Lily was amused by this reaction and with a smile she quoted the old saw “The really rich are different from you and me!”
She could tell that Fred was starting to have second thoughts about interacting socially with Ted and Doris. She knew because she had experienced those same second thoughts, the first time she had visited stately Knight Manor, even though she already knew the Knights.
“Don’t worry! Ted and Doris are exceptions. They are just like normal people!”
She giggled as she said it, because she knew that, even aside from money, Ted and Doris were not ‘just like normal people’. Still, she was sure they would like Fred. After all, he, like they, had dedicated his life to the cause of justice.
“If you say so, Lily. But that swimming pool is bigger than the house I grew up in!”
Well, at least he had an excuse for staring at the women around the pool.
“Are they having some kind of a party? I thought we were going to the ball game?” He was clearly nervous about the thought of having to mingle with all of Opal City’s social ‘elite’.
“Knight Manor is always like this, Fred. The Knights love to have people around, and their staff can take care of the crowd after we leave for the game. I imagine Ted and Doris have already made their good-byes. Don’t worry, we won’t be here more than a couple of minutes.”
At the end of the long curving driveway, Lily pulled to a stop behind a maroon Lincoln Cosmopolitan convertible. Ted and Lily were sitting on a bench in front of the mansion, waiting for them.
“Out, Fred! I need to introduce you, and we need to change cars!” There’s no back seat in a Cord Cabriolet.
The introductions went well, with a minimum of stammering from Fred. Ted and Doris had soon charmed Fred as they charmed anyone they met, and within a few minutes he was totally comfortable. They hopped in the Lincoln, and headed for the ballpark. Ted and Doris made sure to include Fred in the conversation, and by the time they got near the ballpark, Lily knew much more about him than she had earlier. He had grown up in Opal City, had been a Marine during the war, and had fought mostly in France and Germany.
The ball game was very exciting, with the Red Sox winning 6 – 4. This kept them 1 game ahead of the Yankees in the standings. The Skysox went ahead early due to some shabby play by Ted Williams in left field – he didn’t run as hard as he could and a couple of fly balls fell in that Lily, at least, thought he should have caught. At least, she was pretty sure she would have caught them. Later, though, he hit 2 home runs for 5 RBI, his first homer bringing the Red Sox into a 4-4 tie and his second one driving in the last two runs, winning the game. Teddy Ballgame was on his way to his second MVP season, and his entire game was showcased that day – superb hitting and average (at best) fielding.
At dinner, once she got over her awe at meeting her idol, she and Ted talked hitting, almost to the exclusion of the other 3. Lily learned more about hitting than she had ever thought possible, and she felt some nostalgia about playing – if she found Eddie before the start of the next season, she just might look up the South Bend Blue Sox and see if they needed a left fielder! But she had some observations on hitting that were new to Teddy Ballgame, too.
Williams presented autographed bats to both Lily and Fred, and she was delighted that he insisted that she autograph a ball for him. He even had an AAGPBL baseball with him. He claimed it was the ball Lily had hit for her 40th home run and it had cost him $1.50. Even though she didn’t know whether to believe her or not, she was flattered that he had at least found an official AABPBL ball.
The Red Sox and Skysox had another game tomorrow, so Williams had to turn in fairly early. The dropped Fred off on the way back to stately Knight Manor. Lily walked him to the door and they shared a kiss before she left. Without being _too_ forward, she wanted to be sure he was aware of her interest. Maybe he’d be available when she got back…
Ted hit the sack, and Lily and Doris sat up talking. Suddenly, a small light in the corner began to flash.
Doris was puzzled “That’s an emergency signal from the Chief of Police of Opal City that Starman is needed. But it hasn’t been used for years, ever since Ted retired. When he retired two years ago, Chief Chapman promised he wouldn’t tell anyone about it. Even Chief O’Dare shouldn’t know about it!”
Lily was worried. “Shouldn’t somebody check it out? If Chapman told O’Dare, or if Chapman is using it himself, they both know Starman is retired. It must be urgent!”
“Or else, it hasn’t been used in so long, it’s broken!” Doris responded. Then she sighed. “I suppose we ought to tell Ted about it. But I hate to wake him.”
“Doris” Lily spoke up, her voice sounding intense “you don’t suppose…” and she pointed at Doris and then herself.
Doris flashed her biggest smile and said ‘Why not?” and the two of them leaped into action. “Meet you back here in 5 minutes!” They both headed out of the library at full speed.
5 minutes later, they were both back in the sitting room, although they were both still pulling on pieces of their costumes. Lily was astounded to see that Doris wasn’t wearing her regular Starwoman outfit. Instead she was wearing the very revealing Moonflower costume that she had designed for Lily. Lily was wearing the more modest costume of her own design.
“Doris! What are you doing wearing my costume?!”
“I knew you’d never wear such a slinky outfit, and I figured, why waste such a great design? Besides, you know we want to keep Starwoman a secret, so I’m going to pretend to be your sister Moonglory tonight. Say, you wouldn’t want to switch costumes, would you? Don’t you want to show off a bit? You’ve certainly got the bits to show!”
“Is that what you call those? Your ‘bits’? Aren’t you ever serious, Doris?” Lily grinned. She always had fun hanging around with Doris.
“I’m always serious about clothes, dear! I figure, if I’m going to wear a silly costume anyway, I might as well take advantage and strut a little! Besides, how many gals my age can wear something like this and get away with it?”
Lily had to admit Doris had a stunning figure. She wondered if she would ever dare to wear that skimpy outfit herself?
“Maybe when I’m more confident in what I’m doing I’ll make the switch. Or, if I hit a beach while I’m in southern Italy. But we may have an emergency right now, so shouldn’t we get moving?”
Doris threw a concealed switch, and a part of the library’s ceiling slid aside, revealing the night sky. “After you!” She waited while Lily flew through the skylight, and then zoomed off after her. Part 2: Lily Loo and Doris Too
As she rocketed towards the city, Doris was surprised at how far ahead Lily already was, and how fast she had to fly to catch up. She and Ted had spent hours training with Lily, and the Power Rod Lily used was not nearly as powerful as their Gravity Rods. Could Lily have been sandbagging the whole time? She switched her radio to the secure scrambled channel Ted had set up for the three of them.
“Say, Lily Loo, when did you get to be so fast?”
“Hmm, I honestly don’t know, Doris. Ever since Ted tinkered with it, the Power Rod seems to be gaining more power each time I use it.”
“That’s my Ted!” Doris cooed, proudly. “If it doesn’t work, he’ll fix it. If it does work, he’ll make it work better!”
But even Ted Knight could make mistakes. When Lily had first asked him to investigate the Power Rod, he had taken it apart to examine the power supply. What he had found was a small irregular ‘nugget’ of some unknown metal, clearly broken from some larger piece of the same unknown metal. Xnon, the inventor of the Power Rod, had coated the nugget with pewter, making it into a perfect sphere. Ted found that when electric current was run through that sphere, it released tremendous amounts of energy – which Xnon had then used as the power source for his weapon, the Power Rod.
Although he had no idea how this sphere seemingly violated the law of conservation of energy, Ted immediately recognized an engineering problem, and jumped on it. He realized that the current that activated the sphere was provided by a battery, and that battery needed to be recharged frequently. Why not use a little bit of the energy released by the sphere to generate the very small amount of electrical current required? That way, the Power Rod didn’t depend on the battery being charged, and Lily would never be stranded in a tight situation without power.
What Ted hadn’t realized was that the sphere worked by changing part of its own mass into energy – and thus, the more it was used, the smaller it got. The pewter coating deliberately made the process less efficient – but Xnon could pull the nugget out of the weapon when most of the coating had been converted to energy, and re-coat it, and the mass of the nugget itself was never affected. What was happening now was that some of the jagged edges of the nugget itself had begun to be exposed as the pewter coating was evaporated. The conversion of the actual power metal to energy was more efficient than converting pewter, and the Power Rod was slowly becoming more powerful.
This process would continue until all of the jagged edges had been worn smooth, and the shrinking nugget became a perfect sphere, its most efficient shape. After that, the sphere of power metal would shrink, and the Power Rod would gradually become less powerful, until the last atoms of power metal were converted to energy, and it would fail.
Of course, neither Lily nor Doris (or Ted, either, for that matter) were aware of this. If someone figures it out in time, the power metal sphere can simply be dipped into molten pewter periodically, otherwise Lily is going to have a useless tool on her hands fairly soon. Hopefully, she won’t be a couple miles in the air, or in the middle of a battle with a dangerous super villain when that happens!
“I think part of it is that I’m getting better with practice, too. Check this out!” With that she swooped ahead and did a series of acrobatics that would have caused Doris to loose her dinner. Rolls, dives, climbs, sharp turns – every maneuver her father, a World War I fighter pilot, had taught her, and maneuvers no airplane would ever be able to duplicate. All the while maintaining her high speed towards Opal City Police Headquarters.
“Hey! Save some of the energy for the bad guys!” Doris laughed at her through the radio. No wonder Lily preferred the more conservative outfit – she was pulling a lot of gs on some of those turns
“Oh yeah, the bad guys…” Lily sounded abashed, and she immediately abandoned her acrobatics. “Say, Doris? Umm… how’d you know my nickname? No one’s called me that since I left Redcliffe.”
“That’s what you call yourself when you talk to yourself. You don’t mind, do you? I didn’t mean to offend you!”
“Don’t be silly! It’s great to hear it again; it makes me feel warm and happy inside. Do you have a nickname?”
Doris flew a little closer. “Nope.”
“C’mon, everybody calls you Doris all the time?”
“Well, Ted does have a pet name for me…” her voice lowered and the two flew a little closer together. “It’s ”
Crackle Spizzttt Psssllltttt! There was a loud crackle of static, and any eavesdroppers who were depending on radio to overhear were disappointed. By the two heroines were close enough together that Lily heard.
She blushed. “No! He really calls you that?”
Doris grinned. “Not bad for an old lady, eh? Not all the time, actually, and never in public!”
“I can see why! I never imagined Ted was such a firecracker. He seems like such a perfect gentleman to me…”
“That hidden part of him is part of what makes him perfect, dear!” A cat might smile like that, after eating a canary.
“But I can’t call you that! Are you sure you don’t have some other nickname?”
Doris was thoughtful for a few seconds. She nodded. “My best friend in prep school called me Dorilee, but I never really liked that. How about Doe? You know, like a girl deer?”
Lily wasn’t convinced. “Maybe I can come up with something – if you don’t mind?”
“Nope, nickname away, Lily Loo!”
They were almost to Police HQ when every light in the city went out.
Part 3: From the Rubble…Mekanique!
Lily remembered immediately that not long ago, Xenon had plunged Opal City instantly into darkness, when he had stolen the entire output of the Opal City Power Station in order to charge his Power Sceptre. She instantly changed directions and flew towards the power plant, which was located on the riverfront at the south edge of town. Doris swooped to follow her, maintaining their formation perfectly.
“I hope this is the reason the lamp was flashing!” Lily sounded worried. If the police had a real emergency elsewhere, and they were headed for the Power Station because a fuse had blown or something like that, why, that wouldn’t be very heroic – or helpful.
“Well, I’m not sure. But I think we _are_ needed up ahead – take a look!” Doris responded.
Through the windows of the Power Station, they could see bright flashes of incredibly intense bluish white light, almost like a trapped lightning bolt trying to escape. A few late shift workers were already out of the building and running like crazy. As the two heroines continued to approach at top speed, the building suddenly exploded with a blinding flash!
When Moonflower’s vision cleared, she could see something moving in the middle of the pile of rubble that had just stopped providing Opal City with virtually all of its electrical power. A humanoid figure, outlined in an aura of electric blue, and the aura was growing, growing, looking like a column of solid lightning. On the ground, looking like the dark region in the center of a candle flame, the human figure stood motionless. The blue column of ‘solid’ electricity began to shrink, and the two heroines realized the figure was absorbing that electricity.
Moonflower was in the lead, and she took action. She fired a powerful energy blast at the figure, hoping to disrupt the electrical energy absorption process.
“Flower, wait! We don’t know who that is or what’s going on here!” Moonglory yelled, but it was too late. The blast had already struck. It seemed to have virtually no effect, except that the figure took notice of the fast-approaching heroines. It turned to face them and Moonglory was shaken to recognize her.
“Holy spit, Moonflower, that’s Mekanique! A while ago she fought the whole All Star Squadron to a standstill! I think we just found big trouble!” To her surprise, Mekanique didn’t immediately wipe them from the sky.
“Humans! I warn you not to interfere with me, or many will die this night!”
“We’re not interfering, honey. We’re just stopping you cold!” Moonflower responded, in a cold and determined tone. “And nobody else is going to die, either.”
Well, no one could ever say that she lacked courage! Or more likely she didn’t know what Mekanique was capable of. Looking around then at the flattened building, Moonglory realized that the generators had all been untouched by the earlier explosion, and that Mekanique was still drawing power from those generators. It was an amazing diorama demonstrating not only deadly power but also incredible finesse in the application of that power! They were going to need teamwork, not bravado, to live through this night. Well, she knew more than a little something about that.
“‘Flower, break left!” she ordered, as she herself rolled and blasted down and right. It was a maneuver they had practiced before. Moonglory wasn’t sure her friend would follow her lead, so she put all the snap she could muster into her voice. Even so, she was surprised at the tone of command she produced. And Moonflower smoothly broke down and left, just as Mekanique loosed an energy bolt that tore through the spot in the sky that the two of them had just vacated. In spite of the dire situation, ‘Glory grinned tightly to herself.
Earlier in the evening, Doris had managed to divert Lily and Ted Williams from baseball talk by mentioning the Navy’s star flying team, the Blue Angels. During the enthusiastic conversation that followed, they had all learned that one of the pilots was a Marine, and Ted Williams had been his first flight instructor. This drew ex-Marine Fred into the conversation as well, as Doris had intended. Of course, the talk had been about the incredible precision flying of the Blue Angels. Well, she and Moonflower were doing some precision flying of their own!
“‘Flower, you keep her attention while I look for survivors. Evasive, move fast, don’t repeat your maneuvers!” Once again she was amazed at the tone of command she was projecting.
Ted was constantly improving the Gravity Rod, even though he had now, finally, retired as Starman. Moonglory used one of the new features to create a special purpose gravity lens between herself and the ground. This lens blue shifted infra-red light into the visible range, allowing ‘Glory to see heat. She circled the blast site, looking for hot spots that could indicate people trapped in the rubble. Meanwhile, Moonflower was using the acrobatics she had demonstrated earlier to avoid Mekanique’s attacks, while the robot herself stood in one place, allowing ‘Flower to blast her, and continued to absorb power from the generators.
Mekanique had already tapped into their radio. “Human fools! You waste your time and energy. There are no survivors buried in the debris. I gave them warning and they cleared the building before I began my delicious feast! I say again, break off your attack. I will not warn you again!”
“Code 6, ‘Flower!” Once again, Moonglory realized how smart Ted was. He had anticipated someone compromising his secure radio communication system and had developed two simple code systems as well. Code 6 was one of these. Given long enough exposure, Mekanique would undoubtedly figure it out, but she could then switch to Code Sunshine. Hopefully, the battle would be over soon, because they didn’t yet have a third code worked out.
“Mekky, you don’t mind if I don’t take your word on the safety of the workers, do you?” Moonglory asked sweetly. If the robot deigned to answer the question, the answer was lost to history as Moonflower unleashed a tremendous power blast. As far as the heroines could tell, the only effect of that blast was a burst of static that hurt their ears.
“No!” Moonglory realized that Mekanique had not merely ignored ‘Flower’s blast, but had actually absorbed it. “‘Flower, she wants us to attack her directly! Your blast just made her stronger. Blast the generators instead!” No secret code here!
Destroying the generators might seriously inconvenience the whole city for weeks to come, she realized. But a fully-powered Mekanique was more dangerous than any power outage. She began firing blasts from the Gravity Rod at some of the generators. Moonflower followed her lead.
Mekanique’s patience had worn out. “It was not my purpose tonight to bring harm to anyone, quite the opposite, in fact. Yet, if I need to remove you in order to accomplish my task, so be it. You will soon realize that you brought your defeat upon yourself!”
Part 4: Moonglory Stands Alone!
(Mekanique’s advanced electronic senses had already pierced the masks of the heroines, and her computer brain had already matched their faces with historical records in her memory banks. Since Mekanique already knows their secrets, it can’t hurt to go back to referring to them by their given names. And it will be a lot less confusing!)
It was an eerie scene. The main room of the power plant had been larger than the infield of a baseball diamond, housing 6 giant hydroelectric generators arranged in a half circle around a bank of control and monitoring stations. The building had been flattened, but the generators were untouched, and Mekanique stood in middle of the half-circle.
Each gigantic generator was surrounded by a flickering blue aura, and electrical arcs, much like the arcs on a Jacob’s Ladder but millions of times larger, stretched out from each generator and bathing Mekanique in electrical current. All this electricity combined to produce an intense stark blue-white glare, brighter than the brightest spotlight, so bright that the heroines were forced to shield their eyes. And it flickered constantly as the arcs wavered.
Doris could actually taste the ozone in the air, which scared her – she knew that electrical discharges of this magnitude would easily produce deadly concentrations of ozone. Almost as an afterthought, she realized that the Geiger counter built into the Gravity Rod was clattering wildly. She knew that the Gravity Rod would protect her, but she didn’t know if Lily’s Power Rod-generated force shield could block radiation.
Her radio was useless, hopelessly drowned in static, so she altered her flight path and tried to lead Lily away from this disaster scene. Lily didn’t seem to notice her. Instead, she continued flying directly at Mekanique, and blasted away at one of the generators.
Lily was suddenly, incredibly sick. The flickering light bothered her eyes, and she could almost feel it boring along her optical path, searing a charred path directly into her brain. She was unable to control the energy blast she had been preparing to fire, and it lanced out and instantly disintegrated the top third of one of the generators. Her hands shook so hard she dropped the Power Rod, which stopped blasting, thank heaven, but she was falling. Somehow, some weird part of her mind recalled a story she had once written about flickering lights and seizures. And then a hard shoulder rammed into her stomach, and she was folded almost double around Doris, who was rocketing her away from the scene at top speed!
Lily closed her eyes and felt much better – although better is a relative term. She still had no control over her limbs, and she was retching violently. Fortunately they were flying very fast, fortunately Doris’s back was protected by her cape, and, Lily thought,
“Fortunately for us, the flickering lights didn’t cause a seizure for Doris too.” Her head was flopping flaccidly from side to side, and she caught a glimpse of her Power Rod in Doris’s left hand. “I hope I recover soon enough to be helpful!” Her martial arts training should help with that; despite her acute discomfort and the uncomfortable position she was in, she began concentrating on overcoming her nausea.
Behind them, for a brief instant, all hell had broken loose. The armature in the damaged generator weighed several tons and it been spinning at high RPMs, and it was suddenly no longer confined. It broke free and tore the giant machine to shreds, filling the air with shrapnel. Which bounced harmlessly off of the energy shield Doris was maintaining and the armored form of Mekanique.
Mekanique did something that Lily couldn’t see, and the electrical arcs vanished. She didn’t want the other generators to be damaged before she could destroy these pests. As soon as the massive electrical current stopped cascading into Mekanique’s form, the Geiger counter stopped clicking. As the stark blue light vanished, it didn’t become dark; instead virtually every surface in the area glowed with a strange soft cream colored light – much as the phosphorescent fob on a key chain might glow in the dark after a day in bright sunlight.
She launched a bolt of her own at the heroines. Doris was unable to dodge while carrying Lily, so she zoomed over and behind one of the still undamaged generators. Quickly propping Lily in a sitting position, Doris dropped the Power Rod into her lap and then took to the air.
From what she knew of Mekanique, this would be her toughest fight ever. Well, she was pretty sure Mekanique knew less about her. So maybe she could surprise the robot. Maybe Lily would come around soon and be able to help her out. Maybe the horse would learn to talk, too!
Her one advantage might be that Ted loved to tinker, and her Gravity Rod was much more advanced and powerful than the Gravity Rod Ted had been using back in 1942. She was probably going to end up taking a lot of hard shots in this fight, but she thought there was a good chance she would get in some shots of her own. Heck, if being a heroine was easy, anyone could do it! She smiled at herself – was that really confidence, or just bravado? Well, hopefully she’d never have to find out for sure!
Part 5: All Shook Up!
Doris blasted Mekanique with modulated gravity waves, warping space-time around the robot. In regions of warped space-time, the ‘natural laws’ of the universe can vary. Electronic equipment inherently depends on natural laws acting in a specific way, and remaining constant. The more complex an item of electronic equipment is, the more vulnerable it becomes to unexpected variations in natural laws. Mekanique was certainly the most complex piece of electronic equipment on Earth in the 1940s – and thus, the most vulnerable!
Powerful gravity waves buffeted the robot, smashing her downwards and suddenly dragging her skyward, yanking her violently this way and that. Doris thought Mekanique might actually be torn to bits by the gravity waves themselves, and she wouldn’t have to depend on the more subtle effects of the changing natural laws.
But Rotwang had built well – even a solid steel statue would have been ripped to shreds, but the alloys used in Mekanique’s construction were the result of metallurgical technology centuries advanced over mere steel. And she had an internal inertial damper (stolen from an early 1990s Ted Knight invention) that enabled her various components to survive the buffeting. Her body held together.
Her ‘nervous system’ was a different story, as the electronic circuits in her body did prove susceptible. A momentary change in the value of ‘c’ (the speed of light) and two signals sent from the brain to the body might arrive in the wrong sequence. A change in the permeability constant of empty space, and her semi-conductors would temporarily become superconductors or insulators. The overall effect was that every signal from her brain to her body became disrupted, leading to chaos. She ‘froze’ in place, as her mechanical body was unable to obey all the conflicting signals it was receiving.
Doris wasn’t about to start celebrating yet! She figured that as long as she kept blasting gravity waves at Mekanique, the robot would be helpless. But, the gravity wave generator took almost all the power of the Gravity Rod, and what would happen when the sun came up and the G-Rod could no longer recharge itself? Her radio still wasn’t working, so right now it was a standoff. She was sure there would be rescue teams arriving shortly, and she could probably get one of them to contact Ted for her. Or maybe Lily had recovered enough to fly for help?
She couldn’t spare the power to fly herself, so she had drifted slowly to the ground. Carefully backing up, making sure she didn’t trip over any debris, she approached the generator behind which she had secreted her friend, keeping Mekanique under observation the whole time.
Quickly, her hopes and her precautions were both proved futile! Rotwang had provided extra inertial dampening for Mekanique’s computer brain, which protected the computer itself from the most extreme effects of the gravity wave bombardment.
Mekanique realized that there was a predictable pattern to the changing gravity waves, It required considerable calculation, but she was able to derive a sequence of commands that would anticipate the effects of the gravity waves, using those effects to change the seemingly random stream of signals into a valid command sequence that would give her back control of her body! It took her almost a minute to calculate, and then another minute to implement. Doris was just nudging Lily with her foot when Mekanique exploded into action!
Faster than a normal human could possibly react, Mekanique ran out of the range of Doris’s weapon. As soon as she passed the edge of the beam, she stumbled and fell, because she had to adjust her command sequences again. But she had anticipated this. She smoothly rolled back to her feet, then, safely back in normal space-time, she turned and launched a new attack.
A brilliant red laser beam stabbed at Doris. It was so powerful that the impact on her weakened energy shield drove her backwards, and she tripped over Lily’s outstretched legs. This dropped her out of the laser, and she used the short break to shut down the gravity wave generator, then soared into the air, ready to resume the battle. She was disappointed that the gravity wave trick had not worked. Well, she had been training with the Gravity Rod for years, so she went back on the attack.
She diverted more power to her energy shield, and dove at Mekanique like a striking missile. Both arms outstretched, wrapped in an invulnerable force field, she struck the robot like a lightning bolt thrown by an angry god. Mekanique’s own force shield protected her, but she was driven backwards and slammed into a pile of concrete rubble.
The robot reached up and she grabbed each of Doris’s wrists, using the heroines momentum to help her execute a backwards roll, and the, still holding Doris’s wrist, drive both her feet into Doris’s stomach. Doris was pivoted around by Mekanique’s grip, and she slammed into the ground, flat on her back. Even with the protection of her energy shield, she was stunned. Mekanigue was quickly on her feet, and was about to kick Doris viciously in the ribs, when she was struck from behind by a powerful energy beam. Lily was back in the fight!
GKO Part 6
This was just too much. These pests were keeping her from her mission – a mission to save lives. (Well, to save one life – but she had to save many to save that one!) She slammed a fist down on a fallen brick wall, shattering it, and started throwing chunks of rubble at Lily. Lily’s energy shield flared as each chunk struck, and she was being forced backwards with each impact. Unable to advance, she tried to deny Mekanique access to the rubble she was using as ammunition. A wide angle heat beam melted the rubble around the robot into a pool of lava.
Granted a second of relief, Doris got back into the air. She adapted one of Ted’s favorite tricks, and increased the gravitational attraction of both Mekanique’s body and the melted rubble around her. The lava engulfed her, momentarily blinding her.
Without warning, the ground Mekanique had been standing on vanished in an energy blast from Lily’s Power Rod, and she was falling into a deep pit. Lily continued to blast her as she fell, keeping her off balance. When she hit bottom, Doris used the Gravity Rod to drop the damaged generator on top of her. Both heroines switched to heat beams and blasted the generator, melting it almost instantly.
The molten metal surrounding her didn’t harm Mekanique, but she found it difficult to move. Robot bodies aren’t exactly made for swimming, and this wasn’t exactly water. So she tuned her energy absorber for heat energy rather than electricity, and sucked all the heat from the molten puddle, causing it to solidify.
Heat is a much less efficient source of energy than electricity. As hot as the puddle had been, absorbing its heat didn’t provide her with very much useful power, but that hadn’t been her purpose. As soon as the hot metal had solidified, she began to vibrate her body at super speed. In less than a second, the vibrations turned the metal encasing her into dust. She leaped out of the hole, shedding metallic dust as she flashed through the air.
Lily dove like a stooping hawk and smashed into Mekanique from behind, just before she landed. Mekanique couldn’t actually fly, so she had no way of resisting the force of Lily’s attack. Lily expanded her force shield violently just before she hit, greatly amplifying the force of her dive and Mekanique was slammed face-first into the dirt. Doris used the Gravity Rod to increase the force of gravity around her, and Mekanique was pulled into the ground be the tremendous g-forces.
As she sunk deeper, the earth beneath her compacted and fused into rock. She finally stopped sinking when she reached bedrock. Lily was hovering directly over the new pit that Mekanique created as she was dragged down into the earth, and she saw the robot vanish!
“Doris, she’s gone! She just disappeared. Did you disintegrate her?”
“Not me! Be careful, it must be a trick of some kind.” Doris allowed gravity to return to normal, and advanced cautiously, until she, too, could see that the robot was no longer pinned in this new pit.
It required a tremendous amount of power to travel in time, so Mekanique had displaced herself only about a minute into the future. As soon as she rematerialized, she shifted into a squatting position and leaped skyward out of the pit, crashing into the surprised heroines above her like an ICBM. Even though both were protected by energy shields, they were knocked away with stunning force. Before she landed again, Mekanique took stock of her condition. She had used up too much energy and there was no longer enough time to recharge.
This fight had just become irrelevant. In a few minutes, she and everyone in and around Opal City would be dead. She stopped fighting and remained stationary, enduring the attacks of the heroines, waiting for them to notice that she was no longer fighting back.
Part 7: “Good-bye, sisters…”
Doris and Lily were hitting Mekanique with their strongest power blasts, but Lily quickly realized that Mekanique had stopped fighting. Her martial arts training taught her never to attack an unresisting opponent, so she quickly got between Doris and the robot.
“Doris, stop! She’s not fighting back any more!” Doris stopped blasting, mostly to avoid hitting her friend. But when Mekanique didn’t take advantage of this lull, Doris, too, realized the fight was over. The two heroines landed and cautiously approached the robot.
“What is going on here?” Lily demanded “If this is a trick of some kind, you’ll end up being sorry!”
“I’ve told you repeatedly that I was here to save lives, not to harm anyone” the robot retorted. “A major catastrophe is about to destroy Opal City, and I was attempting to avert this catastrophe when you attacked me.”
“It is now too late. You have depleted my powers and I no longer have the strength to destroy or deflect the approaching menace. We will all of us die, and many thousands of others as well.”
“Hold on there, sister! You may have given up, but we humans don’t quit so easily. Tell us what is going to happen, and Doris and I will take care of it!” A large part of being successful is self-confidence, and Lily had confidence in spades!
Mekanique held her hands out, slightly below shoulder height, shoulder width apart, fingers pointing skyward, with her palms facing each other. “Watch, listen and learn.”
The space between her palms darkened, and then was filled with moving sparks of light.
“You are watching a war in space, a war that happened millions of years ago, when the ancestors of all things human still had tails and lived in trees.”
The scene split in two, with the space battle continuing on one side as a group of monkey-like creatures foraged for food in a dense forest on the other. A couple of seconds later, it changed again.
“A war between two species, each very like humans, who evolved on planets circling First Generation stars.”
The picture now showed two individuals. They were hardly ‘very like humans’ visually, but they were more familiar than many of the strange beings Ted had encountered with the Justice Society. Perhaps from the point of view of a robot, the differences between species of living beings were irrelevant.
“When they met, these two species with so much in common, they immediately became locked in a mortal war. Both species had abused the environments of their home worlds, and each was forced to find new planets to live on – and both species coveted the same planets. Perhaps by combining their considerable powers and knowledge they might have been able to find a mutually acceptable solution, and saved both species, but we will never know. It was a fight to extinction, and they both lost.”
“And why should we care about a battle that happened millions of years ago?” Lily asked. “And how does it affect us?”
“Watch and see, impetuous one.”
The picture changed again, and zoomed in on a spaceship that must have been as large as Manhattan Island. An incredible swarm of missiles was launched from the vessel, a swarm so thick it looked like a heavy fog rolling away from the battleship. Each missile was as large as the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth.
“My Lord, there must be millions of them!” Doris said, her voice plainly reflecting her awe – and her horror.
“This battleship was the doomsday weapon of one of the species. It targeted the home world of the other species, and launched roughly 2 million missiles a second for just over 11 minutes – each missile tipped with an atomic bomb. As you might guess, there was little left of their target. Unfortunately, before they could destroy their enemy’s home world, that enemy was able to loose an unstoppable, incurable, fatal disease on their own world. Mutual annihilation followed.”
Doris was amazed to hear sadness in Mekanique’s voice. Could a robot have compassion? Could _this_ robot, so well known as a deadly destroyer, have compassion? She said nothing, and continued to watch.
Many of the billions of missiles missed the target planet and continued to blast further into space until they ran out of fuel. The view zoomed in and focused on one specific missile, which was sleek, shiny and bright – and very menacing. It remained centered in the display, and the stars behind it moved. It gradually changed appearance, becoming dull and pitted, yet becoming even more menacing, like an unstoppable ancient Juggernaut. Suddenly, a planet appeared in the view. A giant ringed planet, a planet instantly recognized by the two humans.
“Saturn!” Doris gasped out, as both women suddenly realized the significance of this view. “C’mon, the Earth is moving at something like 36,000 miles an hour in orbit around the sun, which is also moving, and moving fast.. Do you expect me to believe that a missile fired several million years ago, aimed at a planet umpteen billion miles away from Earth, is instead going to score a bullseye hit on Opal City today? No way in hell!”
Somewhere in the back of her head, Doris felt an itch. Her intuition was sifting through all of the things she had learned from Ted over the years. Living with a genius for years had to be worth something! She listened very closely to Mekanique’s answer.
“The probability of such a bull’s eye, as you term it, is vanishingly small, but not zero. This could be incredibly bad luck. However, I also do not believe this is a coincidence. It is much more likely that the Lords of Chaos are somehow involved, as there are no other powers in the universe that can play such havoc with probability.”
She paused momentarily, then continued. “Still, if I had been unopposed today, I would have bested Chaos. This night, for reasons only Chaos knows, the two of you have acted as unwitting Agents of Chaos. Now, observe the future!”
The screen split in two again. Each side showed the giant missile rushing towards Earth.
On one half of the display, a gigantic pale blue bolt of energy lanced upwards from the surface and impaled the missile. It exploded high overhead, briefly illuminating the night sky with a light greater than the sun.
On the other, the object flashed to Earth, landing on the northernmost shore of the Chesapeake Bay, unleashing a massive nuclear explosion.
Neither heroine had to ask which was their future.
“How long do we have?” That was from Lily. “Maybe we can get some heroes together?” It was a null hope, as most of the heroes had recently disappeared, and even Ted had no idea where they were. Heck, they probably couldn’t even reach Ted in time.
“It is too late now. There is nothing we can do but perish.”
“Sorry, buster, but I sure don’t plan to perish! Maybe you’re out of power, but my Power Rod is stronger than ever!” Lily rocketed into the sky, straight up. “No more talk!”
“Too little, too late. The missile is just entering the atmosphere. Even were you to destroy it now, the shower of debris would produce devastation over an even wider area.”
“TIME TRAVEL!” Doris shouted triumphantly. “Mekanique, can you displace it in time? It would only take a day!”
Mekanique was quiet for almost a second as she calculated furiously. “Perhaps. I had never considered that. However, I will need assistance from both of you.”
“LILY WAIT!” Doris yelled again. To Mekanique: “You got it!”
Mekanique talked fast. “Doris, lift me into the path of the missile with the Gravity Rod. Doris leaped into the air, picked up Mekanique, and blasted at top speed to catch up with Lily.
When they did catch up, Mekanique continued. “Lily, blast me with the highest power setting you have, for as long as you can maintain the blast. I will absorb your power and channel it into my chronotron field generator. Pray that I can expand the field enough to capture the missile and move it back in time…” Her voice dropped to a whisper “A day would mean a million miles…” To the heroines, it almost sounded as if she were praying – or begging!
They were already a mile high – but Lily had not yet blasted Mekanique. She was afraid of some kind of trick. Doris sensed that Lily was hesitant, and spoke in her best command voice.
“Lily, blast her! Now!”
Reluctantly, Lily complied, rolling the power thumb wheel to maximum. She kept her beam squarely aimed at the robot. She was amazed – the power she was pouring into Makanique was an order of magnitude stronger than anything she had previously seen from the Power Rod. It was well for her peace of mind that she couldn’t see inside, as the power metal nugget was shrinking visibly!
There was a gauzy pink aura forming around Mekanique, growing slowly. And now Lily could feel the heat from the approaching meteor. She realized that if this didn’t work, they would all be dead in seconds. Yet they would have died almost as quickly if they had done nothing. Better to die fighting!
“Good-bye, Sisters. Whether this works or not, I doubt if we will meet again. Please temper your heroism with wisdom in the future!”
Part 8: Epilogues
The missile impacted the pink aura and vanished, along with Mekanique.
Epilogue 0. As they flew back to stately Knight Manor, Doris checked the various police radio bands, and discovered that the police and emergency crews had arrived at the demolished power plant, no one had been injured, and she and Lily had not been seen. They decided they didn’t need to tell Ted, either.
Lily had something on her mind. Her radio was still broken so she flew closer to her friend. “Doris, that night, you knew I was there, didn’t you? You know there has never been anything between me and Ted, and there never will be, don’t you?”
Doris knew instantly what night Lily was talking about*. “Of course I know that, Lily Loo. I was just making sure you and Ted both knew it, too!” She smiled, lazily.
Lily got the point. But she wasn’t finished yet. “So, how would this be for a nickname?” She flew closer, and just as she whispered, a gust of wind came up, drowning out her words for any eavesdropper more than a foot away.
“LILY! You wouldn’t dare!” It was Doris’s turn to blush!
“Not really.,, How could I ever call you that in public? It’s too bad you don’t like Dorilee, I think it’s great!”
“I’ve reconsidered, and I like Dorilee just fine, Lily Loo! Certainly better than any others you might end up embarrassing me with!”
“Considering how you embarrassed me _that night_, I’d say we’re even!” Lily answered with her own self-satisfied grin.
*See Lily DeLuna, Investigative Reporter for more details.
Epilogue 2: The next morning, there were no morning papers, but the local radio station, WOPL, receiving power from their huge diesel-powered emergency generator, was reporting that an unknown super being had demolished the Opal Electric Power Generating Station last night and vanished. It sounded as if it would be an unsolved mystery. The radio newscaster even wondered if renowned radio detective Roy Raymond might visit Opal City and investigate.
Lily’s flight to New York International Airport the next day was delayed indefinitely. Until full power was restored, only essential flights were allowed in and out of Opal City Airport. The Knights, however, were not without private resources. Lily’s bags were quickly loaded into Ted’s Piper Cub and Ted and Doris delivered her directly to New York, in plenty of time to catch her ship.
On the way home, Doris subtly guided the conversation towards astronomy. Eventually, she asked Ted about Sky Watch, a non-profit that he had helped set up. Sky Watch looked for and cataloged Earth-crossing asteroids. They had not found many, so far, but Ted estimated that there were probably several hundred of them,
“So, Ted, any action at Sky Watch recently?”
“Funny you should ask” Ted replied with a bemused expression on his face. “Night before last, we spotted one. But it was very unusual. It crossed Earth orbit about a million miles in front of us, which isn’t unusual. But nobody saw it before then. Ken Rumstay at Harvard Observatory checked his plates going back a month, but nothing showed up. It’s almost like it was invisible until then! Very mysterious.”
“What’s your theory, dear?” she smiled mischievously.
“It can’t have just appeared out of nowhere. It must be very dark on one side and very light on the other, and rotating very slowly. It is very difficult to see a black object that small in space. And much easier to see it if it reflects a lot of light. Seems pretty unlikely, I’ll admit, but a lot more likely than just appearing out of nothing!”
Lily would have recognized Doris’s self-satisfied grin.
Epilogue 3. The next day, Opal Electric was able to divert some power from other nearby power grids into the Opal City grid, and important functions, such as traffic signals and subway service were restored. The National Guard brought in a bevy of gasoline-powered generators for places that required full power, such as police and fire stations, streetcars, hospitals, and the train station and airport.
Non-essential events, such as this year’s National Cat Show, had to be canceled in order to save electricity. Gloria Giles Farley was philosophical as she watched her cat carriers being loaded into the baggage car of the train to Metropolis. She had expected her big goofy Maine Coon, Mr. Butterscotch, to win another Best In Show ribbon, and thought her smaller cats, Shayla and Bandit, would do pretty well in the American Short Hair and Siamese divisions, respectively. “Oh well” she thought to herself. “There’s always the Gotham Cat Show, next week. I just hope that the conductor will let me into the baggage car to visit my cats!”
The End
