"Not so many of us, lately," Marilyn said. "I've been hearing stories—"
Glances were exchanged. "Not the transit police again," Maureen said.
Marilyn shook her head. "Something else. Something big and dark ... down in the train tunnels. A couple of people who usually sleep down there haven't been seen, last couple of days."
Lloyd's eyebrows went up. "Not George Woczniak?"
"George," Marilyn said. "Rod Wilkinson, you know Rod, told me he saw some big black guy—not black like you: black black—down there on the lower level, not far from the Lexington Avenue upramp where the maintenance tracks are. Saw him the other night, over by where George usually sleeps. Then, the last couple of days—no George. And you know how George is: predictable. This isn't like him."
Mike looked up and said, "Now, you know . . . that's funny. Jenny McMahon, you know her, the blond lady who stays around 49th and Ninth—she was telling me she'd heard somebody telling some kind of story about something in the sewer tunnels under Second—you know where those access tunnels are—"
"Alligators again," Marilyn said.
Mike shook his head. "Nope. This was going on two legs. Teeth, though. She said whoever told her the story said the thing had teeth like a shark's happy dream. Lots of teeth."
MJ's eyes opened a little at that, but she kept her thoughts to herself for the moment.
Lloyd said, "Some of the regulars told me they didn't want to come up topside now, because of the chance that while they were leaving, they might run across . . . whatever it was. Makes you wonder whether above-ground might be safer for the time being."
Mike shrugged. "After those two guys got aced in the warehouse last night? Naah. It's just that there's no place safe in this city, not really safe. Not an apartment, not the top of Trump Tower, no place. The crime rate's a disgrace."
The conversation started to take the same kind of mildly complaining tone to be heard sooner or later from every city dweller anywhere: things are going downhill, the place is a mess, it wasn't like this ten years ago, the city really ought to do something. . . . MJ was having trouble concentrating on it. She was thinking about someone in black, someone with big teeth, someone around whom people vanished. "And the worst of it," Marilyn was saying, "is that all their hair is falling out."
"All of it?" Mike said, unbelieving. "Maybe it's bad water."
"Helen told me Roedean's hair was coming out in handfuls, in patches. And a whole bunch of them over there were coming out in weird splotches on their skin."
"This is over by Penn?" Maureen said curiously.
"Yeah," Marilyn said. "Roedean just moved over there a couple of weeks ago, and it started. Other people took longer, but they're doing it too. Some have moved already—they say they don't care how comfortable the digs over there are."
Maureen shook her head. "Are they all getting their water from a common source?"
"I don't think so—"
"Can't be that, then."
Lloyd shook his head. "Lyme disease, maybe? There was just an outbreak of it up in the Park last year."
Marilyn shook her head. "Takes longer, doesn't it? . . ."
The conversation wandered on again, and MJ found herself thinking, Hair falling out. Patches on the skin. Sounds more like radiation. It was hardly a revolutionary concept for her, or any great leap of imagination. She had married a man who was very interested indeed in the effects of radiation on human beings, for very personal reasons. She had heard more than enough dissertations on the subject. And her thoughts went again to the huge dark shape with the teeth. . . .
Peter, she thought. Peter needs to know about this, as fast as I can find him. Wherever he is.
Peter was not available for comment just then. But on the top of a fire-hose drying tower at the southeastern edge of the Brooklyn Navy Yards, Spider-Man crouched and looked out over the place, thinking.
Hard to know where to start. Even the military doesn't routinely paste big signs all over the outside of buildings saying, RADIOACTIVE STUFF, GET IT HERE! But all the same. . . . He looked over the expanse of the place, considering. You wouldn't leave it at the outskirts, routinely. You'd put it as far inside the installation as you could—making it as difficult as possible to get in and out without detection.
Or, alternately, you would keep raw fissile material close to the subs. That's one of the most secure parts of the base. He had seen the anti-dive nets below the surface of the entry to the Yards as he swung in. Those would routinely be moved only when a sub was about to enter or leave. Keep the fissiles near the missiles. He grinned under the mask. And the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true. . . .
He shot out a strand of web and began swinging in closer to the heart of the Yards, where the subs would dock. There was only one of them present at the moment, and he intended to take his time approaching it. His reconnaissance was a friendly one, but he wasn't sure the Base security people would immediately recognize it as such.
The Yards were not as easy to swing around in as, say, midtown: there were fewer tall structures, most of the buildings being one- or two-story jobs. Still, you had to work with what presented itself. Dusk was coming on—that much help he had. He busied himself with avoiding lighted windows, staying away from routes passing doorways from which people might suddenly emerge—say, people with guns.
On top of one middle-sized office-type building nearest the docks, he paused, eyeing the local traffic. Not many people were in the narrow streets that went between the buildings. Dinner time? Staff cuts? No telling. He pulled out the camera and its tripod from a web pouch slung over his shoulder. This was as good a spot as any—
It was the sudden faint whining noise in the air which brought his head up, not his spider-sense. That was still absent. He tracked with the sound, then glanced away and hurriedly turned the camera on too. It tracked as well, following the faint gleam of brightness as something fell down from where the sun still shone between the shadows of the skyscrapers falling across the water. The sun's brightness left the tiny shape, but not before Spider-Man saw it and knew it for the angular arrowhead-shape of Hobgoblin's jetglider.
My hunch was right, he thought. He watched the shape arrow downward, heading right for the sub. Don't know what good that's going to do him—
But a closer look at the sub told him. Its biggest hatch, the one used to service the missiles back at the rear end, was open. And anything big enough to install a missile through, was big enough to let the jetglider through as well.
He shot out web and instantly threw himself in Hobgoblin's direction as fast as he could. It was no simpler a business than getting across the base had been, but this time at least he wasn't going to worry about avoiding attention. Hobby was already attracting enough: he could hear shouts below him, and at least once, the sharp crack of a warning shot. If I can just keep from getting caught in a crossfire. Well, my spider-sense—
He felt like swearing. Won't do a thing.
Never mind!
He swung toward Hobgoblin's plummeting sled. For once luck was with him. Hobby was so intent on the sub that he didn't hear or see Spider-Man coming at him. I am not going to let him just waltz in there, Spidey thought. The thing is as full of nukes as a subway car's full of commuters.
But how to stop him?
Hobby was dropping lower, was certainly no more than a few hundred yards away. Now here is a truly dumb idea, Spidey thought, whose time has come.
He took the best aim he could manage, and shot a line of web straight at the sled. It caught—
He was yanked off the building with dreadful speed in Hobgoblin's wake. At first he had entertained some wild hope that his weight would slow the glider down, maybe even make Hobby fall off, but that was too much to hope for. The thing was fast, overpowered, and adaptable, and it just kept flying. Hobby staggered briefly, turned, noticed what sudden unwelcome cargo he was suddenly dragging behind him like a towed dinghy, and turned hard, so that Spidey was whipped hard
to one side at the end of his line of webbing, like a kid at the end of a line of skaters playing snap-the-whip. He hung on desperately, thinking, This is not a good place to fall off. A hundred fifty feet above land, a hundred fifty feet above water, it's pretty much the same result from this height. Splat—!
"You just can't keep out of my business, can you?" Hobby yelled at him, curving around so sharply in the air that for a moment Spidey was still going in the original direction while Hobby was going the other way, and they passed one another in the air. For that brief moment, the effect was comical.
It stopped being funny as the snap at the end of the whip caught Spidey again, harder this time. About 3 g's, if I'm any judge, he thought, his jaw clenched and his fists locked on the webbing. He thought the jerk as he came around again would break his wrists, but somehow he hung on, even without his spider-sense to warn him of exactly when the most dangerous stresses would come. "Let's just call it civic duty, Hobby," he yelled back. "This is government property—"
The second bullet went wheet!, just the way bullets were supposed to go, through the air right past his ear. It had been fired at Hobgoblin, but Hobby had banked hard around again, laughing hysterically. And here came the snap of the whip—
Spidey hung on, eyeing the buildings under him for one tall enough. If he could snag one of them with a webline and mate it with the one attached to the jet-glider—without being pulled in two pieces first like a Thanksgiving wishbone, that is.
But he didn't have time. The next thing he saw, again without his spider-sense giving him the slightest warning, was a pumpkin-bomb flying straight at his head.
Spider-Man let go the web and dropped, spread-eagled—he had learned long ago from watching real spiders, and from experience, that this was the only way to buy yourself a second or two in free fall. Behind and above him, the bomb went off. More rifle fire laced up past him toward Hobgoblin as Spidey looked around desperately for something to web to. One building had a radio mast on it, VHF from the look of it, and fairly sturdy. He shot web at it, felt it anchor, hauled himself in hard, managing to slingshot around it with enough speed and effort to keep himself from crashing into the roof of the building.
He looked up and saw Hobby heading straight down toward the open hatch of the sub. He had just enough time to see some sub crewman look up out of the hatch open-mouthed at the noise, take in the spectacle above, and duck hastily out of sight—but not fast enough to close the sub's hatch. Down the hatch Hobby went, and there followed several seconds of horrible silence.
And a BANG!
Oh God, no, Spidey thought, and swung straight down after him. It was a long shot for the hatch of the sub. He let go of the webbing, casting off as hard as he could to get those last few feet of distance.
He came down hard just at the edge of the hatch as the smoke came boiling up. Not one of the high-explosive pumpkins, he thought. Maybe he's not feeling homicidal today.
He dropped through the hatch and realized that the lack of spider-sense had betrayed him one more time. The first billow of smoke had been an ignition artifact from the bomb, nothing more. Down in the body of the sub, everything was drowned in a thick fog of gas: people were struggling in all directions, falling over each other. This gas Spidey knew from old experience. At high enough concentrations it paralyzed, even killed—and the bombs usually went off in two stages. He stopped breathing and made his way hurriedly along the way to where the cloud was thickest, squinting through his mask, which gave him some protection. There—looks like— He fumbled along the floor, and after a moment his hand came down on the round shape of the pumpkin bomb. Spider-Man leapt back up the ladder to the hatch in two great bounds, reared back and threw the bomb up and out of the hatch. In midair it detonated again, letting loose its main dose of gas, the one meant to flood the whole place and kill, but the breeze off the bay began to take the big noxious green cloud away immediately.
Not that this solved the problems of the men down in the sub. Spidey dove back down that hatch and started grabbing men any which way, upside down, right side up, a double armful of them. Up the hatch he leapt again, making harder work of it this time, but if a spider could jump around while lifting such proportional weights, so could he. He dropped the men in a heap on the upper hull and dived down the hatch again. A second load, men choking and coughing with tears streaming down their faces, cursing the gas and trying to find out what was happening to them. He leapt back up into the clean air, dumped them by their buddies, took a great lungful of breath and dived back down—and was slammed sideways into the opening of the hatch by Hobgoblin, still laughing, as he rocketed back up into the open with his arms full of something metallic and bulky. He soared away.
Spidey clung to the edge of the hatch and shot a webline at Hobgoblin, furious at one more failure of his spider-sense, desperate not to let Hobby get away. But Hobby veered to one side and was off across the river, heading for Manhattan at high speed, his laughter trailing away as he went. The web fell, useless, not being much good at changing direction in mid-shot.
Spider-Man clambered up out of the hatch and went over to check out the men lying around on the upper deck. They were still coughing and rubbing streaming eyes, but none of them were dead, which was something. "Hey," one of them said, focusing on him when his eyes were working again, "thanks, buddy. Maybe I'll do the same for you some day."
Spider-Man looked around him at the dark elegant bulk of the sub. "You've been doing it for a long while," he said. "I'm just returning the favor."
He heard clanking footsteps on the ladder from the big hatch, and turned. A tall dark man with eyes still wet from the effects of the gas, and wearing a sidearm, had come up out of the hatch and was eyeing him coolly. He said, "Captain wants to see you, Mr.—"
"Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man will do," Spidey said, trying to sound as cool. "My pleasure. Lead the way."
The sergeant-at-arms went down the ladder: Spidey followed him. Blowers had been activated inside the sub, and the gas was slowly clearing, so that off to his left Spider-Man could see something he would have missed the first time: a large door labeled DANGER—RADIATION, and bearing the radiation-warning trefoil. Now that's interesting, he thought. Hobby never gave that a second glance, if I'm right. Very strange indeed . . .
"This way," the sergeant-at-arms said, gesturing Spider-Man rightwards. Spidey went. Around him, in the corridor, men were being helped to their feet by others wearing anti-gas equipment. The corridor ended in what seemed like the bridge of the ship—or, at least, a bridge— and standing there was another man wearing an expression entirely too calm for the situation, and triple stripes on the short sleeves of his shirt, which accounted for the expression.
"Spider-Man, I presume," the Captain said. "That'll be all, sergeant-at-arms."
The officer saluted and turned away.
"Permission to come aboard, Captain—"
"LoBuono," the Captain said, and held out his hand. They shook. "Granted. My medic tells me you saved the lives of the men who were stuck aft."
"I think so, Captain."
"Thank you," the Captain said. "We seem not to have sustained any serious damage. But there has been a loss."
"Not of life—"
"No. Your friend there—"
"No friend of mine, sir. Hobgoblin."
"He deserves the name. And worse. He broke into one of the missile silos just forward of the hatch—" A young officer came hurrying up to Captain LoBuono at that point. "A moment," he said. "Report?"
"He got at number three, Captain," said the officer. "Pulled the upper actuator right out."
"Damn him straight to hell," the Captain said, again quite calmly. "Anything else?"
"No, sir. He tried number four as well, but seems to have decided not to bother."
"Doubtless one was enough," Captain LoBuono muttered. "Very well, start decommission procedures on that silo, and notify shoreside and Omaha by the usual procedures. And check number four out.
Dismissed."
The officer saluted and went. "Actuator?" Spidey said.
The Captain let out a long breath. "The device that triggers the atomic reaction in a fired missile," he said. "Certainly something which could have other applications."
"For someone like Hobgoblin," Spider-Man said softly, "no question whatever. And over the last day or so, he's been involved with the theft of some nuclear material."
Captain LoBuono looked at him thoughtfully. "Nuclear. . . . Would you come with me?" he said.
Spider-Man followed him. Further into the body of the sub, air-tight doors had closed and the air was still clean. They went through several of these until they came to the door which led to the Captain's office. The Captain closed the door behind them, gestured Spider-Man to a seat.
He sat down himself, across the desk from him, and paused a moment to run his hands over his face and through his hair. For that second all his dignity didn't so much fall away as relax to reveal beneath it a very tired and upset man. Then he straightened, everything in place again. "I want to thank you again," Captain LoBuono said, "for saving my people."
"Hey," Spidey said, "otherwise I would have kept tripping over them."
The Captain's smile was thin, but amused, that of a man used to seeing people conceal what was going on in their minds or emotions. "We have had some other unusual occurrences here over the past day or so," he said, "and in the light of this, I think perhaps you should know about one of them."
His spider-sense might not have been working, but Spidey could still get that sensation described by some as A Very Bad Feeling, and he was getting it now.
"We had an unusual passenger aboard," the Captain said. "We made pickup—I'm not at liberty to say where—and were to deliver it to a safe location in Greenland. However, our passenger parted company with us very shortly after we docked here."