Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King by Alan Grant (best english novels to read .txt) 📗

almost a million people. It needed to be up and running again as fast as possible.

A half mile away, the truncated pyramid was a black, undifferentiated mass protruding from the scoured valley side. Following Robert Mills's tragic death, and Peter Glaston's disappearance, the Gotham Police Department had closed off the entire site for forensic analysis. Though Commissioner Gordon himself had spearheaded the investigation, his inquiries led precisely nowhere.

All they could suppose was that Glaston had suffered some sort of mental breakdown, murdered his tutor, and then fled–taking Professor Mills's heart with him. A photograph and a description of Glaston had been sent to every police force in the state, but so far there hadn't been a single sighting.

In deference to Professor Mills, the university authorities had abruptly canceled all further excavation. The murder attracted the worst type of publicity they could get, and the university's president was worried that it might affect future funding levels. Better to withdraw from the public eye–for a while, at least. The pyramid was potentially the single most important find ever uncovered in North America, and it merited long and indepth study. The digging teams would return, but only when the furor had died away.

Now, the pyramid was deserted and lifeless, hardly even visible beneath the foreboding sky. Had anyone been watching, they'd have seen a flash of light from the flattened summit, ten times brighter than the cloud-obscured moon.

As the light from their teleportation device died away, the five Justice League heroes found themselves standing atop the pyramid. The Flash breathed a quiet sigh of relief; every time he used the teleporter he remembered the movie about the fly and the man whose disassembled molecules had become jumbled up beyond repair. Still, even he couldn't run from the moon to Earth.

"It feels barren–empty," Wonder Woman pointed out. "Not at all what you'd expect if it's the nexus of me energies we encountered last night."

"Use your telescopic vision," Batman told Superman. "Check out the whole site."

The others waited as the Man of Steel stood, swiveled a few degrees every second or two, his gaze directed down at the structure beneath their feet.

Superman had been conceived on the distant planet Krypton, a world circling a giant red sun that was slowly dying. When the energies at Krypton's core threatened to destroy the planet, the scientist Jor-El built a rocket to carry his unborn son to safety.

So Kal-El, who would come to be known as Superman, had come to Earth, where the radiation of its much younger and more active yellow sun resulted in many of his godlike superpowers.

"There's one small interior chamber," Superman announced at last, "and that's it. The rest of the pyramid is of solid construction, alternating layers of granite and chalk." He studiously avoided meeting Batman's gaze as he went on. "Looks like we may be here on a wild-goose chase."

The words were barely out of his mouth when the small plateau beneath their feet started to shudder and shake.

"Fall back to the edge!" Batman called out.

The center of the summit had begun to heave violently. Either a very localized earthquake . . . or something was trying to burst its way through from the interior.

"Lantern, see if your ring can tell us what's going on here," Batman shouted.

"But there's nothing in there," Superman said, puzzled.

"Nothing tangible, maybe," Green Lantern agreed, "but it would seem there's some kind of unusual energy configuration. Might take me a few minutes to find out more–"

But he didn't have those few minutes. With a roar like crashing storm waves, the center of the plateau erupted in a fountain of rock and debris that shot fifty feet in the air before falling back on the League.

"I'll try to contain it!" As he spoke, Lantern's ring sent out a stream of energy that coalesced into a dome-shape, a smaller version of the trick he'd used last night to subdue the blaze at the museum.

The violent eruption stopped, but only briefly. As if it had been conserving itself, the energy again surged upward, blasting into Green Lantern's capping dome with such force that the dome was blown aside. The Emerald Guardian himself was knocked off his feet.

"Whew," he breathed, taking Wonder Woman's proffered hand and hauling himself upright "Have to admit, I wasn't expecting that!"

A thick column of cobalt-blue light extended a hundred feet or more into the air. The energies within the column swirled and roiled, crackling with flashes of a strange electricity that seemed to throw off little globes of fading light.

The five heroes stared soundlessly at it for a long moment, at a loss over what to do next.

"I see . . . something in there," the Flash said at last. "Look at those patterns."

The light inside the column writhed like a living thing, tortuously weaving this way and that as it gradually began to acquire a faintly humanoid form. But mere was something animal about it, too. As horns began to sprout from the giant figure's head, Batman suddenly realized why it seemed so familiar.

"The same figure I saw at Gotham Cathedral!" he exclaimed. "The monster that killed all those people!"

"It's not a whole lot different from the thing that attacked me, too." Green Lantern nodded in agreement "About ten times bigger, is all." He remembered the feeling of looking into the eyes of the shamanic mask, the mesmerizing power that had seemed to sap his will and replace his thoughts with . . . something alien.

"You told us it tried to hypnotize you?" Batman asked.

"What of it?" Lantern said curtly.

Batman shot his companion a puzzled look. It wasn't like Green Lantern to be so snide. "Everybody go careful," he cautioned. "We don't want it happening again."

Without warning, the light column expanded in width until it covered the entire summit, enveloping the startled heroes before they could react.

Suddenly, they found themselves fighting for their lives.

Green Lantern was astonished to find himself surrounded by a thick, blue-green mist that seemed to cling to his body.

He ordered