Justice League of America - Batman: The Stone King by Alan Grant (best books to read for self development .TXT) 📕

shuttle's massive engines were just igniting in a sea of white-hot flame that blasted down into the thick concrete silo and came spilling back up over the edges. But a shimmering blue globe had materialized on the giant gantry that kept the craft upright. The same light he'd seen only moments ago.

Superman took off again, cleaving through the air with great speed. As he flew, his superhearing picked up distant shouts and comments from the press area "What the hell is that?" "It's some kind of UFO!" "I can't get a focus on it!"

As Superman flew closer, the light turned in the air and bobbed, as if acknowledging his presence. He could see a fine tracery of electrical force rippling within its confines, the lines brightening as they converged at the globe's center. Without warning, a jagged streak leaped from the globe, zigzagging through the air at the speed of thought.

Before Superman could avoid it, the lightning streak struck him full in the chest. A hundred thousand volts seared through his body, throwing him backward as if he were a rag doll and not the mightiest man on Earth.

At least it's declared its intentions, he thought grimly, fighting to regain his balance against the shocks that continued to rebound off his invulnerable body. Then the lightning ceased, and the bluish orb seemed to sink into the metal of the gantry, as if it were being absorbed.

The gigantic rocket was starting to lift now, hovering a few dozen feet above the silo's strengthened base, preparing for its leap into the atmosphere. In disbelief, Superman saw one of the gantry's huge steel beams bending and twisting like a living thing. Suddenly, it recoiled and with incredible speed bounced back to slam into the side of the rocket. Swiftly it drew back again for another blow.

Laserlike beams of heat sprang from Superman's eyes. As they struck the section of gantry, it began to glow red, then white with fiery heat. Then there was a silent explosion as it disintegrated in huge drops of molten metal.

But the blue light's destructive work wasn't finished yet. Even as the rocket started to rise, so gradually it looked like it was moving in slow motion, the blue light reappeared. It dropped like a stone toward the casings of the rocket's huge engines. As it fell, the roiling electrical energies inside the ball of light grew fiercer, spinning faster and faster.

Superman flew headfirst toward it. He could see that the temperature in the silo beneath the rocket was climbing, as if the globe was magnifying the engines' discharge. It was only seconds away from a catastrophic explosion.

No! I won't allow it . . . I can't allow it!

Superman filled his lungs with the hot night air, then expelled it swiftly as a long, cool stream of frozen superbreath. For almost a minute he hovered there, locked in a life-or-death struggle with the orb, trying to cool down the massive amounts of heat that emanated from it.

I'm not going to beat it this way, he realized with a sinking heart. For every few degrees that his icy breath managed to cool the silo, the globe merely heated it up again.

Kicking into forward flight, Superman swooped as fast as he could. At almost the speed of sound he careened into the sphere of light, his hands grabbing for some kind of hold on it. Its surface was smooth, almost plasticlike in its consistency. But beneath the exterior he could feel the power of concentrated energy.

He carried it a hundred yards away from the silo in a fraction of a second. Then, as if becoming conscious that its schemes were being thwarted, the light orb began to pulsate in his hands.

"Sorry, but I'm not going to see what else you have in store," Superman snarled.

With an abrupt movement he tossed the spinning, throbbing light ball high into the air. As it reached the apex of its flight, Superman blasted his heat vision into it with as much power as he could muster.

The ball spun faster, striving to absorb the energy of his Kryptonian vision. But in vain. Its motion ceased totally, and the roiling energies in its core glowed incandescently. For an instant it flared intensely–

And then it was gone as suddenly as it had arrived.

Superman watched as a hundred tons of rocket regained its equilibrium and went shooting high into the air, trailing flame. He just hoped that Jimmy Olsen had managed to get the photograph he wanted.

New York

The domed glass roof of the Manhattan Museum of Ancient Art gleamed dully in the feeble moonlight that managed to penetrate the city's neon electric glow. The doors had dosed to the public many hours ago, and now the building was in darkness except for the moonlight and the occasional gleam of the patrolling flashlights of the security guards.

"Geez, this place gives me the spooks!" Don Bradley breathed quietly.

His flash beam played over the display cases full of artifacts in the Neolithic Hall: stone axes, hammers, flint scrapers, animal bones. He gave an involuntary shiver as the light picked out a replica of a shaman's mask hanging on the wall, its mouth distended in an ugly snarl, the deep eye sockets black and mysterious.

"That thing's uglier than me!"

"You only been here a week," Don's fellow guard, Louie Beltrani, pointed out. "You'll get used to it. Me, I been here eighteen years. It's all water off a duck's back."

"Yeah . . . but can you imagine what it would be like to wear that thing? You'd have to be some sort of psycho to begin with."

Louie Beltrani pursed his lips in disapproval, blowing out through his mustache. Ever since he was a kid growing up in Rome, Louie had loved the lure of the ancient world. Surrounded by the remains of emperors' palaces, the Colosseum, and the Via Appia, he felt a bond with the past that Don, New York born and bred, would never really be able to share.

"Different folks"–Louie shrugged–"different