🚀 go-pugleaf

   "...and coming up on our right is a Dalek battlecruiser heading
for Earth."
   "Ooooooooo!"  The passengers moved over to the right side of
the bus and snapped their cameras at the huge armored spaceship.
   "It looks like a model," Mark scoffed.  "Look, you can even see
the strings!"
   "I think that's part of the propulsion system," said Tracy.
   "Hotel LaGrange will be conducting an excursion to Bob City
tomorrow, for the final showdown of the Industrial Revolution,
where this giant battlecruiser is scheduled to engage Awesome
Force One in battle.  Check any of the Hotel bulletin boards for
details."
   "You know what Laurel would say if she were here?" Tom asked.
   His two teammates nodded knowingly.  "Darn!  We always miss out
on all the good stuff!"
   At the exact same moment, in the lobby of the orbiting Hotel
LaGrange, Tracy's twin sister, Stacy, smiled to herself and
laughed.
   "What's so funny?" asked Nick.
   "We always miss out on all the good stuff," she told him.  Nick
and Kyle exchanged confused looks and turned their attention back
to the bomb.
   "The timer's got less than five minutes left," said Nick.
"Looks like the bomb is hooked directly into the front desk
computer terminal.  That's why the terrorist had to kill the desk
clerk -- to gain access to the computer!"
   Suddenly, the side doors of the lobby burst open and two dozen
heavily armed men clomped into the room.  "Freeze!  Hands above
your heads!"
   "Ah, Detective Lemon," said Nick.  "Perfect timing!"
   "You've offed another desk clerk, I see," said the chief of
Hotel security, advancing confidently toward them.  "What do you
have against these people?"
   "He's only unconscious," said Kyle.  "He was just a little bit
too intense for his own good."
   "What am I going to do with you guys?"
   "I think you have a more pressing matter to deal with at the
moment," said Stacy, pointing to the bomb under the front desk.
   "Oh hell(tm)," said Lemon.  "Marie!"
   "Yes, sir?" asked a computerized image appearing on the
videoscreen attached to the desk.  "I was right about them
returning to the front desk, wasn't I, sir?"
   "Marie, what do you make of this thing?"
   "Hmmm.  It seems to be a sophisticated thermonuclear device,
sir, quite capable of destroying the entire Hotel.  It is set to
go off in less than four minutes."
   "There's no way to evacuate anybody in that amount of time...
Can we disconnect it?"
   "There's only one way, sir.  We'll need to shut down the entire
computer system and reboot from the backup."
   "Okay, do it."
   "Sir?  I would not recommend it, unless the biological beings
on this ship have somehow acquired the ability to survive for
nearly half an hour without gravity or oxygen."
   "Damn!  There must be another way."
   "You have three minutes to think of one, sir."
   "Ahem!"  All eyes turned toward Kyle.  "I have a plan," he
announced.
   "You have a plan?  You?" Lemon demanded.
   "Well, actually it's something I once saw on an episode of the
A-Team, but I think it could work here as well..."
   "We're doomed," said Stacy, dropping her face into her hands.


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****    ***   *      *****  *   *      * TM   *  *    ***   *

                           SUPER SEVEN #6F
                           WORLDS APART #6
         Copyright 1994, Greg Fishbone, all rights reserved.

  Permission is hereby granted to disseminate or reproduce this
  work via electronic means only, for entertainment purposes only,
  and only if all attributions and headers remain in place and the
  text of the work (including attributions and headers) is not
  altered in any way.  Any reproduction of this work for profit of
  any form is strictly forbidden without the express written
  permission of Greg Fishbone.  Hard copy reproduction is limited
  to single copies printed for the use of the user only, and
  cannot be mass produced or disseminated in any way.  Implicit
  permission is granted to make reference to the characters and
  events of this work in the context of the Superguy Subtopic of
  the Superguy Mailing List only, and such use does not constitute
  an abridgement or relinquishment of any of Greg Fishbone's
  rights as they are expressed or implied herein.  All other
  rights not specifically referred to in this notice are reserved
  to Greg Fishbone.  "Super Seven", "Dillweed City", "Worlds
  Apart", and all character names used in this story are
  trademarks belonging to Greg Fishbone, who reserves all rights
  to their use except in the context of explicit or implicit
  permission granted to Superguy authors.  (WHEW!)

Feedback to fishbone@astro.ocis.temple.edu -- just to let me know
you're out there!


   "...and if you have a really good zoom lens, you may be able to
get a picture of the comet impacts on Jupiter, moving into view on
the right side of the bus as we go into this turn..."
   "Aaaaaaaaaah!"  Snap-Whir-Whir-Click!
   "--and that's all I know," said Tracy, updating Mark and Tom on
the situation aboard the Hotel.  "But don't worry, Kyle has a
plan."
   Mark and Tom exchanged surprised looks.  "Worry!" they said in
unison.
   "Hey!  Stacy and I have a trademark on that kind of thing..."
   "Tracy, let me talk to Nick," said Tom.
   "What?  How?"
   "Your link.  I talk to you, Stacy talks to Nick, Nick talks to
Stacy, and you talk to me."
   "What am I, a radio transmitter?"
   "It's important, I need to talk to him."
   "Okay, okay."  There was a short pause.  "He says, 'Tom?  Is
that really you?'"
   "Yeah, it's me," said Tom.
   "He says, 'I hear you've become an honorary Mage.'"
   "I'll tell you all about it later, right now I need to ask you
a question."
   "'What?'"
   "Where is the terrorist who set that bomb?"
   "He says, 'How would I know?' and Kyle says, 'Tom, is there a
point to this?  Once Lemon finishes evacuating the shuttlebay,
we're going to need Stacy's full concentration.'"
   "I was just thinking that he probably didn't stick around to
watch the place blow up from the inside, right?" asked Tom.  "And
what was the first excursion leaving the Hotel after he set the
bomb?"
   Nick was about to answer when he was interrupted by Detective
Lemon.  "Okay, the shuttlebay is clear.  Marie, how much time do
we have left?"
   "Fifty-six seconds," the digital assistant answered.
   "Give us a countdown update every ten seconds," said Kyle.
   "We'll continue this later, Tom," said Nick to Stacy.  "Maybe."
   "He says, 'Good luck.'"
   "Fifty seconds," Marie intoned.
   "That was terminally weird," said Kyle.  "Tom's words coming
out with your voice...  How did it feel?"
   "If we survive, I'll tell you all about it -- now, what do want
me to do?"
   "Set up that seal we were talking about."
   "If I can..."
   "Forty seconds."
   "Okay, gather 'round," said Kyle.  The others crowded in behind
him as he examined the bomb, except for Stacy, who stood by the
shuttlebay door, working up an electric coil.  "Now, I figure that
if we just rip the bomb right out of computer system--"
   "--it would explode immediately," Lemon finished.
   "Uh, right," said Kyle.
   "Thirty seconds."
   "Okay, now let's try this," he said, putting his hand on the
device.  "I've never used my powers to generate cold before, but
it shouldn't be that much different from generating heat...  If I
can get this thing down to a few degrees above absolute zero--"
   "Twenty seconds."
   "--the components will slow down enough to give us a couple
extra seconds between the signal and the explosion!" Nick
exclaimed.  "Then I can teleport it off the station and 'port away
before it blows; Kyle, you're a genius!"
   Kyle considered this.  "Yeah, I guess that would work as
well..."
   "Ten seconds."
   "Stacy, how's that seal coming?" Nick asked.
   "Okay..." she said, clearly straining with the effort of
filling the doorway to the shuttlebay with her electric coils.
"Not airtight, but close..."
   "Open up the airlocks, Detective; I'm coming through!"
   "Five seconds."
   Lemon pressed a code into the terminal, and the shuttlebay
doors opened directly into the black void of space.
   "Four."
   There was a shrill whistling, as air was pulled out of the
lobby through gaps in Stacy's electric coils.  Stacy fell to her
knees in exhaustion, but the seal held.
   "Three."
   "It's cold!" Kyle announced, backing away from the frost-coated
device.  He too seemed physically drained from the effort.
   "Two."
   Nick stepped forward and reached for the device, stopping just
short as he realized something that none of them had thought of;
there was no way he could touch something as cold as liquid
nitrogen with his bare hands!
   "One.  Nice knowing you, sir!"
   Nick desperately grabbed the edge of the desk and shifted from
matter to energy, taking the entire desk along with him.  In the
smallest fraction of a second, he passed through Stacy's seal,
across the shuttlebay, and out into space.
   Nick could sense the device as part of his carrier wave
pattern, but he had no way of knowing whether it remained active
as the microseconds passed by.  Fortunately, all he had to do was
get it a few thousand miles away from the Hotel for it to be safe.
Making sure there were no other ships around, Nick rematerialized
in the vacuum, tumbling, suddenly disoriented by the lack of
gravity.  He held onto the desk, using it as his point of
reference as he tried to collect his thoughts.
   He tried to concentrate on shifting back to a carrier wave, but
all he could think of was the intense pressure on his lungs and
the pain in his eyes and eardrums.  The bomb was taunting him with
a flashing red light, and he knew that there was no way he could
get himself together before it went off.  "Well, Laurel," he
thought, "if you really are dead, I guess I'll be seeing you again
real soon!"  The red light stopped flashing.

                              * * *

   "And coming up on our left is a spectacular nuclear explosion.
Brace yourselves for the shockwaves."
   "Aaaaaaaaah--  Yow!  Ooof!  Yip!  Ouch!  Hey, that was my good
camera!"
   Mark looked out the window and let out a low whistle.  "Now
there's something you don't see every day, eh, Tom?  Tom?"  He and
Tracy looked around, but saw no trace of their teammate amidst the
chaos of the bus.  The other passengers were picking themselves up
from the center aisle, dusting themselves off, and taking
inventory of their souvenirs -- except for one who was holding up
a pair of fusion grenades.
   "All right folks, this is a hostile takeover!" he shouted.
   "Ooooooooh!" the others chorused, snapping off several pictures
of the terrorist with their cameras.
   "It's the man from the front desk!" Tracy exclaimed,
remembering his features exactly as her twin sister had seen them.
"He's the one who tried to blow up the Hotel!"
   "That's right," said the terrorist.  "I don't know exactly what
went wrong, but one way or another that Hotel is going down!
Driver!  Fly us into the Hotel's engineering section, full speed!"
   "But we'll be killed instantly!"
   "No," said the man, gesturing with his grenades, "if you
*don't* fly us into the Hotel, we'll be killed instantly.  The
other way, we have at least five minutes to say our goodbyes to
the universe."
   "In that case, I'll start by saying goodbye to *you*!" came a
voice, and a plasma-powered chop caught the terrorist between the
shoulder-blades.  He fell to the floor, and the grenades dropped
from his hands and rolled down the center aisle.
   "The pins have been pulled out!" somebody shouted, and there
was uncontrolled panic as the passengers frantically attempted to
use up the rest of their film before the grenades could go off.
   Mark reached out toward the grenades with his magnetic powers,
lifting them toward the ceiling while he looked for a place to
dispose of them.  Finding nothing else to do with them, he
accelerated them toward the side of the bus and broke through one
of the windows.  Paper bags, articles of clothing, and a couple of
small children spiraled around the inside of the bus until Tracy
managed to plug the hole with her electric coils.  Once again, the
bus was shaken by an explosion, but there was no further damage.
   "Clumsy, but effective," she remarked.
   "Can you keep those coils in place until we're safely docked?"
asked Mark.
   "No problem."
   Tom shifted back to flesh-form and reached down to check the
terrorist for a pulse.  "Damn!  He's still alive!"
   "Hey, I know who you guys are!" exclaimed one of the
passengers.
   "You do?"
   "Yeah!  Hey everybody, let's hear it for our heroes -- Stan and
Muriel Plotzkin and Stan's brother, Wilbur!"
   "Yay!"  Snap-snap-click-whir!
   Back aboard the orbiting Hotel, Stacy tried desperately to
maintain her seal on the doorway and keep from passing out.
"Can't hold it...  Can't--"
   "It's okay," said Kyle, putting his arms around her for
support.  "Let it go."
   "How... long?"
   "It's been almost two minutes since the device exploded," said
Detective Lemon.  "If your friend was coming back, he'd be here by
now."
   Stacy let the coils dissipate, and the door to the shuttlebay
swung shut with a loud bang.  She embraced Kyle, and her tears
dropped onto the shoulders of his blue pajamas.  "Don't worry," he
told her.  "He probably just went back to Earth.  I'm sure we'll
find him there waiting for us when we get back."
   "You know that's not true.  First Laurel, now Nick--  If we
live in a world where lives can be snuffed out so easily and
everything that seems to matter turns out to be meaningless in the
end, what is there left to live for?"
   "Lots of things."
   "Name one."
   "Love."  Stacy wiped away her tears and looked at Kyle,
surprised at the sincerity in his eyes.  "You know how I feel,
right?  I would never want to come between you and your sister,
but after all that you and I have been through today..."
   "Shut up and kiss me already."

                             * * *

   "Tracy?  Are you all right?" asked Tom, noticing the faraway
look in his teammate's eyes.
   "Kyle..."  The name came out like a sigh.
   "What?!"
   Tracy shook her head as if to clear a particularly unwelcome
thought.  "Damn.  I'm happy for them, but this is definitely going
to take some getting used to."  Mark and Tom exchanged questioning
looks, but said nothing.  Minutes later, their bus was docked in
the Hotel shuttlebay, and they were reunited with the surviving
members of their team in the lobby.
   "Um, hey there," said Tracy to her twin.
   "Hi," Stacy replied.
   "We really need to talk."
   "Yeah."
   "So, where's Nick?" asked Mark.
   "Right here," came a voice, and Nick stepped out of the
shuttlebay to join them.
   "Nick?  You're alive?" asked Tracy, Stacy, and Kyle in unison.
   "Jeez, now they're a trio!" Tom remarked.
   "So you *did* manage to teleport away before the bomb went
off!" exclaimed Kyle.
   "Nope.  I was much too dazed to concentrate."
   "Then how--?"
   "It was the nuclear explosion that saved me," he explained.
"My power converts my matter into a certain type of energy, kind
of like what a nuclear bomb does, but in a lot less destructive
way.  I guess the thermonuclear reaction gave my power just the
jump-start it needed to get me out of there."

                              * * *

   The six of them assembled in one of the Hotel's conference
rooms, where Detective Lemon conducted a briefing with the aid of
his digital assistant, Marie.  "First of all," he said, "Taximan,
Cathode, Human Microwave, I'd like to apologize for any
inconvenience you may have experienced during your stay at the
Hotel LaGrange."
   "You mean like being charged with murder, interrogated, locked
up, and hunted down like fugitives after we escaped?" asked Nick.
   "Um, yes."
   "Okay, you're forgiven."
   "Thank you.  Second, I'd like to express our appreciation for
your help in saving the Hotel from certain destruction at the
hands of a deranged terrorist.  On behalf of the Management, you
have my most sincere thanks."
   "Who was that guy, anyway?"
   "An employee of a rival Hotel orbiting Earth in a different
altiverse," said Marie.  "The destruction of the Hotel LaGrange
would have significantly increased their market share."
   "That seems like a stupid reason to kill all those people,"
said Tom.
   "You have to understand that tourism is the primary industry
for our race," said Marie.
   "Which brings me to my last point," said Lemon.  "In order for
the Hotel to effectively conduct its business, it must remain a
secret to the residents of Earth -- and most especially the super-
powered beings that comprise Earth's biggest tourist draw."
   "So you're going to wipe our memories?" asked Kyle.
   "Normally we would, and you would return to your lives on Earth
like they were before.  However, there are some other
considerations for us to take into account in this case."
   "Because we saved the Hotel?"
   "Yes," said Marie.
   "And it would be cruel to wipe our memories after all we did to
help you out?"
   "No," said Marie.
   "Let me explain," said Lemon.  "By saving the Hotel, the Super
Seven have become extremely popular with the guests here.  In
fact, Management is already planning to use you as the centerpiece
of its next marketing promotion.  During the course of your
adventure here, the six of you have grown together as a team, and
each of you has refined the use of your respective powers.  If we
were to return you to Earth without those experiences, you would
be a much less effective team, and that would hurt our profit
margins."
   "Gee, maybe we should have let the place get blown up after
all," said Mark.
   "I'm sure we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement," said
Lemon.  "We allow you to keep your memories of the Hotel, and you
promise never to speak about it to *anyone*."
   The team huddled for a moment to discuss the matter.  Finally,
they broke up and turned back to face Lemon with predatory smiles.
   "Yes?" he asked, nervously.  "What is your decision?"
   "Throw in a set of Hotel LaGrange bath towels, soap, and shower
gel for each of us, and you've got a deal!" said Stacy.

                          *THE END*


LOOK FOR SUPER SEVEN #7, COMING (FINALLY) VERY VERY SOON (I HOPE).

---
Greg Fishbone                                  fishbone@astro.ocis.temple.edu

   "As you can see, Your Honor, I have no eyebrows."
           --Defendant on "The People's Court" responding to Judge Wopner's
             question: "What seems to be the problem, ma'am?"