Cap'n Bill has the trick of sliding his pipe from the left corner of his mouth to his right away, just by pursing his lips, to show when he is confounded and awed. "Well, blow me down..." He mutters.
But with a stomp of his boots and a thunk of his hickory leg, he gets boards the ghostly, empty schooner made of green light as if she were sure and solid. He limps loudly over to the helm and takes the wheel in hand.
To no one in particular, he shout, "Look sharp! Prepare to cast off!"
Then he looks at the compass to take the heading, looks at the clouds and birds overhead to get the feel the wind and welkin, and peers over the rail at the entirely non-watery pavement under the keel.
He puffs his pipe like a smokestack for a moment, squinting with one eye.
"Aye...ah... up anchor and hoist the mizzen and run downwind out of harbor or ... er ... take her up."
Jimmy feels the salt spray from the distant sea, even as the green light keel slides along the pavement. And he's finding the mystery of Superboy's disappearance bafflingly difficult to think about ... but mysteries involving Superman are what Jimmy DOES, so he's able to notice the incongruity.
"This is very strange," opines Vina. "-Something- in my mind tells me I don't know how to do this. But. I do. It's the skill I got with the Hawks' gear--but...I've always wanted to be a detective. I guess the first order of business is finding the sources of the 'negative waves,' as my dad would say. I mean, it's Hawaii--practically paradise."
She looks around for something obvious. Does some aerial recognizance to see if there's a place where people look more "bummed out" or less so.
With her hawklike vision and keen detective sense, Vina perceives a slight bias toward despair in paradise on the north side of the island, in the direction of the uninhabitable sheer black lava flow cliffs which lead to the surging sea. But they're uninhabitable ... there's no one there. Not even parks, because the lava and volcanic gasses are dangerous. There is a scenic overlook with a couple of cars, but no permanent inhabitation.
And now a REALLY strong pulse of the hopelessness of it all, and while we're on the subject, the pointlessness of it all, washes over Vina. Seriously, Superboy is a superhero. They travel into space, to subatomic worlds, to parallel worlds and so forth all the time. Why should anyone be surprised that he's missing for a few days?
Maybe the positive affirmation exercises Mom and Dad (or Merlyn and Moonlight as they usually prefer to be called--though she doesn't) will be helpful here. Vina goes to some sparkling waterfall radiating rainbows and strikes a meditative pose. All the while the mechanical wings hold her aloft just beyond the spray.
Well! The sparkling rainbows do the job. They allow Vina to clear her mind, and therefore to isolate the one part of her mind which ISN'T clear, being instead a black cloud of coarse hair and yellow fangs, which urges her to forget her mission and run away.
She stops ommming long enough to get on the radio: "Cap'n Bill and Jimmy, the despair is strongest on the north side of the island--near the lava flow. And...whatever it is...its...ka... has fangs and rough hair."
Gathering golden and pink star-shaped plumeria flowers, which are extremely fragrant and symbolize positivity, she crafts necklaces and hair wreaths out of them, adorns herself, and then puts them on Cap'n Bill (carefully avoiding his pipe) and young Mr. Olson.
Plumeria looks like this:
And there, at the place Vina indicated, is the smoldering cone of red-ridged lava, slumping smokily out to sea in a haze of dirty burn-smelling steam.
A huge black-bristled fanged face, eyes aflame, looms directly into Jimmy's face! And Vina's! And Cap'n Bill's!
"Turn back! DOOM awaits if you go further!" the firey visage gibbers.
And the green-energy schooner creaks and shudders, ropes coming undone and planks buckling under the strain. Is this the end? Is all lost?
Well?
Is it?
"Golly," says Jimmy, "someone sure went through a lot of effort to keep us away from the lava flows." How solid is the lava at this point? If Jimmy wanted to get through it, would he have to break it, or is it still more of a liquid?
ReplyDeleteIt's solid except in the center, where it's a thick muddy consistency. The surface is hot enough to boil water, so it would be difficult to stand on for any length of time without thick sea-boots, such as Cap'n Bill has, or limited superpowers, such as Jimmy and Vina have.
ReplyDeleteCapn Bill blushes a wee bit when flowers are hung about his neck, so maybe he likes them.
ReplyDeleteWhen the giant face roars at him, he wags his finger at it. "Belay that talk! Stand down! Tell who you are or what you be about, or I will have a tunny or a gar or a pike here so fast, you'll think a Tartar had shot 'em from a bow!"
He looks around. Is he in the water? On the green ship? Did the green ship break in half?
(Did the great furred and fanged visage appear to have the normal appurtenances, or perhaps he is a projection?)
ReplyDeleteIf the ship is coming apart and the ropes are still intact, she will prepare to use the second to bind the first with better than average strength and speed.
Sub-Superman, after setting aside the necklace and wreath, will take a deep breath and try to fly through the muddy part of the lava. He will try to make his way to the bottom of the lava flow to find what it is burying.
ReplyDelete