Introduction, From JLA #73… Late Fall, 1969

Ted (Starman) Knight was examining the heavens with a telescope in his private observatory. His telescope was equipped with devices of his own invention, not yet available to the rest of the world, such things as laser-referenced adaptive optics to compensate for atmospheric distortion, and variable wavelength filtering and frequency shifting video so Ted could observe infrared and ultraviolet images with his naked eye. And this unexpected combination revealed the approaching energy being to Ted. When Starman investigated, a very short battle ensued, ending as Aquarius wrested away Starman's mighty weapon, the awesome energy-channeling Cosmic Rod, leaving Ted to fall 50' to Earth. This was observed by private investigator Larry Lance and his superheroine wife, Dinah Drake (Black Canary) Lance, who immediately contacted the Justice Society of America. Dr. Fate, Dr. Midnight, Green Lantern, the Red Tornado, Superman and Wonder Woman quickly answered the call to action, and were just as quickly defeated. Using the Cosmic Rod to amplify his powers, Aquarius then unloosed a powerful blast of energy that shifted the Earth and Moon into a magical limbo. Dr. Fate managed to encase 6 of the JSA members and Larry Lance inside an ectoplasmic sphere which protected them from the destruction around them, and only the memories of the trapped heroes kept the Earth and Moon from simply vanishing completely, erased from existence.

Meanwhile, Dr. Fate had already dispatched the Red Tornado between universes to contact the Justice League of America on Earth 1for aid, though he dared not tell his comrades, in order to prevent Aquarius from overhearing. Still, they had all noticed that Reddy had not been trapped along with the rest of them, and so they had some hope. Hope which slowly faded as, day after day, the Justice League failed to appear. Dr. Fate's magic prevented them from being destroyed, and sustained their lives, but he grew weaker as the days passed changelessly and hope for a rescue leaked away.

Astro-Smash!

Note: Kell Orr and his twins are currently speaking Kryptonese, until otherwise noted.

"Astrogation Alert!" Kell and the twins were in the Zavoy's control room, waiting for the end of the hyperjump from Xenon, anxious for their first glimpse of Earth, when the ship's computer announced a problem. The instruments showed that something was pulling the Zavoy off course. Kell had always supposed that it was impossible for a ship to change course in hyperspace, and he had no idea what to do about it. But he didn't get to worry long, because almost instantly, the 'Hyperspace Exit' warning blared, and Zavoy dropped back into normal space. The three Xenonians crowded around the front viewport. Less than a second after the transition, the Zavoy's automatic meteor warning alarm began blaring and the ship jolted with a tremendous crash! The ship started vibrating and clanging like the inside of a bell.

The ship's power went out, and the emergency lighting immediately snapped on. The artificial gravity failed and Kell felt a tremendous surge of vitality energizing his body as his super powers returned! He used his x-ray vision to see what had hit the ship. "By Xenon's core!" he shouted in dismay. "We just smashed into a giant asteroid, and there are dozens of smaller asteroids falling on us!" he warned his twins. Dents were starting to appear in the inside wall of the ship, as the swarm of meteors smashed into the Zavoy's Xenium hull. Xenium was the strongest alloy known on Xenon! "Get your helmets and gloves on!"

Kell and the twins were wearing costumes which covered their entire bodies except head and hands, made from the most durable fabric known to Xenonian science. These costumes were designed not only to stand up to any damage they might encounter once their powers manifested, but they could also be used as spacesuits if required. Kell wasn't sure Larre and Karre would instantly be invulnerable to the effects of space, and didn't want to take any chances. In addition, radios in their helmets would let them communicate if they didn't develop super ventriloquism. A meteor shattered the Zavoy's view port, and the explosion of air puffed the three of them into space. The invulnerability question was answered instantly as a meteor struck Karre in the back and shattered, so the environment WAS giving the twins super powers. But they didn't seem to be able to fly. Kell rushed after them at super speed.

"Boot magnets on!" he ordered as he caught them, then threw them towards the hull of the Zavoy. "Don't worry, your powers will protect you from these rocks. Smash them before they crush the ship! Like this!" He turned and started slamming super powered punches into the incoming meteors, pulverizing them. Behind him, first hesitantly and then with more gusto as they gained confidence in their powers, Karre and Larre followed his example. They couldn't powder every meteor, but they managed to break the larger ones into chunks that were small enough that they prevented the Zavoy from being smashed. After a few minutes, the meteor shower ended. The Zavoy was completely buried in smaller rocks and dust, except for the areas where the two youngsters were standing. Kell swept the sky with his super vision; he could see no more meteors approaching.

"Nice work, kids!" he complimented his twins as he landed beside them. "That seems to be the end of that meteor swarm."

"That was SO COOL!" Larre was exultant. "Wait until I tell the kids back home!" He had been something of a nerd; Kell thought this single incident might change his life significantly.

"I noticed something strange about those meteors, Dad," Karre commented thoughtfully. "The were being pulled here by something other than gravity. When you shattered the biggest ones, some of the pieces should have been thrown out into space, and the gravity of this rock isn't enough to pull them back - but they were pulled back anyway."

Not to be outdone, Larre picked up a chunk of rock and threw it away, fairly gently. It didn't fall back. "But that mysterious force seems to have abated," he pointed out. He turned to his father. "We're trapped here, aren't we?" he asked quietly.

"We have super powers now, remember!" Kell confidently reassured his son. "Either we'll repair the Zavoy, or contact Superman somehow. At the worst, we'll fly to Earth on our own." He used his super vision to examine the Zavoy. "We saved the ship from being crushed. I think I can get the power back on, and then we can figure out how to dig her out." He stopped, extremely startled as he saw something fantastic buried deeper inside the giant asteroid.

"By Xenon's core!" This exclamation had become a popular curse on Xenon since the core reaction had been discovered and dampened, years ago. "There's another ship trapped here as well!" Indeed, he could see a clear pocket, perfectly spherical, deep inside the giant floating mountain, and floating inside was a small spaceship, perhaps large enough to carry a crew of three or four, with indecipherable markings on the hull, apparently undamaged. There were blisters and turrets on the hull that looked alarmingly like weapons emplacements. Alarmingly, he was unable to see through that hull. He described the ship to the twins. Since it seemed to be safe and well-protected for the moment, and the twins were starting to get a bit spooked about this giant asteroid which seemed to 'eat' spaceships, Kell decided that they should make whatever repairs they could to the Zavoy before he investigated the other ship further.

As Karre and Larre dug a tunnel back to the shattered view port of the battered Zavoy, Kell used his x-ray vision to look for deposits of metals. Using his super speed to melt the ores he found, he was able to separate the metals from the slagged rock, and he brought a supply of various metals into the Zavoy with him. By the time he reached the ship, the twins had cleared most of the rock and dust from the ship, and were attempting to pound out some of the dents in the hull. Kell set them the task of putting an airtight patch over the broken view port, and set to work restoring power. The Zavoy carried a generous supply of spares and working at super speed, Kell quickly had the damage repaired. He set the gravity to Earth normal so he and his crew would retain their low-gravity related powers, and threw the emergency switch. The lights came on, and the life support system started filling the ship with air.

Almost immediately, Larre's voice came over the intercom. "Dad, our patch is leaking a little; we need you to seal it with your heat vision. And…" she paused dramatically, then continued with a mischievous twinkle in your voice "somebody's sending a radio signal at us! I think it's for you."

On the command deck, Kell melted some metal and the twins used it like putty to seal the edges of their patch. Kell turned his attention to the instruments. The radio direction finder showed that the signal was coming from the other trapped ship; it must have a powerful transmitter to reach them through the rocky debris separating them. Kell sat down in front of the space stereophone and began to broadcast. "This is Kell Orr. We are peaceful visitors from the planet Xenon, trying to contact Superman of Earth. Please identify yourself and confirm your peaceful intentions." The stereophone was programmed to repeat the message over a wide sheath of frequencies using several different types of signal modulation, a process Kell's scientist father Zoll Orr had developed for 'first contact' situations such as this one. He continued to sit in front of the stereophone, transmitting his picture and hoping that the other ship had the capability of receiving and decoding his signals.

For a time there was no response. The screen of the stereophone flickered and was filled with static. Then Kell thought he could see a pattern of sorts in the static, and then the picture started to roll and change. Some flickers showed a picture, some appeared to be random. Then a dark, unrecognizable blob centered on the screen. The image gradually took on human form, until it became that of a very attractive human female with red hair. Red hair was a very uncommon hair color on their home planet, but other than that, she could easily pass for a Xenonian. She was continually making adjustments on a panel in front of her, and as she did so, the picture continued to clear until the transmission and reception were perfect. She was sitting in a small control room, and wearing an orange costume with a green cape and a black and white emblem on the chest. Kell thought with interest that the emblem was in the shape of the letter 'T' from the English language he had learned from Superman; he wondered what it stood for.

Apparently his image became clear to her at the same time, for she looked at the screen and smiled! "Superman! It's wonderful to see you; I was so worried!" she cried anxiously, and Kell was stunned to realize that she was speaking English. "What's going on? Where is Earth? Why are you in a spaceship? What language was that you were speaking?" When he didn't respond right away, the tumble of questions ceased uncertainly. "Don't you recognize me? I'm Thraka, the Super Woman of Zor."

She paused, but he hadn't yet decided what he was going to say - the situation was too stunning. She continued, then. "We met years ago when I helped you capture some gangsters." Her face turned a little red as she mentioned this; she hadn't helped very much, though Superman had secretly assisted her to hide the fact that her super powers, so mighty on her own home world of Zor, made her little more than a strong average woman on Earth.

Kell was thinking fast. Her intentions seemed to be peaceful, and she knew Superman. He couldn't think of any good reason to conceal his real identity. "I'm sorry, I'm not Superman," he responded in English. "Although a lot of people have mistaken me for the real Man of Steel," he chuckled, then remembered that there wasn't much to chuckle about right now. "I'm Kell Orr of the planet Xenon, and I'm looking for Superman as well. Do you have any idea what is going on here? How did you get trapped?"

They were interrupted by a third voice and another person stepped into range of the display behind Tharka, a large, ruggedly handsome man also with red hair, graying at the temples, in a red costume. He was also speaking English. "My name is Regor, Defender of the planet Uuz, on the outskirts of this solar system. I am also seeking Superman. My instruments show that Earth and the Moon simply vanished almost two weeks ago. I was on my way to investigate, when my ship was drawn to this comet and crushed. I managed to escape and remain alive until Tharka's ship was similarly trapped."

"I brought him aboard, and my force shield was able to protect my ship, but the force that brought us here overpowered my engines. We've been trapped here for about a day." Tharka continued their tale. "This is the first time since we were trapped that the we haven't been able to feel the constant thudding of incoming meteors."

"I suggest we join forces and compare notes, and figure a way off this rock!" Regor suggested.

This time Tharka chuckled. "In my experience, whenever two good guys have their first meeting, there is usually a free-for-all brawl. It will be a pleasure to break that tradition!"

Now that the asteroid was no longer under constant bombardment, Tharka felt safe dropping her ship's shield, and it was only a matter of minutes before Kell Orr was able to open a tunnel between ships. And so, these three mighty champions and the twins as well, met for the first time, peacefully, to see if they could solve their mutual problems.

Note: For the rest of the story, everyone is speaking English.

Interlude: From JLA #74

Back where the Earth used to be, Aquarius was getting bored and a little frenetic. He had been exerting his full powers for two weeks, and had been unable to squish Dr. Fate's mystical spherical shield and his supposedly insignificant foes. He sat in space and sadly contemplated the tiny bubble that was resisting his best efforts, fretting about what he should do. He was totally unprepared when the Justice League suddenly appeared, seemingly from nowhere.

"Impossible!" he thought in stunned amazement. "There CAN NOT be other mortals - yet there ARE!" He was confused and demoralized. "I need time to think, to understand…" Before the JLA could do anything, he acted, casting a powerful magical spell. "I shall let the mortals within the globe delay these interlopers. Within the air I place a mesmeric command… and flee!"

As Aquarius fled, he relaxed his attack on Dr. Fate, and Fate let his bubble collapse. Temporarily panicked, Aquarius cancelled all of his earlier spells and drew as much power as possible from them back into himself. The limbo spell vanished, and the Earth, all its people, and the Moon suddenly reappeared. At the same time, far away in space, the power Aquarius had left in the selected asteroid also vanished, and it stopped irresistibly attracting nearby space junk, and incidentally, spacecraft. Aquarius used some of this power to reinforce his mesmeric command, and it hammered at the wills of the released Justice Society members, mentally exhausted after two weeks of hopeless inactivity trapped in the small bubble.

"DESTROY THE INTRUDERS! THEY ARE YOUR ENEMIES!"

Superman of Earth 1 greeted his Earth 2 counterpart for the first time. What should have been an historic meeting between two legendary heroes instead became an historic battle, as Kal-L brutally attacked an unsuspecting Kal-El. The two Supermen, equally powerful, fought a drawn out battle and eventually battered each other into unconsciousness. Flash and Atom teamed up to defeat an exhausted Dr. Fate, Batman was able to defeat Dr. Midnight, and a stray bolt of magic from the Blue and Gold Mystic interfered with Wonder Woman's control of her magic lasso, allowing Hawkman to bind her with her own weapon.

Green Lantern of Earth 1 easily defeated his Earth-2 counterpart, whose ring had run out of power days ago, leaving him free to command his own ring to seek out and return Aquarius, a decision that was to have disastrous consequences.

Green Arrow trapped Black Canary with a glue arrow, but while he was concentrating on the Blonde Bombshell, Larry Lance slugged him from behind, knocking him unconscious.

Miles away, Green Lantern's emerald energy beam wrapped itself around Aquarius, stunning the giant energy being. "How can this be?" he demanded of the universe. "I am threatened by some unknown foe! It matters not. I am equal to the challenge - to ANY challenge!"

He used the Cosmic Rod to generate a yellow shield, and then cast a shimmering ball of energy back at Green Lantern. But the ball careened instead towards Black Canary… As he was about to kill Green Arrow with one of his own arrows, the mesmerized Larry Lance saw the crackling ball of deadly energy floating towards Canary, and the power of his great love for his wife enabled him to break the power of Aquarius's hypnotic hold. He raced towards the fallen, trapped Black Canary, and leaped desperately, intercepting the deadly globe - which discharged and killed him instantly. Aquarius continued to flee (though by now he'd decided it was a 'strategic withdrawal'), and the heroes were too devastated by the loss of one so close to them to follow him.

Cometary Cross-hairs!

"I say we just bust this rock into shards and then head in and find out what happened to the Earth!" Kell Orr commented impulsively. The twins silently agreed with him; with their new powers they could surely break the two spaceships free from this flying rock pile.

Regor was more cautious. "Before we rush into something, I think we should do some more investigation. Are we sure whatever pulled us here won't return if we try to escape? What if it starts pulling stuff in again, can we survive another meteor shower?" He was the only one on board who didn't possess some degree of invulnerability, though his costume was nearly indestructible. The 3 Xenonians seemed to be in a rush to test their powers in risky situations, and Tharka was impulsive and impetuous. Regor thought his companions might be wondering if he was too timid, but they grudgingly agreed to gather more information.

"The Zavoy's technology is different from mine," Tharka observed to Kell Orr. 'Much more advanced,' she thought to herself, but she'd never admit that out loud. "However," she continued smugly, "I'm sure I can modify one of your electronic telescopes so we can learn more about the missing Earth." She was so physically overmatched by the Xenonians that she felt a little intimidated; reminding them all of her mutant mentality made her felt better. 'But even my mental powers that don't depend on Zor's lighter gravity, tactile telekinesis, remote life-sensing and invulnerability, are feeble compared to these mighty beings!' she thought, and even her thoughts felt small to her.

"That's great!" Kell Orr enthused. "Larre and Karre, why don't you clear a path so we can bring Tharka's ship alongside the Zavoy, and I'll build a dome over us to protect us from any more meteors."

Kell Orr was assuming he should command because he was the most powerful of the group. There was no reference to his own smashed spaceship, Regor noticed, and he had been assigned no job. Before he could say anything else, there was a flurry of activity as the other 4 went about their self-appointed tasks. He watched despondently as the super beings around him set to work. The years he'd spent following the rigorous conditioning and nutritional routines he and Superman had developed had made him far faster and more powerful than any normal human, but his strength and speed were trivial compared to the Xenonians'. He was very pretty smart, too, but Tharka's mutant IQ was off the charts, and her tactile telekinesis gave her a super sensitivity of touch that allowed her alter the internal workings of semi-conductors and actually reprogram integrated circuits, adapting them to her needs! What could he possibly contribute to this group?

As the others carried out their tasks, Regor interrupted Kell Orr for a few minutes. Kell gave him a tool kit, and the Guardian of Uuz dismounted the Zavoy's backup electronic telescope, carrying it and a powerful battery out to the surface so he could observe the solar system. He probably wouldn't discover anything new, but he wasn't going to sit around doing nothing while everyone else was working. The twins widened the tunnel between the ships and gently moved Tharka's ship alongside the Zavoy under the dome Kell Orr was building, while Tharka added her own televisor technology to the Zavoy's primary electronic 'scope.

Regor was able to locate all of the Solar System's planets except Earth. He spent half an hour closely examining the empty space where the Earth ought to be, but even at the 'scope's highest magnification, there was nothing there that he could see. He couldn't see Uuz from here either, and he realized that without a ship, he was very dependent on these extra-solar visitors. All of them could exist unprotected in the rigors of space, while he needed a space suit. Without a ship it would take him years to fly to Earth with the rockets in his suit (and probably centuries to reach Uuz!), and he would die long before he arrived! Still, Superman trusted them, so he should be able to as well.

After about 5 hours, they convened inside the Zavoy. After the Zavoy's meal machine dispensed lunch, they gathered around the modified electronic telescope, and Tharka's hand posed dramatically over the power switch.

"I've added hyperspace technology to this instrument, so what we see will not be limited by speed of light," she announced proudly. As she worked, she'd come to realize that the Xenonians, with all their powers, would have been unable to rebuild this instrument as she had done. "We're more than 10 light hours from Earth, but what we see will be occurring in real time."

She threw the switch, power surged through the modified telescope, and the screen… filled with static. Tharka frowned, a little embarrassed, and hastily manipulated some controls. The screen cleared to show the Sun, about the same size as if seen from Earth. The Woman of the Future stifled a quick gasp of relief, then announced: "The range is correct. I deliberately aimed at the star so there would be something to see. Now let's scan the nearby area." She touched a control, and the Sun slipped off the right edge of the screen. For a couple of seconds the stars continued to glide to the right. "OK, let's try the other way." She moved the same control, and the stars moved back to the left. Slowly the Sun swept across the screen again, and then the screen again showed only stars. And suddenly they all gasped in surprise, as the Earth slid onto the screen, a brilliantly beautiful globe of green, blue and white, floating serenely in front of the stars as if nothing had happened!

"It wasn't there 10 hours ago!" Regor exclaimed excitedly. "Another interesting coincidence; sometime within the last 5 hours, both the Earth reappeared and the magic force drawing stuff to this asteroid vanished." He paused as another thought popped into his head. "Tharka, can you plot the orbits of Earth and this flying mountain?"

She could; in an instant, a monitor to the side lit up, showing Sol in the center of the screen, and the cursor started plotting out the orbit of the object they were currently riding. "It's a cometary orbit; it will zoom past the star at high speed, and then swing far away, and return again in some thousands of years. So we're actually taking a ride on a comet!" she analyzed. An almost circular ellipse appeared on the screen, much closer to the star. The comet's orbit crossed it twice. "That's the orbit of Earth." A red dot appeared on the cometary orbit and started to move along it towards the star, a green dot appeared on the Earth's orbit and began circling around the star. On its second orbit, the green dot collided with the red dot! "A year from now!" Tharka exclaimed in horror. "If we don't do something, the Earth is doomed!"

After a few seconds of stunned silence, everyone started talking excitedly. They would use their powers, and the weapons in Tharka's ship if necessary, to alter the course of this comet they were riding on or destroy it and then go to Earth and find out from Superman what had been going on - and let him know they'd saved his planet. And Regor brightened up instantly, he had just realized what he could contribute to this group! None of them, even the super intelligent Tharka, were very good at strategy or deduction. Regor was a big picture, strategic thinking kind of guy who sometimes let himself be overwhelmed by tactical details, but his new friends appeared to be up to handling those details, and he felt a surge of hopeful energy.

"If we change the path of this comet, we should be prepared to be attacked by whatever force made the Earth vanish," he pointed out to his fellow castaways. They turned to look at him, startled. "We need to make preparations. Even though the Earth is back, anything that can make a planet vanish must be very powerful."

Tharka was starting to look very thoughtful, but Kell Orr and the twins were bombarding him with unbelieving questions and comments. "What are you talking about?" Why do you think what's happening on Earth, billions of miles away, has anything to do with this floating mousetrap?!" "Anyway, whatever vanished the Earth was defeated, probably by Superman, and is no longer a threat!"

"C'mon, Dad, let's break out of here and get going. I wanna see Earth!" Larre pleaded with his father. "Aww, you just think you're gonna impress all the girls with how strong you are!" his sister sneered at him.

"You're right, son. Tharka, you and Karre will pilot the ships, and Larre and I will clear the way. Regor, you go in Tharka's ship. Once the ships are clear, Larre and I will push this rock onto a new course that will miss Earth, then come aboard the Zavoy and we'll all head in. OK?" He started moving toward the airlock, assuming his orders would be obeyed. Regor was steaming at being ignored, and Karre wasn't too thrilled about being picked to pilot rather than help her father with the super feats. She was just as powerful as her twin brother!

"No, wait!" Tharka commanded, startling everyone. "We should listen - I think he's right! At least, I want to hear what he's figured out before we do anything. And now that the Earth is back, do we have to rush?"

Reluctantly, Kell and the twins turned back to Regor. 'Well, I wanted them to pay attention to me!' he thought ruefully. He started speaking, trying to project a confidence he didn't quite feel.

"There's a saying in Aigan-Nica military lore about several unexpected incidents that occur at around the same time," Regor began. Back on Uuz, in his secret identity of Winkin Lamm, he was a reserve officer in his nation's army. "The first incident is happenstance. The second may be coincidence. The third likely indicates enemy action."

Tharka nodded, she'd developed a similar rule of thumb early in her career and it had saved her several times. Kell and his kids had obviously never heard it before, and Kell, at least, looked as if he would need further convincing.

"For us, the first incident is Earth disappearing." The Xenonians looked dubious.

"Right there, that proves enemy action to me!" Kell pronounced. "But it doesn't prove these things are related."

Regor nodded. "Let's look at it from the larger view. The second incident is us being trapped on this rock which is on path to destroy the Earth, now that it's back. The third, which ties it all together, is that whatever drew us here vanished at pretty much the same time as the Earth reappeared. We don't have proof of that yet, but I'm betting that if we stick around and use the unmodified telescope, we'll see the Earth reappear exactly 10 hours, 13 minutes and 37 seconds after the instant that mysterious force vanished." He'd calculated the time carefully; he was pleased when Tharka nodded, acknowledging the accuracy of his numbers.

"I agree," was her only comment.

"Ok… You're probably right," Kell conceded. "But I don't see why that makes you sure the enemy is still active? Doesn't the fact that the Earth has reappeared mean that the enemy has been defeated?"

"No, all it means is that Plan A has failed," Tharka pointed out. "If the enemy is competent enough to set up a Plan B, he's likely competent enough to survive the failure of Plan A."

"OK. I'm not totally convinced, but you guys both have years more experience at being heroes than I have." Kell conceded. "And it can't hurt to make preparations. If an enemy that powerful is going to attack us, it will be better if we're not surprised."

Interlude: Aquarius, Green Lantern and Starman

Miles away, Aquarius observed the death of Larry Lance and howled with maniacal laughter. "The foolish mortals dared to oppose me!" he brayed. "Now they see how puny their own powers are compared to the awesome omnipotence that is Aquarius!" He cackled gleefully as the shock of Larry's death broke his hypnotic hold over the Justice Society, chortled with satisfaction as Black Canary fell to her knees at the side of her beloved, overcome with grief. "I revel in the sorrow of those insects who opposed me!" he roared to the universe. "I wallowed in satisfaction at the dismay of the intruders who dared interfere with my vengeance! And soon, the rest shall fall before me! I rush back to confront my foes and blast them where they stand!" He quivered in place, as a pointing hunting dog, eager to recover its prey.

His expression changed instantly from glee to one of panic, his quivering from eagerness to fear. He continued to talk to himself, but much more quietly. "My powers are weakened, and I had trouble destroying 7 of them at my full strength," he moaned in realization. "And now there are more, and they will be angry at the death of their friend." He hesitated, twisting this way and that as he hung in space, unsure of what to do. "I must flee again, but where?" he wondered frantically. He spotted the Moon, and instantly raced for it. "I must use the Wonder Stick for more speed! It doesn't matter that it will weaken me further, all that matters is escape!" The Wonder Stick was his name for the Cosmic Rod. Yet even as he rocketed skyward, he kept looking back, reassuring himself that none of the heroes was following him.

Halfway to the Moon, he suddenly came to an instant halt. "If I knew more about the newcomers, I would learn their weaknesses, and I should be able to defeat them easily!" he announced thoughtfully. "After all, am I not Aquarius the Mighty, Lord of Chaos, Bane of Mortals?" He hung in space in a sitting position, resembling the statue of the Thinker. He commanded the Wonder Stick to aid him, and used his sense to began studying the members of the Justice League from long distance. With senses unknowable to mortals, he sensed their 'otherness'. More surprisingly, he sensed that the Wonder Stick was already attuned to this otherness. "Show me more!" he roared at it, and then paused, almost in awe at what the Cosmic Rod revealed.

Another entire universe, existing side-by-side with this one! Aquarius and his fellow Living Stars were familiar with the concept of other universes, but he had never before been interested. As he studied this new universe, the universe of Earth 1, he became aware of some fascinating differences between here and there. He noted that some of the beings in this universe had almost exact duplicates in the other universe, and suddenly he was lonely.

"I've lived most of my existence alone, and I've always thought I'd be alone forever. Even the other Lords of Chaos aren't fit company for one as majestic as I." he wailed, tears falling from his eyes. "Even these insignificant mortals have friends, yet I am alone." Then he suddenly brightened with hope, a huge smile playing over his face. "Perhaps there is one in this other universe similar to me, one with whom I could find some kinship?"

He continued his studies, and his hope died quickly. Aquarius and the Living Stars were anomalies in their universe, embodying inside themselves as they did some of the earlier natural laws of its cosmic youth. In a sense, the universe had 'outgrown' those laws. However, because the universe had evolved 'around them', it had adapted to these small anomalous regions and 'learned' to tolerate them. His study suggested to Aquarius that the other universe would have no such tolerance to his presence, and that there would be an interesting reaction if he were to enter that universe. In turn, this suggested that there wasn't an Aquarius analog there.

His loneliness returned, and this time threatened to overwhelm him. He hung in space motionless for hours, numb, and then he felt a hopeful itch in his mind. He concentrated on the itch, and suddenly he was whizzing through space, doing pinwheels, laughing uproariously. "I have a plan, to revenge myself on both groups of mortals! A perfect plan, worthy of the Magnificent Aquarius the Mighty" he bellowed. "Before they perish, they will ALL rue the day they dared oppose Aquarius the Mighty!"

He had some preparations to make; he set industriously to work, humming a happy tune he hadn't thought of since before his banishment.

Deep in space, the two remaining spaceships floated a safe distance away in the shadow of the comet. Kell Orr flew up to the floating mountain and began to push against it, gradually and then with increasing force. He pushed through the surface rubble which had been deposited by the meteors showers which had smashed there earlier, and soon reached the original surface. This proved more durable than the rubble, and he began pushing even harder. When the rock began to crack, he backed off a little, and then continued to apply a steady force. He didn't have to change this thing's orbit a lot, and he didn't have to be too picky about which direction he pushed. On board the two ships, Regor and Tharka used sensitive instruments to measure the shift of the comet's orbit. Finally Tharka signaled Kell to stop; his job was done.

"Good work. You've changed the orbit enough that it will now miss the Earth by around 65 million miles, making its closest approach late in the Earth month of March. And its orbit won't bring it back until 2441. We can't predict the next orbit accurately enough to determine if the Earth will be in danger then, but Terrestrial civilization should be advanced enough by then to deal with it if they have to." She didn't know it, but this particular comet would be spotted by Earth observers several months from now, and, per longstanding tradition, it would be named 'Comet Bennet' (also, C1969 Y1) after the amateur astronomer who first discovered it.

As Kell had accelerated the comet into its new orbit, some of the loose rubble from its surface had drifted away into space. Although the twins were invulnerable to the environment of space and didn't need their helmets any longer, they hadn't yet developed the power of flight. Larre and Karre were zipping around by using the rocket belts from their spacesuits, smashing these smaller rocks into dust fine enough for the comet's feeble gravity to pull a shroud of dust along with it on the new orbit. Before they re-entered the ships, Kell, Larre and Karre used their heat vision to burn the dust off of each other. With their preparations completed, all they could do was wait. If Regor was right, they wouldn't have to wait long.

JLA #74 again

On Earth, Superman was just delivering the last words at the funeral of Larry Lance, when he was rudely interrupted by maniacal laughter. The mourning heroes looked up to see Aquarius sitting on a nearby building, slapping his knee and roaring. "Puny mortals - so amusing!" his coarse, gravelly voice thundered mockingly at them. "You think life is so valuable? You give me great mirth!"

"You MURDERER!" Black Canary screamed at the giant demon. She tried to race to the attack, but Wonder Woman held her back.

"Dinah" the Amazing Amazon said gently to her long-time friend, "There's nothing you can do."

"But WE can do something - and we WILL!" Superman of Earth-2 vowed grimly.

"Or die trying!" the original Green Lantern added his own determined voice.

Aquarius fled into the sky, his laughter booming behind him. "HA HA HA! Come mortals, amuse me more! Frolic with me before I tire and extinguish you."

The Green Lanterns provided transport for their non-flying friends, and most of the heroes took to the sky, giving chase to their new enemy. "Aquarius is speeding for the astral gate leading into Earth-One" Dr. Fate notified his friends urgently. He wasn't through. "The situation is worse than either of you realize!" he warned the GLs. "If we allow Aquarius to bring magic from this universe to yours, the balance of forces will be upset!" he paused dramatically for a second "He could rend the fabric of existence. All humanity could perish in a final spasm of hideous insanity!" the thunderous voice of the Azure Avenger boomed forth a prophecy of doom.

As the heroes chased Aquarius into the astral corridor, they crashed into a trap he had set for them, a space warp which trapped most of them and put them instantly into suspended animation. The Green Lanterns managed to escape by combining their will power, and they decided to deal with Aquarius on their own. "IF we return, we can rescue our companions" Hal Jordan said. "And if we don't, it won't make any difference" Alan Scott agreed.

The 2 Emerald Warriors taunted and insulted Aquarius until he was so enraged that he turned back from the exit to Earth 1 and blindly pursued them into the anti-matter universe, roaring his anger. The green auras projected by their Power Rings protected them from contact with any negative matter, but Aquarius had no such protection - and he died in a fiery paroxysm of annihilation when he couldn't escape a swarm of anti-meteors. The GLs were buffeted by a tremendous explosion such as neither of them had ever before witnessed, as Aquarius vanished in a searing blaze of brilliance.

For the Justice League, the rest of the case was routine. The Green Lanterns rescued their fellows and they all returned to the stately estate of Ted Knight. The JLA took their leave and returned to Earth 1, with one surprise - Black Canary asked to go with them, to get away from the bad memories and the ghost of her husband which she felt would forever haunt her if she remained on this Earth. The heroes in the Justice League gladly welcomed a new member.

Back to the new story…

After the JLA left, Green Lantern dropped in on Ted Knight. Ted was bruised and battered from his fall, which to him had occurred only a handful of hours ago, though to GL it had been two long, harrowing weeks! Ted was puzzled when he'd heard the whole story.

"The Cosmic Rod certainly has the power to protect its wielder from anti-matter," he stated, speaking slowly and painfully. "In fact, I used it to create an anti-matter duplicate Cosmic Rod which Ultraman stole from me when we first battled the Crime Syndicate of America." (See "The Most Dangerous Earth of All" in Justice League of America #30, September 1964). "Aquarius seemed to instinctively know how to use it. He should have been able to protect himself in the negative universe just as well as you and Hal."

Green Lantern was thoughtful. "Now that you mention it, I don't recall him using it against us at the end." He held up his fist, stared at the ring. "Ring, show us the last battle with Aquarius." In 3 dimensional images, the two heroes watched as the Green Lanterns yelled insults at the energy being in the corridor between the universes. "Freeze this scene. Zoom in on Aquarius." The figure of Aquarius expanded, and they could see that, in fact, he was no longer holding the Cosmic Rod.

Ted immediately rolled his legs off the bed and tried to sit up. He got about halfway and groaned painfully, then with second effort and more painful grunts he sat upright. Green Lantern was dismayed. "Ted, you shouldn't be getting up!" He reached out and put his hand on Ted's shoulder.

"I have to. This whole thing, Larry's death, Canary leaving, the world vanishing… it's all my fault for being careless and letting Aquarius take my Cosmic Rod. If it hadn't been for Dr. Fate and the Justice League, I would have been responsible for the destruction of every human on Earth!" Ted gasped out desperately between moans. "I MUST get the Cosmic Rod back before anyone else can misuse it!"

"C'mon, Ted, you know that's not true" Green Lantern insisted. "Aquarius was evil and he would have caused death and destruction without your Rod…"

Ted interrupted him, and his growing anger allowed him to ignore his pain. "That's total nonsense, Alan. Aquarius has the power of a star - but the Cosmic Rod lets me CONTROL the power of the stars! I should have been able to handle him myself" He stood up quickly. "After almost 30 years, I should have figured…" he hesitated, tried to continue "figured out some way…" he abruptly sat down, lowered his head to his knees and wrapped his arms around his head "…Ultraman stole it too. Why didn't I learn…" his voice was almost inaudible. After a moment's silence, he looked up at his long-time friend.

"Alan" he begged "I need you to use your Power Ring to heal me."

"What?!" Green Lantern gasped incredulously. "I can't do that!"

"Bullspit! You say it's a magic ring, and I've seen Dr. Fate and the Spectre use their 'magic' to heal other people. So, use your magic ring to heal me. Alan, I've never asked you for any favors before, but this is something I need!" he pleaded.

"Dr. Fate is a mage who has studied magic for millennia, and the Spectre is a mystical being of almost unlimited power. As a magic user, I just don't measure up to either of them. I don't understand how the magic of the ring works, any more than you do." the Emerald Warrior argued. "I just tell it what to do."

"So tell it to heal me!" Ted insisted.

"Seriously, Ted, it could be dangerous," Alan warned. "Charles and I have talked about it, occasionally, and he's concerned that there could be long-term side effects. The ring doesn't have a blueprint for how your body should work, you know. And there might be residual magical traces left in your system."

"Damn it, Alan, you know I don't even BELIEVE in magic. Are you going to help me or not? If not, go away and stop distracting me!" Before Alan could say anything, he continued "There is a blueprint readily available! Order the ring to compare my injuries to your healthy body and use yours as a healthy template."

Green Lantern reluctantly relented. Ted lay on one bed, Alan on the other, and a green glow surrounded both of them. After a minute, a vertical green plane, about 5' tall and wider than both beds, formed at the foot end. It moved towards the head, parting like the surface of a pool of water as it moved over the footboards. The surface was dappled in different shades of green, in a pattern that would be recognized as 'fractal' in just 5 or 6 years. When the plane reached the feet of the heroes, it brightened, and the pattern started to shift. It became much more dense closer to the bodies of the heroes, and faded away nearer the edges and center of the plane. Two distinct patterns developed, and to Alan, they initially appeared identical, but he looked closer and could see that though they shared a common form and were recognizably related, the smaller details were often quite different.

"Must be the ring's representation of the genetic code." Green Lantern guessed, his engineer's curiosity aroused. "And those black spots that lighten as the plane sweeps forward must represent problems or injuries." He realized that Ted's basic pattern was too complex for him to be sure whether it was changed by the passing of the plane. He was fascinated by the black spots in his own scan. "That one must represent the hairline fracture I got playing football in high school," he mused, and was astonished when it faded and vanished. "I wonder if I'll still be able to predict the weather?" The plane vanished when it reached their noses.

"I didn't want to take a chance with our brains, Ted," GL explained. "Never know what the side effects might be of joining our minds with magic. If you've got a concussion, it'll have to heal on its own."

"Thanks, Alan, I feel fantastic!" Ted still had a headache, but he wasn't going to let Alan know. "I've got to get to work!"

"You know, I feel great too!" Alan commented. 'Maybe I should try that sort of thing more often!' he thought to himself. To Ted, he continued "I think I'll stick around for a while, if you don't mind. Maybe I can be useful."

"Thanks again, pal!" Ted stuck out his hand, and the two heroes warmly and sincerely shook hands. Due to their similar energy-based powers, they had always felt a kinship, and this helped them feel closer than ever.

Alan followed Ted as he rushed into his office. Ted picked up a lamp from his desk, and started pulling it apart. Green Lantern was startled when dismantling the lamp revealed what was clearly a Cosmic Rod, though it was longer and more slender than the one Aquarius had stolen. "I keep several of them available. They're all a little different, as I'm always experimenting. This one has some features I want to test out. Including one that makes it more difficult to steal! This one is tuned to me; if anyone else tries to use it, it stops working."

"Nice!" his friend admired. "So what do we do now?"

"Now, I'm going to find the other C-Rod!" Ted vowed. He raised the Cosmic Rod, issued a mental command. The Rod pulled at his hand until it was pointing skyward. "It's up there, and getting farther away. I'm going after it!"

"The Aquarius we destroyed must have been a phony!" Green Lantern yelped in anger. "I'm coming along! I want another chance at that monster!"

Ted quickly changed to his costume, and the two red and green clad heroes rocketed away on their mission of vengeance!

All 5 of the strange visitors from other planets were again gathered in the command room of the Zavoy when Tharka realized she was hearing, very faintly, what sounded like several people talking in the next room. But that couldn't be! There was nobody out here except her new friends, and she could see them all. She concentrated on her life-radar sense, and quickly confirmed that there were no other beings within her range, much less in the next room. And as she concentrated, the voices seemed to grow louder. But now she realized that she wasn't hearing these voices as sounds; they were appearing directly in her mind!

The Girl of Destiny had put a lot of effort into improving her mental powers over the years, hoping that meditation techniques she'd studied from across her world might help develop her 'life radar' into true telepathy, so she wasn't totally unprepared for the sensation of voices in her mind. It seemed a strange time for such an evolution to occur, but who could explain why so many things happened when they did? She closed her eyes and studied her mental map, and somehow she was able to link each of the murmuring voices to one of the 'stars' in her head that represented her companions. Larre's thoughts, if that's what she was hearing, seemed to be 'sharper' than those of the others, and when she discretely looked his way, she noticed he was furtively staring at her.

She started to laugh, but instantly began gasping in pain! She'd realized where Larre had been staring, which seemed to have given her mind just the hint it needed to fully translate his thoughts, and suddenly it was as if a dike had let loose. Thoughts cascaded into her mind, the thoughts of a thirteen-year old boy staring at a beautiful woman! She wasn't offended - people had been staring at her throughout her life, and somewhere inside she'd been aware of the many reasons for those stares. But she was amused, and so she laughed, and then the thoughts of the others slammed into her mind as well, and she'd gasped in confusion. Who would have ever thought that being able to hear other people's thoughts would be so chaotic and confusing? With the thoughts of everyone around her jumbled together, she couldn't make out anything coherent, even her own thoughts! She was starting to panic, but somewhere inside, she knew how to handle this - she made a mental effort, and the alien thoughts simply vanished. The Woman of the Future mentally thanked the Infinite Force and the wise mystics who'd taught her to turn off her mental senses years ago, and gave thanks again that the old technique still worked with this newly manifested telepathy!

"What's the matter?" Karre spoke before any of the others. It took Tharka a second to get her concentration back while concern started to show on the faces of her friends.

"I'm not sure," she spoke cautiously. How would her new friends react to being cooped up with someone who could read their minds? "My mutant mind gives me some of my powers," she reminded the others "but it seems as if the full range of my powers is still developing. It's as if I sometimes get mental growing pains, and soon afterwards, I discover that I've evolved a new ability." This was the absolute truth, although the only other time she'd had 'mental growing pains' had been over 20 years ago and 'soon afterwards' that time had been several weeks, not several seconds as had happened today. 'Why now?' she wondered silently. 'Could it be my exposure to these other super beings? I wonder if my telekinesis has been affected?' She figured she'd test it later, in privacy.

"Great Krypton!" Kell Orr exclaimed. He was using his super vision to scan space in the direction of Earth. "Something's coming our way!" At super speed, he focused the modified electronic telescope to show everyone what he was seeing.

In abject terror, Aquarius fled into space at the highest velocity he could command from the Wonder Stick. He'd been a fool to imbue that idiotic duplicate with so much of his energy! If it had succeeded in drawing the mortal heroes through the astral corridor into that other universe, he would have been rid of them all! After that, he'd planned to rest on 'his' comet until it approached the Earth, recharging his store of energy at leisure with the Wonder Stick. When the comet reached Earth, he would be at full power with no heroes to stand in his way, and he would have his revenge!

But the duplicate had failed, and been destroyed, and the heroes and that other universe were untouched! They would figure out his ruse and be after him soon, and he was so weak they would hound him until they destroyed him!

'What was that?" he screamed in panic as his mystical senses touched something moving at high speed, coming towards him. He blasted it with the Wonder Stick and a small piece of space debris disintegrated. "I can't afford to waste any more power!" he babbled fearfully. Something was sneaking up on him! He whirled around to blast whatever it was behind him, but there was nothing there. Now virtually petrified and sobbing with fear, Aquarius curled up into a ball wrapped around the Wonder Stick, and made himself as small as possible. He ordered the Wonder Stick to make him look like just another meteor, and continued to speed through space. A close observer might have wondered why a tiny meteor was constantly shivering as if wracked with miniature 'earthquakes'?

Meanwhile, back on Earth...

Green Lantern and Starman made a quick stop at Alan Scott's residence so Alan could recharge his ring. Ted had witnessed this short ceremony before, but it never got old for him. In a sense, he found the whole thing as invigorating as Alan did—after all, reading of Green Lantern's exploits was one of the reasons he had donned the Starman uniform.

Green Lantern stood before the table, made a fist of his left hand, and slowly extended his arm until the Power Ring on his middle finger came in contact with the green lens of the of the lantern.

"I shall shed my light over dark evil."

Tendrils of emerald energy emerged from the lantern and swirled around Alan until he and the Lantern were both wrapped in a glowing green flame.

"For the dark things cannot stand the light."

The light within the lantern began to pulse until it was keeping perfect time with Alan's heartbeat.

"The light of the Green Lantern!"

The moment the final syllable had passed his lips, there was a noiseless, forceless, explosion of green energy that erupted from the Lantern, and the green flame expanded to totally fill the small room. It then began to shrink, condensing and glowing more brilliantly as it condensed, and transformed into a green stream, flowing into the Power Ring. To Ted, it seemed as if time was standing still, and this transformation was taking a long time - but when the last wisp of green energy was absorbed by the ring, he knew the whole process had taken only a few seconds.

Ted couldn't help but grin at the smile that appeared on Alan's face once the glow that had surrounded him had faded. More than anything, that smile showed the true mark of Alan's long association with the magical Green Flame of Life. Maybe he should create some kind of ritual around the Cosmic Rod, to continually remind himself what he was fighting for. Alan stood still for several seconds, and his look of rapture quickly faded. As always, there was work to be done!

"Say, Alan, we're going a long way out. What if it takes us more than a day?" Ted was worried. If GL's ring ran out of power in deep space, it could cause them real problems.

"I've been waiting for a chance to try out a new trick," Alan responded with a sly smile. He was about to one-up his friend. "Something I recently picked up from Hal. Check it out!" He unleashed a green beam at the Lantern, and a transparent glowing green globe formed around it. The globe and the Lantern floated off the table, shrinking as they approached Green Lantern. They vanished as they touched the emblem on his chest. "Miniature pocket universe; it'll follow me wherever I go. Neat, huh?" Ted's face showed his incredulity - a pocket universe? He was already trying to figure out how to achieve a similar effect with the Cosmic Rod; he knew he'd obsess over it until he came up with a neat trick of his own. Meanwhile…

"Since you've got a way to carry stuff with us easily, why don't we make one more stop and get my cook to pack us lunch and dinner? I know your ring can cobble up a meal, but nothing like what Mrs. Karle will whip up. It won't put us much further behind." GL agreed, and they headed for stately Knoght Manor once again. GL was thoughtful as they flew, making some plans for their mission.

"Why don't you provide propulsion, and I'll do life support?" Green Lantern suggested. Ted had been thinking the same thing.

"Good idea," Ted agreed. The Power Ring would provide more comfortable surroundings than he could create with the Cosmic Rod. "I've always wondered what top end velocity I could achieve with the Cosmic Rod if I didn't have to split power between life support and propulsion. I'll bet I can get 100 G's if you can deal with the acceleration effects."

"Pretty hot stuff, let's see if I can handle it!" GL accepted the challenge, then frowned. "Won't that get us up to relativistic velocities in a hurry?"

Ted did some quick calculations in his head. "It would take around 8 days before we reached 1% of light speed. We'll be out of the solar system in less than 3 days. I propose we don't chase him any further than that."

GL agreed. Mrs. Karle, Ted's fantastic cook, put together enough food to choke an elephant, and Ted felt as if they were even again. And he'd have some new trick the next time they got together. Green Lantern added it to the pocket universe.

"No time passes in there," the Emerald Gladiator boasted. "These will still be hot - or cold - when it's time to eat!"

Finally, they lifted out of the atmosphere. Green Lantern formed a comfortable vehicle around them, with plush reclining swivel chairs and private facilities, and they populated a green refrigerator with some snacks and cold drinks so they wouldn't have to open the pocket universe every time they got thirsty. Finally, they rocketed towards the stars, guided by one Cosmic Rod tracking its missing counterpart.

When no attack came, Aquarius felt a stirring of hope. Maybe he'd fooled them after all! He cautiously extended his mystical senses, and as far as he could tell, there were no living beings within at least a million miles. He'd managed to escape!

"I live! I go to rest on my temporary home, where I shall make my plans and recharge my power. I almost destroyed those meddlers once, and I have learned what I need to know to wipe them all out the next time I encounter them. Once they are destroyed, I will send another duplicate to that other universe, and this time there will be nothing to distract it. With the Wonder Stick, I will destroy any who oppose me!"

He came out of his ball, unaware that he had unconsciously started to glow with the color he'd been as a star, a blindingly bright and sharp electric blue. He hadn't felt this good in eons, perhaps not since he'd been exiled. To celebrate, he launched into a series of vacrobatics, loops, rolls, whirls and maneuvers which could never even be attempted in a gravity field, while laughing uproariously. Eventually, he realized he'd gone well off course, and was burning a lot of energy. He damped down his flare, and used the Wonder Stick to locate the comet so he could resume his flight.

His joy evaporated instantly, and a volcano of rage erupted within. The comet was no longer on orbit to smash the Earth! Aquarius instantly accelerated to his top speed, seething with rage. Was there no end to the interference of these cursed mortals? Would the never stop hounding him, and leave him in peace? He would punish them and they would suffer, as no mortal before them had ever suffered! "With this Wonder Stick, their destruction is certain!" he crowed to himself. "I can perform even feats that were denied to me as a star!"

"I've plotted the course the Cosmic Rod is following," Green Lantern willed a radar screen into existence, and it showed several things. A small green rocket showed their position, and far behind them now was a blue circle indicating Earth. Far in front of them was a very small red circle, and between their rocket and the red circle was a small white humanoid shape, connected to the red circle by a dotted line. "I'm assuming that Aquarius somehow survived the negative dimension and still has the Rod. The red circle indicates a comet, I don't recognize it. Should we assume it's his destination?"

"The odds of a very small object following a random course at high velocity through space intersecting a slightly larger speeding object 4 thousand million miles away with bulls-eye accuracy are astronomical." Ted commented. "Even Green Arrow couldn't make that shot! That has to be his destination." He looked at the display again. Can you put some numbers up there? Velocity and distance?" Numbers appeared on the screen and Ted did some calculations in his head, then adjusted the thrust provided by the Cosmic Rod. "We'll get there the same time he does." He paused, thoughtfully. "As soon as I can make it small enough, I'm going to put a computer into the C-Rod." He was already trying to visualize the technology required. 'Transistors wouldn't be small enough - someone will have to develop a method of putting thousands of transistors in a single component the size of a quarter…'

Alan had seen that faraway look before. "Hey, Ted!" he laughed at his friend. "We're chasing a dangerous supervillain here; I need your mind on the job at hand!"

Final Conflict

With his mystical senses vastly diminished by his low energy condition, Aquarius didn't see the attack coming in time to dodge. Three small spaceships floating near his comet all blasted at him with powerful weapons. He was struck simultaneously by a powerful maser beam and a tightly focused beam of x-rays, followed an instant later by a bolt of electricity many times more powerful than a Terrestrial lightning bolt. Aquarius was instantly surrounded by a kind of flickering, glowing coronal discharge, and he writhed in seeming agony.

Inside his thoughts, Aquarius was laughing manically. "What total fools these mortals are!" he roared inside his head. "I was born a sun; energy such as this surged through me like the blood of life! Again, my enemies aid me as I grow stronger!" He used the Wonder Stick to absorb the tremendous flow of energy that was bathing him.

"Cease fire!" Tharka yelled over their radio link. Aquarius's thoughts were so strong she'd received that last one even though she had damped her mental powers as low as they would go. "He's soaking up our power!" she yelled frantically. "We're only making him stronger!"

Tharka, Regor and Kell Orr were each stationed on one of the small 'spaceships' Aquarius could see; they weren't real ships but decoys, a thin skin of metal salvaged from Regor's ship plated over rocks sculpted into the correct shapes by Karre and Larre. Tharka and Regor were firing real weapons they had dismounted from her ship, while Kell Orr was using his x-ray vision. The twins were some thousands of miles away in the real ships, with strict orders to go to Earth for help if necessary.

The beams and lightning stopped, and Aquarius silently howled his rage into the vacuum of space. He had hoped his seeming pain would fool them longer. He directed some of his new power through the Cosmic Rod…

At the exact instant he formed the intention, Tharka knew what was coming next. Once again she yelled into the radio "Ditch!" even as she was fleeing from her decoy ship at her top speed. A bolt of energy flashed from the Cosmic Rod and one of the decoys exploded.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Aquaris was once again roaring laughter into the vacuum of space. He hadn't felt this good in ages! "Thus all who oppose me perish!" He was already aiming the Cosmic Rod at another of the small ships when Kell Orr burst from the flying debris of the first one. The explosion had shaken him up, and his costume was torn and tattered, but he rocketed towards the space monster. Aquarius started in disbelief - he recognized this man! He'd already fought two others, identical in features and seemingly in power. How many of him were there?

In that instant of hesitation, Kell Orr slammed into the giant being - and bounced off, as he discovered that the body of Aquarius, which seemed so flimsy that stars could be seen through it, was at least as invulnerable as he was. Before he could recover, Aquarius blasted him again. Unlike Superman, who had been knocked out by a similar blast, Kell Orr was staggered but unharmed.

'That blast was as powerful as that which hurt the other one of him,' Aquarius was thinking frantically. He realized he'd made a mistake… he'd imbued his duplicate with most of his mystical energy, and the Wonder Stick couldn't recharge energy of that type; his body would only recharge itself with rest. It must have been the magic that stopped the other one, magic that he was now missing! Before Kell could recover, Aquarius grabbed him in a beam of force from the Wonder Stick, and commanded it to blast him as far away as it could.

Meanwhile, Regor had jetted away from his decoy and he began firing yet another weapon at the star giant. It was something Dr. Computeer had developed and left in Tharka's ship, a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher which fired missiles tipped with tactical nuclear warheads. They delivered incredible concussive force with almost no radiation released - the perfect weapon to attack Aquarius! He had time to fire twice before the monster turned to him and launched another bolt from the Cosmic Rod. Regor saw death approaching as he realized he didn't have time to dodge. As he stared in horror at the approaching dart of destruction, the faceplate of his space helmet was shattered by a beam of blackness that shot from his eyes!

The black beam hit the energy ball, which shrunk as it fought against the stream of blackness. To Regor's astonishment, the deadly dart vanished before it reached him. He was even more astounded that he wasn't trying to breath vacuum, but the broken helmet was somehow still holding atmosphere! He noticed a dim, gray blur surrounding him, like nothing he had never seen before. He gently touched the faint gray aura over his shattered faceplate and it was like pressing his finger into the side of a balloon - it resisted his touch, and stretched a little. He didn't press any harder; right now he had no desire to see if he could burst that balloon!

Meanwhile, the two missiles exploded against Aquarius like a one-two punch, knocking him tumbling. His concentration was disturbed, and his humanoid form collapsed back into his natural shape, which looked like a giant paramecium glowing. Apart from the first punch landed by Superman in his original fight with the JSA, this was the first attack by these mortals which had actually hurt him. Enraged, he zoomed off in Regor's direction, planning to personally destroy this annoying flee.

"Hey, there's somebody out here already!" Ted yelped as he saw Aquarius being bombarded by beams and bolts. "The big guy sure knows how to make friends everywhere he goes, huh?" he added with a chuckle. "Maybe he should take a Dale Carnegie course!"

"Well, let's show 'em we're on their side!" Alan replied. "You ready?"

"Yep, let's go!" Ted brought their impromptu spaceship to a halt, then used the Cosmic Rod to enclose himself in an environment-sustaining force field. "Split up and blast him from the sides?"

Before Green Lantern could answer, they saw a human missile smash into Aquarius, bounce off, and get blasted. When Aquarius used the Cosmic Rod to banish the human figure, Ted couldn't take it any longer.

"I'm tired of that monster using MY Cosmic Rod for his perverted purposes!" he shouted his anger. "Let's put an end to this."

At that instant, Aquarius was battered by the two nukes and changed his form. "NOW!" GL shouted, and the heroes, now each under his own power, flashed into position for their planned attack.

Tharka extended her mental senses, if she could read this monster's mind, it would give them an advantage fighting him. Instead she discovered two human minds she hadn't expected, and realize they were about to attack Aquarius with their energy weapons. "Stop!" she 'shouted' a mental command. "He absorbs energy attacks! You'll just make him stronger!"

Ted and Alan were both surprised at the telepathic message, but each hero had dealt with telepathy before. Green Lantern held back his attack, and used his ring to send back a mental query. "Who are you?" Meanwhile, Ted was too angry to wait. He gritted his teeth; he hated what he was going to have to do, but he'd thought about it the whole time they were flying out here. He wasn't going to allow anyone to use his inventions for evil purposes! He commanded his Cosmic Rod to send a secret signal, and the stolen Cosmic Rod exploded!

"Yee HAH!" Ted yelled. "Take that, you bastard!" One of lowest points in Ted's life had been when the US dropped the first Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He had been involved in the Manhattan Project and it had taken him years to get over the guilt he felt for the hundreds of thousands of deaths. He had come to accept that bomb had been necessary, and that the project would have gone on without him but he was also determined that nobody was going to use his technology for evil purposes ever again as long as he could help it! The Cosmic Rod used some very rare materials, and destroying one was a major loss of resources, but stopping this monster was more urgent to Ted than any number of Cosmic Rods could be.

The explosion was far more effective than Ted had hoped. About a third of the mass of Aquarius's body simply vanished in a flash of bright actinic light and the remaining mass was blasted away at high speed, tumbling wildly. Ted used the Cosmic Rod to rocket after it; he wasn't going to take any chances with this monster! That blast shouldn't have been enough to kill it. And quickly, as Aquarius stopped tumbling and his body coalesced into it's natural form, noticeably smaller now than before the explosion, bolt, he knew it hadn't. With a roar of rage, Aquarius blasted Ted with an incredibly powerful energy blast, which splattered against his energy shield and came within a whisker of shattering it.

In his rage and fury, even without his Wonder Stick, even drained of most of his magic and missing part of his mass, Aquarius was a formidable foe. He unleashed blast after blast of incredible power, pounding continuously against Starman's force shield. Ted was unable to counterattack, and his shield was weakening rapidly. He realized instantly that he would be quickly overwhelmed…

But Starman wasn't the only hero in the sky! Kell Orr rocketed back to the fight, and battered at Aquarius with his fists, landing blow after blow with enough power to shatter a mountain. Regor had jetted around to the monster's far side, and the mysterious black beams from his eyes seemed to cause pain, as Aquarius was shifting and twisting wildly to try to escape them. Tharka was using her new-found telepathy to disrupt that alien's concentration, filling his mind with images of his own defeat. And Green Lantern had ordered his ring to form a giant stone mallet from the material of the comet, and a giant, massively muscled green arm hammered away at the outnumbered energy being.

Without the Wonder Stick to draw Cosmic Energy for a recharge, and balked at using his own natural energy-absorbing power by the tactics of his enemies, Aquarius soon realized he was fighting a losing battle. He would soon be too weak to escape. Straining his concentration to the max to counteract Tharka's mental attack, he pretended to be weaker than he was, marshaling his energy for an escape into hyperspace.

Tharka read his intentions from his mind, and broadcast a warning to her companions, but Green Lantern and Starman had too much experience to be fooled by an opponent playing possum. Ted enclosed Aquarius in a force globe, designed to block any type of ambient energy which the alien might use to recharge from reaching him. GL instantly reinforced this globe with one of his own, and the heroes ordered their twin globes to shrink, forcing Aquarius to expend more energy to save himself from being crushed. It didn't take too long before he used up most of his remaining energy and fell into a state resembling unconsciousness.

Back to Earth for a Happy Ending?

"So, what do we do with Aquarius?" Green Lantern asked. The heroes were assembled in the control room of the Zavoy, which, along with Tharka's ship, was headed Earthward. A quick hyperjump had put them just outside the orbit of Mars; it would only take a couple of hours more.

"Execute him!" Kell Orr insisted. "He has been destroying civilizations and murdering beings for literally billions of years. He may have killed more beings than any other than any other entity in the universe! It's our duty to those who have already died - and if fail to execute him and he kills again in the future, the blood will be on our hands." Coming from a civilization that had all but eliminated crime, the scope of Aquarius's evil deeds beyond his power to comprehend.

Green Lantern wasn't usually in favor of execution, but he and Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern from Earth 1, had already passed a death sentence on Aquarius, and the fact that the alien energy monster had survived didn't change his opinion. Aquarius had slaughtered literally trillions of innocent beings in his wanders across the universe, and would undoubtedly slaughter more if given the chance. "I agree. We have a unique opportunity to rid the universe of a major evil; we must act! We can avenge more lives than any of us have ever imagined."

"Our job isn't to be Avengers" Starman reminded his companions. "We're champions of Justice. But, I have an idea. Green Lantern and I have a… well, I guess he's a colleague… who is better qualified than we are to decide what to do about Aquarius. In fact, I would say this is just the kind of situation he was created to deal with!" He told the extraterrestrial visitors about the Spectre, and the companions agreed to let him deal with Aquarius. The Astral Avenger seemed to be the perfect choice to deal with a being who had begun his life as a star!

Green Lantern shuddered; he hated to think of what vengeance the Spectre might take for the lives of trillions of innocents, but Ted was right, it seemed a perfect answer. None of these companions had enough power to be sure Aquarius never harmed anyone again without killing anyone, but surely the Spectre's power dwarfed even that of Aquarius.

With the fate of Aquarius settled, it was time to ponder the new powers gained by Tharka and Regor.

Tharka revealed that she was now a projective telepath, able to read minds and send her thoughts into the minds of others, and her telekinetic power was now strong enough to move small objects, perhaps a couple of pounds in Earth gravity. As far as she could tell, her other powers remained unchanged.

There was some excitement generated by the investigation of Regor's new powers. Regor's eye beams could disintegrate Green Lantern's ring constructs as well as beams from the Cosmic Rod. They punched holes in force fields, and cancelled laser beams, Kell Orr's vision powers, and lightning bolts. Kell volunteered to stick his hand into the beam and it hurt! But what really caused consternation for Ted and Tharka was that there was no trace of the dissipated energy. It wasn't changed to heat and Regor was not absorbing or storing it.

"That's impossible!" Ted protested vehemently to the universe. "That's a violation of Conservation of Energy!"

"It could be magic, Ted," Green Lantern suggested helpfully.

Tharka snorted. "I don't believe in magic!" but she was visibly upset; natural laws were the foundation of her universe as they were of Ted's!

Alan laughed. "Ted doesn't either, even though he believes in the power of the 'magic' ring I wear. To him, 'magic' is a code word for 'I don't understand it yet'."

Ted nodded in agreement. "Perhaps the missing energy is being shunted into another dimension somehow, or through time. I'm sure I can figure it out with time and the right equipment."

Regor's gray aura didn't seem to be related to the eye beams. The aura was a weak force field, which could protect him from external gas and fluid pressures ranging from vacuum through about 2 atmospheres, and it passed oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. However, it couldn't manufacture oxygen; in a vacuum Regor would have to carry his own. It didn't make him invulnerable, and maintaining it took energy; he couldn't count on it to protect him indefinitely. But it had saved his life in the earlier battle!

"The question that remains is 'why' Tharka and I developed new powers - not that I'm complaining!" Regor chuckled. "She and I must have been exposed to something that affected us, but didn't affect the Xenonians. That might be because they are invulnerable, or they weren't exposed long enough, or, exposure to them is the cause." The three Xenonians looked stunned. "Hey, like I said, I'm not complaining!" he continued before they could get mad. "But if Alan and Ted start developing new powers…"

"While you've done a good job of enumerating the possibilities," Tharka broke in "it seems much more likely to me that we were somehow changed by exposure to the comet. After all, we've posited that Aquarius cast a spell of some kind on the comet to make it attract space junk."

"More damn magic!" Ted grumbled as the rest of the group laughed.

"Geez, this is boring!" Larre complained to his sister, as the adults consigned Aquarius to the mercy of the Spectre. "Let's use the space stereophone and watch some Earth TV programs." Kell had told them about Earth television when they were growing up, and earlier they had been pestering Ted and Alan to tell them about what TV was like now.

"Dad liked 'I Love Lucy' the best." Larre told GL.

"No, he actually liked 'The World Today' with Libby Lawrence the best!" Karre interrupted. 'He had to hide her picture from Mom!"

"We all liked 'The World Today'; Libby is one of the most respected newscasters in the world. She still shows up on TV from time to time, doing documentaries and specials." Alan replied, smiling as he talked about his good friend.

"I don't think 'respect' is the reason Dad kept her picture," Karre responded mischievously.

"I don't generally have time to watch TV, but I always make time for one of Libby's special reports." Ted agreed. "There's more to that lady than just looks!. But there's really nothing else on TV that's worthwhile any more. Except maybe that Brit show, 'Master Who'. That's usually pretty cool".

"I thought you liked the space show, 'Star Castaways: 1999'?" Alan asked with a chuckle. "After all, the credits list you as a 'Technical Advisor'."

Only the very first show!" Ted retorted hotly. "I sued to get my name OFF the credits after they ignored everything I told them."

After 15 minutes on the space stereophone, the twins hesitantly interrupted their elders. "Uh, Dad?" Karre asked timidly. "You guys had better come see the TV broadcasts from Earth. There's nothing on but news - and there's nothing but bad news!"

"Yeah - they're showing riots and stuff burning all over the place!" Larre added, horror sounding in his voice. "It's like half the world has gone crazy!"

After a few minutes, Alan and Ted were able to make sense out of it. "The general public has found out that two weeks has jut gone by in the blink of an eye," GL explained. "It was noticed almost instantly by astronomers who were viewing the sky when Aquarius snapped the world into limbo. When they popped back in, all the stars had shifted places! For a while, no one believed it, but within a couple of hours, the evidence couldn't be denied. At first, governments tried to keep it secret, but they couldn't. Navigation was screwed up; navigators who took readings on stars found that their ships' locations had apparently shifted by hundreds of miles since their last readings. One navigator on a ship in Lake Michigan figured that his ship had to be in Downer's Grove, Illinois!" His face was grave. "About the time Starman and I were leaving Earth, the US government was appealing to the JSA for an explanation."

"Apparently the JSA and all the governments got together and issued a report that was translated into every known language. It was supposed to be reassuring; not sure that was a good idea or not." Ted mused. "Most peoples' beliefs have been shaken to the core! Prophets have arisen world wide proclaiming everything from 'That was the warning, the end is near, you have only X days to put your house in order!' to 'The end has come and we're all now in the afterlife!' to 'This proves there is no deity because no deity would let this happen!' New cults are springing up all over, some worshiping Aquarius as a benevolent god, others as a demon. There are lines of people outside confessionals, and lines almost as long in front of casinos, bars and places of 'carnal entertainment'."

"Some people are casting the JSA as being evil for not 'negotiating' with Aquarius. And other bunches of idiots who are upset because we wiped out 'an entire sentient species' when Aquarius was supposedly destroyed". He snorted in disgust. "Nobody trusts the official story, and there are people who are saying that there's a massive cover-up going on. Republicans blame the Democrats and Democrats blame the Republicans, and everyone hates the news! Reminds me of 'National Brotherhood Week'!" Green Lantern quipped before turning serious. "If you can't be certain the world is going to be here from one second to the next, what can you be certain of?"

"There's even some groups demanding that Superman, and all other aliens, be rounded up. Some folks are demanding that they all be executed, while others just want them exiled from Earth. Looks like you guys picked a bad time to visit!" Ted summarized for their new friends. "GL, we need to hurry back and see if there's anything we can do to help calm folks down." He turned to Kell, Tharka and Regor. "I suggest you guys land on the dark side of the moon and just hang around for a while. We'll let Superman know you're there."

"We'll take Aquarius with us," Green Lantern added. "Maybe seeing that he's alive and actually been captured will help? And I'll return Captain Champion to prison."

Green Lantern sent a message to Hawkman, asking him to meet them at the JSA Brownstone with whatever heroes and authorities he deemed appropriate, and the heroes headed for Earth while their extraterrestrial associates headed for the dark side of the moon.

In Aquarius's depowered state, the Spectre was easily able to extract a millennia's worth of memories from the fallen star to convince even the most skeptical that Aquarius was unutterably evil. He had destroyed civilization after civilization, species after species, planets and stars, and all because this was how he enjoyed his life. And those who wanted to argue that Aquarius had only come to Earth because of the presence of heroes - in over 12 billion years of his wanderings, Aquarius had destroyed whomever he encountered, and the heroes of Earth were the first to stop him. Even the world's most hardened human haters had to admit that making Aquarius powerless was a human accomplishment to be proud of (at least until they'd had time to spin the story).

This new information calmed most people somewhat, and much of the worldwide civil disturbance faded. In a couple weeks, things were seemingly mostly back to normal.

Epilogue

Late at night, in Smallville, Kansas, a couple of days after the extraterrestrial visitors landed their ships on the Moon.

On the well-tended Kent farm, in a secluded corner behind the barn, an extraordinary figure stood, fists on hips, gazing at the moon. His cape billowing behind him in the light breeze, the bright moonlight glinting off his chiseled features, Superman looked every bit the planetary protector of legend. Standing with him was his wife, Lois Lane Kent. "There!" the Man of Steel pointed.

Lois looked closely, but she was unable to see anything. "You cheated!" she complained. "You used your super vision!"

He chuckled. "OK, we'll call it a draw. Ted's made them invisible, as well as undetectable on radar. They'll be here in about 5 minutes."

"I wonder if Kell Orr has changed much?" Lois mused. "I was kind of angry with you, and him, when I found out about his masquerade as you, so long ago! He gave away your secret at least twice, but then the two of you convinced me I was wrong again! It's lucky you got back when you did, though or I would have figured it out anyway."

"Still, there were other times when having another Superman around, or another Clark Kent, would have been helpful since then." Superman replied. "I hope his folks are OK. I grew very fond of them while I was visiting Xenon." He paused, reflectively, thinking of Zoll Orr and his wife Vara, who had invited him into their home and treated him like a son as he attempted to find a way to save their world. "I wonder what has Kell so excited? He wouldn't tell me on the radio. Said he wanted to surprise me. Actually, he said he has two surprises."

"I wonder if Tharka ever figured out that her powers didn't work on Earth?" Lois changed the subject. "She was more than a little full of herself when she came here the last time."

"She was only 13 years old, Lois. If you were the world's greatest genius and had powers and abilities far beyond those of your fellows at 13, how would you have acted?" Clark chided her gently. "I'm sure she's matured a lot since then."

Lois grimaced as she recalled several times when she had been granted temporary super powers, and she hadn't always handled them with the maturity that might be expected of her. She changed the subject again, to something more comfortable. "It will be nice to meet Regor, finally. You've told me a lot about him." She hadn't met Regor on his last trip to Earth, but she knew that her husband considered the Protector of Uuz to be a close friend. Clark had always been fascinated by the parallels between his own life and Regor's. Because of these parallels, there were things he and Regor had in common that he shared with no one else.

When he was low enough to be sure he and his companions would be unobserved, Ted dropped his invisibility cloak, and they landed nearby. He then used the Cosmic Rod to light up the sheltered area as if it were daylight.

Lois gasped in amazement. "It's Larry and Carole!" she squeaked. "It's impossible…" Kell Orr and his twins were closest to the Kents, and Lois was staring at the twins in astonishment.

"What's the matter, Lois? You've seen twins before!" Superman was puzzled. He broke off to greet his old friend with a handshake and a super hug. "It's great to see you, Kell! You look very well!" Indeed, except for their costumes, the two could have been the same person. Kell turned and greeted Lois with a hug as well.

"It's great to see you two!" Kell said enthusiastically. "So you finally got married, huh? Congratulations!" He noticed Lois still staring at the twins. "I did, too, Kal, you remember Vana Vair? We got married a few years after you saved Xenon, and these are our children, Larre" the male twin bowed "and Karre". Karre curtsied. "I overheard you a second ago, Lois - how did you know their names? I wanted to surprise you."

"You bet I'm surprised!" Lois answered. "Years ago, before Clark and I finally got married, I used to dream about what life would be like as Superman's wife. In one of those dreams, we had twin children, named Larry and Carole, and they looked exactly like your kids!" She sounded wistful.

"I guess that's not too big a surprise, Lois, since I look just like Kal-L, and my wife Vana is almost your exact double, except for the color of her hair."

"Excuse me" Superman said. "Kell, we can catch up in a few minutes, I'm going to go greet my other old friends." He strode off towards Regor and Tharka.

"So do you and Kal have children?" Kell Orr asked Lois.

"No. Different physiologies or something," she replied quietly. "We might adopt when one of us slows down a little."

"Well, why don't I help you get to know the twins better?" he asked.

As they talked, Lois marveled at how much this man resembled her husband - and that she had been unable to tell the difference years ago. There were so many little differences she should have picked up, such as Kell being clearly left-handed while her Kal/Clark/Superman was totally ambidextrous, and his hands were slightly smaller, and his eyes were a different shade of blue. 'I would have figured it out if we'd spent more time together!' she insisted to herself, and herself agreed that she was probably correct.

Superman was about to shake hands with Tharka, when she gave him a big hug instead! "Thanks for keeping from making a fool on myself on television with everyone on my planet watching!" Then she pushed him away. "I almost got killed on the next planet I tried to help, where nobody had super powers to secretly come to my aid. I was SO angry at you for not telling me!" She stomped her foot as she spit this out, looking exactly like that petulant teenager of years ago. Then she chuckled. "It was a big enough shock that I learned my lesson. With great power comes great responsibility, and part of that responsibility is to make sure you are properly prepared!"

"It's fantastic to see you. You look great!" Superman told the SuperWoman of Zor, then turned into a warm handshake and a bear hug with Regor. He was impressed; since they'd last seen each other, Regor had put on 30 pounds of muscle, and his grip was powerful enough to make any Earth human wince. To maintain a physique like that on a low gravity world such as Uuz required a level of dedication as high as that of the Batman. "So what brings you two to Earth?" he asked. Lois didn't give them a chance to tell their stories.

"Ted, you're staying for a late dinner, right?" she asked Starman. "I've already set a place, and I told Doris you'd be spending the night here." Of course, he agreed. "So, why don't we go inside? The table is set and the food's ready to serve," Lois announced. There was a rush to the house the visitors had been eating spaceship food for a few days and were looking forward to a home-cooked meal.

Everyone's stories came out over dinner. Regor had gone first.

"This Bantor of yours sounds a lot like my arch enemy, Lex Luthor, even to the red hair!" Superman commented. "Staging a fake alien invasion sounds like something Lex would do."

"Gosh, do you have exciting adventures like that, Mrs. Kent?" Karre wanted to know. "Our mom won't tells us neat stories like that. She says we can hear them after we've grown a little older."

"Yeah, and she's been telling us that for years now. How much is 'a little older' anyway?" Larre grumbled. Kell Orr smiled; he and his wife Vana had agreed to keep her most dangerous adventures from the kids, not wanting them to simply rush out and try to find exciting adventures on their own.

"You know, I think it's interesting that each of you super men married the 'pesky female reporter' in your lives," Tharka commented, perceptively realizing that it was time to change the subject. "I guess it proves that women are more perceptive than men - they were interested in you long before you became interested in them."

"You said it, sister! Give me 5!" Lois cheered, holding up her hand. Tharka didn't instantly recognize the gesture, but the meaning quickly popped into her mind, and she reciprocated and they shared a good laugh.

"I'm sure we can find several tons of compounds containing potassium that you can take back to Uuz with you," the Man of Steel continued. "And maybe we can scare up a couple of asteroids with a high potassium density that you can mine if you need more in the future."

"Say, I'd like to help with that," Starman spoke up thoughtfully. "I've added some new capabilities to the Cosmic Rod that I'd like to test out. Using radio pulse induction, I should be able to detect metals from a great distance and even tell them apart."

Tharka caught a stray wisp of concern from Regor, but realized he wouldn't speak up about it. 'Men! He came all this way and now he's worried about asking for the help he needs,' she thought in mock disgust. She spoke up, "Before Regor can take home tons of ore, he's going to need a new ship."

"I can help with that," Kell Orr joined the conversation. "Kal, here, saved my planet by building a giant ship designed just to capture asteroids and bring them back to Xenon. It would be perfect for this job. I've got the full plans for that ship in the Zavoy's computers." All 5 heroes (Superman, Regor, Tharka, Kell Orr and Starman) were interested in this project; they decided to start in a couple of days.

The focus of attention shifted to Tharka, and she recounted her adventure stopping the two criminals from Earth. "They were brought to Zor because Dr. Computeer figured that if I was just about physically average among humans on Earth, an Earthling would have superior physical powers on Zor. Sort of like Regor, but for evil purposes." She nodded her head at the Protector of Uuz. "In fact, now that he's cured, you remind me a lot of Fergus." She turned back to Superman. "So I was bringing Captain Champion back to jail. And I need your help getting Fergus an official pardon. The crimes he committed were not his fault; he was not competent at the time due to his injuries. I've brought his medical records to prove it."

Lois spoke up. "Suppose I investigate that? I'll get all his criminal records together and find out what he was charged with, and the records of his trial. When we've got all the information together, we'll decide what to do. If the Justice Society can't get him a pardon, I'll be amazed." She turned to Kell Orr. "So, besides the twins, what's the other big surprise you've been keeping from us, Kell? It's not hard to see you almost dying to tell your story."

"It's not as big as it sounds initially," Kell warned them, attempting to keep their expectations low. "Zoll" his father, a twin for Jor-L and Xenon's leading scientist, "has been doing some research on kryptonite recently, just to insure that your solution was permanent." He nodded to Superman. "He discovered a new natural process. Don't get too excited, because it takes a long time, but his team discovered a way to neutralize Kryptonite."

Karre rolled her eyes and looked disgusted as suddenly, the other people at the table became very excited. She'd warned her father that he needed to do a better job of preparing them. But had he listened?

"Hold on!" Kell added just a bit of super power to his words, and his voice easily cut through the babble. "This isn't something you can carry with you, to save you when you run into Kryptonite unexpectedly. It's a natural decay process with a half life of several years." He went on with the rest of the story. "So you see," he concluded, "if you have the time, it's a good way to get rid of kryptonite forever, but you can't use it in a hurry whenever some crook pulls out a chunk of K."

Ted and Tharka were already fascinated by the decay process. "Did you bring the equations with you?" Ted asked.

"No, I only glanced at the blackboards where Zoll and his team had worked out the process." He paused and looked startled. "Why, I only glanced at the boards, but I can recall everything on them perfectly! And…" his eyes grew wider "I can understand the equations now!" Kell Orr had nowhere near the level of scientific genius as his father, but the local environment that gave him physical super powers also improved his mental powers. He still wasn't interested in particle physics; he asked for some paper and a pencil and using his superspeed, he wrote out all the equations. Ted and Tharka asked to be excused, and they settled into Clark's study for an exciting discussion on the quantum mechanics of kryptonite decay.

Kell Orr told Lois and Clark the entire story about their encounter with Aquarius. "Well, that clears up at least one thing for me. It may not be possible to change the past, but you CAN change the future." Superman said thoughtfully after the story was completed. "Many years ago, I was thrown into the future." He paused for an instant as he recalled something startling. "In fact, it was just before I met Regor the first time - what an interesting coincidence! Actually, sometimes I wonder if the coincidences in my life are really coincidences, or there isn't more to it…" he murmured, then shook his head. "Sorry! Anyway, Lois was hot on a story. A renowned expert in electricity and rays, Professor Wilson of the Metropolis University Physics Department, announced that he'd built a machine that produce a focused electric 'ray' with the power of lightning. As usual, Lois found danger and excitement, and again as usual, I had to deal with the consequences of protecting her."

He was teasing Lois. He only used that "as usual" cliché when he was telling a story to someone they trusted. "You'll pay for that!" she responded, in an apparent fit of pique, but her emotion-sensing 'mood ring' was sending him only playfulness.

"To be fair, Lois wasn't the only reporter at the demonstration. And my intuition told me Superman should be there as well, rather than Clark Kent. As I was saying…" Superman continued "Professor Wilson's machine was supposed to produce a well controlled, extremely powerful 'beam' of focused electricity. He was trying to develop a power broadcast device. I inspected his apparatus with my x-ray vision, and realized that the vacuum tubes he was using couldn't contain that much energy. One of them was going to explode! He turned the machine on before I could say anything, and I barely had time to get between the observers and the machine. That terrific blast of energy hurled me into the future - to the year 2949!"

"What I learned there was astounding! Everyone on Earth had super powers. I met a descendent of Lois, named Lois 4XR* who had super strength, was invulnerable, and could fly. And the scientists told me that a comet had struck Metropolis in early 1970. It was on a tangential course, so it sort of bounced off the Earth, but Metropolis was destroyed. There was no loss of life, the city had been evacuated. But gasses from the comet 'polluted' Earth's atmosphere, and the next generation was born with super powers." He paused.

*See Superman #57, March/April 1949, "Every Man a Superman"

"I always wondered why I didn't stop that comet from destroying Metropolis. I had plans to fly into space next month and find the damned thing, and see if I could make it miss," he mused. "But you guys have taken care of that for me. Thanks!"

"That story confirms a theory of mine!" Ted exclaimed. He and Tharka had come back to the kitchen to hear Clark's story. "Certain events are crucial to the course of history and intervention in those events by living beings can produce alternate futures. It happened to Doris and I years ago*. She received a telepathic message from the future, and by acting on the contents of the message, I was able to avoid a death trap. There's another world somewhere that was identical to ours until that day in 1946 when I retired. Now there's another world that was identical to ours until Aquarius showed up. The future you visited, Clark, didn't just vanish; for some reason, your visiting that future set in motion events that caused our time line to split."

*See "Give Up the Stars" here: http://the5earths.50megs.com/earth-2/timespast/e2braveandbold1948-02.html

Ted paused. "Whew! This is giving me a headache just thinking about it! And it's different than the 'other universes' such as Earth-1 and Earth-S. Now I'm going to have to come up with a bigger theory that explains both 'other universes' and 'alternate futures'!" He pretended he was exasperated, but this was the kind of thorny theoretical issue he loved to tackle!

"It can wait for tomorrow, Ted!" Lois interrupted sternly. "We've all got some big projects ahead of us. Let's get a good night's sleep, and we can all get started after a good breakfast!"