Nabu was indeed able to teleport an interstellar vessel from the long-abandoned Galactic Patrol base on the rogue planet Ekluabdyalbker, though it exhausted certain rare magical components which might take him centuries to replenish, and left Marnu deeply in his debt. Nabu deposited the ship in an unpopulated mountain region near Vancouver, British Columbia, and Valor went to work, relying on the technological knowledge that had so long ago allowed him to found the Galactic Patrol. The ship was a Patrol cruiser, about the same size and general shape as the Hindenburg dirigible. It was in equal parts a minor warship and an exploration vessel.

Jim also headed to Vancouver, where he exchanged diamonds for cash. He had selected Vancouver as it was the home of several small cruise lines, and he contacted one of the suppliers for these lines. He arranged to purchase a standard package for a small cruise ship on a one-week cruise; he figured supplies for 75 people for a week would last a lot longer for two people – one of whom didn't eat. And there were a lot of things included in the standard package that he might have forgotten, like sundries for the online stores, recreational supplies such as desks of cards and books, and cleaning supplies. Some of it he thought they would never need, but it would cost more for the supplier to break open the packages and remove it than it was worth. They had plenty of storage space.

So, 4 days later, Strobe was using his power to unload 4 tractor trailers into the storage holds on their new cruiser. And then another 4 trucks showed up, chartered by Vic Valor, these ones carrying machine tools and computers. Not exactly the greatest confidence builder Jim had ever seen, really. But, as Valor had said earlier, they both had super powers and could survive in space without a spaceship if necessary.

Jim had already gathered his remaining possessions, so once their stuff was stowed, the two heroes held a short christening ceremony, naming the ship the "Tiak Avenger". Jim had convinced his companion that a shakedown cruise was necessary before they headed into deep space far from any star, so they headed outward from the Sun in normal space.

Shortly after launch, as they passed the orbit of the moon, Valor was discussing the condition of the ship. "I was extremely disappointed in the state of the ship when it arrived. When I first turned things on, less than half the systems would even power up. It is almost unthinkable to me that a Galactic Patrol ship could deteriorate so much in such a short time! They were designed, by me, to easily last several tiaks."

"A tiak may be like a week to you, but I'm surprised the whole thing didn't crumble to dust when Nabu moved it." Jim replied. "Human-made machinery rarely lasts a hundred years…" He was thoughtful for a few seconds. "Besides – you expected regular maintenance during that time, didn't you? That would make a big difference, I'll bet. There are some cars on Earth which are almost a hundred years old and in brand new condition, and Old Ironsides is almost 200 years old. Proper care makes a big difference!"

Valor didn't respond, directly. "With the spare parts normally carried aboard, and by scavenging non-essential systems, I've managed to restore propulsion, life-support for important areas, and navigation to 100% efficiency. Weapons and defenses are totally down, and I've shut down life support in the areas we won't be using. I propose that we make Ekluabdyalbker our first port of call. The Patrol had extensive maintenance facilities there, and we should be able to restore this ship to full capability – even if the facilities have deteriorated to the same extent as this ship. Plus, Ekluabdyalbker was an intelligence-gathering base, so we may find information to guide us on our quest."

The spells concealing and protecting Burr's preferred home, and now Wotan's, had been established eons ago, and were consistently reinforced and updated whenever the current owner felt sufficiently paranoid. Nabu had been unable to give them anything more than a general direction, so Valor expected to use intelligence he'd collected as Marnu before his personal disaster. He didn't see anything unusual about relying on 100,000 year old intelligence. Jim realized this was consistent with his expectations regarding the Patrol Cruiser. He was starting to learn that Marnu might be a little naïve in the ways of short-lived mortals!

The Patrol Cruiser was highly automated, and could be left on autopilot in routine situations. About a third of the vessel was devoted to power, engines, weapons and defenses (currently inactive) and life support, and another third was currently devoted to storage. Jim and Vic rattled around in the remaining third, which included living quarters, recreational facilities, and the control rooms. Hanging underneath where the gondola would be in a real dirigible, there was a hanger which housed a pair of much smaller auxiliary vessels.

System glitches occurred frequently. The temperature in Jim's room plunged to below zero. Lights in one of the hallways flashed like a strobe light. Sensors showed 'ghosts' – two or three images of the same things. All their clocks started counting down instead of up (that wasn't a system failure, Valor insisted, but a programming error he'd made when reprogramming things to use the Earth clock). Valor/Marnu was able to fix all of these things quickly, and by the end of the second day, things appeared to be more stable.

Around noon, ship's time (Seacoast City, California time, as well) on the third day, Jim was in the control room familiarizing himself with everything. He had quickly discovered that when he wore the Glove, the ship would respond to his mental commands. They were passing close to the asteroid of Juno, and Jim was using the ship's televiewer to examine it closely. Initially there was nothing of interest – it looked just like any other asteroid, a giant boulder tumbling endlessly through space, but then Jim was stunned to see a futuristic city! Tall buildings with monorails wandering through the buildings – and then just as quickly it had appeared, it vanished again!

"It must be a malfunction" he thought, and called his partner to the bridge. After watching the recording, Valor agreed, but he was unable to find anything wrong with the televiewer. Meanwhile, Jim had ordered the "Tiak Avenger" into a wide turn and a second, lower pass across the asteroid. The rest of the surface was as expected, but when they came to a halt above the same point, they were again looking down on a fantastic city.

"There's really something there!" Jim shouted. He adjusted the focus. "I can see people and cars on the streets. But all around the city, nothing but the dead rock surface of the asteroid! How can that be?"

"I think we are somehow looking through… a hole in space, Jim" Valor replied. "The polyphasic tachyon array shows three images. The asteroid, something floating above the surface – and something inside that." He looked at another instrument, and reacted with alarm. "I think we should move aw…"

Juno vanished Instead of moving through empty space thousands of miles from a small asteroid, the Tiak Avenger was suddenly deep in a planetary atmosphere, not more than a mile above the futuristic city, plunging towards the surface at deadly velocity!

Chapter 4A Rough Landing

Jim was nearly deafened by the instant clamor of collision warnings and alarms. High speed collisions are the perhaps the most dangerous nemesis of spaceships, and all of the contingencies, safeguards and backups provided by the Galactic Patrol scientists, engineers and shipbuilders came instantly online. Or, sluggishly online, or in some cases, never came online at all.

The measures that never worked were nowhere near as damaging as those that failed, often spectacularly, in their first usage in a thousand centuries. The anti-collision energy shield, which normally drew minimal power as it swept meteors from the ship's flight path in space, suddenly flared to full strength. The power draw was too much for the fragile ancient components, and the shield generator exploded, utterly destroying one of the ship's power plants and a dozen nearby compartments. Auxiliary maneuvering engines roared to life and attempted to bend the collision course away from the planet's surface. The ship abruptly accelerated sideways, and started to shudder violently, like a paint can being shaken in the hardware store as the engines powered up unevenly, with some stuttering and dying and others jumping to full power regardless of the control settings. The pearly glow of Jim's power enveloped and protected him, and Valor's invulnerability was proof against this battering, but anything inside the ship that wasn't fastened down was thrown against the bulkheads.

Jim was frantically sending mental commands to the ship. 'Turn off the alarms! Shut down all malfunctioning systems! Main engines to full reverse!' The violent shuddering mostly died away, and the heroes felt the deceleration building up. "We're changing course, but not enough!" Jim shouted, pointing at an instrument that was plotting their path. They could see the course starting to bend, but it still hit the surface.

"I've cancelled gravity beneath us" Valor added, calmly. "But inertia is our main enemy now, not gravity!"

"Holy spit - they're shooting at us!" Jim snapped in disgust, as the televiewer showed something streaking upwards from the city towards them.

"Incoming missile alert! Incoming missile alert! Impact in 14 seconds" they were warned by the computer.

'Shut UP!' Jim screamed a mental command to the computer. "Vic, do we have any shields left?"

Valor's visual sensors gave him telescopic vision. He stared intently at the screen for an instant, and then turned his concentration back to saving the ship. "I don't think it's necessary, Jim. That's not a missile, it's a person."

While they both fought desperately against the implacable force of inertia for the life of their ship, they watched the flying figure pass beneath the cruiser, and then they felt the nose start to lift. Jim switched the monitor to an external camera on the bottom of the hull and they could see that the green-clad flier, now recognizable as a medium sized humanoid, was straining to lift the nose of their ship on his shoulders, much as the mythical Atlas was supposed to have lifted the world. The plotted path on the monitor gradually changed a little more, but it wasn't enough, and they were out of time! They were already hundreds of miles past the mysterious city, and the Tiak Avenger did a high speed belly flop into the green surface below them. The cacophony of noises that filled the ship at impact temporarily overwhelmed both heroes, and for long instants, neither could do anything more than hang on.

If the surface had been solid they probably would have died. As it was, they crashed into the highest layer of foliage in a deep dense jungle which covered virtually the entire planet. Foliage, branches, and even the massive trunks of centuries-old trees snapped like twigs, and the Patrol cruiser slid through the jungle, crushing everything in its path. Nothing living could damage the ultra-hard ceramic of the hull, probably the toughest material that highly-advanced civilization of the past had ever produced. Still, forcing its way through the dense jungle eventually slowed the ancient ship to a halt, at the end of a mile-long valley of crushed and shattered vegetation.

The two heroes had come through the crash in better shape than the inside of the ship itself. Strobe launched himself towards the nearest airlock, hoping to find out what had happened to the flying hero who had helped save them. Valor stayed behind to shut down anything that was still operational and start damage control.

Jim immediately noted a strange green cast to everything, and he looked to the sky - the local sun was a pale green. He saw movement in the jungle nearby, and was stunned to see that vines were already growing out of the edges of the shattered vegetation, seeking to reclaim the empty canyon created by the crashing Tiak Avenger. New plants were sprouting, eagerly taking advantage of their access to the sunlight, and runners were already covering the downed vegetation, insinuating roots into the dead and dying foliage and dissolving it with acid sap. Competition for survival in this all-encompassing jungle was brutal and ruthless!

Jim flew to the front of the ship, but he had no hope - the mysterious hero must have been crushed between the vast mass of the ultra-hard hull and the pile of shattered wood and other vegetable matter bulldozed up by the ship. Where the dead vegetation touched the hull of the Tiak Avenger, still superheated from air friction, it flashed into flames, but the fires went out quickly. Where the questing vines touched the hull, they also burst into flames, but instantly spit out a stream of sap, which bubbled up into foam and extinguished the flames.

"Built-in fire extinguisher!" Jim thought. He noticed a bunch of green balloons, rising out of the jungle on the upwind side of the living trench. They floated towards the ship, each trailing a very fine vine behind it. This jungle wanted the trench back, bad!

He heard someone shouting, and turned towards the rear of the ship. The green-clad native hero had somehow survived! Although his torn and tattered costume showed that he hadn't totally escaped the crash. Though he was still more than 2 football fields away, Jim could hear him clearly. He couldn't understand a word but the native's tone was clear - he was shouting a warning of some kind.

"The Glove is a universal translator" Valor reminded him through the Patrol communicator Jim was wearing. Jim commanded the Glove to translate the shouts, but he still couldn't understand.

"Must be a language the Patrol didn't know" Jim responded wryly. One more change the Lord of Order hadn't expected. Pretty soon he would have to realize that a tiak is a long time, especially when dealing with mortals.

Jim remembered when he had commanded the Glove to read Iredok's mind. He didn't need this man's whole history, though. "Read his mind to learn the language, and then translate for me." A few seconds later the shouts started making sense.

"The Jungle is incredibly dangerous. It will eat you and bury your ship!. You must escape quickly before it destroys you!" He pointed his hands at the encroaching balloons, and each balloon he aimed at collapsed and fell, draping the thin vines across the hull. There were some muffled explosions further back in the foliage, and dozens of football-sized projectiles were flying through the air towards Jim and the stranger. The flying hero aimed at these, and some of them exploded. Jim created a glowing white tennis racket, which started swatting these projectiles away. Still, some of them got through, and exploded on the seemingly invulnerable skin of the native flier and Jim's energy shield.

"Vic, we need to get out of here. This jungle is attacking us, and it's dangerous! Can you move the ship, or am I going to have to carry it?" He wasn't at all sure that he could carry something that big, but he would have to try.

Thicker vines were starting to climb up the web of thinner vines that now were draped over about a third of the hull. They were exuding sap, which quickly burned away any organic debris and then started dissolving the hull paint. Paint designed by the Patrol to stand up to space, takeoff and reentry, and all planetary environments known to the patrol! Fortunately, the ceramic hull itself seemed proof against the corrosive sap.

"I've got the hull shield working. Move away!" Valor warned. The hull shield was a powerful force field that formed itself microns above the surface of the hull. It had the capability to deliver a powerful energy blast to anyone on the hull, and was primarily designed to help repel boarders. The discharge vaporized all the plants that were within an inch of the hull, and the Tiak Avenger instant lifted from the planet. "It will take hours before we can do that again. A couple of auxiliary atmospheric engines are still working, barely enough to lift us out of reach. I don't know how long they'll last. Ask your friend if there's anywhere we can go on this planet that's safe?" Jim heard and explosion in the background. "Damn! The hull shield generator just melted." Jim had never heard the ancient Lord of Order swear before.

Strobe flew into the airlock, followed by the native hero as the Tiak Avenger lifted slowly out of range of the deadly voracious jungle below. A few seconds later, Jim and the stranger joined Valor in the control room.

With the Glove now translating for Valor as well, the native spoke. "The only safe place on the planet is the city! If I could use your radio, I'll let them know we are coming so we don't start a panic." Now that he had time for closer examination, Jim was stunned to realize this powerful native hero was a teenage boy!

Chapter 5 Power Boy

"My name is Power Boy. Sorry your welcome to Juneo was so violent. But that's pretty much what we deal with every day, here."

"I'm Jim Chisholm and this is Vic Valor. Glad to see you alive." Jim extended his hand. The gesture must have been known on Juneo, as Power Book shook hands with both of them. "I was sure you had been crushed in the crash!"

"It would take a lot more than that" Power Boy replied casually. "But I got brushed off by the first Senoita tree. Nothing more I could have done, anyway."

"Does everyone on this planet have super powers?" Valor asked the teenaged hero.

"Just me. If we all did, maybe we'd have a chance against the jungle." He paused, and looked each of the Earth heroes directly in the eye. "Look, do you think you could teach me to build that weapon you just used to free your ship? We need all the help we can get."

Before Jim could agree, Valor spoke up. "We'll do what we can to help you and your people. Why don't you tell us more about Juneo?"

The Tiak Avenger floated well above the range of the deadly jungle. With most of her engines disabled, it would take a couple of hours to drift back to the city. It was a good time to gather more information about their current situation.

"Not sure what to tell you. The jungle's overrun every other city on Juneo except for Ralzen's Forge, where we're headed now. Sooner or later the jungle adapts to anything we throw at it. Your weapon might give us a couple more years." He sounded very dejected.

"Even after seeing it, it's a little hard to believe how deadly your plants are." Jim commented. "I've seen killer monsters who weren't nearly as deadly."

Power Boy shook his head in agreement. "I guess it wasn't always like this. A long time ago, the sun was yellow and the plants were tame. When it turned green, the jungle got out of control. At least, that's what the history books say!"

"I was wondering about that" Jim replied. "I never heard of a green star before."

"Almost every star emits light of almost every color" Valor said. "Red stars emit red light much more strongly than any other color, blue stars emit more strongly in the blue. There are stars that emit most strongly in the green, but the human eye's frequency response is lowest in the green. So, to human eye, stars that emit most strongly in the green appear to be white." Jim had noticed that Valor occasionally dropped into a lecturing mode that reminded him of one of his most boring college professors. He figured it was an expression of the Marnu part of his personality. "For a star to appear green to a human, it must be emitting extraordinarily strongly in the green. This is something well outside the normal process of stellar evolution." He turned to the young hero. "Do you know when the sun changed from yellow to green?"

"It was about 100,000 years ago, I think. Why?" Power Boy replied.

"Wow! Just about the time the Galactic Patrol was destroyed!" Jim noted. "Do you think they're related?"

"An interesting coincidence, at least" was all the answer Valor gave.

"I've always wondered if the sinking of Lemuria on Earth was somehow related to what happened here? Both disasters happened at around the same time." Power Boy mused.

"How do you know about Earth and Lemuria?" Jim asked, stunned.

"Why, I was born in Lemuria."

"I would have guessed you were about 16" Jim laughed. "You're not a Lord of Order, are you? And how did you get here from Lemuria?"

Power Boy used his super vision to judge the distance to Ralzen's Forge. "I guess we have time for the story. It's pretty unbelievable, even to me. But first, give me a moment…"

Power Boy looked like an average teenage boy. He was around 5'7", gawky and not very graceful, as if he had was still getting used to his last growth spurt, with short curly red hair and freckles. His searched the tatters of his yellow cape, and smiled in satisfaction as he opened a pocket and pulled out a… green golf ball? His figure suddenly blurred and then became solid again, and his costume was restored. He was mostly wearing dark green – boots and skin tight long sleeved top, with a green loin cloth, dark orange tights, and a yellow turban and cape. The turban sported a large red jewel, and there was a mostly triangular red insignia on his chest. A yellow utility belt completed the outfit.

"I always carry a number of spare costumes" he told the Earth heroes. "Though I seem to be invulnerable, Juneon science hasn't quite come up with fabrics that hold up to the dangers I regularly face."

He sat down at one of the empty control stations, and started his self-history.

Long ago, a great disaster wiped out a great, highly advanced civilization on a distant planet known by its inhabitants as Earth, as the continent of Lemuria was swallowed by the ocean. A brilliant eccentric scientist, Oria of Mestoron, had predicted the disaster, but her warnings were ignored by the ruling council, and she was mocked by the general populace.

Oria and her husband, Leus, realized it was too late to save their own lives, but they were determined to save their 2 year-old son Taleus. There would be no place on Earth where the baby would be safe. The sinking continent would trigger a global epidemic of earthquakes and volcanoes, and the sinking continent would unleash tidal waves and tsunamis that would inundate most of the other continents. The dust, smoke and water vapor thrown into the atmosphere by these natural disasters would trigger a 'nuclear winter' and an ice age. Humanity would be reduced to living in caves for many thousands of years – if it could survive at all. Fortunately, Leus, a noted astronomer, suggested an alternative – the asteroid Juno.

Through his super-powerful telescope, Leus had seen a city of the surface of the third-largest asteroid. The inhabitants appeared to be humans, and the technology appeared to be at about the early internal combustion level – not as advanced as Lemuria, but certainly better than the almost certain death their son would face anywhere on Earth.

Using advanced materials and technology Oria had created, the two Lemurians labored together to build a small rocket. To save the weight and space required by life support equipment, their young son would make the trip in suspended animation. All this was known from written diaries the two scientists had loaded into rocket with their son.

After the successful launch, things had gone wrong. Nobody knew why the small rocket had missed Juno, or how it had somehow crossed interstellar space to reach Juneo instead. And instead of being discovered shortly after it reached the planet, the rocket fell into jungle, where it was buried by the vegetation and remained undiscovered for a thousand centuries.

Some 15 Earth years ago, a native scientist was testing a new plant-destroying weapon while investigating an anomaly in Juneo's magnetic field. The new weapon had charred the jungle down to bare soil, and the anomaly turned out to be the partially-buried rocket containing Taleus. The child revived as soon as he was exposed to the air, and the weapons scientist and her husband adopted the infant. His amazed parents quickly discovered that the boy had super powers. This boy, of course, had grown up to become the Juneon super hero known as Power Boy.

Chapter 6 A Never Ending War

Power Boy stopped talking abruptly, and his expression indicated that he was listening intently to something the other two heroes couldn't hear – even Vic Valor's super hearing missed the inaudible message. But Power Boy let them in on it soon enough.

"I have to go. The Jungle Defenses are being overwhelmed!" He headed for the airlock, followed quickly be Strobe. Valor switched the autopilot to hover and followed at super speed. Outside the three heroes flew over a seemingly endless landscape of green – the top of the world-girding forest. In seconds, though, the city of Ralzen's Forge came into view on the horizon. It was a fantastic sight!

The forest was several hundred feet deep. The city, about the size of Manhattan, was circled by a wall that was perhaps twice as tall as the tallest tree in the forest. Along the top of the wall, and on a descending series of ledges covering the entire height of the wall, were arrayed thousands of fantastic weapons, all of them firing constantly. They didn't have much time to gawk at the city, but it was definitely 'gawkworthy'! At a quick glance, Jim noticed that these people built tall, avoided corners and used a lot of glass. He thought the building style looked like a cross between Arabian-style architecture and the Westin Peachtree Hotel in Atlanta, lavishly decorated in arabesque style carvings.

The forest was cleared back from the wall for about a half mile, and in the cleared area, the ground was a war zone. Cannons fired explosive shells, and energy weapons filled the air with hot deadly plasma. The weapons fire was mostly directed at the edge of the forest, to try to extend the clear zone. Jim thought that the free energy density in that area must approximate the center of a nuclear fireball! Nothing living could possibly survive that, and yet, the jungle was constantly pushing amoeba-like extensions of itself into that hell. Though these new extensions were instantly vaporized, the best efforts of the Jungle Defense Team were barely enough to keep the perimeter from encroaching any further.

As they approached the city at supersonic speed, Power Boy led them to an area near the perimeter where the ocean of vegetation was deeper than the surroundings. As they watched, a patch several hundred acres in size was growing into a hill, and then a mountain. When the heroes arrived, this mountain of vegetation was almost as tall as the wall surrounding the city and still growing.

"We must chop this down!" Power Boy used his super loud voice to communicate above the din of the ongoing battle. "Otherwise it will grow larger, then collapse on the wall, and provide the jungle with a path to invade the city!"

As they had flashed over the forest, Marnu had done some thinking. As an immortal, he was no longer used to making decisions at breakneck speed, and his recent activities had been making him kind of frazzled. A 'well-thought-out plan' for a human was less than a capricious whim to an immortal, and he disliked acting on a whim. As well, trying to deal with humans at their level reminded him of the time when he had been still very like a human - and it was disturbing to think of himself as ever having been such an... incomplete… being. These must be some of the reasons Nabu took a host - to deal with mortals on mortal terms... The aspect of his personality that had been Vic Valor had been quite successful, in mortal terms, so he decided to withdraw the greater portion of his consciousness from Valor's day-to-day activities.

Power Boy was explaining about the jungle's most recent attack. "This kind of major attack normally happens about every 50 years. It's like the jungle saves up extra energy for an all-out effort over those years. Worst thing is, it adapts to the weapons we use against it, and after a '50 year attack' the adaptations spread throughout the entire jungle! So we use the down time to develop new weapons. But this attack is way early - by about 15 years. We don't have our latest weapons ready yet!"

"It can't be a coincidence that the jungle advances its attack by 15 years just at the same time we're on Juneo!" Strobe mused. "Wotan must have something to do with it! Man, I hoped I was free of him when Nabu lifted that damn curse!"

Valor realized his best weapon against the Voracious Jungle would be his disintegration beam. Nothing that was made of matter could resist that beam - it produced a pinpoint of hyper-intense gravity, and anything within about 30 thousands of an inch (about the thickness of a dime) was instantly crushed into monatomic dust. But the area of impact was too small to be effective against a menace the size of a skyscraper! If he defocused the beam, the crushing effect would not be as powerful, but he judged that he could produce an effective radius of about 10 feet and the beam would still be powerful enough to destroy the vegetation involved. He mentally tweaked the settings of one of his gravity control modules (sort of like built-in Gravity Rods).

Internal alarms started blaring immediately. Now operating well outside its design parameters, the gravity module had become unstable and was swiftly building towards overload! Thinking quickly, Valor burst ahead of his friends.

"I think I can take out that whole thing with a single gravity bomb! Stay back!" He opened an access panel in his side and pulled out a small oblong box. 'It's a good thing Ted Knight used modular plug-in design with redundant backup capacity when he built this suit!' he thought, as he threw the box with all his super strength at the giant green wave, which seemed just on the verge of breaking. 'I'll be able to keep functioning at slightly reduced power by drawing on the excess capacity of other units. It will take more than that to slow down Victorious Valor, Ultimate Commander of the Invincibles of Xadam!'

"We're not safe yet. We must get out of the blast radius immediately!" Valor yelled to his friends, still doing mental calculations. If his math was right, they were barely far enough away. If he was off by a decimal, they would be caught in the implosion, and Strobe and Power Boy, his own body and likely the entire planet, would probably be destroyed.

"How far?" Power Boy demanded, while Strobe extended his white energy shield to encompass all three heroes.

Behind them, they heard a muffled 'whoomph' and then an incredibly loud crack of thunder, as cubic miles of angry jungle and the ground beneath it vaporized, and air rushed to fill the vacuum. They felt something grab their feet and pull with giant strength, but only for the barest instant. They looked back and all that was left was a spherical crater, almost a half mile in diameter, the jungle leaning crazily towards the crater in a larger circle.

"Holy Spit! What was that?" Strobe wanted to know.

"I decided to use my gravity controller as a 'gravity bomb'" Valor responded. "I set it to overload. For just a nanosecond, it created a virtual quantum black hole which vaporized everything within a quarter mile."

Power Boy was awed. "If we had that weapon, we could finally win our battle with the jungle!"

Strobe was a little more practical. "What would have happened if we'd been inside that radius? You could have given us a little more warning!"

"I'm sorry - I'm not used to working with others" Valor apologized. "As you can see, though, my methods are successful." He wasn't about to tell anyone it had all been unplanned, the serendipitous results of a potentially deadly mistake on his part - or that he had a long history of similar successes!

"You better work on the teamwork concept some, Vic - I don't look forward to being destroyed next time you're playing the Lone Ranger with black holes or some other super-scientific weapon of planetary scale destruction."

"You already have my apology" Valor said stiffly. He was after all, commander of the most highly skilled troop of warriors in the galaxy, not some mere recruit to be reprimanded by a civilian! "My results should speak for themselves."

"We've still got problems" Power Boy reminded them. "The jungle is now probably impervious to our existing weapons, and our latest generation is still under development. Mr. Valor, do you think you can teach our weapons scientists how to build hull shields and gravity bombs?"

The major threat of the giant wave was defeated, but the jungle was already reclaiming the crater - in fact, vines were cracking out of the exposed granite. And Strobe could see that tentacles of vegetation were creeping tentatively into the clearing around the city. The combined forces of the Jungle Defense Force fired at these new tentacles, and some of them were blasted out of existence, but some resisted. It took the combined fire of every weapon on this half of the city to push the encroaching jungle back to the perimeter in a single spot, and while the firepower was diverted, the jungle began pushing forward at hundreds of new locations. Again the fire shifted, and another incursion was destroyed, but another hundred were begun, and the jungle crept closer. There weren't enough weapons, and they couldn't be redeployed fast enough, to stop the revitalized invasion. Without newer, more effective weapons, the eventual outcome was clear - total victory for the Jungle.

"I can certainly work with your weapons team!" Valor agreed, and Power Boy led them into the city, to a highly advanced weapons research facility. After introducing Valor to the lead scientist, he and Strobe headed back to the city wall, to aid in the war against the jungle.

The jungle was now immune to the killing effects of the microwave radiation beams from Power Boy's hands, though if he focused the beams long enough on a certain point, the heat generated would eventually cause the vegetable matter to either explode or burst into flame, but that was quickly extinguished. He and Strobe quickly discovered that physical force was currently the most successful weapon they could employ.

Power Boy would stand straight and extend his arms out to the sides, and then begin whirling around at super speed. His outstretched arms acted as invulnerable saw blades, and the rock-hard vegetation would almost literally explode when he whirled into it, and as long as he could spin, he carved away the face of the forest with relative ease. But he couldn't keep up the pace for long - the broken vegetation sprayed him with sticky sap, and debris stuck to him, and every few minutes, he had to stop and stand beneath one of the powerful energy weapons, which would burn the mess off of him. Strobe was able to create giant cutting tools, such as a giant glowing white chain saw, but the 'wood' of the jungle contained a lot of ultra-hard stone, absorbed by the plants as armor against explosions and cutting tools, and the cutting edge quickly dulled. When he willed the cutting edge to be as hard as hull ceramic, things went more smoothly.

Working in concert with the Jungle Defense teams, Power Boy and Strobe were able to fight the jungle back to the earlier boundary. But they had to constantly use their powers to the fullest, and they had almost no time to rest. Sooner or later they would need a break, and during that time, the jungle would inexorably creep forward. The assistance of the heroes could slow down the inevitable fall of the city to conquest by the jungle, but the heroes were seemingly doomed to ultimate failure.

Until Valor appeared over the wall, carrying a futuristic gadget that looked like a Jack Kirby energy cannon.

"Stand back!" he roared the command. Bracing the cannon with his massive body, he aimed at the edge of the forest and fired. A pale pink beam lanced out, and where it touched the encroaching vegetation, all the green instantly turned to brown. It seemed as if the plants were being killed, but it wasn't enough – the piles of dead matter protected the living plants further behind. The weapon was actually going to make it harder to fight the forest! "Protect yourself, there is about to be a very large explosion."

After his last experience with Valor's weapons, Strobe immediately threw up a powerful force bubble around himself and Power Boy. Cones of heat came from Valor's eyes, and the dead vegetation exploded violently, blasting the dead matter out of the original clearing, and actually destroying some of the living jungle and extending the cleared zone significantly. A cheer went up from the Jungle Defense gun crews on the barrier wall.

"The weapons factories are starting to turn these out now. We should help deliver them to the teams on the walls!" Valor told his friends.

"What a fantastic weapon!" Strobe was enthusiastic. "But it's not a gravity bomb or a hull shield – how did you come up with it so fast?" The three heroes sprang into the air, and Power Boy led the way to one of the many weapons factories in the city.

"It's a beam that breaks the hydrogen-oxygen bonds in water molecules" Power Boy guessed. "It kills the plants, and then they are filled with hydrogen and oxygen – and it just takes a little heat to make the dead matter explode. You found a power supply with enough energy to drive the beam?"

"That's it. I just adapted an stellar infra-energy power source used on Earth and it was ready to go. The factories were already tooled up to build the cannons as soon as someone figured out how to power them. How did you know about the bond-breaking beam?" Valor asked the teenage hero.

"I invented it."

Chapter 7 A Final Solution?

Within hours, with the assistance of the 3 super heroes, enough Tri-B Projectors (Bond Breaker Beam) had been delivered to the walls to drive the encroaching jungle back to its prior limits. Inside the city walls, the constant rumble of plants which had just been converted to high explosives sounded to Jim like distant heat lighting on a hot Earth summer day. The inhabitants were used to a lot worse, and they simply ignored this background noise.

"So, you're an inventor?" Strobe asked Power Boy, as they finally took a well-deserved break. "You look like you should still be in high school." There must have been a translation problem, as Power Boy looked puzzled. They discussed the concept of a high school, and when he got it, Power Boy was stunned.

"In our society, we don't have the luxury of allowing teenagers to waste their time in school. Our population is so small and our battle with the jungle so all-encompassing that everyone must join the workforce as young as possible. Our schooling is done via mental teaching machines, and most students graduate with the equivalent of your college diplomas at the age of 11. After I completed my apprenticeship I've been a government weapons contractor for the past 3 years."

Jim was horrified to think of a society where children never had time to be kids, but were forced to spend most of their childhood attached to learning machines, with the teachings of a human lifetime crammed into their brains before they even reached their teens.

Before they could discuss this further, they were interrupted by a siren. Power Boy recognized it instantly. "That's the meteor alert!" He quickly scanned the sky with his super vision. "There! 3 large asteroids, aimed right at Ralzen's Forge! I hope you don't mind, but I need your help!"

"Lead the way" Strobe replied wearily. He really needed a good night's rest, but it seemed he wouldn't get it any time soon. The 3 heroes headed skyward at high speed. As the ocean-liner sized asteroids came into sight, they split up, one hero per asteroid. Power Boy simply smashed through his chosen asteroid at super speed, and then continued to smash the fragments into even smaller fragments. Valor rushed up to 'his' asteroid, braced his back against it, and used his remaining gravity control modules to boost this rock into a different orbit.

Strobe set up a giant rocket on the flank of his selected rock, and a plume of glowing white rocket exhaust started pushing the asteroid into a new orbit. Suddenly, his energy constructs wavered, and then disappeared completely! Strobe instantly dove towards the atmosphere of the planet below, while warning Valor over his GP communicator.

"Vic! Something's interfering with my power. The last time it happened, it was caused by kryptonite radiation! I need to get somewhere safe, fast!" As Strobe headed for the ground, Valor signaled to Power Boy that the Juneon hero should deal with the last asteroid, while he used his highly advanced built-in sensory equipment to search for kryptonite radiation. He quickly found a large boulder which glowed bright green, which had apparently been knocked loose from the asteroid Power Boy had destroyed. He grabbed it with both hands, spun around to gain added momentum, and threw it as hard as he could towards Juneo's sun. A super speed search of the orbit nearby discovered no further kryptonite radiation.

Meanwhile, Power Boy had guided the last asteroid into a different orbit. It was now on a nearly parallel path with the asteroid Valor had redirected seconds earlier. These asteroids would eventually pass out of Juneo's solar system into interplanetary space, never to menace the planet below again.

Jim was extremely excited when the other two heroes joined him on the surface. "I think I've figured out a way to end the threat of the jungle on Juneo forever!" That got Power Boy's attention immediately.

"That kryptonite rock jogged something in my memory. When I trained with the Justice Society, I spent a lot of time reading their records, and I came across a case that involved 'White Kryptonite'. White Kryptonite instantly kills any kind of vegetation! If we could find some White K and bring it here, the Juneons could use it to control the jungle."

"What's kryptonite?" Power Boy wanted to know. So, Jim had to tell the whole story of Krypton, and Superman.

"Wow! His story is just like mine!" Power Boy exclaimed. "What an amazing coincidence! Except he wasn't stuck in suspended animation for 100,000 years."

"I wonder what gives you your powers?" Jim asked curiously. "Superman gets his from the lower gravity of Earth, and some kind of energy emitted by the yellow sun."

"My adopted mother, the leading scientist on Juneo, speculated that it was due to the green sun reacting with my alien metabolism." Power Boy replied.

"But, I'm from Earth like you, and I haven't developed the same powers you have" Jim objected.

"You haven't been absorbing green sun energy for a thousand human centuries, either, Jim" Valor reminded him. "Power Boy, in suspended animation, has been on this planet for a lot longer than you. But let's get back to kryptonite. I know everything Ted Knight knew in 1949, so I know about Green Kryptonite, but I've never heard of White K."

Power Boy looked confused at this. Why would Vic Valor know everything that someone else had known, some time in the past? But the kryptonite discussion continued, and Power Boy forgot to ask for the whole confusing story of Vic Valor.

"It may not be native to our universe – I think someone brought it here from Earth 1." Jim explained. ""

"OK, I was just going to listen – but what do you mean, 'our universe'? Are you saying there's other universes?" Power Boy interrupted, a puzzled look on his face. So of course, they had to stop and explain the concept of multiple universes.

"OK, I get it. But how can something that doesn't even exist in our universe help us?" Power Boy wanted to know.

"If I knew more about how Kryptonite was formed, I might be able to duplicate the process of creating White Kryptonite" Valor spoke up. "But it would interfere with our quest for the Lens of Allouche if we went to Krypton's solar system." He looked at Jim, leaving the question hanging in the air.

"We've got a chance to give the kids of this planet their childhoods back!" Jim was enthusiastic. "I can't think of any better way to spend my time. What about you?"

"I've got plenty of time, being immortal" Valor answered. It was settled; they were going to head for the Rao system.

Interlude Port of Call

The small armed Free Trade starship 'Slim Chance' was about to exit Jump Space to make port in the Juneo system, after its first trade run. The 5 person crew, all of them recently mustered out of the Survey Service of the Third Emporium, as was their ship, were poised at their stations in the control room, and the tension in the room was almost tangible. There were rumors of space pirates haunting the exit point on this trade route, and if they could add the bounty for the pirates to the profit they had already made, their first trading run would be an outstanding success. Of course, the pirates would have something to say about that!

"Status?" Captain and owner Kirk Lonewolf, an Answerin, spoke quietly, but his powerful voice easily carried to everyone on the bridge. The physical toughness of the Answerin made them familiar and prized members of all the Imperial services, but their almost foolhardy courage made it rare for one to survive long enough to reach command ranks. He was looking forward to plaentfall – his crew really needed R&R, and he knew they would hit the port for some hard partying, but he hoped the port wouldn't hit back. He was getting tired of getting his Pilot and Cargo Master out of jail in every port!

"Exit from Jump Space in 3 minutes, Captain" replied Phoenix Starswarm, his Aslan Science Officer, calmly. "Detectors are at full power, and all ship's systems are nominal." Phoenix doubled as Ship's Engineer. In a crew this small, every member (except for Squirkey, the ship's pet and mascot) was trained to handle several important functional areas. Her feline eyes and quick reflexes were a perfect match to the task of getting important information from the science computer in emergencies, and her insatiable feline curiosity drove her search for knowledge.

"Weapons ready, shields hot" her mate, Weapons Master 'Cannon' Starswarm reported, his pointed ears raised like miniature radar dishes. "Any rats sniffing around the jump point will feel our claws!" Eager anticipation filled his raspy voice. The hunting instincts of his distant feline ancestors were close to the surface in him, and his feline characteristics served him well in any kind of combat.

"Ready for evasive action, Skipper!" Pilot/Navigator Derek Shadow reported. "Plus, alternate courses to Port and back into Jump Space are plotted and ready to be switched in." Shadow had been with Captain Lonewolf longer than the rest of the crew and sometimes got away with being less formal. Alone of the crew, he had visited Terra, the homeworld of humaniti, though he had been born on one of the colonies in the Spinward Reaches. He saw himself as a dashing swashbuckler, and on many ports, the ladies agreed with his self-assessment.

"Cargo stowed and locked down for action, Sir!" Slate Tungsten, the Cargo Master responded. "Control Room shipshape." He had gone through the Control Room and verified that there was nothing that could turn into a missile if Shadow had to jerk the ship around on high acceleration evasive maneuverings. "Squirkey is strapped in and his cage is locked!" There would be no repeats of an earlier Breakout, when ship's mascot Squirkey, a small green shape shifting alien, about as intelligent as a chimpanzee, got loose and caused mischief for several days before he could be caught. Slate was human, though no one knew which subspecies – as an infant he had been the only passenger recovered in the lifeboat of an interstellar cargo ship, probably destroyed by pirates. As soon as he was old enough, he had joined the Survey Service and he had two goals in life – to find out more about his personal history, and to destroy space pirates.

Satisfied that his ship and crew were ready, Lonewolf began a countdown to Breakout. "3… 2… 1… Exit!"

"Scanning! Nothing nearby. No ships, no exhaust to show traces of any recent passages, and no Jump Space wakes to indicate imminent Jump Space exits. Looks like we're clear, Captain!" Phoenix Starswarm reported, and Shadow would have sworn there was disappointment in her voice. She wasn't quite as bloodthirsty as her mate, but she had her moments.

"Very well. Cancel Yellow alert. Return to normal status. Navigator, take us to port!"

As they began relax, the crew of the Slim Chance was stunned when an alarm bell started ringing!

"Science Officer! I don't recognize that alarm!" Captain Lonewolf barked. "Are we under attack?"

Phoenix Starswarm was startled by the bell, and then she burst out laughing, and stood. "That's the autostove; it's time for dinner, boys!"

The illusion of the control room of the Slim Chance faded away, revealing a room that could easily pass for a living room in Seacoast City, California, USA – or any other town in the US, for that matter. The exotic, feline form of Phoenix Starswarm faded to reveal an attractive middle age woman, Amarla Vorne, Power Boy's adoptive mother and the weapons scientist who had originally found his Lemurian rocket. "Jim, it is absolutely amazing to be able to relax and play, after 50 years of constant combat against the jungle. For all of Juneo, thanks so much for introducing us to Earth games. We haven't had time to develop our own games for hundreds of generations! Traveller is my favorite. I always wished to go to space, and even when you get back from the Rao system with White Kryptonite, it will be years before we develop our own Juneon space program and I'll be too old. Computer simulations are as close as I'm ever likely to get."

"Thanks, Amarla!" Derek Shadow had morphed into Jim Chisholm. "But it was Zarl's idea" he pointed at the teenage boy in the room, Zarl Vorne, the secret identity of Power Boy "to program the Tiak Avenger's supercomputer with the Traveller rules, and then use the ship's planetary database as source material. Using data from actual planets, stars, and civilizations lends incredible realism to the game."

"Not to mention, having the computer be the GM and project virtually real holograms using the power of your Glove!" the youngster Larz said. Even wearing glasses and brightly colored red and blue clothing, almost the exact opposite of Power Boy's colors, Jim couldn't see how the teen hero's disguise fooled anyone.

"Amarla, Larz" Jim nodded to Amarla and Cannon Starswarm, who was now revealed as a strongly built middle age man, Larz Vorne. "I hope you know that Valor, here" the former Captain Longwolf, "and I really appreciate you letting us live with you while the Tiak Avenger is being repaired."

"Indeed, Mr. And Mrs. Vorne, we definitely appreciate your hospitality" Vic Valor agreed. Even in local clothing, a loose shirt with puffy sleeves, a sleeveless vest, baggy pantaloons and a turban, he could never be mistaken for a Juneon. "With old systems being ripped out of our ship and replaced with Juneon technology, our shipboard quarters have become temporarily unlivable."

"Hey, Ma, I'm starved!" Zarl interrupted. "What's for dinner? Let's eat!"

The group adjourned to the dining room, and had a pleasant dinner.

Chapter 9 Off to Krypton

The new weapon invented by Power Boy, the TriB Cannon, powered by Ted Knight's infra-energy collectors (by way of Vic Valor), had already led to significant changes in Juneon society. Though the new weapon wasn't going to be enough to clear the entire world, the cleared area outside the city wall was growing as the jungle was slowly forced back. Smaller teams were now required to man the weapons on the walls, giving every citizen more leisure time, and most of them had no idea what to do with free time.

A group of people were already talking about trying to re-take Telhas, the last major city which had fallen to the jungle. Many of the older citizens of Ralzen's Forge had been born in Telhas and evacuated when the city finally fell almost 70 years ago, and they finally believed that someday they might return to their homes. A smaller number, including Zarl Vorne, advocated re-colonizing Midville, a much smaller town not far from Ralzen's Forge. Zarl's own family had died when a 50th year jungle wave had crashed over Midville, and only an heroic effort by his own parents had gotten him to safety, but even Zarl agreed that freeing a larger city was probably a more effective use of resources, given the small total size of the current population.

The refit of the Tiak Avenger was going well. 3 workers with super powers and the knowledge of a Lord of Order, and the leading technologist on the planet, Amarla Zorne, led a crew of highly trained Juneon engineers and technicians in ripping out the trashed Galactic patrol systems and installing replacements built with Juneon technology.

One of the areas where Terran technology was superior to Juneon was computers. The supercomputer and dozens of human KVM-style workstations (keyboard, video, mouse) Valor had purchased were being installed throughout the Tiak Avenger and interfaced with the Galactic Patrol systems. Power Boy became fascinated with computers, and he spent long hours exploring both the capabilities of the Tiak Avenger's Terran/Galactic Patrol hybrid computer systems and the terabytes of Galactic Patrol era data stored in the ship's memory banks.

"Jim, you know how we were wondering about the 'coincidence' of the Destruction of the Galactic Patrol, the Sinking of Lemuria, and Juneo's star turning green, all about 100,000 years ago? I've found some evidence that they might have been connected."

Jim had been using the power of the Glove to remove burned and melted components from one of the power rooms, and he welcomed the excuse to stop and talk. "Tell me more."

"Well, it turns out there used to be a Galactic Patrol base on Juneo back then. The Patrol never contacted Juneon civilization, as we had just barely achieved powered atmospheric flight. The base was hidden in a remote region on the southern continent, which was also the first continent overrun by the jungle."

"Wow! Vic and I had better check it out once we get back with the White K. Probably nothing left after being buried in the jungle for that long. But the Patrol did have some pretty tough building materials."

"There's more, Jim. While the Patrol didn't have a base on Earth, either, they were aware of Lemurian civilization. Because a Lord of Chaos named Zanadu lived in Lemuria!"

"Marnu will be interested in that last. The must be a connection between Zanadu and Burr, somehow. We'll get more details from Wotan; we're not going back to Earth at this point! But I guarantee we'll look up that GP base when we get back with the White Kryptonite."

"It's been buried in the jungle for 100,000 years" Power Boy protested. "How could there possibly be anything left?"

"Well… your rocket was buried for that long, and it survived. Valor says the material your mom used is almost identical to Galactic Patrol hull ceramic. So anything inside a ship might have a chance. Guess we'll know when we get back."

After the refit was completed about 3 Earth months later, Amarla Varne and a young female Captain in the Jungle Defense Force named Jessiat Gazil came on board the Tiak Avenger with a surprise request. "As you know, Juneo is already planning the launch of our own Space Program, and Captain Gazil has been selected to be the Commander of our first spaceship. As a representative of the Juneon government, we would like to formally request that she be allowed to accompany you on the flight to Krypton and back. We feel that it is only fitting that we send someone to help in the mission to save our world, and the experience will be invaluable to her new career. Captain Gazil has been extensively trained and exhaustively tested, and she is a superior representative of the Juneon people. I'm sure she will be an asset to you."

Neither Jim nor Vic objected to having another crewmate on what they expected to be a boring flight. A few days later, in a totally refitted Tiak Avenger, they left behind their second world in a month, headed for the system of the red star Rao, searching for the remains of exploded giant planet Krypton.

Coming Next: The Tiak Avengers in The Super Companions. Watch for it!