The Crime Crusaders Club

Case #9: "Gravity's Rainbow"

By Mikel Midnight
(lyrics, additional prose by and with apologies to Thomas Pynchon)

Black Condor walks across the small airfield in a quick pace, his body bent forward from the hips, his long legs moving stiffly, his hands hanging at his sides. His sharp nose and thin-lipped mouth are wrinkled in irritation. "Where is he?"

Jim Anthony glances at his watch, amused. "I wasn't under the impression that your FBI liaison was known for his punctuality."

Leaning against the sole plane the remaining Crime Crusaders ... Neptune Perkins, Guardian Angel, and Genius Jones ... chuckle amongst themselves. "It sure is nice to visit San Francisco, but these Freedom Fighters don't seem the most organised. They don't even have a real HQ!"

Suddenly a bright red airplane descends from the skies with a varoom, a Plastic Man sound. It glides down to the runway and slowly reshapes, a head appearing with blank carapaced eyes and unplastic jaw.

Guardian Angel approaches the apparition, hand extended. "You must be that Plastic Man we've all heard so much about."

The figure reforms into a humanoid shape. "Yeah. Who're you, Ace?"

Black Condor does quick introductions. "You ... remember the Freedom Fighters were working an exchange with those midwest mysterymen, the Crime Crusaders Club? And that we're supposed to be representing our organisation?"

Plastic Man grins, "Sorry, I had to see a company man about an albatross." He pulls out from an invisible pocket a white knight, molded out of plastic. "And here it is. This is Imipolex, the material of the future."

Genius Jones ahs, like the sound of someone savoring a fine wine. "Imipolex G has proved to be nothing more--or less--sinister than a new plastic, an aromatic heterocyclic polymer. It is stable at high temperatures, like up to 900 degrees centigrade, it combines good strength with a low power-loss factor. Structurally," here he pauses and consults his mental file folder, "it's a stiffened chain of aromatic rings, alternating here and there with what are known as heterocyclic rings."

Black Condor raises an eyebrow. "That information is supposed to be government classified."

Neptune Perkins raises his hand dismissively, "That's his trick. Don't worry about it, he's a human encyclopedia."

Genius Jones grins, "That's what they call me!"

Jim Anthony folds his arms over his chest. "This is all very interesting, but surely you haven't called us here to give us a science lesson."

Plastic Man nods soberly. "An inert version was developed by in 1939 by one L. Jamf for IG Farben. We've just got word that a Nazi scientist named Dr. Zwitter has developed a new version which will give German armaments a huge leg's up, as insulation for rockets but it has many other applications." He looks from one mysteryman to the other, "We have to travel to Zwitter's lab, destroy it if we can, obtain his files for our own researchers if possible."

"Oh is that all," says Guardian Angel. "Well, I’m just the pilot to take you there."

"Unfortunately it's not that easy," says Plastic Man. "If he were just holed up in a lab in Germany, my assistant Woozy Winks and I would just go there ourselves. But he's currently mobile, having set up a lab aboard ship run by a pirate named Gory Gnabh, and her Black Commandoes."

Neptune Perkins growls, "I've heard of her ... the so-called 'Pirate Queen of the Baltic Run'. This isn't a job for you, G.A. I think it's time to break the Nautilus out of its mothballs."

Neptune Perkins peers through the viewscreen of the periscope. "There, I see it. Regenbogen der Schwerkraft ... Gory Gnabh's vessel. Black as death and not half as pretty."

Jim Anthony leans against a bulkhead. "Since the Black Commandoes are an unknown quantity beyond their names and photos," he brandishes the fat file which Plastic Man had supplied, "I suggest we send Plas in first. We'll take on the frontal assault and he can be our ace in the hole."

Plastic Man reshapes himself into a torpedo. "Fire when ready!"

Neptune Perkins sighs. "It's a good plan. Jones, will you take Plas down to the torpedo bay?"

Genius Jones grins and salutes, "Aye aye, sir." He gestures to the torpedo, which ambles along behind him, "Walk this way!"

The Nautilus breaks the surface of the water quietly, and extends a long, mechanical tentacle towards the hull of the cruiser. The impromptu squadron clambers aboard, and the tentacle retracts. Genius Jones' head appears in the hatchway, gives another quick salute, and the submarine descends down again to wait.

As they ascend up the side, they hear two crewmembers talking aboard the bow. Wearing his sharp, pointed helmet like the nose assembly of a rocket, is the man identified by the file as Racketemensch. He is wearing a mask, a crimson tunic, a pair of buckskin trousers, and a full silk-lined cape of sea-green velvet on the back of which is a big, scarlet, capital 'R', with his black military boots ensigned with triangular scraps of leather. He enquires of the other, "Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!"

The man identified by the file as Alpdrucken is wearing a complicated metal suit, something like a deep-sea diver's, and a Wehrmacht helmet through which are drilled a couple of hundred holes and inserted nuts, bolts, springs and conductive wands of many shapes so that he jingles whenever he nods or shakes his head, which is often. "Die ist ein Kinnerhunder und zwei Mackel uber und der bitte schoen ist den Wunderhaus sprechensie. 'Nein' sprecht der Herren 'Ist aufern borger mit zveitingen."

The two men start to laugh hysterically, their jovial conversation breaking off as the squadron attacks. Black Condor and Guardian Angel lift into the air, the latter gliding down to lead the battle against Racketemensch who sweeps aside, gives Guardian Angel a quick veronica with his cape, sticks his foot out and trips him. Racketemensch shouts his war cry, "Haupstufel!" and bullets into the air to confront Black Condor.

Jim Anthony and Neptune Perkins advance on Alpdrucken. As they move into an attack, the man's armor crackles with electricity, repelling them. The conducive wands on his helmet flash lightning towards them as they desperately tumble out of the way.

The man identified by the file as Sundial is a tall figure who is clad in an orange long sleeved tunic with bare legs and folded-over boots. A jagged edged tabard lies across his shoulders and smoothly blends into a cowl with a symbolic sundial on top. He flashes in, landing next to a woman standing at the ship's guiding wheel. "It appears they came via some sort of submarine," he says in German-accenting English. He flashes out again, a shock of brilliant light coming from under the water, before he returns to land lithely next to her. "No more."

Neptune Perkins turns his head at the words. "What?"

The woman identified by the file as Gory Gnabh commences bellowing a bloodthirsty sea chantey:
"I'm the Pirate Queen of the Baltic Run, and nobody screws with me --
And those who've tried are bones and skulls, and lie beneath the sea.
And the little fish like messengers swim in and out of their eyes,
Singing 'Screw ye not with Gory Gnabb and her desperate enterprise!'
I'll tangle with a battleship, I'll massacre a sloop,
I've sent a hundred souls to hell in one relentless swoop --
I've seen the Flying Dutchman, and each time we pass he cries,
'Oh, steer me clear of Gory Gnabh, and her desperate enterprise!'"

At her words, come the Jackal-men: a fleet of bareback dwarves, on the backs of eagles, with little plastic masks around their eyes that happen to be shaped just like the infinity symbol. Little men with wicked eyebrows, pointed ears and bald heads, although some of them are wearing outlandish headgear, not at all the usual Robin Hood green fedoras, no these are Carmen Miranda hats, for example, bananas, papayas, bunches of grapes, pears, pineapples, mangoes, even watermelons -- and there are World War I spike-top Wilhelmets, and baby bonnets and crosswise Napoleon hats with and without N's on them, not to mention little red suits and green capes.

Gory Gnabh laughs with contempt as Jim Anthony, Black Condor, Neptune Perkins, and Guardian Angel are surrounded by the dwarves she had summoned from the air with her words. The squadron is led in chains down to a mad Nazi scientist lab: brightly lit, well-ordered, crammed with blown glass, work tables, lights of many colors, speckled boxes, green folders ... in the center stands Dr. Zwitter, a stocky man, dark hair parted down the middle, eyeglass lenses thick as the windows of a bathysphere, the fluorescent hydras, eels, and rays of control equations swimming seas behind them.

Dr. Zwitter looks up from his laboratory, peering at Gory Gnabh and the captives. "I see," he says, peering through his eyeglasses. "these are oddly dressed visitors for my lab, Captain."

She chortles, "Hardly visitors," she says. "captives, more like. You'd been talking about testing your Imipolectique on humans to see what happens, right?"

Dr. Zwitter ahs, "Yes, thank you. You anticipated my needs wonderfully."

Jim Anthony mutters, "I don't much like the sound of that," and begins to strain at his bonds.

Plastic Man goes oozing out of a keyhole, around a corner and up through piping that leads to a sink in the mad Nazi scientist's lab, out of whose faucet Plas' head now is just emerging. "Biff bang pow, hey kids, miss me?"

Gory Gnabh puts to finger between her lips and gives an ear-piercing whistle, and the Jackal-men tumble around the lab, picking up samples of Imipolex and winding them around the new intruder. Plastic Man loses his way among the Imipolex chains, and topologists all over America will run out and stop payments on his honorarium checks ("perfectly deformable", indeed!).

Dr. Zwitter shakes his head, "Such distractions!" He approaches the bound Plastic Man curiously. "A most amazing specimen, I especially wonder what my aromatic rings will do when injected into the bloodstream of someone like you."

Sundial taps the mad scientist on the shoulder, "Sorry, did you say you wanted distractions?" He emits numerous beams of light, bursting through the floor and ceiling of the lab and blinding the Jackal-men who scream and roll around on the floor of the lab.

Black Condor grins, "Hey Ray."

Racketemensch kicks the Ray in the groin, screaming "Fickt nicht mit der Racketemensch!"

The Ray gasps up at him, "Too little too late, sport," as scarlet tentacles grip the ends of Gory Gnabh's ship, breaking it apart like kindling. The pirate queen screams, and quick as a beam of light the Ray grabs the ring of keys off her belt, quickly unlocking the Black Condor from his chains. "We got to get these guys out of here before the ship sinks!" he says.

Black Condor nods to him, "You grab the kids, and I’ll tackle the man of bronze over there. Don't worry about Plas and long-hair, they'll be fine for a while."

The Ray nods, and the two of them grab the Crime Crusaders up and out, carrying them away from the vessel. From the air, they see the Nautilus, squidlike tentacles attacking the ship. As the wreckage falls to the ocean floor, Genius Jones opens the top hatch, giving another salute. "Ray told me he was working as a mole," he explains to Jim Anthony as the squadron descends, "He told me to lay low until he gave the signal."

Jim Anthony nods as the Ray releases him from his bonds. "You did good work, lad."

Neptune Perkins and Plastic Man bob along to the side of the Nautilus, the latter inflated like a giant balloon, and Black Condor soars over the lift them out. "And I think we've got enough samples of the new version of Imipolex G to satisfy the brain-boys back home."

Guardian Angel just shakes his head. "You Freedom Fighters sure use unorthodox methods ... but they work, that's for sure!"