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Lex Luthor fumed. The richest, the only, lode of alien technology on the planet was in his grasp, if the fools he had chosen to work with could only find it. Steven Vanderworth’s yacht, the Gertrude, had been sailing north for days. But the going was excruciatingly slow.

Even in summer the Arctic Ocean wasn't a place for the faint of heart. And although he certainly would never classify himself as faint of heart, he couldn’t say the same of his ‘colleagues.’

Luthor wished they’d been able to leave Metropolis earlier, but Gertrude Vanderworth hadn’t had the courtesy to die in the spring as he had planned. No, the romantic delusional fool had waited until mid-summer to kick off this mortal coil, leaving Lex Luthor with her late husband’s billions – or what was left after Luthor had transferred every liquid asset he could get his hands on into overseas accounts.

He knew the old woman’s relatives would be trying to find the money Luthor had ‘liberated’ from them. They would be trying, but Luthor had spent years working out his plans. No mere human would be able to thwart him. And Superman was dead.

Luthor turned up the volume on the main cabin’s sound system. Wagner’s Götterdämmerung – The Twilight of the Gods.  It was one of his favorites. The hero is revealed to be an oath breaker, reviled by his beloved, and then murdered, signaling the end of godly rule in the world.

Luthor hummed to the music as he opened one of the books he’d brought with him. Crystals were such fascinating things - orderly, predictable, beautiful. And they didn’t talk back.

Kitty sighed from her own seat across the room from him. The ship had a fabulous library, yet she couldn’t find anything interesting to read. Of course, the library had belonged to Steven Vanderworth and his tastes had tended to non-fiction – history, geography, and biographies. Kitty preferred mindless, formulaic romances featuring broad-chested Cro-Magnons with perfect hair and teeth.

“Kitty, where’s my drink?” Luthor asked.

Kitty sighed again. “My name is Katherine,” she said, but she got up and went to the bar to prepare his martini. He watched as she filled the shaker, shook it up and poured it out into one of Vanderworth’s monogrammed martini glasses. Then she dropped a single olive into the glass and brought it over to him.

He glowered at her.

“What?” she asked, even though he knew she knew how he liked his martinis.

“Is that the reward for the greatest criminal mind of our time? For the man who patiently waited by Gertrude Vanderworth’s bedside feeding her prunes, reading her Dickens… washing her?” He knew it was a rhetorical question. He knew she had heard it all before. It had become something like a game between them.

He continued. “All so we could live in the kind of opulence a girl like you only reads about in magazines? Is this the reward, Kitty? A martini with one withered olive?”

It was a dance they both knew the steps to. He asked for something simple, she provided it, half-heartedly or half finished. He complained and she fixed it. She took back the glass and added more olives.

“So, now that we’re out in the middle of nowhere, away from prying eyes, and have been for better than two weeks, does the oldest criminal mind of our time think I’m worthy of hearing his plan?” Kitty asked with saccharine sweetness.

“Small doses for small minds,” he chided.

“So, what is it? Clubbing baby seals or selling ice to Eskimos?” she asked. “No, don’t tell me. It has to do with land. You’re going to subdivide the ice you’re selling to the Eskimos.”

Luthor chuckled. “Not bad. How long have you been working on that quip?” he asked.

Kitty poured herself a drink and glared at him over the rim of the glass.

“Do you know the story of Prometheus?” he asked, waving one hand at the mural that covered one of the main cabin’s walls – Prometheus stealing the fire. Luthor continued before she had a chance to answer. “Of course you don’t. Prometheus was a god who stole the power of fire from the other gods and gave control of it to mortals. In essence, he gave us technology. He gave us power.”

Kitty snorted. “So we’re stealing fire from gods, in the Arctic?”

“Sort of. You see, whoever controls technology controls the world. The Romans ruled the world because they built roads. The British Empire ruled the world because they built ships. America built the atom bomb and so on and so forth. I just want the same thing Prometheus wanted.”

“And what’s that, Lex?” Kitty asked. “For people to be grateful to you? For them to worship you? You’re not a god.”

Luthor sneered. “Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don’t share their power with mankind. I don’t want to be a god, Kitty. I just want to bring fire to the people.”

She stared at him and he knew she wasn't buying it.

“And I want my cut,” Luthor added.

“Didn’t Prometheus have his liver torn out everyday for his trouble?” Kitty asked.

Luthor stopped and stared at her. For once, she had surprised him.

He didn’t like surprises.



Lois Lane couldn’t sleep. She’d felt restless for the past few days but hadn’t been able to put a finger on why. Things were going well at work. Her last series on childcare in Metropolis had been well received and she was certain to be at least nominated for a Kerth, if not for Pulitzer, this year.

She looked over at Richard. He was still asleep and it was unlikely he would wake up if she got out of bed. He was a very deep sleeper.

She grabbed her robe and went downstairs to the kitchen. Her mother had always recommended chamomile tea for sleepless nights. Lois boiled some water in the microwave and poured it over a teabag. As she waited for the tea to steep, her thoughts went back to the man upstairs.

Richard White was a handsome man - handsome, intelligent, gentle. He was a good father to Jason. He would make a good husband. Maybe that was a source of her unease. Richard had asked her to set a date again and again she had balked. There was no logical reason for it. They’d been living together since Jason was born. Having a slip of paper that said the state had recognized their union shouldn’t mean anything aside from some legal niceties.

Still she refused to set a wedding date. Was it that she wanted her son to have a father, but she didn’t want to be tied to a husband? That sounded mercenary, and she was sure it wasn't true. She just couldn’t see herself married to Richard. She adored him, she was willing to share her bed with him, but she didn’t want to be tied to him.

Her tea was ready. She carried the cup out onto the back deck and sat down on one of the Adirondack chairs. Richard’s seaplane was moored to the dock, moonlight glittering on the wings and the water.

The scene should have been peaceful and it usually soothed her nerves, but there was an uneasiness in the air tonight. It felt like a storm was brewing on the horizon, flashing lightning she could just see out of the corner of her eye but disappeared when she tried to look straight at it.

“Wind's in the east, mist comin' in. Like something is brewin', about to begin,” Lois murmured to herself. Jason loved the Mary Poppins movie, especially the penguins. But Jason was too young to appreciate one of the truths of Mary Poppins – she was the east wind, blowing away the stale air and stultifying ideas. She was the destruction of old broken ways. The new broom that swept clean.

Lois shivered as the wind started to kick up and went back inside.



Again, Kal-El dropped to Earth not far from the Kent farmhouse. It was night and the lamp over the barn door cast warm shadows across the yard. The air was warm - it was summer, but was he back far enough?

He stepped forward and fell. He was exhausted, far worse than his last stop. He’d known it would be hard, but he hadn’t realized how physically taxing it would be. He picked himself up and stumbled to the farmhouse porch. He had no idea of the time, but there was a light on in the kitchen.

“Mom?” Kal-El called out, hoping she was alone. The kitchen door opened and he moved into the shadows.

“Clark?” Martha Kent called from the door. He stepped forward, into the light. She stared at him, wide-eyed before throwing open the screen door and pulling him into a hug. “Clark!”

“It’s good to see you, Mom,” he murmured, even though from his point of view he’d seen her only minutes before.

She pulled back and looked at him, forehead creasing in a frown, just as it had before. “You look tired.”

He nodded. He was still achy, and he was longing for sunrise. Longing for the golden warmth that would drive the exhaustion from his body and soul.

“It was a long hard trip,” he said. She moved aside to let him into the kitchen. It was warm and cheery, the way he wanted to remember it.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

He nodded again, realizing he was hungry. Hunger didn’t often bother him, but there were times he needed more sustenance than just sunlight.

“I’ll scramble up some eggs,” Martha said, turning on the stove. Kal-El sat down at the kitchen table. There was a partially finished Scrabble game on the kitchen table. He recalled that Ben liked to play Scrabble.

“More than five years,” Martha was saying. “It’s just been so long. If your father was alive, he never would have let you go. And then suddenly you’re here. I almost gave up… I thought I’d never see you again…” Her shoulders were shaking and he realized she was crying. He went over to her and hugged her tight.

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” he murmured.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Martha asked softly.

He shook his head. “I thought… hoped… it might still be…”

“Your home?” she asked.

“This is my home. That place was a graveyard. And a death trap,” he said. “The report of Krypton’s survival was a hoax perpetrated by a man named Luthor. He wanted me to go there to die, to leave him free to commit his crimes against humanity.”

“But you’re back now,” Martha said, turning her attention back to the eggs she’d started beating. “You can stop him, can’t you?”

He studied the calendar on the kitchen wall. “It’s August 27th, isn’t it?”

Martha frowned and nodded. “It’s past midnight, so it’s the twenty-eighth.”

He sighed. “I have forty-eight hours, maybe less, to stop him. If I don’t, then everyone and everything on the planet Earth will die at 3:47 P.M. Mountain Standard Time, December 24th.”

“How can you know that?”

“I was there,” he said simply. “I saw it happen. I saw it happen and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it.”

“But you’re here…”

“Yes,” he said. “And getting here seriously bent the known laws of physics.”

“More than flying?” she asked. The eggs were ready and she scooped them onto a plate for him along with two slices of toast.

“Yeah. More than flying. There are some things corporeal beings are simply not meant to do.”

He sat back down at the table and dug in. He knew it was simply scrambled eggs with toast and homemade blueberry jam, but it tasted like heaven. Eggs had been one of the rationed items in the Denver of Armageddon. And on his journey to Krypton, what little he’d eaten came from food packs. They were nutritious but without flavor. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed simple food until he smelled and tasted his mom’s cooking.

Martha sat down opposite him. “What will you do?” she asked.

“First, get some sleep,” he said. “Then, find Luthor and neutralize him.”

She waited until he was finished, then took his plate and rinsed it off. “I kept your room ready for you and your other ‘suits’ are in the back of the closet.”

“Thanks Mom, but this one is probably more appropriate,” he said, indicating the dark body suit he was still wearing. “I honestly don’t know if Superman will ever be coming back. But what I have to do isn’t a job for Superman.”

Martha peered at him. “We can talk more in the morning. You look like you’re dead on your feet. You need to get to bed.”

He nodded and headed for the stairs, then stopped at looked back at her. “Mom, if I don’t see you before I leave, I want you to know I’m glad Ben has been here for you.”

“How do you know about…”

“I… He’s a good man, Mom. And I really am happy for you.”

He climbed the stairs to his old room, leaving his mom staring after him. It had taken a while for him to get used to the idea of his mother with a man who wasn't his father.

‘Clark, dear…’ she had said back in Denver. ‘No one will ever replace your father, but Ben and I found something special together. I was even planning on selling the farm before… before all hell broke loose. We were going to move to Montana. We love the lakes and the fishing.’

‘Fishing?’ he had managed to get out.

‘You’ve been gone a long time,’ she had said. ‘And not even you can keep the world from spinning.’

Oh Mom, if you only knew…

He changed into some old sleep shorts and settled onto the old mattress. It was good to be home, good to be in his old bed. The bedroom window was open, allowing the breeze to cool the room. Once again he drifted off to sleep breathing in the familiar scents of cedar and lavender.

He awoke to the summer sun streaming through the open window.  He laid there for several minutes, absorbing the sunlight, reveling in the sun’s touch across his exposed skin. He wasn’t as nauseous as he’d been expecting and that was good. The last thing he needed was for Luthor to suspect he wasn't at the top of his game.

Finally he rolled out of bed, stretched and pulled on the dark body suit. Then he was out the open window and into the stratosphere before his mom would even be aware that he’d woken up. He hoped he would have time to come back and explain later.

The sunlight felt even better without as much atmosphere blocking it. He basked in the glow for a few more minutes then he began searching for the yacht Gertrude, somewhere in the Arctic Ocean around Alaska.

He spotted the yacht a hundred or so miles south of the Fortress. Luthor’s men were preparing a helicopter for flight. Kal-El dropped closer, staying out of sight above the clouds. A quick shot of heat vision damaged the rotator shaft on the rear of the copter. With any luck at all, it would take them a while to realize the copter had been sabotaged.

Now he had to prepare the Fortress for ‘visitors.’