EARTHBOUND
by: Dan Bivens
Chapter 1
Having barely made it the many billions of light-years via agonizingly opening Space-Time tunnels through which to ostensibly travel, the silvery visitor from beyond the farthest star drifted ever closer to the blue-green world he'd made his second home.
Where once he would've gone to a beautiful planet in the Deneb system of the Milky Way galaxy, so named by Humans, he now felt an undeniable longing for this newest planetary home. That was whenever his peerless power cosmic was not allowing him to roam the airless void that held such universal wonder for such as he.
But now, he needed a planetary respite. He needed to heal. To regain his strength. And, most important of all, he needed to warn those four super-powered global protectors of the coming of…destruction.
His name…the Silver Surfer. Those four such as he sought…the Fantastic Four. And the source of certain destruction to come…Galactus.
"Colonel!" said the Air Force Sergeant, Dylan Maddox, seated before the super-advanced, for Earth, radar screens nestled somewhere within a seemingly innocuous set of buildings at a supposedly deserted Air Force base.
"What is it, Sgt. Maddox?" said Col. Ben Foster to the lesser member of the top-secret military installation situated not far from the legendary Area 51, while stepping up behind the seated man in uniform.
"Hard to say for certain, sir," replied Sgt. Maddox with a shallow shake of his head. "Whatever it is, it definitely came from outside our atmosphere, but it's dropped from multi-Mach speeds to a little over two hundred miles per hour. And it's definitely under intelligent control."
"Show me," Col. Foster said swiftly while leaning down to get a better look at the multi-informational radar screen. Though he could read the myriad data for himself, he still let Sgt. Maddox rattle it off.
"…bottom line, sir, the object is not much larger than a man. But…"
"Communications," Col. Foster was quick to command of the second Sergeant sitting at a high-tech Comm-system situated on the opposite side of the secretive control center. "Try to raise whoever that is. I want identification!"
"Trying, sir," said Sgt. Sandra Knightly, "but there's no response."
"We've got to assume the worst," muttered Col. Foster barely loud enough to be heard, as he next stepped over to his temporary post's metal desk in order to pick up the special landline phone while pressing a specific button, then issued a very serious order. "I want batteries brought to bear on the UFO currently above our position. Whatever the hell that thing is, I want it brought down. Now!"
The Silver Surfer, though still sapped of his usual cosmic strength, nevertheless sensed the coming of highly destructive smart missiles streaking up at Mach One velocity to impact with an unscheduled and unresponsive "blip" on their primitive, to such as he, radar.
He couldn't allow such to happen.
Standing now upon his gleaming board, his own silver-skinned form now straight and tall as the wind, at 45,000 feet, whistled around him, the Silver Surfer leveled a single glittering hand in the direction of the incoming missiles and, with what cosmic strength he did have left, sent forth a burst of concussive energy which encompassed said missiles and, with ridiculous ease, caused them to implode harmlessly.
"Though it has been years since last I soared through the polluted air of this otherwise beautiful world," the Silver Surfer said even as he dropped to his knees atop his flying board, "still the Humans react with destructive ignorance against what, to them, is an unknown visitor to this backward planet. Still they try to kill me. And still must I use the power cosmic against their barbaric weapons."
As his morose emotions gave way to growing empyrean dynamism, the Silver Surfer now, once again standing astride his gleaming board, swooped through the air with the greatest of ease as his speed swiftly exceeded the speed of sound thrice over so that no launched weapons could easily track him while he, in a roundabout manner, began quickly snaking his way down toward the top-secret Air Force base from which said missiles had come.
To the Silver Surfer's way of thinking, if these barbaric Humans would send such destructive devices skyward toward him, then they would likely do the same with less self-protected targets that could simply be fellow Humans blown off course by a mere handful of kilometers.
In scant seconds, the Silver Surfer, a scowl commanding his argentine countenance, unleashed a nondestructive shower of cosmic energies which so altered the molecular composition of the remainder of high-flying explosive devices so that they could do little more than unleash a proverbial flurry of actual blossoms. The ultimate "flower power".
"What the hell?" exclaimed Col. Foster even as he watched the Silver Surfers swift departure via not only the radar screen, but via closed circuit security cameras situated about the supposedly deserted base.
"It's the Silver Surfer, sir!" said Sgt. Maddox with ludicrously wide eyes and a voice much louder than necessary.
"What tipped you off, Sgt. Maddox?" sarcastically said Col. Foster. "The silver skin or the flying surfboard?"
"When will humanity learn?" said the Silver Surfer to himself as his spoken words were lost in the roar of the wind as the gleaming man on the board soared high above the ground at speeds that exceeded Mach 5. "When will they learn to extend a hand in peace before striking out with a fist in fear? Sometimes, I think I am wasting my time attempting to save them from cosmic threats that exceed their collective comprehension. Such as now. I can only hope that the four I seek do not still perceive me as the threat they thought me to be in the beginning."
With that, the gracefully sky-surfing super-being streaked through the skies over numerous cities and townships in gravity-defying loops and swirls that would make the greatest jet aeronaut envious, while steadily heading straight toward America's East Coast.
More specifically, New York City…
END OF CHAPTER 1