One agent, the only male aboard, smoked a cigarette while he stared at radar screens through mirrored aviators. His sandy hair had one dark streak, swept back into a pompadour-mullet; his silk tie around his open-necked dress shirt was already loosened. His slacks and patent-leather shoes set him apart from the dozens of females in gold lamé space suits who sat at control boards.
“Where the hell did it go?” he snapped, looking over the shoulders of one female. “It was there just a moment ago. Don’t tell me we lost it …”
“Stop pacing, Agent Percy,” said another female. She was dressed differently than that rest: a pink cashmere turtleneck, flared polyester slacks, a red beret slanted rakishly over long ginger hair. She wore rose-tinted glasses and also stood, surveying the bridge of the Blow Dryer. “Your heels are echoing on the metal deck; it’s giving me a headache.”
“The hotrod vanished below the clouds,” reported a seated agent. “NORAD’s ground radar has lost it, but it’s trajectory was toward southeastern Michigan—Detroit—or possibly Windsor, Ontario.”
“We picked up something else, though,” reported another gold lamé agent. “The phantom blurs jamming our radar all disappeared briefly—all except one. They seemed to have launched a shuttlecraft following the hotrod. Now all the phantom images are back up.”
“That explains why they’re here,” said Percy. “Did you get a lock on their position?”
“We did, but what are we going to do? We have no weapons to engage them,” reported another seated agent.
“And if they’re from the future,” added the red beret, “they’re bound to have all sorts of futuristic weapons like lasers and particle beams.”
“We could always ram them, if necessary, Lemon Lime,” said Percy. “Just keep that one image in your sights from now on. Do we have a trajectory on their shuttle craft?”
“Descending to Detroit as well,” reported the agent at the radar. “Triangulating both the hotrod and shuttlecraft, it definitely looks like both will be landing in the territorial United States.”
“Why not Southern California or Florida or Myrtle Beach?” snapped Percy. “Why do all these UFOs head toward the rustbelt all the time?”
“You can guess why, Preston,” replied Lemon. “That’s where all your megahero friends congregate.”
“They’re not my friends,” said Preston. “I just handle them for your father as a personal favor …”
“Harry Foster Lime isn’t President of the United States anymore, Preston,” said Lemon. “You only have duty to God and country—and Dr. Mercedith Robeson-James, our director—holding you to your commitment. Why don’t we have her granddaughter look into it?”
“Gads,” said Preston, dropping his cigarette and snuffing it under foot. “I don’t trust Ms. Megaton Man anymore than I trusted Megaton Man to handle critical matters. Better to look into this myself before calling the Troy+Thems or anyone from the East Coast, either.”
“The coordinates have been uploaded to the pod computers,” reported a seated gold-lamé agent. “It’s fueled and ready on the flight deck.”
“Back to Earth for Preston Percy,” said Lemon, smiling. “Give my regards to Ypsilanti, won’t you?”
“Give Ypsi your regards yourself,” said Preston. “You’re not the First Daughter anymore—you’re coming with me.”
Lemon shrugged. “Sure, I could use the fresh air,” she said.
“You’ll have to shop for clothes, first,” said the agent at the radar. “It’s eighty-five degrees with seventy-percent humidity this afternoon.”
“Thanks,” said Lemon.
“What do these girls do up here in orbit when I’m not around?” asked Agent Percy.
“You don’t want to know,” said Lemon Lime.
Ms. Megaton Man flew over the Brightmoor section of Detroit, observing the pre-rush hour traffic on Five Mile and Telegraph Roads below.
“It is definitely way too hot for this costume,” she said to herself. “But at least there’s plenty of sun. How are you doing, cape? Are your solar batteries charged up?”
Her red cape fluttered in the wind, no more and no less than when it was detached and flying of its own accord. Now it was affixed to her blue body suit with two shiny, brass buttons, which functioned as eyes for the cape.
Ms. Megaton Man tapped her visor; computer readouts appeared on her orange-tinted visor before her eyes. “Five Mile Road” and other street information overlay what she saw with her naked eyes.
“Seems to be in working order,” she said. “Not bad for nearly a year in mothballs. Feels good getting the wind in my hair again, now that it’s growing back. How ‘bout you, cape? I wonder if the Hair Dryer is picking up our visuals; Jasper said he’d rewired it for me so I could function off the radar, but we’re still networked into their computer banks.”
Ms. Megaton Man descended to only a few hundred feet about the low-lying buildings. “No one’s like to be looking up at me except a few backyard sun-bathers,” she said to herself. “And those would be mostly white people working on their tans. Motorist heading into rush hour aren’t like to spot little Clarissa James, even if I am wearing primary colors as bright as day.”
Clarissa dropped to the roof of a small storefront along Six Mile Road, actually West McNichol inside the city limits of Detroit. “I thought I spotted some kind of blur,” she said. “What do you make of it, cape?”
She scanned the horizon to the west and north. “Can’t see much difference down here,” she said, snapping off the buttons from her collarbones. “Cape, why don’t you take a look and report back to me?”
The red cape fluttered and hovered in midair, then flew off over the houses and trees.
For several minutes, Clarissa intently watched the imaged the brass buttons of her cape sent back to her visor.
“There it is, that blur,” she said. “Just a couple blocks from here.”
Clarissa made a short hop the building, and apartment block, rejoining her cape.
“That is wavy gravy,” she said, waving her yellow-gloved hands in front of her in the empty air. “It probably wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye, but this visor picks up more than the average bear.”
She tapped the temple of her visor several times, changing the calibration of her visor each time.
“Whoa, there it is,” she said. “Big, black and shiny—the hotrod I saw over Avondale, as big as a city bus. It must be parked in another dimension a mere vibration away from this one.”
She tapped her visor again.
“Jasper, are you getting this?”
The face of Rubber Brother appeared before her eyes.
“Ms. Megaton Man, is that you?” he said. Like Clarissa, he was African-American, and wore a sleek, translucent visor. “Girl, I thought you’d retired from megaheroics for good.”
“It’s the summer,” she replied. “No grad school and nothing to do but feed all the kangaroos. Tell me what I’m looking at.”
“I have no idea,” replied Jasper. “You’ve transmitted video to our computer banks, I see; I’ll need time to look it over. What is that vehicle? Something from the Motor City Auto Show?”
“Donna and I saw it fly over her house late this morning,” said Clarissa. “I had to go back home to fetch my uniform so I could check it out properly. We think it’s from outer space, and maybe the Forbidden Future. It’s definitely not the Partyers from Mars; they don’t need this much leg room.”
“I’ve got your position,” said Jasper. “But I’m the only here at Troy headquarters at the moment. Let me send up a flare and get back to you. But don’t tangle with these folks yourself; wait for backup.”
“Okay, Granny Johnson,” said Clarissa, tapping her visor and ending the call.
She walked to the end of the roof, looked down to the neighborhood street a few floors below.
“What do you think, cape? If the space people parked their ride here, they can’t be too far … maybe they’re even staying inside this very building.”
Clarissa watched a car park along the curb; two people got out with grocery and shopping bags. They wore sweeping cloaks and visors over their eyes. A third person, the driver, got out; he wore a black leather duster.
“This part of town’s a food desert,” she said. “Those two white people are too pretty, and the black guy looks like Shaft from about a thousand years in the future. Looks like they’re just moving in, too—the first thing you’d need are some eats and some new threads. What do you think, cape? Looks like we’ve found our future space people.”
Clarissa unfastened her red cape again.
“I don’t hear any air conditioners,” she said, “and they’re aren’t too many bugs. Maybe there’s a window without a screen you can sneak into. Whaddya say, cape? You up for a little Peeping Tomism?”
The cape fluttered over the side of the building and disappeared.
Next: Visiting Artists
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Archival Images:
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| Clarissa over Detroit in Bizarre Heroes #2 (Fiasco Comics Inc., July 1994). |
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| The Hair Dryer from Megaton Man #4 (Kitchen Sink Press, June 1985). |
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| The Hair Dryer from Return of Megaton Man #2 (Kitchen Sink Press, August 1988). |
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