Marvel classic novels - Spider-Man: The Venom Factor Omnibus E-Book

Diane Duane

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Marvel classic novels
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 1216

Beschreibung

Rediscover the classic Spider-Man Venom trilogy by Diane Duane, now as a brand-new omnibus collecting all three novels.THIS TRIPLE THREAT GIVES SPIDER-MAN THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE.Collecting all three of Diane Duane's fan-favorite Spider-Man novels in a brand-new omnibus, featuring The Venom Factor, The Lizard Sanction, and The Octopus Agenda.Venom is out of control, seemingly murdering one of the innocents he swore to protect. Has Venom lost his mind, or is there another suspect?The Lizard is rampaging through the Everglades in search of a cure. While Spider-Man tries to stop him causing any more destruction, Venom appears hell-bent on killing the Lizard. What do these two have in common, and does it have something to do with the mysterious group of mercenaries in the area?Doctor Octopus is stockpiling nuclear bombs and has masterminded a plan to rain havoc down across the globe. Spider-Man and Venom must put aside their differences and team up to defeat Doc Ock before he devastates the planet.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Novels of the Marvel Universe by Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

Book One: The Venom Factor

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Book Two: The Lizard Sanction

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Acknowledgements

Book Three: The Octopus Agenda

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

THE VENOM FACTOR

A MARVEL OMNIBUS

NOVELS OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE BY TITAN BOOKS

Ant-Man: Natural Enemy by Jason Starr

Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Dan Abnett

Avengers: Infinity by James A. Moore

Black Panther: Who is the Black Panther? by Jesse J. Holland

Captain America: Dark Design by Stefan Petrucha

Captain Marvel: Liberation Run by Tess Sharpe

Civil War by Stuart Moore

Deadpool: Paws by Stefan Petrucha

Spider-Man: Forever Young by Stefan Petrucha

Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt by Neil Kleid

Thanos: Death Sentence by Stuart Moore

Venom: Lethal Protector by James R. Tuck

X-Men: Days of Future Past by Alex Irvine

X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga by Stuart Moore

X-Men: The Mutant Empire Omnibus by Christopher Golden

X-Men & The Avengers: The Gamma Quest Omnibus by Greg Cox

ALSO FROM TITAN AND TITAN BOOKS

Marvel Contest of Champions: The Art of the Battlerealm by Paul Davies

Marvel’s Spider-Man: The Art of the Game by Paul Davies

Obsessed with Marvel by Peter Sanderson and Marc Sumerak

Spider-Man: Hostile Takeover by David Liss

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – The Art of the Movie by Ramin Zahed

The Art of Iron Man (10th Anniversary Edition) by John Rhett Thomas

The Marvel Vault by Matthew K. Manning, Peter Sanderson, and Roy Thomas

Ant-Man and the Wasp: The Official Movie Special

Avengers: Endgame – The Official Movie Special

Avengers: Infinity War – The Official Movie Special

Black Panther: The Official Movie Companion

Black Panther: The Official Movie Special

Captain Marvel: The Official Movie Special

Marvel Studios: The First Ten Years

Spider-Man: Far From Home – The Official Movie Special

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – The Official Movie Special

Thor: Ragnarok – The Official Movie Special

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Spider-Man: The Venom Factor Omnibus

Print edition ISBN: 9781789094596

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789094602

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: March 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

© 2020 MARVEL

Special thanks to Lou Aronica, Lucia Raatma, Eric Fein, Danny Fingeroth, Julia Molino, Ginjer Buchanan, Eileen Veith, Ken Grobe, Stacey Gittelman, Mike Thomas, Steve Behling, Steve Roman, Carol D. Page and the gang at Marvel Creative Services.Original trilogy edited by John Betancourt & Keith R.A. DeCandido.

FOR MARVEL PUBLISHINGJeff Youngquist, VP Production Special Projects Caitlin O’Connell, Assistant Editor, Special Projects Sven Larsen, Director, Licensed Publishing David Gabriel, SVP Sales & Marketing, Publishing C.B. Cebulski, Editor in Chief

Spider-Man created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

THE VENOM FACTOR

Book One

THE VENOM FACTOR

Diane Duane

For all our friends at Baycon ’94 and Ad Astra ’94, Toronto… who watched it happen

Thanks to Keith, who suffered, well, we know what

PROLOGUE

IT was very cold three hundred feet down, very dark; but not very quiet. Outside the skin of the sub, the noise of near-shore seas rumbled and clattered and moaned against the hull—a muted chainsaw rattle of engine noise from ships passing overhead, the clunk and burp of bells or horns from nearby and distant buoys, even the occasional soft singing moan of a whale going about its lawful occasions. The man in the center seat of the submarine’s bridge looked thoughtfully at his charts. He sighed at the thought of his upcoming leave and of the relative peace and quiet of being surrounded by air instead of water.

The spot where he sat was not really the center seat, of course. Not yet: his boat was still three years off its refit. Eventually all U.S. subs’ bridges would come to resemble the original one of a famous television starship, the circular design having eventually been appreciated by the powers-that-be as the best and most efficient presently available. But right now, the bridge of SSN-45, the USS Minneapolis, was still a tangle of panels and conduits arranged around the obstructive central column of the periscope. The captain’s chair was no plush overseeing throne, but a folding chair stuck under the lighted chart table: not very aesthetic, not very comfortable. It was not meant to be. Captains spent most of their time on their feet.

Right now, though, Captain Anthony LoBuono was sitting and didn’t care who saw him. He could not wait to get this boat into dock and out again. Eight days from now, after final unloading at Greenland, he would get his butt off her, and the back cargo section emptied out once and for all. Never again, he thought. Never again.

Realistically, though, he might be commanded to carry such a cargo again, and he would take his orders and do as he was told. In fact (and the thought made him twitch) it occurred to Captain LoBuono that, since he had managed this mission well enough, he might easily be given the same task again at some later date.

He swore gently under his breath. He would not soon relish another week and a half like the last one. His crew were on edge, which was no surprise, for he was on edge: and such things communicated themselves, no matter how hard you tried to keep them under wraps. You should be grateful, he thought to himself. It’s one of the things that makes your crew as good at their jobs as they are. They hear you thinking, anticipate you, jump faster when they have to.

All the same, he would have preferred to pass on this last week’s case of nerves.

His Ex appeared at his shoulder. LoBuono looked up. Bass Lorritson—no one called him Basil, no one who didn’t want a drink later spilled on them “accidentally”—favored his captain with a calm look that fooled LoBuono not at all. “Coming shallow as scheduled at the north end of Hudson Canyon, sir,” he said. “Do orders mandate a specific course, or are they letting you play this one by ear?”

LoBuono smiled grimly. “We’re inside the limit,” he said, “and safely under the birds by now. No mandate, except to avoid the Hudson Canyon/Barnegat lanes—too much routine traffic there. Plot us in toward the Coast Guard beacon at Democrat Point, and then take your preferred route to the Navy Yards.”

Bass raised his eyebrows, thought a moment. “Jones Inlet,” he said, “East Rockaway Inlet, Rockaway Point, Ambrose Light, Norton Point, Verrazano Narrows Bridge, and up.”

LoBuono nodded. “Don’t stop to pay the toll this time. How’s the tide at Ambrose?”

“About three knots, the CG says.”

The captain nodded. “Coast-creeping. I guess it suits the situation. Call Harbor Control and give them our ETA. Then call New York Yards Control and tell them I want that stuff waiting at the dock and loaded no more than fifteen minutes after open hatches.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m not fooling around, Bass. I don’t want to linger.”

“I’ll tell them so, Captain.”

“Go.”

Bass went. Captain LoBuono got up and stepped over to the periscope. “Depth,” he said.

“Two hundred, Captain,” said Macilwain on the number-two radar. “Periscope depth in half a minute.”

LoBuono waited, staring at the shiny scarred deck-plates. It seemed about a hundred years, now, since he had reported aboard the Minneapolis at Holy Loch after returning from his last leave and had been handed the sealed envelope. That aspect of his life he was used to: usually a whole looseleaf binder full of mission info stamped “SECRET,” which in the present scheme of things normally meant “not very.” But this envelope had not been the usual color, but an eye-rattling air-rescue orange, and it had had the new barcoded utter-security seals in it. Two sets of seals: one for the envelope itself, and one for a package which had been waiting on a lowloader by the dock. The package had been about eight feet square, a metal case with a very large cordon of armed and jumpy MPs around it—an escort which, in a lighter mood, would have suggested to Captain LoBuono that possibly the President himself was inside. As it was, he went down belowdecks, swiped the barcode through the reader in his quarters, opened the envelope, swiped the barcode on the inside envelope, opened that, sat down, and read.

And swore. But then, as now, there was nothing he could do about it, any of it—not the envelope, the box, or either of their contents. The box was loaded on, and he had told his crew not to ask questions about it because he had no answers for them. Then Minneapolis had headed out.

The door of the secure-cargo compartment way in the back, where the uneasy MPs had deposited the box, was now sealed with the second set of barcode seals, and a sign which one of the MPs had slapped on the door at eye-height: “DANGER—RADIATION,” with the familiar three triangles, red on yellow. At the bottom of this sign, over the past few days, some wit had scrawled in ballpoint, “SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW?” Whoever had done it had a point: Minneapolis was an attack sub and carried nuclear-tipped torpedoes—what her crew did not know about radioactives would fit in a very short book indeed.

“FULL ALERT,” his orders had said, “HOLY LOCH TO GREENLAND: TRIPLE WATCHES: RADIO SILENCE UNTIL COASTAL WATERS NY.” And so it had been done. LoBuono had known what effect this would have on his crew. They were an intelligent and stable bunch—no news there: neither the stupid nor the unstable were allowed on nuclear-armed submarines. But it made them uneasy to be carrying out secret orders. It made them feel as if their superiors didn’t trust them, and they didn’t know which superiors to be annoyed with—the brass higher up or their captain.

For his own part, Captain LoBuono knew how they felt. His annoyance was more focused. Without knowing what he carried, it was hard for him to take all possible and prudent precautions, thus jeopardizing the mission itself.

“Periscope depth, sir,” said the number-two radar man.

“Thank you, Mr. Macilwain,” LoBuono said. “Up periscope.”

It slid up before him, and he draped himself over its handles and peered into the hood. Someone had left the starlight augmenter on, so that everything in view glared green. He hmphed to himself, toggled it off, and looked again.

Dead ahead of them he could see Ambrose Lightship, some six miles away, rocking slightly in the offshore swells despite its anchoring. He looked north toward Norton Point, got a brief glimpse of Coney Island, walked around the ‘scope housing a little, gazing to northeastward, and saw the brick tower in the middle of Jones Island, with its pointed bronze-green top. He smiled slightly. It was a long time since he had pestered his folks on summer weekends to take him down to Zachs Bay near that tower, where he could sail his toy boats in the quiet water near the Playhouse—

“… don’t know,” he heard someone whisper off to one side, partly behind him.

“You think he does?” the whisper came back from down the Bridge.

Silence: probably the sound of a head being shaken. “I think that’s what’s steaming him these last couple days—”

This was the other thing Captain LoBuono hated about sealed-orders runs: the rumor mill that started running when the engines did and didn’t stop until some time during the crew’s next leave, if then.

“I heard different.” Another voice, whispering too.

“What?”

“Some kind of thing they’re studying. Something they found.”

“Thing? What kind of thing?”

Captain LoBuono swung gently around so that his back was broadside-on to the conversation. He looked idly south toward empty water, then swung slowly around to gaze westward, spotting the familiar landmarks: the Coast Guard observation towers on Sandy Hook, and the Sandy Hook Light, oldest in continuous use in the country; the low rise of the Highlands of Navesink, marking the southern boundary of New York Harbor.

“I don’t know. Something—not from here.”

A little further around LoBuono swung, toward the conversation. It stopped.

“Verrazano Narrows,” his Ex said.

“So I see,” said Captain LoBuono, looking through the periscope at the graceful upstrokes of steel and curves of cable. “Got five bucks, Bass?”

There were smiles around the bridge. Three trips ago, they had come this way, and Bass had been easing Minneapolis out of harbor in storm weather while LoBuono attended to paperwork business in his quarters. A nasty unsuspected riptide had pushed Minneapolis into one of the stanchions of the Narrows Bridge. She had taken no damage worse than a good scrape on the hull, but Bass had been mortified, and the crew had teased him good-naturedly and offered to pay the toll for him if he wanted to get onto the Bridge that much.

“Fresh out of small bills, Captain,” Bass said.

“Good man. Sound surface. Steady as she goes, then twenty degrees starboard.”

“Sounding surface.” The usual clangor began. “Twenty degrees aye. Yard Control says our packages are loaded and waiting for us, Captain.”

“Very well, Mr. Lorritson. Surface. Anything from Harbor?”

“Routine traffic west of Gowanus Bay,” Macilwain said. “We pass eastward, starboard of the separation zone. Course to Buttermilk Channel and north to the Yards is clear.”

“Proceed,” Captain LoBuono said.

They sailed on up out of the Lower Bay and into New York Harbor proper, taking their time. LoBuono turned a bit again to admire the view of the skyscrapers towering up over lower Manhattan, or to seem to. He heard no more talk behind him, though, except the normal coming-to-berth chatter. “Tide’s at two,” said Loritz, the second navigator, one of the crewmen who had been whispering before.

“Mind the Spider,” Bass said. LoBuono’s mouth quirked. The treacherous crosscurrents of that name, which ran to the starboard of Governor’s Island, were what had caused Bass his old trouble with the bridge. But this time of day, with high water still two hours off, they were at their least dangerous.

Without more incident they sailed on up through the East River and under the Brooklyn Bridge. Traffic on the bridge slowed down as motorists, seeing the Minneapolis’s sail, braked to stare and point. Captain LoBuono smiled slightly with pride, but the pride did nothing to ease his tension. The sooner we’re loaded and out of here, he thought, the better I’m going to like it.

A few minutes later they passed under the Williamsburg Bridge, where the same slowing occurred, and then turned slightly out of the main East River “deepwater” channel.

“Wallabout Bay,” the second navigator said.

The Navy Yards at last. “Down scope. Pop the top,” Captain LoBuono said. “Mooring crew to the aft hatch. Down to one knot, Bass.”

“One knot aye. Mooring crew reports ready.”

“What’s our berth?”

“Sixteen.”

“Take us in.”

They crept slowly through the outer Shipyard harbor mole. Not much business came this way anymore, what with defense cutbacks and other curtailments on spending: the Brooklyn Navy Yards, once the talk of the world, full of half-laid keels and the rattle of rivets and air-hammers, were now mostly home for mothballed ships and massive lifting cranes whose hooks swung empty in the wind off the Harbor. Still, the Navy used the Yards for occasional nontechnical repairs and provisioning work.

‘Twenty-five degrees right rudder,” Bass said. “Half a knot.”

“Five hundred yards, sir.”

“Very good. Rudder back.”

A crewman was working the wheel that popped the forward hatch. Captain LoBuono waited for him to get out of the way, then went up the ladder to get a look at the day and the mooring.

There was a brisk wind blowing: it had already mostly dried the sail and the superstructure. LoBuono leaned on the sail’s “balcony rail” and gazed down at the dock to the starboard of slip sixteen as Minneapolis sidled gently into it. The dock was stacked with plastic-wrapped crates and packages on dollies, ready to be hauled up onto the superstructure and passed down the hatches. Very slowly, very gently, the boat nudged sideways into the dock.

Bump.

And then, abrupt and terrifying, came the screaming hoot of collision alarms. The whole ship shook, abruptly, and shook again. “What the—” LoBuono started to mutter, and didn’t bother finishing, as he dove down the ladder again.

By the time he reached the bridge, Lorritson was already running out of the back of it, toward the source of the alarms. “Hull breach!” someone yelled at the Captain as he raced past them.

“Bass!” LoBuono yelled at the back of his Ex, running in front of him.

“Not me, Captain!” Bass yelled back. They kept running.

Ahead of them they could hear the most dreaded sound of boat men, the thundering rush of uncontrolled water. They could also hear a slightly more reassuring sound, that of watertight compartments with automatic doors, dogging themselves closed. First Bass, then Captain LoBuono came to the final door, the one down at the far end of the weapons room, and found it closed as well. Behind it, they knew, lay the door with the “DANGER—RADIATION” sign. They looked at each other as they stood there.

LoBuono grabbed a mike that hung nearby and thumbed its “on” button. “Bridge! Everybody accounted for?”

“All accounted for, sir,” said the Crew Chief’s voice. “No one’s back there.”

“Get someone out in the water and have them see what the damage is!”

“I’ve got a man out there now, Captain,” the Crew Chief said. “One moment—” There was an unintelligible squawking of secondhand radio conversation. Then the Crew Chief said, “We’ve got a breach about a foot and a half by two and a half, from the looks of it. Deck crew are getting a temp-patch on it. We can pump out the aft compartment in a few minutes.”

“Go,” LoBuono said.

He looked at his Ex. Lorritson opened his mouth, and the Captain said, “Sorry, Bass. The currents in the Narrows are one thing, but I know you’d never make a goof like that in dock.” He made a slightly sour smile. “Put it down to nerves.”

Lorritson nodded. “It’s been—difficult,” he said.

“All around—”

“Patch is in place,” the Crew Chief said. “Pump’s started.”

They heard the throb from the in-hull pump motors starting. For a few minutes more they hummed unobtrusively. Then LoBuono heard the coughing noise that meant they were running out of anything to pump.

“Right,” he said, and turned to Lorritson. “Got your dosimeter?”

Bass patted his pocket, where the little radiation-sensitive patch hung.

“If it turns any interesting colors, get your butt out of here,” the Captain said. He turned the wheel to undo the door.

Clunk! went the latch. LoBuono pulled; the door swung slightly open. He peered around its edge.

His dosimeter, one of the new ones with a sound chip in it which essentially made it a small geiger counter, ticked gently to itself—a slow watch-tick, serious enough but hardly fatal. “Let’s keep it short,” the Captain said, stepping through and looking around cautiously.

There was nothing to be seen but wet floor, wet walls, wet ceiling, and the silvery-gray metal crate in the middle of it all, as wet as everything else. Slowly LoBuono walked around it. The front was fine. The sides were fine.

The rear of it, though, had an oblong hole about a foot and a half wide and two and a half feet long punched through it. The bent rags and tags of metal around the hole in the crate were all curved outward. LoBuono’s dosimeter began to tick more enthusiastically, as did Lorritson’s when he came up beside the captain and peered through the hole in the crate. There was nothing inside.

They looked at the hole in the hull, now sealed with pink plastic fast-patch. It very closely matched the one in the crate, both in size and in the direction of impact—from inside, punching toward the outside. Whatever had been in the crate, it had waited until the most opportune moment and then had left under its own power…

Lorritson looked at the hole in the hull, reached out to touch it, thought better, and let the hand drop. “I guess we’d better call the lost and found.”

Captain LoBuono shook his head. “The lost part we seem to have handled,” he said sourly. “We’ll be in enough trouble for that very shortly, I would imagine. As for the found part—are you sure you would want to?”

Lorritson shook his head like a man unsure of the right answer. “Come on,” LoBuono said, “let’s get on the horn to the brass. We might as well start the trouble ourselves as wait for it to come to us.”

But as they walked to the Bridge, LoBuono found himself wondering again, against his own orders, just what might have been in that box… and he shuddered.

ONE

HE had been in many strange and terrible places, in his time. He had been off Earth, on other planets, to other galaxies, even. He had faced threats terrible enough to make all Earth shudder, and had come away from them alive. All in all, he didn’t have a bad record so far.

But right now, Peter Parker stood outside the doors of the 48th Street midtown branch of the First Manhattan Bank and cursed at the way his palms were sweating.

Behind him, the city made its accustomed roar. People on the sidewalk rushed past, going about their business, no one noticing the young man standing there paralyzed by his own unease—he refused to call it “fear.” I’m a super hero, he thought. Why am I standing here twitching?

No answers came. Peter scuffed one sneaker on the sidewalk, staring at the chrome and plate glass of the bank. He had never been entirely comfortable with the term “super hero,” at least not as applied to himself. Some of the other people he consorted with in his line of business—mutants or other humans unusually gifted with extraordinary powers—seemed to him really to merit description with the word “hero”: many of them exhibited a level of courage or nobility which inspired him and sometimes shamed him. In his own case, “super” couldn’t be argued with. But the way he often felt while out on his rounds—frustrated, enraged, sometimes terrified—struck him as less than heroic. This kind of thing… this is different. Harder, in a way. This is just life.

The people on the sidewalk just kept streaming past him. It was lunchtime, and they had more important things to pay attention to than a reluctant super hero, had they even recognized one in his street clothes. Peter let out a long sigh, squared his shoulders, and walked into the bank.

He made his way through the soulless cheerfulness of the front of the bank, filled with gaudy posters shouting about mortgages and favorable interest rates, and went to the customer service counter. For all the attention anyone paid him for the first five minutes, he might as well have stayed outside. The young woman who finally came over to him did so with the air of someone engaged in much more crucial matters than serving a customer. “Yes?” she said, and popped her bubble gum.

“Mr. Woolmington, please?” Peter said.

“He’s out to lunch.”

This chimed well with some of Peter’s private opinions about the man, but he was hardly going to say as much in public. “Can you tell me when he’ll be back?”

“Dunno,” said the young woman behind the counter. “This afternoon sometime.” She turned away.

“Can you take a message for him, please?”

Popping her gum in a manner which suggested she had been a machine gun in an earlier life, the young woman said, “Yeah?”

“Please tell him—” Peter had a powerful urge to say, Please tell him that Spider-Man was here to see whether his debt-consolidation loan’s been approved yet, or whether he has to get one of the Avengers to cosign for it. He restrained himself. “Please tell him Peter Parker stopped in to see if there was any news on his loan approval.”

“Uh huh,” said the young woman, and she turned away again.

Peter watched her go, then walked back out to the street again, feeling—actually, a little grateful. He was so sure the answer was going to be “no” when it came, that not finding the guy there to give him the bad news was a blessing, in a way.

He walked on down 48th Street toward Fifth Avenue, hands in his pockets, staring at the sidewalk—as much from self-defense as anything else. No matter how much you fined people for not cleaning up after their dogs, it never seemed to help much.

Banks…. Peter thought. This had been just one more of many situations in his life lately which had made him wonder whether being able to invoke the inherent cachet of superherodom openly would be any use. Or, would it just make matters worse? There were some heroes who functioned without secret identities, and when you saw them socially—if you did—they seemed to be managing okay. All the same, Peter suspected their answering machines were always full when they got home from heroing, or even from doing the shopping, and the thought of how much junk mail they must get made him twitch. Even without anyone knowing his own secret identity, Peter got enough to make his trips to the recycling bins a trial for anyone, super hero or not. And when you added MJ’s endless catalogs to the pile.…

He smiled slightly as he crossed Madison and headed on along toward Fifth. Mary Jane Watson-Parker was quite a celebrity in her own right—or had been, until she had left the soap opera Secret Hospital. Even before that, she had been well enough known for her modeling work. As a result, every mail-order house in the country, it seemed, sent her notifications of its new product lines… and she went through every one lovingly, pointing and oohing at the goodies.

But, of late, not buying from them. Things had gotten—well, not desperate, but tight. It was easy to forget how lavish money from TV work was until you lost it. Until then, MJ had spent some months persuading Peter to lighten up a little, to go ahead and spend a little money, buy himself that jacket, eat out more often. Peter had resisted at first. Finally, because it made her happy, he had given in—gotten used to enjoying himself, gotten used to having more funds to work with, gotten out of the habit of dreading the time the credit card bills came in.

And then, just as he had gotten used to it, it had all changed.

Now the mailbox was once again a source of uneasiness. The rent on the apartment, easy enough to handle on the combined incomes of a minor TV star and a freelance photographer, had now become a serious problem. Breaking the lease before it expired so that they could move somewhere smaller and cheaper was proving near impossible. So was keeping up the rent on just a freelancer’s salary. They had some savings: not a huge sum, but it would last a while. MJ was out there getting every interview and audition she could scrape up. She was getting depressed, too, at not having been hired for something else right away. But Peter, just as nervous about it all as she was, had been purposely staying cheerful, trying to keep her spirits up and prevent her from getting discouraged. At the same time, he desperately wished there was someone to keep him from getting discouraged.

Being a super hero is all very well, he thought. I just wish it paid better.

I wish it paid, period!

He stopped at the corner, waiting for the light, while around him people hurried across anyway, daring the oncoming traffic. Whether heroing paid or not, he had to do it. Just as he had to take pictures, because he loved to, whether he got paid for them or not. Just as he had to study science, whether there seemed to be a job in it for him later or not. The old habit, the old love, went back too far, was too much a part of him now to let go.

He just had to make everything work together, somehow.

The light changed. Peter crossed, heading up Fifth to West 49th, then over to the shop where he usually got his photographic supplies. He had a couple of hours’ work in the darkroom before him. Usually he tried to wind that up before MJ got home from her day out and complained about the smell of the developing solution (as well she might). It wasn’t always easy. Darkroom business had become a lot more complicated, and more expensive, since the Daily Bugle’s front page had gone color. Now a photographer who aspired to lead-story work had to be able to manage quality color processing at home—a one-hour place wouldn’t cut it. And color chemicals were four times the cost of black-and-white.

Nothing he could do about it, though. Peter swung into the store, waited a few moments: Joel, the owner, was busy trying to sell a guy in a leather jacket a large and complicated camera case. After a few minutes the guy shook his head and went off.

“Hey, Petey,” Joel said, “you need a camera case?”

Peter snorted. “That thing? With the plastic hardware on it? It wouldn’t last a week.”

They both laughed. It was an old game: Joel would push something useless at Peter; Peter would push it back. Then they would gossip a while. Peter had learned not to cut the gossip short—Joel sometimes knew about potential news stories in the area, and once or twice Peter had been able to bring in hot pictures to the Bugle as a result, before anyone knew anything about the news story in question.

“Hey,” Joel said, bending down to rummage under the counter for a moment. “Got that gadget you were asking me for.”

“Which one?”

“Wait a sec.” Joel vanished below the counter, and things began to appear on it: rolls of film, brushes, lens caps, lens hoods, and lots more small pieces of equipment. After a moment he came up with a little black box with a clear plastic lens on the front.

“Strobe slave,” Joel said.

“Got one already,” Peter said. It was a useful accessory for a photographer, a second flash cabled to his camera and “slaved” to the first, so that they went off together. That way you could add light to a dark scene, or fill in unwanted shadows from the side.

“Not like this, you haven’t,” Joel said. He picked up the little box and turned it to show Peter a tiny secondary lens on the side. “Wireless. It goes off when your flash does by sensing sudden changes in the ambient light.”

Peter picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully. He had been thinking about some improvements to his present rig. “Any way you could hook a motion sensor to this, you think?”

Joel nodded, pointing to a jack socket on the back of the slave flash. “One of my other customers did something like that. Nature photographer. He picked up one of those passive infrared things, you know the kind—the doohickey that turns on your outside lights when someone gets close to the door. Saved him having to watch the birdie so much.” Joel chuckled. “The bird moves, the camera takes its picture before it flies the coop.”

Peter smiled. “I can use this. How much?”

“Forty.”

He sighed, did some hurried addition in his head and pulled out his credit card. “Okay. And give me another package of three-by-five stock and a bottle of three-fifty, would you?”

“No problem.” Joel went back to the shelves, came back with the gallon bottle of developer solution and the photo paper. For a moment he worked at the cash register. “Your lady find work yet?” he said.

Peter shook his head. “Still hunting.”

“Hmm. You know, I have a guy comes in from the network place around the corner, the studios for the daytime stuff. Yesterday he told me they’re hiring actors all of a sudden. Some kind of high-class soap, he said.” Joel chuckled. “ Is there such a thing?”

“You’ve got me. But I’ll tell MJ to check it out.”

The cash register dinged. “Sixty-two thirteen,” Joel said.

Peter winced and handed his credit card over. “Did the price of the three-fifty go up again?”

“Yup. Another four bucks. Sorry, Petey.”

“Not much we can do, I guess,” Peter said, as Joel swiped the card through the reader.

“Don’t I know it. The distributor says he can’t do anything since the manufacturer’s raised his prices…” Joel sighed. The reader beeped twice: Joel looked down at it, then raised his eyebrows. “Uh oh. They declined it.”

Peter swallowed. “Didn’t get the payment yet, I guess.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised. Did I tell you I sent my sister-in-law in Brooklyn a birthday card two weeks early, and it didn’t get to her until two weeks afterwards? I ask you. You’d think we were in Europe or something. Come to think of it, I get letters from my cousin there faster than I do from Cecile.”

Peter dug out his wallet and produced the necessary cash, noting sadly that this process left him with the munificent sum of one dollar and sixty cents. “Yeah,” he said. “Here you go.”

“Right.” Joel handed him his change. “Hey, Petey—” Peter turned, already halfway to the door. Joel waggled his eyebrows at him. “Don’t let it get you down. It can only get better.”

Almost against his will, Peter smiled. “Yeah. See you, Joel.”

“See you.”

All the same, as he walked on down the street, it was hard for Peter to see any way that things would get better any time soon. There’s only one thing, he thought, that’s going to make it seem worthwhile.

Tonight….

The apartment was empty when he got there. It was big and roomy, with a nice enough view of the skyline, and a slightly less impressive view of the next-building-over’s roof, about ten stories below their own and in this weather well covered with people in bathing suits trying to get a tan through the smog. The apartment’s big windows let in plenty of light on white walls and a polished oak floor. There, as in some of MJ’s show-business friends’ apartments, it might have stopped, finding not much else to shine on. But unlike them, MJ had no patience with the presently fashionable minimalist school of decorating which considered one couch and one throw rug “enough furniture” and left the place looking barren as a Japanese raked-sand garden. Mary Jane Watson had been something of a packrat—though in the best possible taste—and Mary Jane Watson-Parker remained so. Her tastes ran more toward Laura Ashley than Danish Modern: big comfy sofas and chairs to curl up in, cushions scattered around, lots of bookshelves with lots of things on them—vases, bric-a-brac old and new (mostly old), and lots of books. It made for a comfortable and welcoming environment, though it was a pain to keep properly dusted.

Dusting, though, was not on Peter’s mind at the moment. The new strobe slave was. Peter made his way back to the darkroom, unloaded the developing chemicals and the paper, and went back out to the front of the apartment to see what the answering machine had for him. Two invitations to subscribe to the New York Times (which they already did), one offer to clean their carpets (there weren’t any), two anonymous please-call-this-number messages (probably bill collectors: sighing, Peter took the numbers and wished the machine had thrown one of its occasional fits and lost the messages). No offers of work, no parties, no sudden legacies, no good news.

Oh well. Tonight….

Peter got up and went back to the table where he had dropped the new strobe slave. It was often difficult to take decent pictures when you weren’t behind the camera, but in front of it as Spider-Man. It was tough to pay much attention to f-stops and exposure times when you were duking it out with some bad guy. It was the devil to keep the camera pointed at the action when you were swinging by your webline from one rooftop or another. Also, criminals, both the elite super villain types and your ordinary garden-variety crooks, were generally not very amenable to staying in the camera frame while you were having it out with them. Peter had been trying to find a solution to both of those problems for some while.

Now, though, I might have one. On the table, left over from where he had been fixing MJ’s sunglasses the other night, was a set of ultratiny screwdrivers which he also used for jobs like maintenance on his web-shooters and getting the faceplate off the microwave when its LEDs failed. Now he picked up the third-largest of the group, undid the screws on the bottom and sides of the strobe, and carefully pried the backplate off, taking a long look at the insides. It was a fairly straightforward array, though some of the soldering on the chip at its heart was slapdash. A transistor, some assorted diodes, all labeled for a change; an LED to tell you when the gadget was armed; the light sensor; and a bypass circuit to take it out of commission when you had some other triggering mechanism jacked into the input.

Fair enough. Peter had one other piece of hardware which would communicate with this readily enough, with some programming. Miniaturization had worked enough wonders of late, but there was one that not a lot of people but researchers in the sciences knew about. To take up less room on the lab benches, some bright guy in the Far East had taken a whole PC computer motherboard and worked out how to fit it on a board the size of two cigarette packs laid end to end. That, with enough RAM chips, was enough machine-smarts to run a fairly sensitive motion-control apparatus—and that was what Peter had been working on for a while now. The Engineering Department at Empire State University had assumed that one of the doctoral candidates was doing a little good-natured slumming when he came down to pick their brains about the fine points of motion control programming. Privately they thought that the guys up in Nuclear Physics were getting twitchy about handling the radioactives themselves, and were trying to teach the computers how to do it for them. They could hardly have suspected the real purpose of Peter’s visits. Pretty soon, though, he would have something of considerable use to a photographer who was also a crimefighter. Bit by bit, he was building a camera which, with the right motion sensor attached, would turn by itself to follow the action taking place around it, and which could be remotely triggered, and which (if the aforesaid crimefighter got too busy) would follow his movements and fire at preset default intervals. Once this creature was built, his bosses at the Bugle would have fewer complaints about the poor composition of Peter’s shots compared to other photographers’.

And his credit card company would be much happier with him.

For half an hour or so he fiddled with the slave strobe. The actual movement-controlling hardware, the guts of an old portable telescope’s cannibalized and much-altered clock drive, had been ready for a while. All Peter had needed was a suitable actuator. This new slave would do fine until something more sophisticated came along. The afternoon shadows moved across the apartment, and finally the windows lost the sun. Peter barely noticed, finishing his adjustments to the slave itself and then going to fetch the system’s moving parts and the camera itself. It was his best one, a Minax 5600si, with an extremely advanced automatic exposure- and shutter-control system—which it would need, when its owner was hanging by synthesized spiderweb from the top of some building, swinging after a crook, tens or even hundreds of yards away. The camera screwed into a little platform with a ball-and-socket joint able to yaw, roll, and pitch. That, in turn, screwed into the top of a small collapsible tripod which had the motion-control motors and the teeny PC motherboard, each bolted to one of the tripod’s legs in a small shockproof case. The whole business, when collapsed, would fit comfortably into a backpack or one of the several elastic pouches that Peter had built into his costume over time.

Finally, there it all stood, ungainly looking but theoretically functional. He took the camera off its stand, popped off its back, rooted around in a nearby desk drawer for some of the time-expired film he used for tests, loaded the camera, and seated it on the stand again.

The instant the camera was turned on, it whirled on the stand. The camera’s inboard flash went off as it took his picture, and another one, and another, and another….

“Oh jeez,” he muttered, “cut it out.” He stepped away, trying to come around the setup sideways to turn off the slave. Unfailingly the camera followed, taking pictures as fast as it could wind itself, about one per second. The flash was beginning to dazzle Peter. He jumped over the table and took a few steps further around it. The camera tried to follow, fouled itself on its own motion-control cables, and got stuck, still taking picture after picture, its motor making a pitiful and persistent little hnh, hnh, hnh noise as it tried to follow him right around the table. Peter reached out and caught the tripod just as it was about to fall over.

It hnh, hnhed in his hands for a few more seconds before he managed to pull the motion control system’s jack. Well, it works, Peter thought, turning back toward the table. Even if it is a little light on the trigger. I’ll take it out tonight and see how it does.

A key turned in the apartment door, which then obligingly opened. The camera in Peter’s hands flashed. MJ stood in the doorway, caught open-mouthed with a couple of heavy bags of groceries, and looked at Peter curiously.

“It’s not my birthday,” she said. “And I don’t remember calling the media. What’s the occasion?”

“Your glorious homecoming,” Peter said, putting the camera down. “C’mere. I want a hug.”

MJ offloaded the bags onto a table near the door, and Peter collected the hug, and a couple of serious kisses, while behind them the camera flashed and flashed and flashed. After a few seconds, MJ detached herself by a few inches, took his face between her hands, and said, “Gonna run the batteries down that way.”

“What, mine?”

She laughed. “Not yours, lover. Eveready, that’s you. Just keeps going, and going, and…” Peter poked her genially in the kidneys, and MJ squealed slightly and squirmed in his arms. “What, what, why are you complaining? It’s a compliment. Lemme go, the frozen stuff’s going to defrost. It’s like an oven in here. Didn’t you turn the air-conditioning on?”

“I didn’t notice,” Peter said, letting her go. He picked up one of the bags while MJ got the other, and they headed into the kitchen.

“It may be just as well,” MJ said as she started unpacking one of the bags: salad things, a couple of bottles of wine, ice cream, sherbert. “I turned the air conditioner on this morning and it didn’t go. Made a sort of gurgly noise for a while, but no cold air. I shut it off—thought it might recover if I left it alone.”

Peter sighed. “That’s what it did the last time it broke. The compressor, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. The guy said it might not last much longer….”

She reached down into the bag for a couple of cheeses, then picked the bag up and started to fold it. Peter opened his mouth to say something about how they really couldn’t afford to have the air conditioner break just now, there were too many other bills… and then he stopped. MJ looked so tired and woeful. Perspiration and the heat of the day had caked the makeup on her, her hair was all over the place, and she had a run in her stocking. He knew she hated looking like that, and she was so worn down and miserable that she didn’t even care.

He went to her and hugged her. Somewhat surprised, MJ hugged back, and then she put her head down on his shoulder and just moaned softly, a little sound that hurt him as badly as any super villain tapdancing on his spleen.

“Nothing today, huh?” he said.

“Nothing,” MJ replied, and was silent for a little while. “I can’t stand this much longer. I hate this. I’m a good actress. At least, they all used to say so. Were they just saying that because they wanted to stay on my good side? And if they weren’t just saying it, why can’t I find another job?”

Peter didn’t have any answers for her. He just held her.

“I’ve been all over this town,” MJ muttered. “I’m either too tall, or too short, or too fat, or too thin, or my hair’s the wrong color, or my voice is wrong somehow. I wouldn’t mind if I thought the producers knew what they wanted. But they don’t know. They don’t know anything except that I’m not what they want. Whatever that is.” She breathed out, hard. “And my feet hurt, and my clothes stick to me, and I want to kick every one of their sagging, misshapen butts.”

“Oh, come on,” Peter said, holding her away a little now, since her voice told him it was all right to. “Their butts can’t all have been misshapen.”

“Oh yes they can,” MJ said, straightening up again and reaching for the second paper bag, while Peter still held her. “You should have seen this one guy. He had this—”

“Who’s all this food for?” Peter said suddenly, looking at the counter, which was becoming increasingly covered with stuff. Chicken breasts, more wine—dessert wine this time—fresh spinach, cream, fresh strawberries. “Is someone coming over for dinner, and I forgot about it? Ohmigosh, you said we were inviting Aunt May—”

“It’s for us,” MJ said. “Why do we only have to have nice dinners when people are coming over? Besides, May is next week. You have a brain like a sieve.” She folded up the other bag, picked up its partner, and shoved them into the bag drawer.

“No question about that whatsoever,” Peter said, abruptly glad of an excuse not to have to tell her immediately about the bank, or the credit card, or the answering machine. “Sieves R Us. What’s for dinner, sexy?”

“I’m not telling you till you set the table. And tell your little droid friend out there that he doesn’t get a high chair. He can sit in the living room and I’ll give him a can of WD-40 or something.” She hmphed, an amused sound, as she pulled a drawer open and started taking out pots and pans. “Flashers. I have enough problems with them in the street without finding them at home.”

Peter chuckled, picked up the camera tripod and its associated apparatus and carried it into the living room, where he left the camera with its face turned to the wall. Then, humming, he went to get the tablecloth.

Tonight, he thought. Tonight we’ll see.

Much later, well after dinner, the lights in the front of the Parker apartment went out.

The lights in the back were still on. MJ was in bed, propped up in a nest of pillows, reading. If someone heard about this tendency and asked her about it, Peter knew, MJ would tell them one version of the truth: that she was just one of those people who found it constitutionally impossible to get to sleep without first reading something, anything. The other truth, which she only told to Peter, and no more often than necessary, was that she needed to do something to take her mind off his “night job,” as opposed to his day job. His night job’s hours were far more irregular, the company he kept was generally far less desirable, and sometimes he didn’t come back from it until late or, rather, early. Peter knew MJ restrained herself from saying, much more often, how much she feared that one night he would go out to the night job, and never come back from it. He had learned to judge her level of nervousness by how big a book she took to bed with her. Tonight it was The Story of the Stone, a normal-sized paperback. So Peter went out in a good enough humor, as relaxed as he could be these days, when he was no longer quite a free agent.

It was perhaps more strictly accurate to say that Peter Parker opened the window, and turned off the lights. Then, a few minutes later, someone else came to the window and stood for a moment, the webbed red and solid blue of the costume invisible in the darkness to any putative watcher. It was always a slightly magical moment for him, this hesitation on the border between his two worlds: the mundane standing on the threshold of the extraordinary, safe for the moment… but not for long.

Tonight he hesitated a shorter time than usual. The camera and its rig were collapsed down as small as they would go, slipped into the back-pouch where they would stay out of his way. If anyone caught sight of him on his rounds tonight, they would probably find themselves wondering if they were seeing some new costumed figure who had decided to emulate the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He chuckled under his breath at the thought. Would one more costumed figure attract any attention inthis city anymore? he wondered. Lately the place had been coming down with them. Meanwhile, there would be the usual stir if one of the natives spotted him, one of the more familiar, if not universally loved, of the super heroes in town.

Under the tight-fitting mask, he smiled. Then Spider-Man slipped out the window, clung briefly to the wall, and closed the window behind him, all but a crack.

Carefully, as usual, he wall-crawled around the corner of the building—theirs was a corner apartment—and around to the back wall, where MJ’s bedroom window was. The window was open, in the hope of any cool breeze. He put his head just above windowsill level, knocked softly on the sash. Inside, on the bed against the far wall, the reading light shone. MJ looked up, saw him, smiled slightly, made a small finger-waggle wave at him: then went back to her book. She was already nearly halfway through it. I still wish she could teach me to read that fast, he thought, and swarmed up the back corner of the building, making for the roof.

He peered cautiously over the edge of the roof balcony. There was no one up there this time of night: it was too hot and humid, and their neighbors with air conditioners seemed to have stayed inside to take advantage of it.

Can’t blame them, he thought. It was a heck of a night to be out in a close-fitting costume. All the same, he had work to do.

About a third of a block away stood a tall office building. Spider-Man shot a line of web to a spot just south of the roofline near the building’s corner. And we’re off, he thought, and swung.

He had five different standard exit routes from the apartment, which he staggered both for security—no use taking the chance someone might see him exiting repeatedly and figure something out—and for interest’s sake. Security was more important, though: he didn’t want to take the chance that someone would find out where he was living by the simple expedient of following him home.

By now the business of swinging through the city had become second nature, a matter of ease. Tarzan could not have done it more easily, but then, Tarzan had his vines hanging ready for him. Spider-Man made his swinging equipment to order as he went. He shot out another long line, swung wide across Lexington and around the corner of the Chrysler Building, shot another line way up to one of the big aluminum eagle’s heads, and swarmed up the line to stand atop the head and have a look around.

This was a favorite perch: good for its view of midtown, and it had other attractions. This was the particular eagle-head on which Margaret Bourke-White had knelt while doing her famous plate photos of the New York skyline in the late forties. Spidey stood there a moment, enjoying the breeze—it was better, this high up—and scanned his city.

It moved, as always it moved: restless, alive, its breath that old soft roar of which he never tired, the pulse visible rather than audible. Red tail-light blood moving below him in golden-lined sodium-lit arteries, white light contesting the pathways with the red; the faint sound of honking, the occasional shout, but very faint and far-off-seeming, as heard from up here; the roar of late jets winding up, getting ready to leap skyward from LaGuardia; lights in a million windows, people working late, home from work, resting, eating meals with friends, getting ready to turn in. Those people, the ones who lived here, worked here, loved the place, couldn’t leave—those were the ones he did this for.

Or had come to do it for. It hadn’t started that way, but his mission had grown to include them, as he had grown.

Spider-Man breathed out. While Spidey had never established a formal communication with the various lowlifes, informants, and stoolies that populated the city, he still heard things. Over the last couple of days, he’d heard some rumblings about “weird stuff” going on on the west side. Nothing more specific than that, just “weird.”

Spidey slung a long line of web at the Grand Hyatt, caught it at one corner and swung on past and around, halfway over Grand Central, then shot another line at the old Pan Am building, swung around that, and headed westward first, using the taller buildings in the upper Forties to get him over to Seventh Avenue, where he started working his way downtown. That was something he had learned fairly early on: when traveling by web, a straight line was often not the best way to go. It wasn’t even always possible. Buildings tall enough to be useful are not necessarily strung for a webslinger’s convenience in a straight line between him and his destination. Over time Spidey had learned where the tall buildings clustered and where they petered out. He learned to exploit those clusters for efficiency, discovering that an experienced slinger of webs could gain as much speed slingshotting around corners as he lost from not being able to go straight as the crow flew.

Shortly he was down in the mid-Twenties, and he slowed down to take in the landscape. This time of night, things were more than just quiet, they were desolate. There were few restaurants in this area, not even many bars, and almost no one lived here, except the occasional tiny colony of homeless squatting in some unused or derelict structure. Not even much traffic passed by. Here the street lighting was iffy at best, the lamp bulbs missing or sometimes blown out by people who liked the dark to work in. The presence of that kind of person was one of the reasons he patrolled here on a more or less regular basis. Left to themselves, the children of the night might get the idea that they owned this neighborhood, and it was good for them to know that someone else had other ideas.

He paused on the roof of one building, looked up and down its cross-street, and listened carefully.

Nothing. He shot out another line of web, swung across another street, and waited. It was not only sound for which he listened.

Nothing.

So it went for some good while. Not that he minded. Every now and then, he lucked into a quiet night, one which left him more time to appreciate the city and required less of his time worrying about it. The problem was that the worry came a lot more easily than it used to. The city was not as nice as he remembered it being when he was a child—and he chuckled softly to himself, remembering what a dirty, crime-ridden place it had seemed to him when his aunt and uncle first brought him from Queens into Manhattan. By comparison, that New York of years ago—and not that many years, really—was a halcyon memory, a pleasant and happy place, where it seemed the sun had always been shining.

Not anymore.

He paused on another rooftop on West 10th, looking around. Nothing but the muted city roar. Locally, no traffic—but he could hear the grind and whine of a diesel truck, one with a serious transmission problem to judge by the sound of it, heading north on 10th Avenue. We’ve got a dull one, he thought. No “weird stuff” in sight. Normally I’d he grateful.

Then it hit him.

Several times over the course of their relationship, he had tried to explain to MJ how it felt, the bizarre experience he had long ago started to call his “spider-sense.” It was, first of all, very simple: there was nothing of thought or analysis about it. It wasn’t a feeling of fear, but rather of straightforward alarm, untinged by any other emotion, good or bad. It was the internal equivalent of hearing a siren coming up behind you when you knew you hadn’t done anything wrong. It had seemed to him that, if as simple a creature as a spider experienced alarm, it would feel like this.

It also made him feel as if he was tingling all over. He was tingling now.

He stood very still, then slowly turned. The sense could be vaguely directional, if he didn’t push it. Nothing specific northward, nothing to the east. Westward—

He shot out some web and swung that way, over several decrepit-looking rooftops. Unlike the buildings closer to midtown, these were in rather poor repair. There were gaping holes in some of the roofs, places where the tar and shingles and gravel had fallen in—or been cut through. Looks like there’s precious little to steal in most of these, though.

The spider-sense twinged hard, as abrupt and impossible to ignore as the nerve in a cracked tooth, as he came to one particular building. He had almost passed it, an ancient broad-roofed single-story building with big skylights which looked mostly structurally intact, though most of the glass in them was broken. Well, all right…