"Go With What Works"
by Dale Glaser

My name's Ted Grant. Or you can call me Wildcat - I answer to both, though usually not at the same time. In street clothes, as a recently enrolled student at Syracuse, I'm Ted and I won't cop to the Wildcat I.D. When I'm in the midnight blue bodysuit and under the cat's head half-mask, I'm liable to refer to 'Mr. Grant' in the third person. There's a couple of exceptions, involving people who know that Wildcat wears Ted Grant's face under the cloth snout and whiskers. Despite the fact that I was born about fifteen years before everyone who'll start collecting Social Security this month, I like to believe those exceptions are by choice, not because I'm an old man getting addled with senility, prone to wandering out of the house in a mystery man mask, an open bathrobe and skivvies. Stubborn pride, I guess. The fact that I recently found a fountain of youth that restored to me the body of a twenty-something helps me believe it, too.

I'm in the Wildcat costume now. It's an affectation, I often tell myself. It's the de rigeur garb of the superhero, a community of which I am a charter member, much to my frequent surprise. I remember when the breed first appeared, before the media even coined the term 'superhero' for us. When Jay Garrick became a literal embodiment of figures of speech for speed. Run circles around you? Yeah, he could literally do that. Move faster than the eye could follow? Yep, literally. Or when Alan Scott and his genie-jewelry hit the scene, a flying man in carnival colors throwing around weird green energy that took any shape he imagined. They were regular joes once you got to know them, sure, but they were something to see in action, really blazing new trails, setting new standards for making a difference in the world. Me, I was (and except for the reversed aging thing, still am) a regular joe, period. Bit more pugnacious than most, maybe. Made me a hell of a boxer, if I do say so myself - and I'm not the only one who has. I just decided I could do the world more good outside the ring, applying my fists to problems the same way Jay used his speed and Alan used his magic ring. Why they originally let a bare-knuckle brawler like me into the Justice Society alongside the Flash, Green Lantern, Dr. Fate, Hawkman and all the rest I'll never know. But I think it had something to do with dressing up like a cat-man, mask and all.

Still, the costume doesn't make me any more special a person, or even a much better boxer. A slight edge, since the costume's padded a bit to absorb some blows, but I'm no man of steel. All in all Wildcat is just Ted Grant when Ted doesn't want anyone to know it's him. I'm just a palooka with a conscience - and somehow, in that, a superhero.

Sorry if I'm dwelling on this, but it's hard not to at times like this. Times when it sure is easy to envy Jay his super speed or Alan his ring thing. Times when there's a larger-than-life threat bearing down on my new hometown, exactly the kind of thing you'd expect a superhero to handle, and instead all Syracuse has going for it is a former heavyweight in blue cat pajamas. God help us.

I'll back up a bit to give you some perspective. About six hours ago I - the Ted Grant 'I' - was going for an early morning run. My feet were pounding a path through some of the woods just north of Syracuse, crunching the dry pine needles, and my lungs were getting a good dose of non-city air. There's nothing quite like the peaceful, focused feeling a good hard run can give you, and I was definitely getting into it. Still throwing my share of jabs and hooks at the air in front of me as I ran, but that's force of habit. I felt really all right.

That never lasts.

At the top of the hill I was working my way up the trees fade off to the sides. When I reached the summit I stopped in my tracks. I've run this trail plenty of times since I relocated to Syracuse, and so I'd noticed the small white building on a higher hill on the right. Your basic squat, featureless, utilitarian block out in the middle of nowhere. I'd heard around campus that there was research conducted inside and under the building, some kind of magnetic/gravitonic unification hoohah that was probably just shy of impossible to explain in layman's terms. In any case, it remained the white bunker on the hill every time I jogged past it.

This morning, the squat white block had a new feature - a wide, jagged gash right down its face. Looked like someone had sent a wrecking ball through the wall. More than enough to raise this cat's curiosity, but really that was just for openers.

About fifty feet downhill from the research building, there was … something else. At first I couldn't figure out what it was. I knew it looked familiar but there was something off about seeing it in that context that made my brain balk. Then it hit me. It looked like a fireball, like a big old explosion, with two minor differences. Well, they seemed minor at the time. The first was that there wasn't any black smoke anywhere near the fireball. It was just burning a hot orange-yellow, with brighter shades boiling out of the surface and darker ones falling back into it. The second was that the fireball was in slow motion. That's just not something your mind can make sense of right away when you're not catching an action movie and seeing it on screen. In fairness to my powers of perception, this explosion was significantly slower than any dramatic movie blow-up. A hundred times slower, at least. It had taken me a few seconds to realize there was any movement of the thing at all.

It didn't make any sense, but there it was: the amazing smokeless slo-mo blast, rolling down the hillside like molasses in the winter. It must have torn its way out of the research building, and I reasoned there were probably people there who needed help. Clearly this was a job for Wildcat, since I was the only hero around, and maybe the only one up at that hour.

I unshouldered my knapsack and took out the Wildcat togs. When I'm expecting action, I can usually wear the costume underneath my plain clothes, but shorts and a t-shirt with blue padded legs and arms sticking out is just too conspicuous. Jogging with some weight on my back gives me a better workout anyway. I pulled on the gloves and mask, the finishing touches, and slung the knapsack over a tree branch. Back for that later.

The fastest route to the research building from the top of my hill was straight across, but since I can't fly I opted for the second fastest. The footpath would meander over there eventually, but running down between the trees and up the face of the opposite hill was more direct. I gave myself a wide berth around the slow fireball and found myself at the hole in the research building wall soon enough.

I had figured I could enter the building through that gaping hole, but it turned out that on the other side of the wall was a whole mess of equipment. Some large chunks were missing, but it still covered the entire gap in the exterior wall. Front door, then.

The entrance to the building was locked with one of those elaborate security panels that you stick a magnetic key into and then enter an access code on the keypad. I pounded on the heavy door with the heel of my hand, hoping somebody inside was all right enough to come over and let me in. Sure enough, the door swung inward a couple seconds later, and a young dark-haired woman in a lab coat stared at me like she wanted to say my name but couldn't remember it.

"Everyone all right in there?" I asked, stealing looks over her shoulder while trying not to blatantly ignore her.

"Oh, yes … everyone is fine, mister …" she faltered.

"Wildcat," I supplied for her. "Mind if I come in?"

"Of course not," she smiled apologetically, standing aside so I could enter the facility. It looked like a sanitized, orderly Frankenstein's laboratory. Some computer terminals hooked up to printers and plotters, recording data; video cameras connected to black and white monitors; standing columns of translucent, bubbling liquid and a few large, silvery devices I couldn't rightly put a name to. The walls were completely covered by machinery decorated with lots of buttons and LED panels and the like. I could see how one section of the wall-length equipment was cracked and splintered, its displays unlit, and I realized I was looking at the exit route of the fireball from the inside.

The scientist who had met me at the door was following at my side. True to her word, the other scientists inside the facility seemed unharmed. "What happened here," I asked, and as I glanced at her I.D. badge added, "Dr. Penrose?"

"An unexpected culmination of our research, I'm afraid, Mr. Wildcat …"

"Just Wildcat."

"Sorry," she smiled, a little flustered. I let her take a moment to put her thoughts back on track and she continued, "Our experiments here have been growing progressively more ambitious. Today it seems to have exceeded our containment abilities."

"So it was business as usual, and things just got too hot and went ka-boom?" I asked.

Dr. Penrose shrugged and answered, "I'll spare you the dissertation on hypergravitic thermodynamics …"

"I appreciate that," I nodded.

"… but essentially, yes, things 'got too hot'. Even our back-up safety overrides could not control the reaction and … I assume you saw the energy manifestation on the hillside?"

"You could say it caught my eye," I responded. "So the only questions that matter are what exactly is that fireball, and do you people know how to put it out?"

"Again, the explanation is difficult," Dr. Penrose gestured me toward one of the video monitors, where a balding man in a lab coat sat. "Watch the screen."

I moved over, behind the seated scientist (who looked more like a guy you'd see at the shore wearing Bermuda shorts and a t-shirt that says 'It's not a bald spot, it's a solar panel for a sex machine"), and looked at the monitor, which was apparently hooked up to a video feed from a camera on the roof of the research facility. Even in black and white, I could spot the interminably exploding flames moving oh-so-slowly away from the camera's perspective.

"Dr. Wiesnewski?" Dr. Penrose asked.

The balding man answered, "The manifestation has moved .68 meters in the past sixty seconds, and gained 1.72 meters in average diameter."

"Getting a little faster and a little bigger?" I asked, knowing I was really just paraphrasing what Dr. Wiesnewski had said. "Are you trying to tell me it's eventually going to burn itself out like a normal explosion?"

"No, I'm afraid not," Dr. Penrose answered. "Take a look."

My eyes went back to the monitor, in time to see the fireball reach a single scrub pine about six feet taller than the fireball. As soon as the orange-yellow effect touched it, the tree began to glow. Pretty soon it was entirely orange, and then it exploded. For a half-second it was a normal, regular speed explosion, and then the brakes went on, and the rolling combustion was the same speed and part of the snail-paced fireball itself.

"It's getting bigger because it's … feeding on things in its path," I figured.

"Incorporating obstacles into its field of hypergravity, yes," Dr. Wiesnewski corrected.

I'm sure these scientists were all just trying to fulfill their dreams of making the world a better place, but their jargon was all Greek to me. "Come again?" I tried politely.

"Our research here is on the practical uses of localized extremes of gravity," Dr. Penrose interceded on my behalf. "Are you familiar with the principles of black holes?"

"More or less," I answered, relieved for having known Ted Knight, one astronomer who loved to talk about his work. "Things in space so massive their gravity is irresistible, sucking in everything, even light."

"Precisely," Dr. Penrose nodded. "We are not creating black holes here, Wildcat, but we simulate environments of such incredible gravitic force that black holes are the only natural phenomena comparable."

"Why do you need so much force?"

"To fight time," Dr. Penrose responded automatically. "Intense gravity fields not only affect matter and energy but time itself. Most conversions of matter to energy are inherently wasteful, but by slowing the very passage of time itself during the conversion, it can be more precisely controlled. Rather than splitting the atom, collecting a pittance of the energy released along with two smaller atoms, we can achieve a reaction which is a ninety-nine percent conversion of matter into pure energy."

I felt like I was getting the pitch for federal funding, which Dr. Penrose had probably given more than once. "All right, I think I'm up to speed. One of your slow-time reactions got out of hand, so we have this fireball rolling down the hill, slowing down time around it to turn matter into pure energy, like what just happened to that tree. On to my second question: how do we stop it? What's your back-up plan?"

Dr. Wiesnewski seemed reluctant to answer, but talked himself into it. "This scenario was not exactly a foreseeable one. We have a supply of liquid depleted Mordantium which we use to absorb reaction energies …"

I was losing my patience. "Why didn't you use it before your reaction blew open the outer wall?"

"We had no chance," Dr. Penrose insisted. "The reaction spiked suddenly and destroyed our environmental controls, including the Mordantium delivery system."

"So we'll have to take it to the fireball ourselves," I proposed. "Where is the stuff?"

"It's actually in a silo outside this building," Dr. Wiesnewski informed me. "It's near the base of the hill, connected to the facility via underground pipes. It looks like a tree …"

"Like those cell phone towers they put fake bark on?" I asked.

"Correct. But one of us can take you directly to it."

"I will," Dr. Penrose volunteered. She was already heading toward some industrial blue lockers near the front door, and pulled her handbag out of one of them. I contemplated informing her that we weren't going to have time to do any shopping on our way down the hill, then thought better of it. I know how women can be about their purses, not going anywhere without them. I followed her out the door.

The fireball was still trudging down the hill. From our vantage point I could see it burning in frame-by-frame clarity, and just past it, the outskirts of Syracuse. I figured we had plenty of time to reach their Mordantium supply before the city was in any trouble. Just glad I had been around to help.

Dr. Penrose didn't say much as we made our way down the hill. I stayed near her as we navigated around rocks and roots and tangles of undergrowth, all the while not getting too close to the dreamlike fireball. Once the blow-up was behind us, we made better time straight down the path of least resistance. Dr. Penrose led me over to a particularly straight and tall tree trunk. Something told me I probably could have found it without any help - the aesthetic disguise job was only intended to be inoffensive from a distance - but it saved us a few minutes being able to zone in on it without any detective work.

Dr. Penrose walked up to the trunk and popped open a control panel similar to the one on the front door of the research facility. She entered a code and the sound of motorized servos filled the air. A seam around the base of the tree appeared, widened, and revealed an interior cylinder as the exterior of the fake trunk rose up on four mechanized rods. A dark gray liquid filled the interior cylinder. "So this is the stuff that's going to sponge up the rolling explosion's energy, huh?" I asked.

"It would be, if it were to come in contact with the manifestation," Dr. Penrose answered, digging deeply into her purse for something. She pulled it out a moment later and pointed it at me: a snub-nosed revolver, and she had me dead bang.

"We need more time," Dr. Penrose seethed, emphasizing the last word as if it were causing her agony. "The safety protocols were breached, but this could be the most significant breakthrough of human science! We're still monitoring the manifestation from the research facility, we can't undo it yet!"

"And what happens when your precious manifestation hits Syracuse?" I asked, keeping myself from making any sudden movements.

"Sacrifices are often unavoidable in the pursuit of knowledge," Dr. Penrose shrugged. "Do not try to stop this, Wildcat, or I will put a bullet in you, I swear."

"You won't get away with it," I said, hoping it didn't sound as lame and hackneyed as I feared.

"The evidence - your body - will become matter fuel for the energy manifestation," Dr. Penrose countered.

She had me there. And that's right about when I started wishing I were some other member of the old JSA. Jay could've caught the bullet, run laps around the fireball to trap it in a whirlwind, and figure out some way to stop it. Alan could've plugged up the gun with a green cork and rigged a big green catapult to launch the fireball into outer space.

And all Syracuse had going for it was Wildcat.

"Got anybody you care about down there in Syracuse?" I asked, taking a gamble.

"No."

That figured. Sympathy wasn't getting me out of this one. Dr. Penrose was smart enough to have the gun leveled right at my face, one place I was definitely unwilling to take a slug to try getting past her.

The fireball was still chewing its way down the hillside in its own slow time, utterly oblivious to our little human drama. I threw a quick glance in its direction, long enough to see an outcropping of rock converted to explosive energy, and hoped Dr. Penrose would follow my eyes. She wasn't about to let herself be distracted, however. Her fellow scientists were up in the bunker watching the fireball. She just had to keep me covered. Still, was that a twitch in her neck, or a struggle to keep herself from gawking at her haywire experiment?

My ring instincts took over and I decided to gamble on believing in what I had seen. Neither Dr. Penrose nor I said a word, staring each other down under the phony branches of the Mordantium standpipe. The fireball continued at a snail's pace down the slope. My muscles tensed as it came nearer. I knew we were safely out of its path, but I still didn't want my tail any nearer the thing than it had to be. I just held my ground and waited. And watched.

The fireball passed directly behind me. Dr. Penrose's inquisitive eyes betrayed her, straying from my face for a split-second to drink in the glory of her hypergravitic reaction. I had figured she might do something like that, and I was ready. My right hand shot out in a jab that caught her square on the fingers clutching the revolver. Dr. Penrose cried out in pain and surprise, and pulled the trigger reflexively, but my blow had knocked her aim askew and the bullet zinged off into the ground. My left hand was already reaching out to grab the gun, and a second later I had wrested it from her hand.

Dr. Penrose looked about ready to tear me apart with her bare hands, and I had to deal with her quick. It wasn't enough to get myself out from under the gun; I needed to somehow do what the crazy scientist lady refused to do, without any real knowledge of how to do it, and without her getting in my way. Dr. Penrose lunged at me, and I sidestepped, staying close enough to throw a solid knifestrike into the back of her neck. That put her down for the count.

I drew up to the elevated treetrunk and studied the controls for the standpipe. As I had feared, they weren't very user friendly. Slow as it was, the fireball was gaining size and speed and bearing down on my hometown. I didn't have time to learn the standpipe controls by trial and error. I felt like I had no time at all. I backed away from the tree in disgust, swinging a punch at one of the arms holding up the trunk casing as I did. It clanged satisfyingly under my knuckles.

Sometimes you just have to go with what works.

I walked around to the side of the standpipe facing the path of the fireball, planted the balls of my feet in the dirt, and started swinging. I bashed away at the two hydraulic arms on that side, working them as mercilessly as I would the heavy bag at the gym. After a few shots my knuckles started to sting. A few more and I was pretty certain they were bleeding under the gloves, and the stinging blossomed into a throbbing ache. I couldn't let up, though. Somehow I had to bring the whole standpipe down. I put all of my weight into every punch, landing each one as close to the same spot on the metal arms as possible.

The left one gave first - I always did have a mean left hook. It didn't exactly crumple, but it bent at about a forty-five degree angle in the middle, and the bottom snapped loose from its housing. I applied both fists to the right arm and it soon became disconnected from the base of the fake trunk as well. The upper section of trunk seemed to wobble a little. Unless that was just wishful thinking combined with beads of sweat running into my eyes.

I ran around to the other side of the standpipe, and gave the upper section a solid jumping roundhouse kick. And another. And another … and that's when the two remaining support arms started to creak and bend. I caught my breath, braced myself, and gave it one more kick with everything I had left.

The bark-like housing was like a gigantic lever. I had only moved it a little bit off center near the base of the tree, but that translated to a serious deviation in the upper reaches of the trunk. And since the standpipe was built to last, barring such rough treatment as it had received from myself, it was solid and heavy from root to tip. The heavy, off-center top end and good old normal Earth gravity did the rest.

"Tim-berrrrr," I said, half as a prayer.

The standpipe obeyed, as it toppled over from its own unbalanced weight. The delicate electronics near the trunk were snapped in two, leaving the roots firmly entrenched in the hillside. Fine by me, since what really mattered was the logful of Mordantium that slammed into the ground.

The hillside was steep enough that the heavy standpipe began to roll down it almost immediately, and at a good clip, too, I was relieved to see. I had been afraid that the fireball was leaving a wake of slow time behind it. Pretty quickly the pipe was barreling downhill and gaining on the fireball. Before the fireball reached the bottom of the hill, the standpipe caught up with it.

The result was pretty much academic. As soon as the fake bark made contact with the yellow-orange cloud of languid flames, the whole tree turned its own shade of orange, and the matter dissipated. Except for the liquid depleted Mordantium payload, thankfully, which seeped into and under the fireball and sloshed out ahead of it a few seconds later. The fireball sputtered, fell in on itself like a tent with the poles yanked out, and was gone without a trace. The Mordantium puddled into an inert pool at the base of the hill.

I emptied my lungs in a sigh of relief, realizing only then that I had been holding my breath since the standpipe started its rolling pursuit of the fireball. I gathered Dr. Penrose, still unconscious, in my arms, and started to jog back into town. First I'd stop at the police station, let Abbie take custody of Dr. Penrose and possibly accompany them both to the hospital. I'd fill the cops in on the rest of the mad scientists in the white bunker and probably stop shy of suggesting a formal investigation, let the boys in blue come up with that on their own so they don't feel like the super-hero is trying to push them around. Finally, I'd make some calls about a Mordantium clean-up. Not too sure that stuff should just be left lying around.

But for now, I had an early morning run to finish. Ted Grant had started it, and Wildcat was going to take it home.

END

e.