The Legends of Forever by Barry Lyga (books to read for beginners .txt) 📕

the thing was enormous, easily a hundred meters in diameter. The surface shone here and there with a metallic sheen that glimmered dully in the dying light of the distant, dim stars, but most of it was coated in haphazard overlapping layers of grime and rust. It vibrated subtly, shaking the grains of sand and dirt around them.

“You’re tellin’ me the Reverse-Flash is in there, just running around in circles?”

“Let’s find out for sure,” Superman suggested, peering ahead at the sphere. A moment passed and then he frowned. “Nothing. My X-ray vision isn’t quite . . . working.”

Barry stepped forward. “We don’t need to see through it. I can feel the speedster frequencies radiating from that thing. Perturbations in the Speed Force. Hyper-accelerated wave-particles. Thawne’s in there.”

“Uh, Volthoom has something to say.” Mick pointed his fist the sphere, and suddenly a wavering, shimmery green beam of light appeared at the top of it before trembling off into space, headed for the chunk of rock on which stood the Time Trapper. “According to the ring, there are . . . Hang on . . . Say that again?” He grimaced. “No, I ain’t making any deals with you. Say it again, you piece of junk jewelry. OK, Volthoom says rapidly accelerated, hypercharged ionic energy is being beamed off-site. I guess that’s the green line he made there.”

Deliberately not asking why or how Mick had decided the ring was a he, Barry mused, “So, Thawne produces the energy, and the Time Trapper sucks it all up and uses it to do things like reach back through the Iron Curtain and set Anti-Matter Man free.”

“How does he only need one speedster to go through the Curtain, but we needed ten thousand?” Mick asked, his tone annoyed.

Superman shrugged. “Simple: The Time Trapper is so powerful that he just needs the boost of one speedster.”

Barry shivered. He didn’t like the sound of that. “This is probably how he’s maintaining the breaches between universes back in our time.”

“We can ask once we’ve cut off his power supply.”

With that, the Man of Steel flew forward toward the sphere, leading with his fists. Barry ran after him, his steps gigantic and wobbly in the low gravity of the planetoid. Mick cruised alongside him, already gaining confidence in his flight abilities.

Superman had a head start—he reached the sphere first and slammed into it full tilt with both fists. The sphere shook and rocked backward as Superman ricocheted off it, pinwheeling through space for a moment before regaining his equilibrium and steadying himself in a standing position above the surface. A massive dent formed where he’d struck the sphere as sheets of dirt and rust flaked away, cascaded off the thing’s skin, and wafted slowly to the ground.

“That blow should have ripped the thing open,” Superman commented. He seemed to be breathing heavily. “I don’t get it. What’s it made out of?”

“How ‘bout we try this?” Mick produced a gigantic green, glowing can opener with the power ring. It hovered in the air before them, both ominous and hilarious.

“Maybe something a little less . . . savage?”

With a shrug, Mick conjured an enormous chain saw, complete with buzzing noise and the putt-putt sound of a gasoline engine. “Better?”

“Might as well try,” Superman said. “Flash?”

Barry said nothing. There was something very wrong here. He couldn’t tell what, exactly, but . . .

“There’s still Speed Force energy coming off that thing, but . . . I feel something else, too. Do you guys feel anything? Like . . . like something right behind you? Like static electricity in your hair?”

Superman shook his head, puzzled. Heat Wave shrugged. Barry took a moment to peer around the rock on which they stood. The surface wasn’t much larger than a couple of football fields. In the distance—perhaps a mile or two away—hung the icy ball of rock on which the Time Trapper stood, manipulating his odd alien machinery.

“OK,” he decided, “maybe I just have the heebie-jeebies. Mick, go ahead and try . . . I don’t know. Something. Use your imagination.”

Mick’s eyes lit up, and suddenly there appeared before them a massive, glowing green acetylene torch, spurting a focused swath of verdant flame. “Oh baby, yeah!” Mick chanted, licking his lips. “Bringing the fire!”

“Still think it was a good idea, giving him the ring?” Barry whispered to Superman.

Superman wrinkled his nose. “Let’s just say I’m rethinking some recent decisions.”

With a wild yawp, Mick soared into the air and aimed his blowtorch at the sphere. The green flame lengthened and tightened, becoming a hot, focused cutting beam. Sparks sizzled into the non-air as the fire touched the outside of the sphere. If there’d been an atmosphere to carry sound, Barry would have expected to hear the sizzle of melting metal, the roar of flames, the hiss of molten steel as it cooled. But since they were in a near vacuum, he heard nothing but Mick Rory’s rapturous cackle as he wielded the blowtorch with the verve of a true pyromaniac.

“Burn, baby, burn!” Mick howled. “C’mon! Hotter! We’ll never run out of gas, so keep it up!”

“He is doing this for the greater good,” Superman commented.

“I’m just wondering how we get him to stop.” Barry put his fists on his hips. Mick had sorta-kinda reformed since his thieving days, and according to White Canary, he’d taken to the cause of helping others with at least a grudging sincerity. But that was before Barry put the most powerful weapon in the universe in the palm of his hand.

As the brilliant British historian Lord Acton had once said: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The sphere split open under Mick’s relentless, fiery assault. The blistering hot, red-glowing edges of the incision Mick had made emitted a blurt of yellowish light. Then a chunk of the sphere slid free and crashed soundlessly to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust and grit. Barry couldn’t do anything about it—normally he would just whirlwind his arms to create a windstorm to blow the cloud away, but there was no air here to manipulate.

Superman suddenly pushed