agonizing beyond compare as they attacked the Scorpion Queen and Lord Gorgon’s faces, whipping their tiny stingers against sensitive eyeballs, exploring the insides of their nostrils, their panting mouths, the very channels of their ears.
The Scorpion Queen ran for the portal that opened upon thegreat hall of her castle. Lord Gorgon followed but halfway across the laboratory he stumbled across a heavy cable and fell to the flagstone floor. Even as he struggled to rise he was attacked by tens of thousands of albino scorpions. He got as far as his hands and knees, then threw his hands into the air. He uttered a single, final cry of anguish and despair, then fell to the floor, a cold, whiteshell all that remained of what had once been a man.
The Golden Saint pursued the Scorpion Queen from the laboratory, her membranous wings holding her aloft and safe from the Scorpion Queen’s white warriors, but as the Saint emerged into the great hall of the castle, her arch-foe was nowhere to be seen.
Shortly the Golden Saint would leave the castle, circling above its walls and towers, searchingfor the Scorpion Queen, but the latter was nowhere to be seen.
Later, her ravaged lower limbs treated with exotic unguents developed by ancient scholars in hidden cities still concealed in the vastness of the continent of Africa and unknown to the outer world save for the towering redoubt of the Golden Saint, the Saint spoke with GeneralHopkins. Her message for him, transmitted across the etherby a device of her own devising, was urgent.
It was imperative, the Saint told the military man, that the fleet of B-16 warplanes be loaded with high explosive bombs. They must return to Seacoast City from their base at North Orion Field carrying their load of destruction and utterly obliterate the Scorpion Queen’s now abandoned redoubt in Poseidon Pond.
To his great credit, the General agreedwithout argument. Within the hour the squadron of mighty B-16’s were refitted with high explosive bombs. Within another hour they were airborne, and shortly they would make their bombing runs over Molly Pitcher Park.
The menace of the miniature scorpions was ended. The ice in Seacoast Harbor would melt, the city would return to its summer norm, children would play once more in the grassy meadowsof the city’s parks. The baseball league would hold a special selection of players to create the once idolized Seacoast City Superbas. And foodstuffs and vital war materiel would flow from Seacoast Harbor and the other great ports of America to the beleaguered, heroic resistance fighters of suffering Europe.
The following morning Ruby Mae Jones, formerly of Savannah, Georgia, now a proud residentof Seacoast City, reported for work as usual. Seated at her manicurist’s station in Madame Cerise’s Salon of Beauty, she carefully manipulated a cuticle stick on the carefully maintained fingernails of one of her regular patrons.
“Isn’t it nice,” the patron asked, “that the sun is shining again and summer has returned to Seacoast City?”
“Oh, yes’m,” Ruby Mae smiled. “It was real nice and warmdown South where I was raised up. I do love living here in Seacoast City, but I didn’t like having that extra winter this year, not one bit.”
The patron laughed. Ruby Mae was a smart girl. She was going to go places in the world, the customer thought.
She was right. Even more than she knew.
The Whisperers
The so-called editorial offices of Millbrook High School’s student paper would never have been mistaken for the city room of the San Francisco
Chronicle
or even, to stick closer to home, the Marin
Independent-Journal
. A cardboard sign with hand- lettered copy was taped to the frosted glass; it said
Millbrook Hi-Life
, and inside the musty room, wrestled a decade ago from a protestinglanguage teacher, half a dozen battered desks crowded into an area suitable for half that number.
Karen Robertson sat behind the biggest of those desks. On its battered
The Scorpion Queen ran for the portal that opened upon thegreat hall of her castle. Lord Gorgon followed but halfway across the laboratory he stumbled across a heavy cable and fell to the flagstone floor. Even as he struggled to rise he was attacked by tens of thousands of albino scorpions. He got as far as his hands and knees, then threw his hands into the air. He uttered a single, final cry of anguish and despair, then fell to the floor, a cold, whiteshell all that remained of what had once been a man.
The Golden Saint pursued the Scorpion Queen from the laboratory, her membranous wings holding her aloft and safe from the Scorpion Queen’s white warriors, but as the Saint emerged into the great hall of the castle, her arch-foe was nowhere to be seen.
Shortly the Golden Saint would leave the castle, circling above its walls and towers, searchingfor the Scorpion Queen, but the latter was nowhere to be seen.
Later, her ravaged lower limbs treated with exotic unguents developed by ancient scholars in hidden cities still concealed in the vastness of the continent of Africa and unknown to the outer world save for the towering redoubt of the Golden Saint, the Saint spoke with GeneralHopkins. Her message for him, transmitted across the etherby a device of her own devising, was urgent.
It was imperative, the Saint told the military man, that the fleet of B-16 warplanes be loaded with high explosive bombs. They must return to Seacoast City from their base at North Orion Field carrying their load of destruction and utterly obliterate the Scorpion Queen’s now abandoned redoubt in Poseidon Pond.
To his great credit, the General agreedwithout argument. Within the hour the squadron of mighty B-16’s were refitted with high explosive bombs. Within another hour they were airborne, and shortly they would make their bombing runs over Molly Pitcher Park.
The menace of the miniature scorpions was ended. The ice in Seacoast Harbor would melt, the city would return to its summer norm, children would play once more in the grassy meadowsof the city’s parks. The baseball league would hold a special selection of players to create the once idolized Seacoast City Superbas. And foodstuffs and vital war materiel would flow from Seacoast Harbor and the other great ports of America to the beleaguered, heroic resistance fighters of suffering Europe.
The following morning Ruby Mae Jones, formerly of Savannah, Georgia, now a proud residentof Seacoast City, reported for work as usual. Seated at her manicurist’s station in Madame Cerise’s Salon of Beauty, she carefully manipulated a cuticle stick on the carefully maintained fingernails of one of her regular patrons.
“Isn’t it nice,” the patron asked, “that the sun is shining again and summer has returned to Seacoast City?”
“Oh, yes’m,” Ruby Mae smiled. “It was real nice and warmdown South where I was raised up. I do love living here in Seacoast City, but I didn’t like having that extra winter this year, not one bit.”
The patron laughed. Ruby Mae was a smart girl. She was going to go places in the world, the customer thought.
She was right. Even more than she knew.
The Whisperers
The so-called editorial offices of Millbrook High School’s student paper would never have been mistaken for the city room of the San Francisco
Chronicle
or even, to stick closer to home, the Marin
Independent-Journal
. A cardboard sign with hand- lettered copy was taped to the frosted glass; it said
Millbrook Hi-Life
, and inside the musty room, wrestled a decade ago from a protestinglanguage teacher, half a dozen battered desks crowded into an area suitable for half that number.
Karen Robertson sat behind the biggest of those desks. On its battered
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