The field of Meta-Science has many luminaries. For example: Doctors Reed Richards, Henry Pym, and Bruce Banner. Names every bit as household as the president or last season’s American Idol winner.

It also has other, lesser stars, who for whatever reason never quite make the papers. One of these was Professor Andrea Wells, a theoretical physicist and occasional adventurer known only among her closest peers.

Over a long--if decidedly checkered--career she had made several significant discoveries in the fields of space/time anomalies, advanced AI, and parallel dimensions. Her findings were well respected in academic circles even if publishers remained hard to find. Part of the reason for this was her taste for the oddball jobs, the dangerous assignments that led to places few others dared to venture.

Given that, it was not entirely surprising that Andrea should found herself marooned on an alien planet as an attacking army descended on her head.

That didn’t mean she had to like it.

“C‘mon,” Andrea yelled, hurrying back towards her friends. “We have to find cover! We can’t be caught out in the open.”

Overhead the engines of the attackers’ hover-crafts filled the sky with an ear-piercing hum. They swarmed in black masses around a single base ship, a cocoon shaped craft the size of an Earthen battle cruiser. It cast a dark shadow over the valley, broken only by the searing pinpoints of its searchlights.

“Quit staring, damn it!” Andrea insisted, unable to keep the anxiety from her voice. Unlike them, she has seen what these things were capable of doing. “We have to move!”

Despite her insistence, Andrea’s friends seemed unwilling to budge. There was a very good reason for this too. They were the Fantastic Four, Earth’s greatest superheroes, and facing down alien armies was just one of the many hazards of the job.

“Are you coming?”

“Nah,” said the Thing casually, rolling his shoulders like a ball player called to bat. “Don’t think so.”

Andrea froze in her tracks, looking from the Thing to his other four teammates. Reed and Sue continued to watch the circling ships with mounting curiosity, while Johnny levitated a few feet off the ground, a halo of white hot flame surrounding his arms. The natives they’d been traveling with had already dropped their weapons and fled in a panic.

“Been waiting to pulverize something all week. This looks like too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“Big guy’s talking sense,” Johnny replied with a smirk. “What do you say Reed? We cut loose?”

As the aliens drew nearer, a shower of lasers rained down into the valley, kicking up dust wherever they struck. Reed Richards stepped back as one landed just inches from his boot, nearly singing the tip. Glancing from the scorch mark back into the sky, he nodded once.

“Pulverize it is.”

As usual, Johnny was the first to spring into action. Covered head to toe in flame, he shot into air like a missile, aiming for the nearest alien in reach. It was an ugly looking thing, he thought, tall and bipedal, with the spindly black arms and hairy head of a spider.

Ugly, however, didn’t necessarily mean fireproof.

As Johnny closed in, he sent a fireball blazing towards the hovercraft that held it up, a small one-man ship similar in the design to the Avengers’ Sky-Cycle but bristling with weaponry. Johnny’s aim was dead on as always but before his bolt could reach its target, the ship had already exploded into powder, sending its occupant spiraling through the air.

Johnny glanced back towards the ground to spy Ben balancing a pair of car-sized boulders in his giant mitts. Even as he watched, his teammate picked another target, threw, and knocked a second ship to pieces.

“Okay,” he called out with a grin, “you think that’s impressive, gravel face? Watch.”

Extending his hands, he loosed a gout of flame into the nearest enemy squadron, consuming their ships in a cloud of fire. Dozens of the creatures went diving into the open sky rather then risk burning up in the wreckage.

As if in response, another boulder whizzed past Johnny’s ear, followed by an explosion.

The contest was on.

While their teammates thinned the field, Reed and Sue were on the move. Gliding across the valley on one of the Invisible Woman’s domed platforms, they sped towards the natives’ home, a crude city carved into the wall of a distant canyon.

It wasn’t the safety of the city’s caverns they were after though, but the Queen’s entourage. In a gesture of royal good will--apparently brought on by Andrea’s boasting--the tribe’s Queen had marched out to meet the Fantastic Four as they approached her city. So it was that when the alien creatures attacked, the Queen’s party had been stuck out in the open, too far from their city walls to get back in time. Reed knew that the natives, armed with little more then spears, would prove easy prey for their attackers.

Meaning it now became a race to see who got there first.

As they soared across the sand and rock, a hail of laser fire pinged off Sue’s force dome, requiring every inch of her concentration to keep it solid. Reed just did his best to stay still and let her do her work.

“What are those things, Andrea?”

The professor, who had tagged along with them, could only shrug. “No idea, but the natives are terrified of them. They’ve attacked at least three time since I showed up, always with terrible results for the tribe.”

Reed frowned. “Why? I don’t see what threat these simple people could offer a race with this sort of tech.”

“A good question, but I can’t answer it. There doesn’t seem to be a reason. They simply attack, destroy whatever they can, and then disappear, only to return weeks later for more of the same. They never take anything or anyone with them.”

“Strange.”

Wells nodded. “Apparently they’ve been at it for years though, maybe even centuries. From what I can tell they go back as far as the natives’ history. In fact, most of their religious ceremonies have to do with placating them. They call them the Ghost Gods.”

A dozen of the hovercraft screamed overhead, raking the dome with bright flame. Sue’s two passengers ducked reflexively but she held her ground, somehow even managing to pick up speed. Yet it still seemed as though miles separated them from the Queen, and the aliens were already picking at their stray edges.

“There has to be a reason, Andrea. Who goes to the effort of sustaining such an army just for sport?”

“No clue. If there is a reason,” she offered, “then I can’t surmise it and neither have the tribal leaders. All they know is that they live in constant fear of these attacks.”

Reed shook his head, his expression both troubled and oddly vibrant. For the moment all worry over the last few days--the media criticism, the canceled engagements*--was gone from his mind. Instead it had focused laser-like on this new information. Because however this battle turned out, he knew there was a question here that needed answered.

* (See Fantastic Four v2 #1)

And answering questions was what he did best.

One more down, Johnny told himself as he weaved around his latest victim, puncturing its engines with a tongue of flame. The wounded hover-craft spun away from him, trailing a plume of black smoke as it plummeted to the ground. Somewhere along the way its occupant leapt free before it shattered on the rocks.

A helluva fall, the Human Torch reflected, but a few broken legs and collar bones would serve them right. It was a lot less final then what they were offering him.

By this time, most of the hover squads had been cleared out of the sky. Below him, Ben could be seen swatting aside a few final attackers, using one of their own crumpled ships as a bat. The rest were gathering around a group of natives to the south. Reed and Sue seemed to be en-route, but they could always use a little help, Johnny figured. Blowing things up was sort of his specialty.

Nodding to himself, he was about to set course when the air suddenly lit up. Lasers, dozens of them, coming right for him. He went into evasive maneuvers, corkscrewing into a dive and then out again. As fast as he was, he couldn’t dodge them all. A stray shot one clipped his arm and a painful jolt shot up his back.

“Sonuva,” he cried between gritted teeth, struggling to get a bead on his attackers as he spun around. There was no sign of any more hovercraft in the area though, which left only one source. Their base ship.

As if to acknowledge his hunch, its heavy gun batteries swung on him again and fired off a second barrage. This time he was ready, rising above the blasts before they could reach him.

“Alright,” he said, eying the vast battleship and the row of cannons that sprouted from its gunports. “Fine. You want to play too huh?”

A cloud of flame rippled over his body and Johnny smiled grimly.

“Then lets see what you got….”

As Reed and Sue came within view of the Queen’s entourage, they became witness to the terrible carnage. Before their eyes, the natives were being cut down in swathes. With eerie precision, the hovercraft simply formed into groups of ten--like bowling pins--and swept the crowd, leaving rows of bodies in their wake.

Reed was ready with orders but Sue knew what was needed before he got them out. As their dome skidded to a stop on the rough ground, she immediately dropped their force field and began erecting a new one--a wide flat barrier big enough to shield all forty or more survivors. Already, rows of laser shots began to bounce off its surface.

Meanwhile, Reed and Andrea moved quickly. Rounding up the wounded and frightened, they did their best to corral them into a smaller area, allowing Sue to cover the group more easily. Fast as they were though, they could not rescue everyone.

Two, four, five, ten more were cut down as they fought to contain things.

At last, they managed to move into a group dense enough for Sue to drop a dome around them. Despite the fact their shots were having no effect, the Ghost Gods continued to fire, mindlessly hammering her field with barrage after barrage. Sweat began to bead across her forehead.

“Can you hold it?” Reed asked. If the shield fell, he knew, they’d be mowed down almost instantly. Neither Johnny or Ben were anywhere close enough to aid them.

“I can,” she replied with gritted teeth, “in fact…”

Sue closed her eyes, her face contorting with strain as she manipulated her field further. Slowly little knots began to bead on the field’s surface before bursting outwards in a shower of tiny, invisible pellets. They struck with the force of buckshot, peppering the aliens and their crafts.

A number of the ships caught fire or went smashing to the ground. A few toppled into Sue’s shield, staggering her reserves as she fought to keep it in place. Others were tossed from their seats with broken arms and legs.

She repeated her attack twice, dwindling their numbers each time, but the effort took its toll. With the third barrage, she staggered, falling to one knee as Reed rushed to catch her. The shield began to flicker unsteadily.

“Can’t…much…longer…”

“Just a bit more,” he said, casting his eyes around the terrified crowd for any sign of the weapons. There was nothing more dangerous then the tribe’s flimsy javelins. How many of the enemy, he wondered, could he take out before they were overcome? No more then four or five, he suspected, and then…?

“They’ve stopped shooting.”

Reed looked up to see Andrea standing at his side. She seemed surprisingly jubilant.

“I think they’re retreating.”

And so they were. The remaining raiders had turned away from the entourage and were rising back into the sky. They appeared to be hightailing it towards their ship, which is when Reed first noticed there was something wrong with it.

The base ship’s searchlights had stopped shining and it lurched dangerously to one side. Thick clouds of dark smoke gathered over it.

“My God,” Andrea said. “It’s on fire.”

Even as they watched, bright flames crawled across its frame, sweeping over the bow. It listed further and began a slow plummet towards one of the distant mesas. Oblivious to the mounting danger, the hover-riders continued to sail towards it and, as a terrible thunder tore through the valley, they disappeared into a halo of flame.

Reed covered his eyes from the flash. Even at this distance, he could feel the hot wind of the explosion. When he looked again the ship had broken in two, its burning wreckage spilling out onto the other side of the mesa.

“Johnny…”

Reed glanced back to Sue and found her staring at the same awesome sight. It took a moment for him to realize what she meant. Then it hit him--had Johnny…?

He fumbled with the comm-link on his belt. “Johnny! This is Reed! Are you okay?”

Only static. He flipped the frequency to Ben.

“Ben, are you alright? Do you see Johnny?”

“I’ve fine Stretch, but the kid ain’t anywhere around here.” The voice was quiet for a moment and then it came back, hoarse with alarm. “What? You’re not thinking…?”

“I don’t know,” Reed said, “I can’t raise him-”

Suddenly he looked up and saw something streaking towards them like missile. “Sue! Your shield!” He knew, however, it was already too late.

Luckily it didn’t matter.

“Whew!” Johnny called as he pulled up just shy of singing their hair. “Did you see that? Am I awesome or what? I mean, you guys did okay but damn, I took out the whole freaking ship!”

Reed and Sue both sighed as one, before exchanging relieved smiles.

“First thing’s first,” Reed said, as Johnny touched down next to them and flamed off. “We’ll need to gather up any of the creatures who survived that explosion. Hopefully we can get some answers out of them.”

“No such luck, Stretch.” Ben appeared at the edge of the crowd, a handful of charred rags in his huge hands. “Ain’t nothing left.”

“There must have been some survivors…”

“No,” Andrea informed him, “I’m afraid there won’t be. The Ghost Gods’ dead and injured have a very short, well, shelf life you could say.” She pointed a steel finger towards the spot where Sue’s bullets had forced a squad of hover-riders down. Although the ships themselves were in tact, there was nothing left of their owners save burnt rags and acrid smoke.

Reed frowned, his brow knit in confusion as he examined their remains. There was little of any worth there. Even the ships, though still whole, no longer worked. They had fried their own circuitry from inside.

The Ghost Gods had come and gone, leaving nothing but empty husks and smashed machinery.

“More mysteries.”

“Um, Reed, I don’t want to interrupt but, ah…”

Reed turned to see a party of natives approaching them. They looked physically identical to the others, bronze skinned humanoids with large yellow eyes, but it was clear these were ones of rank. They wore heavy bracelets and anklets of carved bone and carried long poles with banners made from dyed reptile skin. The other natives gave them a respectful berth.

“Andrea?”

“The Queen,” his friend explained, and even as she spoke her honor guard parted. A regal figure appeared from the center of the entourage. She was a tall, graceful woman, her dark hair pinned at the base of her long neck with a jade-like broach. No bone trinkets decorated her body but instead an intricate pattern of delicate tattoos that ran from her slim shoulders all the way to the tops of her feet.

She walked boldly up to Reed, stopping a mere arms length away to stare directly into his eyes. He was uncertain what to do but, as it happened, nothing was required.

Without sacrificing grace or poise, the Queen dropped solemnly to her knees and touched the tip of her forehead to the ground before his boots. The tribe, moving almost as one, rushed to follow her example.

“What’s going on?” Reed asked nervously.

“Nothing to be alarmed about. I’m afraid your bit of heroics has had a rather profound on our friends though.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning,” Andrea clarified, “they think you’re their new gods.”

Several hours later, things had begun to sort themselves out. Rather then go through the trouble of explaining the frankly unexplainable, the team allowed the tribe to fete them as triumphant gods, sharing their meager drink and food with them. For their part, Reed, Sue, and Johnny abstained, unwilling to eat alien cuisine without the benefit of chemical analysis. Luckily, Ben ate enough to cover for all of them.

“Heck,” he said, “given what I been through, if I ain’t dead yet then I don’t reckon any grub’s gonna to claim the prize.”

It seemed like a logical enough argument, given the circumstances.

The feast was followed with rituals of song and dance, but Reed and Sue stayed no longer then was necessary to be polite. Johnny and Ben were having fun enough for the both of them at any rate. Instead, they had allowed Andrea to lead them into the canyons’ deep caverns, where she claimed to have something important to share with them.

“What, exactly, are we going to see Andrea?”

“As I told you before, there’s evidence on this planet of a once greater civilization, one of incredible technological prowess, and I don’t mean the Ghost Gods. You did not seem to believe me at the time.”*

* (Last issue - Al)

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Reed said, “although I’ll admit it seems unlikely.”

“Perhaps, but I know my business. At some point in time, this planet was home to a civilization of remarkable advancement. Easily surpassing our own.”

They were traveling through a dark stretch of canyon, feeling their way along the rocky walls as Andrea led. Their only light was supplied by a pair of small flashlights they’d grabbed from the Nega-Rover earlier.

“If that’s true,” Sue said, “what happened to them?”

“If my theory’s correct, you’ve already seen what’s happened.”

“You mean…?” She motioned her head back towards where they’d come from.

“Precisely. I believe those tribes are all that remains of an advanced race. How they reached their current status is a mystery.”

“The Ghost Gods?” Reed suggested.

“A possible theory, one I have certainly humored, for lack of a better one.”

Up ahead a light had appeared in the tunnel. Switching off their own, they followed its glow until they came to an opening in the cavern, this one several miles from the spot they entered, on the other side of the canyon.

As they stepped outside into open air, Reed could not stifle a gasp.

Rising from the scrabble rock of 32-I a giant, luminous city filled his frame of vision. It was a thing of beauty. Paved streets and elevated walkways wound their way through a series of crumpled citadels and glowing spires, like some futuristic vision from Arabian Nights. Everything had an abandoned, long-decayed look, but that did not hide the majesty of the architecture.

“My God.”

“It’s incredible,” Reed said, buoyant with curiosity as they waded into the ruins. Andrea was more then accurate in her assessments. Everywhere there were signs of incredible technological acuity.

“These pads, Andrea, do you think?”

“Teleportation conduits? Indeed I do.”

Trading a quick grin with his colleague, Reed returned to his investigations, scrambling through rubble and layers of dust to examine the street lamps. Somehow they were still glowing as bright as day after centuries of disuse. “And power? What did they use for power?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Andrea said, a hint of amusement in her voice at witnessing Reed’s child-like excitement. Sue was smiling as well--it was the liveliest she’d seen him in months.

“There’s something that looks like a possible fusion reactor a mile to the west, though I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”

“I’ll have to see it,” Reed said, “I’ll have to see all of it. Do you realize what can be done here? There’s enough left standing to rebuild. Sure there’s damage but the infrastructure for water, sewage, power systems, they’re all still in place. With a little work…”

“Possibly,” Andrea mused, “although the tribes haven’t shown much interest. They seem to think the place is cursed. Trespassing brings on attacks by the Ghost Gods, you see. Of course, now that they’re gone…”

Reed merely nodded, continuing to move from structure to structure, his intensity almost unnerving as he analyzed every nut and bolt. Despite his attention to detail, he was moving at such rapidity that it took Sue some effort to catch up to him.

“Slow down buster, it’s not going anywhere.”

“First,” he said, without so much as glancing back at her, “we’ll need to locate their water source. I’m guessing there’s a reservoir of groundwater beneath the city, but they may have also built some sort of hydrogen generators. Then-”

“Reed,” she said, “stop it already!

He paused, turning to face her with a look of surprise. “What?”

“All this stuff you’re talking about. Re-building this and that, who’s going to do it?”

“What do you mean?” he said, clearly confused. “We are.”

“Reed, the work you’re talking about, it would take months, maybe years. We can’t stay here that long. Even if time does progress differently in the Negative Zone, that’s too large a commitment.”

He shook his head. “I’m not following you….”

“We have a home, Reed. A family, friends, our own world that needs us. We can’t stay here. We accomplished what we came for. We’ve found the source of the distress signal and we even chased off these Ghost Gods creeps in the bargain. But we’re done now.”

“No. No, I don’t think so. We can’t just leave a discovery like this.”

“And what do you suggest?” She asked, puzzled by his stubbornness. “That we move here? What about Earth? What about your children? Don’t you want to see your son and daughter?”

He laughed. “Of course, I do. And I will when we’re finished here. They’re not going anywhere.”

Sue frowned. She had had enough; it was time to put her foot down. “We’re not staying Reed and I’m not arguing. We’re going home. Johnny and Ben will back me up on that.”

At last, she saw something come over his face. He paused, tapping his index finger against his temple thoughtfully, as though considering what she’d said. “Perhaps,” he decided, “you’re right.”

Sue nodded, relieved at his more rational tone.

“You and the others don’t need to stay here. I should be able to handle what’s required on my own.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious…”

Reed took her by the shoulders, his voice almost pleading. “Can’t you see, Sue, that this is what I need? My work is valuable here. There’s so much good I can do for those people, good they’ll appreciate. I can give them back what they lost. I have to do this.”

As his words sunk in, Sue realized for the first time just how changed he looked from the last few weeks. The run-down, world-weary man who’d been struggling under the weight of public criticism at home had disappeared. In his place, was the young, enthusiastic Reed of old, the man who could barely wait to get into the lab each morning. To do what he did best.

It was refreshing in a way, although there was a hint of a new intensity, a near fanaticism almost, that frightened her. Perhaps, she thought, he did need this. A time away from Earth, a chance to heal, both in mind and body. A chance to excel again.

Was it fair to say no to that?

“When would you return?”

“Just as soon as my work was finished. We could rig one of my Negative Zone probes so that I can keep in contact with you. Time passes quickly here. It may not take longer then a week or two at home, and in that time so much could be accomplished…”

“I don’t know, Reed,” she said, fighting aside her own doubts, “if you honestly think this is what’s best….”

“I do.”

And so it went. The rest of the team was as shocked as Sue by the announcement but they offered only token arguments. After all, if his wife was agreed to such an arrangement, then what grounds did they have to protest it?

As a vanquishing god, the natives were more then happy to accept Reed’s continued presence and, no doubt, that happiness would only increase in the months to come as he restored the city’s wonders to them. Oddly enough, Andrea agreed to stay along as well, curious to see the fruits of the rebuilding effort. Which meant their whole rescue operation had amounted to not much of a rescue at all.

Leaving one of the Nega-Pods from the Nega-Rover’s storage hold, Susan said her final goodbyes, wishing Reed luck and success. As their ship pulled away from the planet’s surface though, she could not quite shrug off the feeling that this marked something significant.

What was bothering her, she couldn’t put words to. It had nothing to do with the pushy Andrea. Sue trusted her husband entirely, and furthermore she knew he could handle himself here alone. Any trouble that cropped up, he’d be more then capable of dealing with it.

Nevertheless, the premonition remained. Sue had a sense of terrible foreboding. As though a deadly enemy lay just outside her vision, waiting only for the right moment to strike.

Would she be ready when it finally did?

Next Issue: We take a break from the mysteries of 32-I for an All Star Marvel Team-Up as the Thing and Franklin Richards face the terror of…the Junior Inventors of America?

Fantastic Forum

Author’s Note: Apparently I jumped the gun last issue about Stephen Crosby’s Fantastic Four Vol. 1 finale. It’s now available to read here and I strongly urge FF fans to check it out.

Originally I was going to post an e-mail that I received from previous FF scribe Jason Bruss. With typical shortsightedness though, I somehow deleted it from my mail box. So to make a poor summary of it his message essentially said some nice things about my first couple issues.

This was appreciated. It’s difficult to follow someone else’s work and you worry that maybe you’ve made a mess of things. That may very well be the case, but he was nice enough not to say so. So I thank him. Even if I did accidentally delete his mail.

- Alan Strauss