Enemies & Allies (3 page)

W
ITH SOARING SKYSCRAPERS, BUSTLING PEOPLE, MUSIC,
and the constant noise from traffic and pedestrians, Metropolis was an entirely different world from the American heartland where Clark Kent had grown up.

Surrounded by tall buildings of concrete and glass, the
Daily Planet
offices were alive with energy, ringing telephones, chattering employees, and clacking typewriters. A harried switchboard operator made connections, plugging in wires as if she were performing emergency surgery on an octopus. On the streets below, cars honked their horns; a traffic cop blew his shrill whistle.

Clark knew he wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

Since his hearing was incredibly acute, he had trained himself to tune out distractions and focus on his manual typewriter and the sheet of bond rolled into the platen.

On the trip back from Gotham, Clark had compiled his notes and impressions about Bruce Wayne, pulling together enough details to make an interesting story. Once the film was developed, Jimmy’s photos of the millionaire and his imposing manor had turned out well, including the embarrassing one of Wayne acting all chummy with Clark. (Jimmy had already sent a glossy print of that one to the Wayne Enterprises headquarters.) Even gruff Perry White had pronounced three of Jimmy’s shots “decent enough to use.”

At his desk in the bullpen on the thirtieth floor, Clark hunched over the keys, hunting and pecking his way through the first draft of his profile article. He had learned to control his muscles and give the machine relatively delicate taps, careful never to let on how fast he could really type. His first experience writing at the
Planet
had been rather unfortunate; intent on his article, he had pounded away on the keys with such vigor that his fingers had smashed directly through them and shattered the machine. Now he was both a better typist and a better reporter.

But this profile of Bruce Wayne was hardly news. Unquestionably, the man did plenty of good work and contributed large sums to charity. His extravagant lifestyle pegged him as someone who belonged out at night, dressed in a fine tuxedo, with a beautiful woman on his arm. Clark couldn’t understand why the man was so devoted to his dreary Gotham City; on the other hand, Clark himself called a dot on the map in Kansas home. No accounting for tastes.

Clark soon finished his first draft, pulled the sheet from his typewriter, and removed a sharpened red pencil from a cup on his desk. He combed over the words, marking corrections. Most reporters wouldn’t bother typing a clean copy before showing the piece to the editor, but Clark wanted to make the best impression. Always. It was something Jonathan Kent had expected of him.

Clark glanced around, inserted a sheet of bond into the typewriter, and when no one was looking, retyped the whole article in a blur. With the clean copy in hand, he walked toward Perry White’s office. Several pool reporters gathered around the shortwave radio set in the bullpen, always looking for a story. They monitored the various frequencies, hoping to pick up a scoop.

Passing through the bullpen, Clark gave Lois Lane a polite smile, but she grabbed the phone on her desk and dialed a number with an intensity that showed she had a hot lead. He had always found Lois both beautiful and fascinating, with her dark eyes and her long dark hair in a no-nonsense but stylish cut. He’d been shyly watching her ever since he started working at the
Planet.

She presented an all-business attitude to anyone who doubted her while revealing her generous heart to only a few. Since Clark was still a new kid on the block, Lois had not yet decided whether to consider him a competitor or harmless (apparently the only two options, in her view). One of these days, Clark would ask her out to lunch, but he wanted to let her notice him first.

He held up his article as he knocked on the editor’s door. “Here’s the profile you asked for, Mr. White—everything you wanted to know about Bruce Wayne.”

Perry White chomped on a cigar. His ashtray was continually full of the ugly chewed brown ends, and his office reeked of resinous, pungent smoke. “
I
don’t want to know anything about Wayne, but our readers are suckers for this stuff.” Perry absently brushed his fingers through the white fringe of hair at his temples. He let his cigar droop and made rough grumbling noises as he scanned the paragraphs. “It won’t win a Pulitzer, but it’ll sell enough papers to pay for your expense account.” He waggled a finger. “You and Olsen better not submit any extravagant meal receipts.”

“Why no, Mr. White. We just ate hot dogs.”

“You should have let Wayne pay for lunch. He’s got enough money to give you prime rib.” Perry tossed the copy onto his desk. “If you add a few more quotes, maybe some titillating details, it’ll lead off the section-three society page, but it’s not a headline. From now on get me headlines. We’re a newspaper here, not one of those gossip rags.”

“Yes, Mr. White. I’ll do one more draft.” Clark pushed his glasses up on his nose.

Through the constant chatter and background noise in the bullpen, Clark noted a sudden urgent change among the staff reporters, indrawn breaths, excited conversation. People began to cluster around the shortwave radio, listening intently. Lois hurried to join them.

With an instinct for news, Perry poked his head out of his office. “Great Caesar’s ghost, what’s going on out there? And why aren’t those people at their desks working?”

“I think something’s happening, sir,” Clark said.

“This is a newspaper, Kent. Go find out what it is.”

“It’s an SOS call!” snapped Steve Lombard, a reporter who primarily covered sports. “A passenger boat sinking forty miles off the coast, one hundred twenty-three passengers and crew.” He looked up from the shortwave set. “It’s the
Star City Queen.
One of the engines exploded, blew out the lower hull, and she’s going down fast. They’ve called for the Coast Guard, but they’re still miles away.”

Clark gave the matter his full attention as he backed out of the editor’s office. Perry pushed past him, no longer interested in the Bruce Wayne article. Lois was in the middle of the excitement. Her face showed clear concern as well as frustration. “It’ll take rescue ships more than an hour to get out that far.”

“Gosh, by that time the ship will be sunk!” Jimmy said.

“Better hope they stocked up on lifeboats,” Lombard cracked, as if the situation were a joke.

Lois grabbed her purse and her notepad. “Jimmy, follow me down to the docks. Maybe we can get aboard a Coast Guard ship before they head out.”

The young photographer had already snatched up his camera. “Sounds like they’ve already been dispatched, Miss Lane.”

“Then we’ll wait for them to come back, gather some information in the meantime, do man-on-the-street interviews. Let’s hope this doesn’t turn out like the
Hindenburg
or the
Titanic.
” In a flurry she was gone.

Clark knew what he had to do. He made an excuse to a distracted Perry, mumbling something about checking his sources on the Wayne profile; then he ducked down the hall. Not a moment to lose—the people aboard the doomed
Star City Queen
must have been terrified, knowing that even the swiftest Coast Guard rescue would be a long time coming.

It was easy to find a secluded closet, where he stopped being Clark Kent and became someone else entirely.

D
RESSED IN RED AND BLUE, HIS CAPE STREAMING BEHIND
him, Kal-El shot out of a window on the opposite side of the building. Right fist extended, he soared into the sky, circled the rooftop’s golden sphere with the orbiting words “Daily Planet,” then raced toward Metropolis harbor.

Every second counted. No time to enjoy the euphoria of flying, the freedom of not having to hide his secret identity. Martha and Jonathan Kent had raised their adopted son to be much more than a passive observer. Seeing a problem, Kal-El had to
do
something about it. It was the core of who he was.

Leaving Metropolis and the shoreline behind, he headed out over the ocean. He streaked past the diligently chugging Coast Guard boats that churned a white wake behind them. Lois had wanted so badly to get aboard one of them to be an eyewitness reporter with the rescue operations; he realized he could have deposited her on the deck right before the surprised faces of the Coast Guard sailors. But he didn’t want to put Lois in the middle of a dangerous situation. She had a bad habit of doing that all by herself.

Kal-El had to think of the desperate passengers first, all those people who needed him. More than forty miles from port, the
Star City Queen
was all alone.

Except for him.

With an odd combination of super-hearing and enhanced vision, he was able to push his senses from the short-wavelength band of the X-ray spectrum out to intense infrared, and from there to the very-long-wavelength radiofrequency range, where he picked up the urgent SOS transmission bleating from the
Star City Queen.
He could even hear—ever so faintly above the wind and the stirring waves—the cries of terror from the passengers and crew.

He tightened his fist and flew faster, slicing through the salty air and across the open expanse of deep water until he found the curling plume of smoke from the burning engines. Below, in the middle of blue-green emptiness, he spotted the wallowing
Star City Queen.

The large boat canted at an unusual angle, its lower decks flooded. Below the waterline at the level of the engine rooms was a large hole made by an explosion, and portions of the hull bent outward from the blast. The frightened passengers had congregated out on deck, clinging to the rails as the ship tilted more and more, taking on water.

He could see no other boats within range, no rescuers who might offer any help. He’d have to do this himself.

The
Queen
was an old ship, repainted and recommissioned, but Kal-El could see that she should have been scuttled long ago. Two of the white-painted lifeboats had already been set out on the water, whereupon they had immediately sprung leaks, and several passengers now splashed in the water, clinging to life preservers.

Kal-El let himself drop down, red cape fluttering as he alighted on the bow, where a gray-faced, bearded captain stared at the disaster with red-rimmed eyes. “You seem to be having a few problems, Captain. I’m here to help.”

Superman’s arrival startled them all. The passengers began cheering so exuberantly that several people lost their balance on the slanted deck and had to clutch their companions to keep from falling overboard.

The captain straightened, showing a fresh burst of confidence. “Superman, you don’t know how glad we are to see you! I doubt we’ll be afloat for more than another hour. How close are the Coast Guard vessels?”

“More than an hour away,” he said. His voice became stern. “Why don’t you have enough lifeboats for all these passengers?”

The bearded man seemed ashamed and embarrassed. “The owners figured it would be a waste of their money to follow the recommendations from the safety inspection, and now these poor passengers will have to pay for it.”

Kal-El answered with an angry frown. He looked at the ten people bobbing in the water who had been in the sunken lifeboat; they were clinging to life rings. “I take it you don’t have enough life preservers either?”

“We never expected to sink, sir,” said the first mate, looking sheepish. He was even younger than Jimmy Olsen.

Kal-El’s brows drew together. “No one
expects
accidents. That’s why it’s so important to take precautions.” He dashed off and promptly returned carrying two dripping passengers he had fished out of the water from the wallowing lifeboats. After another four trips, he had retrieved all the sodden people from the waves, but they weren’t much safer on the slanted deck of the
Star City Queen.

The crowd hung on his every word. Straightening his horn-rimmed glasses, a balding businessman said, “Even if you fly us to the nearest port, Superman, you can only rescue two of us at a time.”

“Maybe he can carry one of the lifeboats loaded with people,” a plump woman suggested; then, lowering her voice, she said, “But the boat could fall apart on the way.”

“You’re thinking too small,” Kal-El said as an idea came to mind, though he wasn’t sure he could manage something so extravagant. “Find a way to secure yourselves here on deck, all of you.”

“What are you going to do?” the captain called. “Is there a way to save my ship?”

Another thump came from belowdecks, a secondary explosion in the engine room. A cry of surprise and fear rippled through the crowded passengers. The
Star City Queen
lurched.

Kal-El nodded briskly. “Trust me. This will work.” He sprang into the air, shot up high over the listing passenger ship, turned, and dove deep beneath the water.

As the cold ocean folded around him, his eyes adjusted to the dimness. Above him, Kal-El saw a stream of air bubbles gushing out of the damaged hull as water continued to fill the
Star City Queen.
The ship gave a stuttering groan like a death rattle.

Swimming upward, gathering speed and concentrating his strength, Kal-El approached the bottom of the large hull. The passenger ship seemed so enormous, and he was just one small man.

But he wasn’t just a man. He was
Superman
.

Kal-El spread his hands on either side of the keel, pushing his shoulder against the metal hull. The whole ship shuddered as he heaved with all his strength. He had never lifted anything so large before, had never tried, but he didn’t allow doubts to enter his mind. He would lift this sinking ship because he
had
to. There was no other option.

Holding his breath, Kal-El exerted himself, shoving the huge hulk high enough to raise the gaping engine-room hole above the waterline. If nothing else, holding it here would stop the
Star City Queen
from sinking.

But that wasn’t good enough.

Kal-El kept straining. Slowly—like a spoon being pulled out of Martha Kent’s jar of thick molasses—the passenger ship rose out of the water. He pushed higher and higher, until the vessel itself was airborne. Salt water streamed from its sides in a drenching downpour, falling with a whisper-roar back into the waves.

The passengers on the deck were astonished. Some cheered; some hung on for dear life.

With the ship suspended in the air, rocking slightly as if in heavy seas, Kal-El turned its bow and flew off toward the harbor in Metropolis Bay. The damaged vessel groaned and creaked with the strain, but it held together as he carried it along.

He passed directly over the Coast Guard rescue ships, which still churned across the open water as fast as they could go. Uniformed crewmen stepped out of the wheelhouses and onto the decks, shading their eyes and looking up into the sky at the astounding sight. Releasing the
Star City Queen
with one hand, Kal-El waved at them as he flew past. Surprised and confused, the crews stared, then began to cheer. The Coast Guard captains turned their ships about and began chugging back toward the harbor.

Excited and tense crowds had already gathered on the docks in Metropolis harbor. Smaller boats moved out of the way, clearing a spot in the shallower water as Kal-El came in and gently set the damaged vessel down at an unoccupied slip on the wharf. He surfaced again, dripping wet, and landed on the wooden dock. The elated captain of the
Queen
threw him a thick hawser, and Kal-El pulled the boat closer to the pilings, lashing it firmly in place.

At the edge of the crowd he saw Jimmy Olsen dutifully taking photograph after photograph. Lois pushed to the front, eager to be first to talk with the rescued passengers and crew. Kal-El was glad she would get her big story, and he raised a hand to greet her. Their eyes met, and when Lois returned his wave, he would have sworn that she seemed much more interested in interviewing him than the captain or crew. Though he would have loved to do her a favor, he didn’t consider it fair to give her such obvious special treatment. She was an excellent reporter and could do very well by herself. Later on, Clark Kent would be sure to congratulate her.

Emergency crews arrived to help the shaken passengers. All of the rescued people applauded Superman. Many began jabbering about their experience; some of them cried. Kal-El stayed on the docks long enough to receive their thanks, smiling politely but uncomfortable with all the attention. He had done his good deed, and that was all that truly mattered to him. Although it was difficult to show modesty after carrying a giant passenger ship across the sky, the Kents had taught him to be humble.

With a wave—and a last wink at Lois—Kal-El flew into the sky. He had to get back to the
Daily Planet,
change clothes, and return to his desk before anyone noticed he was gone. Clark Kent had an article due.