27

The knock on the door roused Chester from his semi-conscious state and he forced himself from his horizontal position on the time beaten drab green couch to a sitting position. As he scratched the back of his scalp, he simultaneously yawned and muttered, "Come on in. I may as well have some company. I don't seem to be doing anything right now."

Officer Joe Kubert strolled into the makeshift lab and asked his new friend from the Lone Star State, "Does that mean you're through investigating?"

"Well, that kinda depends, Joe. No, the investigation continues because we still haven't any hard evidence of a cause of the tremors. But yes, I think I'm through investigating because I keep coming up dry on my theory. I know - I just know - that this purple element has something to do with the whole thing, but I can't seem to figure out how! I'm... about out of ideas. I guess I may as well just... pack muh stuff and head on back to Cowtown."

"Cowtown?" Kubert was completely baffled.

"Oh, that's just one of the nicknames for my home town. Cowtown, Panther City... One writer once said that Fort Worth was where the West begins, and Dallas was where the East petered out."

Joe chuckled, then eyed the geologist as if disappointed. "So that's it, then? You're giving up?"

Chester realized he was disappointed, too. "If I just had something to go on, Joe, I would keep at it. But all I have is purple dirt! Purple... dirt! It's at every site, but every sample I take shows nothing that would cause anything but stains."

'I guess I might feel a little beaten at this point too, Perfessor. I guess I was just hoping that if someone was to save the Earth, it would be nice fella like you instead of one of those pompous windbags you have to work with. Is this the sample I looked at yesterday?"

"Yep, That's it. The dish right in front of you."

"Nah, this can't be it," said Kubert as he squinted down at the clump of soil and rocks. "Must be another sample."

"No, I remember. You were looking at that dish. Petri dish number four."

"This couldn't be what I looked at yesterday, Perfessor. Unless you changed the rocks in the dish. These are smaller than the ones I saw. Not much smaller, but it is a little."

Chester, with a puzzled look on his face, stared at the New York cop for a few seconds, then he looked at Petri dish number four and elbowed his way past his friend. "'Scuse me, Joe!" was all he said as he picked up the calipers he had left near the dish, then picked up the same rock he had measured the previous day. "I can't believe it! How did I not see this! This... this has got to be it! Joe! You found it! Y-you found it!" Chester was jumping up and down and laughing.

"I found what? What the heck are you talking about?"

"Don't you see?" He thrust the calipers in front of Kubert, who had no idea what the geologist was going on about. "The calipers are still set from the other day!"

"I... still don't..."

"The rock! I measured the size of this rock with these calipers yesterday!"

"Yeah, so..."

"Look!"

Chester passed the calipers over the rock and at least a quarter of an inch of space appeared between the rock and the legs of the device.

"Okay, what does it mean?"

"It means we have something, Joe! It means we have a very important something!" With that, Chester yanked the policeman's cap off his head and planted a kiss smack dab in the middle of his friend's bald spot.

"Are you all right?"

"Of course I'm all right. I'm invulnerable."

George let out the breath he had been holding for what felt like hours. The explosion they had set up had rocked the ship worse than any of the weapons their pursuers had unleashed. George had been thrown from his seat by the impact and deposited on the floor of the craft, but he had no time to recover. At least three panels had blown causing several small fires to smolder up. He grabbed an emergency fire extinguisher and went to work on the two nearest him while Guer-On used his super-breath to blow out the remaining blaze.

"At least no one is firing on us now," said George as the fires were snuffed out. He checked the damage control listing on the computer screen readout. "Life support is undamaged. We still have all propulsion engines intact. Force fields are down twenty per cent and the only real damage was to short range sensors and the aft camera. I think we lucked out." He paused a moment and then added. "That never happened in any of the movies I ever saw..."

"Excuse me?" asked a puzzled Kandorian.

"In the movies... dramatizations on recorded media..."

"I know what movies are, George. We actually did have such a thing on Krypton... And, as I have already said, we have observed your broadcast signals for many years."

"Sorry. Well, in the movies when the good guys are being chased by the bad guys and the good guys toss an explosive behind them to dissuade the bad guys from chasing them, the explosive always stops the bad guys and the good guys just keep on going untouched. That didn't work like that exactly for us."

"Perhaps because in the movies they do not use real explosives."

George laughed, "Yes, perhaps! I guess they were closer to us than I thought, too. They hit the little forget-me-not we tossed much sooner than I thought they would."

"Well, I suggest that we not wait around for long. They may have sustained as little damage as we. I believe we can now as you say, 'make a run for it?'"

"Good idea. The belt is just ahead. Once we make that, we should be able to hide from Jennifer's clowns pretty easily while we search for... what did you say it was called?"

"Illium 349-a... but your people have a simpler name for it - Kryptonite."