Triumph of the Supergirl Revenge Squad

by

Tom diCentauri

1964 Jun 12:

Friday night in Stanhope, especially in the summer, never gets completely dark or quiet. Students from the college, after a week of study, recreate themselves with dates and parties. Barely out of their teens, the revelers all too often take too little care with their safety, perhaps drinking too much and getting into fights or not watching where they are going and taking a fall. That no serious damage results may be attributed to the town's guardian angel, who had taken guaranteeing the safety of the college's students as her personal mission.

Rarely seen, she flew lazily over the town. In blue minidress and red cape, she would have been familiar to anyone in the town even before they saw the red-and-yellow ess-on-a-shield emblazoned across her chest. On this particular Friday night she alighted on one of her favorite vantage points, on top of the dome on the college's administration building, and looked out over the town. Music from a dozen fraternity and sorority parties reached her and, exercising a discipline that would astonish any Zen master, she tuned in on one selection after another.

The Pi Delts were playing Elvis Presley again. The Sigma Lambdas had the Everly Brothers' "Let It Be Me" on the phonograph. She heard the Alpha Lambdas, her own sorority (actually Linda Danvers's), playing The Lettermen's "Come Back, Supergirl" and listened to the whole song. One stanza in particular made her smile:

"You broke up with me the other night.

You said I'm worse for you than kryptonite.

I watched you fly 'til you were out of sight

as I cried out my plight.

Won't you come back, Supergirl, come back to me?

Come back, Supergirl! Can't you see I'm in love?"

The lyrics were a little silly, but she liked the melody and the Lettermen's mellow harmonics made her feel romantic.

She leaned back against the dome and gazed skyward, still listening to Friday night in Stanhope. She watched a shooting star streak across the sky from east to west, then saw it execute a u-turn and come back toward Stanhope. Startled, she stared hard at the object and it seemed to leap at her and grow huge. Her first impression was that it resembled one of the Pluto Platters that she had seen some students skimming across the quad during lunch breaks. It was a flying saucer, though strictly speaking its shape was that of a very flat oblate spheroid. In any case, it was something that she should investigate.

A spooky force pushed against her back and threw her up off the dome. As she rose she leaned forward and the forcefog aspect of her superpower nimbus shifted its orientation to provide the lift and thrust that drove her through the air in her usual high-diver's pose. As she gained speed the air flowing over her fluttered her hair, her cape, and her skirt and caressed her body in a way that no lover could ever hope to do. She raised her arms over her head and used the airflow over her hands to execute her pitch, roll, and yaw maneuvers.

She had started out flying in the direction opposite the direction taken by the flying saucer. She tilted her hands up to pitch herself up through an ascending half loop, then she leveled off with the ground above her, and executed a half roll to bring herself into normal flying attitude. She remembered her mother taking her into a flight simulator and demonstrating what Earth people called an Immelmann turn, never suspecting that someday she would be executing such turns without the need for an airplane.

The alien spaceship had gone toward the hills north of Stanhope, away from the town's lights, into the dark. But to Supergirl's eyes the faintest starlight was sufficient to illuminate the landscape as bright as day and in full color. It didn't take her long to spot the alien vessel sitting in the middle of a clearing on a flat level area on the side of a hill. She pitched up, gave herself a kick forward, and then, sliding through the air on her belly, coasted on a parabolic arc that would bring her down about two hundred feet from the saucer.

From her vantage point soaring over the forest she watched three women carry a strange-looking apparatus down the ramp that had formed when part of the saucer's hull opened outward. The women wore red coveralls and had pale blue skin: they looked like the people that her cousin called Wexrians. He was familiar with the Wexrians because of a cabal of Wexrian men who, for unknown reasons, insisted on harassing him. They called themselves the Superman Revenge Squad, though it was anyone's guess as to what they thought they were avenging. If the three women in the clearing were, indeed, Wexrian, then it would pay Supergirl to be cautious.

She stared hard at the apparatus that they were setting up in the meadow and the apparatus went completely transparent for her. The women, likewise, were completely transparent to her x-ray vision. The saucer was almost completely transparent: two boxy compartments simply refused to go transparent for her. The larger of the two was open and she could see that it was empty. From its shape she guessed that it held the apparatus now standing in the meadow. The smaller compartment was closed, so she decided that she would avoid going within one hundred feet of it until she was certain of the women's intentions.

Coming almost straight down, she tucked herself in, executed a forward half somersault, and came out of it falling feet first. She exerted her thrust, came to a halt an inch above the grass, and gently lowered herself to the ground.

"Hello, there!" she called out as she walked toward the women. "Welcome to Earth!"

The women looked up from their work, looking around as if trying to see whence the call came. One shone a light and spotted her. The women then stood and watched her.

As she approached the women she felt as if ultrafine gossamer threads were being pulled en masse through her body. Normally she ignored the flux of Earth's magnetic field, allowing her subconscious mind to use it as an aid to navigation, but this field was dense. She soon inferred that it emanated from the device the alien women had set up. It felt like what Professor Pepperwinkle called a dipole field, a magnetic field shaped much like Earth's.

"Do you speak English?" she asked when she got close enough to the women to use a normal conversational tone.

"Yes, we do," one woman said in thickly accented English. She had bright red-orange hair and stood slightly taller than Supergirl. "I am H'ngidra Yoynatt and my companions and I have come to study your world."

"I am called Supergirl," Supergirl said, "and I would be glad to help you if you encounter any difficulties in your study." She felt the magnetic field begin to diminish, then suddenly an intense stinging, burning cold sensation swept through her. Intuitively she tried to levitate herself away from where she stood, but she was too close to the kryptonite and the onset of the kryptonitic radiation had been too abrupt. She succeeded only in throwing herself twenty feet away from where she had been standing. Desperately she tried to crawl away from the women's apparatus, for now she understood that it was the source of the radiation.

Three pairs of hands grabbed her and hauled her back toward the saucer.

"No, please don't," she cried out. "The radiation will kill me!"

"No, it won't," H'ngidra said. "We won't let it. We want you alive."

Supergirl knew then that she had walked into an especially clever trap. Instead of hiding their kryptonite inside a lead container, the Wexrian women had magnetized a piece to suppress its deadly radiation and then, when she was well within its range, damped the magnetic field to restore the kryptonitic radiation field. It would be a lesson well learned, but only if she survived it.

The Wexrians half dragged, half carried her aboard their vessel. They took her to the control compartment and laid her on the floor. She saw the wide curved window set into the saucer's hull above a console covered with indicators of various kinds and the dials, switches, and buttons needed to control the ship. She also saw three high-backed, well-cushioned chairs bolted to the deck, only one of which came up to the control console. She then noticed that H'ngidra had taken a shiny package from the lead container that she had seen earlier. H'ngidra set the package on the deck and opened it out.

It looked like a sleeping bag made of silk-soft, glass-smooth, clear plastic that had green stripes printed lengthwise on it. Supergirl guessed that the vinyl ink in the stripes contained kryptonite dust, which would keep her helpless. The other two women held her while H'ngidra put her feet into the bag and then pulled the bag up over her. H'ngidra pulled the top of the bag over her head like a hood and then knelt at her feet. Supergirl saw her pick up a hose and then take between her thumb and forefinger a translucent-white tube, half an inch long and a quarter inch wide, that protruded from an inch-wide translucent-white aureole near the base of the bag. H'ngidra pushed the end of the hose into the tube and pressed the lever near that end.

Supergirl heard air blow into the bag. After a minute she felt the bag's inner layer of plastic begin to press against her. She tried to struggle, but to no avail. H'ngidra blew the bag full and taut, patting the plastic when she was done. The bag now held Supergirl firmly in its grip.

At the same time the other women had gone to retrieve their phony scientific apparatus. They brought it aboard the saucer and put it into the larger lead container. Supergirl felt the stinging burning-cold sensation in her body diminish to an electic tingle. She felt better, but she was still too weak to get out of the inflated bag, much less break out of the spaceship.

The women then took from a drawer three calf-length serving aprons made of blue plastic on which her emblem had been printed in reverse at crotch level. Red letters in the Wexrian language were printed below the emblem. The women put the aprons on, tying their doubled-plastic ties behind their backs. Then they faced their prisoner, put their right hands on the reversed emblem, and pushed it into their crotches.

"Supergirl," H'ngidra said. "We of the Supergirl Revenge Squad salute you!"

Then in unison all three women said, "Grovel, Kryptonian pig!"

The Wexrians lifted her off the deck and set her into an upright padded cradle and closed a trio of padded steel bands that held her in it. Having thus secured their prisoner, they strapped themselves into their seats and commenced their preflight check.

"H'ngidra," Supergirl said, "where are you taking me and why?"

H'ngidra turned her head and nodded to the woman with violet hair. The violet-haired woman got out of her seat and came to the cradle to confront Supergirl.

"I am Nagikra Yasnin," she said. "I will be disciplining you." She slammed the heel of her right hand into Supergirl's mouth. "Shut up!" She went back to her seat and strapped herself in.

The pain brought tears to Supergirl's eyes. She decided to keep quiet and concentrate her attention on what H'ngidra was doing to fly the spaceship. She emptied her mind of all conscious thought, opened it to perception only.

With Nagikra once more strapped into her chair, H'ngidra drove the spaceship skyward. The ship shuddered and keened as it rose through Earth's atmosphere. For long moments H'ngidra did little more than sit and glance at the indicators on her control board. Then a bell chimed and H'ngidra danced her hands over the controls in front of her.

Supergirl heard an echoing sound like the crack of lightning and through the ship's windows saw the star-spattered black of space replaced by the swirling black-speckled luminous butterscotch fog of hyperspace. For several hours all Supergirl saw and heard was the fog of hyperspace and her captresses talking in Wexrian and laughing. Then the bell chimed again and H'ngidra brought the little ship out of hyperspace, coming out what looked like only a few hundred miles above the surface of a planet very much like Earth.

The ship fell and H'ngidra used its engines to slow the descent and to transform a vertical fall into a shallow glide. The ship seemed to float above a vast sea of dazzling-white cloud and then sank into it. Suddenly white covered the windows and then dimmed down into progressively darker shades of gray. As H'ngidra flew the ship the woman with moss-green hair, Dvorla Chuzz'hvoz, talked on the radio with someone.

After some time the ship broke out of the clouds and approached a rural landing field. Surrounded by fields of vegetables and orchards, the landing field consisted of a wide concrete pad and a hangar that had a small building annexed to one side. H'ngidra brought the ship down on the pad next to two other ships, shut down the engines, and went through her power-down checklist. Nagikra opened the ship's hatch and Supergirl could hear the soft roar of rain falling on the concrete. A puff of cold air wafted into the ship and kissed her.

With the ship secured H'ngidra got up from her seat and from a cabinet took her soft, skin-smooth, transparent-red raincloak. As H'ngidra put the raincloak on Supergirl saw that instead of sleeves it had capelets that added to its swishiness. Dvorla took a transparent-turquoise raincloak from the cabinet and put it on, carefully closing the magnetic patches down its front. Nagikra put on a transparent-gray plastic raincloak and then unfastened the straps holding Supergirl in the cradle.

H'ngidra and Dvorla brought forward a gurney that they had retrieved from the ship's rear compartment and the three women lifted Supergirl in her plastic cocoon onto it and strapped her down. Then, before the women rolled the gurney out into the rain, H'ngidra opened her raincloak and took off her apron. Then she put the apron over her captive's face and then tied the ties around the inflated cocoon at Supergirl's neck. The sensation of another woman's personal plastic touching her bare skin made Supergirl feel sexual warmth rise within her.

Well, the Wexrian women were certainly pretty enough to warrant sexual desire. And they appeared especially desirable in their plastic raincloaks. But for Supergirl the horror she felt when she started feeling hot came from her understanding that she was feeling attracted to women who clearly intended to abuse her.

Those women rolled the gurney down the ship's ramp and onto the landing pad. H'ngidra closed the ship's ramp/hatch then and the women then towed the gurney across the concrete. Unable the see anything through the opaque-blue plastic of the apron, Supergirl listened to the rain patting on the plastic of the cocoon and of the apron and to the soft swish of the women's plastic raincloaks.

With large wheels, the gurney rolled relatively smoothly over the pavement. Nonetheless, from the way it rocked and bumped Supergirl gained the impression that the landing pad and walkway were not well maintained. After perhaps ten minutes of a brisk walk the women brought the gurney under some kind of cover that protected their path from the rain. They paused there for a moment to let H'ngidra retrieve her apron.

Able to see her surroundings, Supergirl saw first that they had come to a covered walkway that led to the main entrance of a two-story house that sat broadly on the landscape. The women rolled the gurney to the door, waited while H'ngidra unlocked the door and opened it, and then wheeled the gurney into the foyer. There they unstrapped their prisoner, lifted her up, and carried her deeper into the house.

The short, broad hallway from the foyer opened onto a wide circular room that had wide floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking both the front and the rear yards of the house. The central portion of the room was sunk about two feet below the five-foot wide area by the walls. It was into that pit that the women carried Supergirl.

Supergirl saw that the women were carrying her toward an odd-looking structure. It consisted largely of a semicircular stainless-steel foot that embraced a low circular platform that appeared to be made of frosted glass and an upright that rose up from the midpoint of the foot's arc, curved over the platform, and held what looked like a very flat crystal chandelier over the platform. The women lifted her upright and set her on the platform, held her as H'ngidra threw a switch on the back of the upright, and then let her go. Supergirl felt something lift her up a foot and when she squirmed she felt herself bounce up and down and rock to and fro slightly: she was now suspended in some kind of forcefield.

Nagikra came to her then and punched her. The cocoon absorbed the blow, but the intent was not to inflict pain so much as it was to cause humiliation. Supergirl rocked back and then bounced back up to be punched again. Nagikra laughed with delight as she bopped her new toy and watched her bounce and wobble helplessly in the forcefield.

As the women took turns playing with her, Supergirl took another look around the room. To her left she saw five plush chairs set together at the edge of the pit midway between the two sets of windows. A large rectangular portion of the wall opposite the chairs was dark charcoal gray, an amazing contrast with the cream-white of the walls and other decor in the room. A low railing separated the elevated portion of the room from the pit, except for a gap at the steps that the women had brought her down: the women had draped their raincloaks over it near the chairs.

After a time the women tired of bopping their special Supergirl punching bag and sat down in the chairs and talked among themselves in Wexrian. Then Supergirl saw through the front window a small aircraft land on the landing pad and could just make out two people getting out of it and walking toward the house. Moments later two women came into the room, one wearing a transparent-pink plastic raincloak and the other wearing a raincloak made of transparent-white plastic on which blue patterns resembling the outlines of Rannish orchids had been printed. As the two women came down into the pit H'ngidra called the meeting to order and all of the women sat down in their chairs.

"I am now recording this proceding," H'ngidra said. "Those present will now call themselves by name that we may know the representation of the clans." She looked around and then said, "H'ngidra Yoynatt represents her clan."

"Nagikra Yasnin represents her clan," came the next call.

"Dvorla Chuzz'hvoz represents her clan."

"Yundica Yohi represents her clan," said the woman in the transparent-pink plastic raincloak. She brushed back the hood to reveal her raven-black hair.

"Kaiboka Aynurpompen represents her clan," said the woman with silvery-white hair. She finished folding her blue-flowered transparent-white raincloak, laid it onto a footstool, and sat herself down in one of the chairs by H'ngidra.

"The Five Clans are hereby represented," H'ngidra said. "This meeting of the Supergirl Revenge Squad is in session. We meet here on the central estate of Clan Yoynatt of the City of Chiisunbaw in the province of Mpeiff'baw to celebrate the capture of Supergirl and to try her for a heinous crime against the Five Clans."

"Watch and learn, Supergirl1" Nagikra said. She pointed to the dark gray patch on the wall opposite the chairs.

H'ngidra touched the controls on a box next to her chair and the dark gray patch lit up with imagery. A box attached to the projector translated the Wexrian into English for Supergirl's benefit. The imagery began with a picture of a world lit by a red sun and proceeded to show further pictures from the first Wexrian expeditions to a strange and wonderful alien solar system.

The Wexrians had been astonished to discover that one of the planets of a certain red subgiant star bore life. But as they had come closer to the planet they had begun to see unmistakable signs of a native civilization, the lights and other electromagnetic emissions from cities. Cautiously they had sent small probes to land in the continental interiors, far from the areas of habitation that they discerned from high orbit. They had observed the native life and then had disguised other probes to resemble native flying animals. Those probes they had eagerly sent to the planet's largest city.

The explorers had watched in rapt fascination as their probes showed them, scene by scene, a civilization that seemed more a product of fantasy than of evolution. It was a nuclear-powered civilization that had gone through its robotic revolution, but had not yet achieved spaceflight. But the explorers just weren't ready for what came next. It is said that all of Wexr II let out a collective gasp when a probe finally sent over the hyperwave pictures of the aliens who inhabited this civilization. The Wexrians had been utterly stunned and completely flabbergasted to find that intelligent life on that high-gravity hellworld comprised people that resembled them, people who called their subgiant planet k'Raop'tonu or kaRaobadonu, depending upon which decoding machine was used to transliterate the natives' rapid-fire speech.

A giddy, almost religious fervor swept across Wexr II and its off-world colonies. Overnight the Wexrians seemed to focus all their attention on the world that they came to call Krüptonöi.

"There is so much we can gain from these people," Jgoxx Yoynatt, leader of the expedition, had said, "in learning alone. And we have so much to offer them. What a grand friendship our peoples will share!"

"What magnificent people!" Fnugzz Yasnin, his second in command, had enthused. "So much like us... and yet they live and thrive on a world upon which we would be unable to stand up!"

Tgoskk Srepa, an old, well-loved professor of philosophy with long service in the Senate behind him, had urged caution. "Let us not be hasty," he said. "Perhaps we should approach these people slowly... gradually and take sufficient time to get acquainted before we contact them. I think we should reveal ourselves slowly, lest these Krüptonöians misjudge our motives."

It is to the Wexrians' credit that only five clans agreed to participate in a mission to make contact with the Kryptonese civilization. Five clans and five only were represented on the doomed expedition, all of the others having heeded Tgoskk's warning.

Of course, the Wexrians did not know for a fact beforehand that the expedition was doomed. Had they taken Tgoskk's advice and spent the time to learn more of the native culture, they would have anticipated their error and avoided it.

The Wexrians themselves could not land on Krypton, so they were obliged to send an automated ship to bring Kryptonese delegates to them. It was a reasonable enough thing to do. They sent their elegantly appointed lander to the largest city on the planet and instructed it to land in a wide open space near the city's center, an open field eminently suitable for the landing of a spaceship. It was simply remarkable bad luck that the emissary ship landed on the field where, Kryptonese lore has it, the first aliens to come down from the sky had landed. That luck was not improved by the fact that the whole humiliating affair was beamed live to Wexr II and its colonies by hyperwave.

Billions of Wexrians had watched as images of the lander were sent to them from the disguised probes perched around the landing field. Excitement had dissolved into horror as the lander came down on the field and exploded. As the elegant craft disappeared into a ball of fire the watching Wexrians saw the Kryptonese, moving at the manic pace of a movie run five times too fast, pointing what were clearly weapons at their probes. One by one the transmissions from the planet blanked out, finally leaving only the image of Jgoxx staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed into the camera. Later analysis of the datastream showed that the lander had been hit by a dozen projectiles that had been lobbed onto it from positions outside the city.

For years afterward a Wexrian ship had monitored the planet that had so insulted the Five Clans. A member from each of the five clans took a turn on the team monitoring the Kryptonese, seeking to find some way to repay the insult. They were there when the city in which the insult had occurred suddenly vanished. When the planet exploded a few years later the monitors left and it was only some years later that someone noticed a second hyperdrive signature in the records from the explosion. It had been a small craft, a robot barely capable of carrying an infant across the vast lightyears. More years had elapsed as Wrexian astrogators interpreted the signature and traced it to a planet similar to Wexr II, a planet bearing a civilization almost ready for contact. On that planet, Earth the natives called it, they found the teen-aged Superboy and deemed him a suitable target for their vengeance. The sons of the aggrieved families were brought together to form the teams of the Superboy Revenge Squad. "Show the people of Earth what contemptible scum these Krüptonöians are," was their guiding principle, their not-so-simple goal being the utter humiliation of Krypton's last survivor.

The presentation ended and H'ngidra turned off the projector. She then confronted Supergirl.

"Do you understand now the crime for which you must pay?"

"I understand that your ancestors got their feelings hurt, but I didn't see any crime," Supergirl said. "Your own people warned your ancestors to make contact slowly and not to rush into an alien society."

"You didn't see...!" H'ngidra sputtered. Turning to her companions, she said in astonished indignation, "She didn't see any crime! We sent a spaceship to them in peace; they blasted it to flinders; and she didn't see any crime!"

"How were we to know that your intentions were peaceful?" Supergirl asked. "We had been invaded before by people from the sky and the experience was traumatic to us. Even though it has been a thousand years since we won our freedom, we have not forgotten how the Vrang came to our world to enslave and abuse us."

"The Vrang!?" H'ngidra exclaimed.

"Yes," Supergirl said. "We spent centuries living in anxiety over the possibility of other people coming out of the sky to harm us and all because of what the Vrang did to our ancestors."

"No," Dvorla said, "the Vrang never invaded your world. We know the Vrang. They are a primitive, uncivilized people. We know that they never had the ability to build starships. They destroyed themselves in a war before they could leave their own solar system. Your story is a lie."

eeefff

But the rat-faced Vrang had, indeed, come to Krypton and invaded the simple civilization growing there. The Vrang were a smugly malignant people; their first and only starship was, in effect, a pirate ship. Like Vasco de Gama's first expedition into the Indian Ocean, the Vrang's first interstellar expedition came to Krypton not as explorers as much as exploiters and plunderers.

Imprudent in their insolence, the Vrang made two fatal errors. They assumed that small arms would be sufficient to cow the native population. And they took almost two thousand of the natives away to sell them as toys on their homeworld, which they called Aubmilshur. They took them to a subgiant planet like Krypton, but one that revolved about a star that ranked as spectral class G6 on the Harvard classification scale, a yellow sun.

Ever cruel, the Vrang employed sjamboks to cow their captives. Essentially a set of brass knuckles with a four-foot length of fiberglass fishing pole extending from it, the sjambok makes an especially nasty whip. But when a Vrang first tried to use one on one of the arriving captives, the prisoner, to his own astonishment, felt no pain and showed no welt. The Vrang struck again and again, until the captive grabbed the sjambok and struck the Vrang, slicing him in two.

Shocked, the other Vrang turned their heat rays on the captive, but only succeeded in melting the sjambok and destroying the man's clothes, the degrading slave uniform the Vrang had forced him to wear. In short order the Vrang found themselves facing an army of naked, enraged, and superpowered foes. And the Kryptonese learned quickly what they could do. Primitive they certainly were, but stupid they were not. They learned that all of the Vrangs' most powerful weapons were useless against them. They learned that they could fly and teams of them flew through buildings, cutting through the load-bearing columns and toppling the buildings like cut trees. They learned that if they were to stare in a certain way, they could generate their own heat rays: the Vrang cities, towns, and villages went up in howling firestorms.

Eventually the Kryptonese captives discovered their telescopic vision and found the cities on Aubmilshur's moon. Those, too, felt the wrath of the superpowered slave revolt. Only the Vrang settlements on the other planets and moons of the Vrang system escaped destruction by the Kryptonese, who could not conceive the idea of their existence. But over time, cut off from the civilization that had supported them, they all failed and died. Vrang civilization - utterly destroyed - would never rise again from the Stone Age into which the Kryptonese captives had thrown it.

Having thus destroyed any possibility that the Vrang would ever menace Krypton again, the captives all reboarded the starship that had brought them and coerced the crew into taking them home. In despair the Vrang starmen complied, but as the ship began to emerge from hyperspace in the Krypton system a suicidal engineer caused an explosion in the ship's hyperdrive, vaporizing the ship and creating a solitonic tear in space-time that went into a cometary orbit about Krypton's sun. Thus vanished the only evidence that the Vrang had developed interstellar flight.

eeefff

"But it's true to History," Supergirl protested. "Krypton was invaded by people who called themselves Vrang."

"Thus we see the famous Kryptonian devotion to truth," Nagikra sneered. "Even when their lies are exposed, they persist in demanding that we believe them."

"You don't need to believe me," Supergirl said. "All you really need to know is that the events that so distress you occurred long before I was born. Even if there were a crime, I could not possibly be responsible. It makes no sense. I could not have either abetted the act or prevented it. So perhaps you, who are so devoted to truth yourself, will tell me what's the real point of this exercise?"

Nagikra slapped the back of her hand across Supergirl's face. "Impudent skudge!" she screamed. "You inherited the sin of your ancestors, foul nishtok! Your very existence reeks the vile stench of Kryptonian treachery!"

The slap brought tears to Supergirl's eyes, but she persisted in her defense. "Let's consider this hypothesis, then," she said. "The elders of your clans could not face up to the fact that they made an error against the advice of their peers and failed as a result, so they did as a child might do and shifted the blame. You need to know that blaming us for your failures may feel good for a short time, but it won't lead you to any meaningful successes. So long as you blame others for your failures, you will never overcome those failures and you will continue to fail."

"Just as you blame us for your failure to escape our justice?" Nagikra sneered in a truly sad attempt to flip the script on her victim.

"No," Supergirl said. "You and your friends went out of your right way to lay a trap for me. You deceived me. That's not a failure on my part."

"Just more Kryptonian flumgox," Nagikra snorted.

"Would you have us believe that it is our fault that the Directorate gave our seats in the Juventate to other clans?" Dvorla asked indignantly. "It was your people's unprovoked attack upon our mission of peace that allowed our enemies to sabotage our claims to represent the people of our townships."

"Did your Directorate tell you why they gave those seats to others?" Supergirl asked. "If your leaders are as wise as Tgoskk, then they certainly know that people who shift blame are unfit to govern."

She anticipated Nagikra's slap and shifted her weight to make the cocoon rock backward. Nagikra's hand just clipped the end of her nose. Nagikra reacted by pushing on her with both hands and then, when she bounced back forward, punching the cocoon over her belly with all her might. She succeeded only in knocking the wind out of Supergirl and giving her a minor bellyache.

"Throwing tantrums on me won't change anything," Supergirl said. "It just leaves you too weak to do anything of real value."

"Well, we're going to fix that," Nagikra growled. She turned to her companions and said, "I move that we convict Supergirl of bearing the guilt for the dishonor that her people inflicted upon the Five Clans."

No surprise, the vote was five votes for conviction, none against. The four seated women got up out of their chairs and came to stand with Nagikra and confront Supergirl.

"I don't suppose," Supergirl said dryly, "that I could appeal your decision to a higher court, such as - oh, let's say - one of your world's legitimate courts?"

The women ignored her. H'ngidra came to stand before her and the other women formed a semi-circle around her.

"We know," Kaiboka said, "that Clan Yoynatt suffered the greatest humiliation from the Kryptonians. Therefore, in accordance with what was long-ago decided, we offer her possession of the prisoner. If you accept the commission, H'ngidra, place your hands on the prisoner."

H'ngidra put both her hands against the cocoon, pushing Supergirl slightly backward.

"Do you, H'ngidra Yoynatt, take this prisoner to be your personal possession," Kaiboka intoned, "to have and to use, to humiliate for the glory and the honor of the Five Clans, as long as you both shall live?"

"I do," H'ngidra said.

"Then by the authority granted to me by the Five Clans and the Code of Honor," Kaiboka said, "I now pronounce you mistress and slave. You may punch the prisoner."

H'ngidra gave Supergirl a push and then punched the cocoon over her belly when she bounced back up.

"I am your owner now, Supergirl," H'ngidra said as she punched her new toy. "I am your first mistress. My eldest daughter will be your second mistress and her eldest daughter will be your third, and so on. You are now my family's heirloom, to be passed from generation to generation forever."

Starting to pant from the exertion, she stopped punching Supergirl. The other women gathered around Supergirl then and H'ngidra threw the switch to shut off the forcefield that was holding her up. The women grabbed the cocoon before it could fall over and then lifted it up. Led by H'ngidra, they carried Supergirl out of the pit, into a long hall, and into a large room full of strange-looking electronic equipment. They carried her to where a cage stood on a raised circular platform and laid her down on the bare concrete floor.

H'ngidra brought a straw with a flange around its middle and pushed it into the cocoon's valve. With a soft whoosh air began to blow out of the plastic bag and Supergirl was able to move again as the pressure in the bag diminished. After a few minutes went by she was able to sit up. The Wexrian women then pulled the bag off her and stood her up.

"The cage is made of kryptonite coated with a quite brittle layer of lead-based paint," H'ngidra said as she pushed Supergirl toward it. "You won't last long if you try to bend the bars or break the lock."

Still weakened by the kryptonite in the stripes painted on the cocoon, Supergirl submitted to being put into the cage. H'ngidra closed the door and locked it, then went to turn on the apparatus connected to the cage's elevated base and an identical raised platform a few feet away from it. There was only room enough in the cage for Supergirl to stand, so she stood and watched H'ngidra fiddle with her apparatus. She also rested her hands on the horizontal tie-bars and on the lock, slipping one finger out over the gap between the lock and the jamb: she was pleased to note that she felt no burning or stinging sensation, which meant that the bolt was not made of kryptonite. She had the first piece in the puzzle she had to solve in order to escape.

Meanwhile the other women had been folding the cocoon and squeezing the last of the air out of it. When they had succeeded in that task, they folded up the cocoon and put it into a gray metal box. Then they closed and latched the lid on the box.

Suddenly Supergirl felt her superpowers return. A rushing cacaphony swelled in her ears until her mind organized her auditory attention and brought her only what she tried to hear. She felt the gossamer threads of Wexr II's magnetic field sliding through her body as well as those of the magnetic fields generated by the various electrical circuits in the house and she felt the slow turning of the planet in her superkinesthesia. She stared at the apparatus H'ngidra was standing in front of and it went transparent for her, except for those areas shadowed by the lead-coated bars in front of her. So intent was she on watching H'ngidra that she barely noticed Nagikra stepping up onto the platform next to hers. Then she noticed Dvorla staring at her with a worried expression on her face.

"Tijj gil mwnt'snok felgnöpp," she said in an anxious sounding voice.

H'ngidra simply snorted something that sounded like "Hah!" and pressed a large button on the console before her.

Supergirl felt a shock, like the sudden onset of kryptonitic radiation, sweep through her and then fade. When it was gone, so were her superpowers.

"Oh!" she heard Nagikra exclaim from beside her. Turning to look, she saw Nagikra hold her hands out palms up. She saw Yundica lay a steel bar across those palms and Nagikra close her fingers over it. Then Nagikra bent the bar into a U-shape, appearing to exert no effort at all. She held the bar up for Supergirl to see.

"Well, I'm not weak now," she gloated. Then she stepped down from the platform and headed for the door with all but H'ngidra going with her.

"Wait!" Supergirl called after her. "You don't know how to use those powers. You might hurt people."

Nagikra only laughed and kept on going.

Supergirl watched the women disappear into the hallway and then felt H'ngidra jab her in the side.

"Stand up straight, Slavegirl," H'ngidra said.

Shocked, Supergirl obeyed, standing with her hands on her thighs. She still had a startled expression on her face when H'ngidra pressed a blue button next to the one she had pressed to transfer her superpowers to Nagikra.

She heard a loud whump just as she felt as if something had exploded inside her. Then she noticed that she could not move. She also felt as if her clothes had come off her: she felt naked.

"There," H'ngidra said as she unlocked the cage door, "that should prevent your powers from coming back to you. Now Nagikra is the new Supergirl." She opened the cage door, lifted Supergirl out, and set her down on the floor. By luck Supergirl was facing the right way and caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror mounted on the wall near the door. She saw that she had been transformed into an image of herself printed on the opaque-pale-blue plastic of an inflated punching bag, an elongated-ovoid balloon, slightly tapered at the top and weighted at the bottom to keep it upright.

"Perfect!" H'ngidra enthused. "And now I must ask my friends what I should do with you." She held up a portable recorder and pressed a switch.

"Treat her to a feast of wallops, jabs, and bops," Supergirl heard the other four women chant. "Turn her into plastic and punch her 'til she pops!"

H'ngidra shut off the recorder and set it down. Then she gave Supergirl a quick playful jab and Supergirl heard a soft rubbery thump, felt the jolt throughout her entire body, and tipped over backward, rocked back up, and wobbled to a halt, all without her being able to move.

"Don't worry," H'ngidra said. "I made your plastic indestructible. I don't want you to pop. You're going to be my very special inflated plastic prisoner forever!"

She picked Supergirl up again and carried her out of the laboratory. Down the hall she went, back to the main room where the trial had been held, into another hall, up a flight of stairs, and then down another hall to a large, plushly-furnished bedroom. There H'ngidra set Supergirl in the middle of the floor, facing the bed, gave her another jab and then left.

For what must have been several hours she stood inflated - helpless - in H'ngidra's bedroom. Sporadically she heard faint squeals of delight from outside, presumably from her captresses watching Nagikra try our her stolen superpowers. At last, though, the other women left the estate, returning to their own homes. At last H'ngidra was alone with Supergirl.

"Now, you are my plaything," H'ngidra gloated when she came into the bedroom, "my very special slavedoll."

Reduced to utter helplessness as a printed image on a plastic punching bag, Supergirl watched in growing dismay as H'ngidra slowly, sensuously took off all of her clothes and then stood naked in front of her. H'ngidra's pale blue skin reminded her of the transparent-blue plastic of her raincoat. It looked cold, but it was, in fact, as she was soon to find out, as warm as human flesh.

H'ngidra gave her a quick jab that tipped her over backwards almost to the floor. When she bounced back up H'ngidra grabbed her in an embrace and held her. H'ngidra slid her arms down the bag and lifted its base off the floor and then belly bounced it. She pressed her left cheek against soft, skin-smooth, body-warm plastic and felt the bag pneumatically thump her clitoris as she thrust her belly against it and let it swing back to hit her.

Supergirl felt H'ngidra's bare skin pressing against hers. Again she noticed that she felt completely naked. Her tactile sense had apparently been transferred directly to the plastic on which she was a mere image. She felt H'ngidra's warmth and softness. She felt the rubbery smoothness of H'ngidra's skin rubbing against her plastic and she felt H'ngidra's clitoris poking into her crotch, arousing her own lust and getting her hot.

H'ngidra was breathing heavily now and uttering a squealy grunt each time the bag bounced off the top of her crotch. "My prisoner at last!" she moaned, "My plastic prisoner at last!" She had both arms wrapped tightly around Supergirl, pressing Supergirl's face against her cheek and squeezing her hard. She continued belly bouncing her toy for several more minutes and then loosened her grip to let the bag slide down a few inches, sliding down the front of her body, until its weighted base rested again on the floor. She spread her legs and pushed the bag between them so that she could rub her clitoris and labia against it. She emitted her squealy grunts in rapid little series, ending each series with a half-sobbing moan. Then she ended a series with prolonged grunts that took an air of desperation. She jerked against the bag and trembled as she writhed against it. She moaned, "Oh, Supergirl!" over and over again. And then she stopped and stood embracing her new punching bag, panting and stroking the soft, smooth plastic.

For her part Supergirl felt her own arousal, unsatisfied, fade away. She had hoped that H'ngidra's movements would bring her to climax, but, alas, they were not sufficient. Without direct contact with Supergirl's genitalia, H'ngidra could arouse her but not finish her off.

After resting for a time, H'ngidra tightened her embrace of Supergirl, picked her up, and carried her into her bathroom. "Now, my pretty plastic sex prisoner," the Wexrian woman gloated, "it's time for us to take a shower together." She put Supergirl into the oval shower stall and turned her so that she could watch her mistress put on her shower cap.

H'ngidra had a beret style shower cap, Supergirl saw, one made of a milky-white rubber band and a disc of transparent-white plastic printed with turquoise patterns shaped like cartoon butterflies. Apparently, if her experiences were any reliable guide, humanoid women the Galaxy over used this simple accessory whenever they had hairstyles long enough to require a special means of keeping them dry while a woman was bathing. H'ngidra slipped hers over her hair and then tucked stray wisps under the rubber band before coming to get into the shower stall with Supergirl.

She embraced her prisoner again and Supergirl heard a swishing from H'ngidra's shower cap caressing the plastic on which the top of her head was printed. She felt naked and again felt H'ngidra's bare skin soft, smooth, and warm on her plastic. H'ngidra stood with her feet apart and hugged her Supergirl bag to push it partway between her legs. Supergirl felt H'ngidra's erect clitoris pushing against her plastic. H'ngidra pulled her head back, gazed into Supergirl's eyes, and sighed, "My big blowup lesbo love doll!" She was breathing heavily now and on every inhalation she pressed her belly harder against Supergirl. Then she rubbed herself against her toy and brought herself to another hot, shuddering climax, again arousing Supergirl's lust and leaving it unsatisfied.

H'ngidra turned on the water in the shower and bathed herself and Supergirl. As she soaped and rinsed Supergirl, she made sure to turn her so that she could get a good look at the transparent-blue plastic shower curtain and, in particular, at the scene painted upon it. The scene showed Supergirl kneeling before naked, shower-capped H'ngidra and kissing her crotch.

After bathing and drying the both of them, H'ngidra carried Supergirl back into her bedroom, set her by the side of the bed, then got into bed to go to sleep.

Next morning H'ngidra awoke and looked up at Supergirl. As if not quite believing her good fortune, she reached out to touch her inflated plastic prisoner, then gave her a quick jab. Supergirl bounced lightly off H'ngidra's fist, rolled over backward, and then sprang back up to be punched again. For several minutes H'ngidra filled her bedroom with a series of soft rubbery thumps, getting out of bed as she did so. Finally, when Supergirl came back up at her, H'ngidra grabbed her, putting both hands on the sides of the bag at chest level. "Now, kiss your mistress!" she said as she pulled the bag forward and pressed the image of Supergirl's lips against her bare breasts. Supergirl felt H'ngidra's stiffened nipples pushing against her mouth. Before she got too excited, H'ngidra released Supergirl, allowing her to bob upright. She dressed herself and then left, closing the bedroom door behind her.

It was afternoon when H'ngidra came back to her bedroom. She picked up Supergirl and carried her back down to the laboratory. She set her prisoner inside the cage and then closed and locked the cage door. Moments later the other four women in H'ngidra's coven sauntered into the room. Well, three of them sauntered: Nagikra limped.

She had her left leg in a cast, obliging her to use a crutch. Her right arm, also in a cast, resting in a sling draped around her neck. Her head was bandaged and she moved as if in great pain. She gave Supergirl a poisonous look of raw hatred.

H'ngidra pressed the blue button on her console and Supergirl felt as if she had imploded. She felt weight and solidity return to her and understood that she was no longer an inflated plastic doll. Then she felt her superpowers rush back into her. Caught by surprise, she staggered and quickly knelt down to avoid striking the bars of the cage. Then she heard the second thing she needed to know to contrive her escape.

"How long will it take for her powers to come back to her?" Dvorla asked.

"I don't know," H'ngidra said. She poked Supergirl and asked, "How long before your powers come back?"

"Minute or so," Supergirl said, feigning fatigue. She slipped into superspeed mode then and applied her x-ray vision to everything within her field of view. She memorized what she saw and then slowly stood up as if she were getting stronger. "What happened to Nagikra?" she asked as she looked at the injured woman in horror.

"She lost her powers while she was racing against Kaiboka's car," Yundica said. "She's lucky she wasn't killed."

"Yes," Dvorla said as she stepped up onto the platform next to Supergirl's cage. "But we must learn how to use these powers if we are ever to make them truly our own. Now I must try."

"No, wait," Supergirl said. "You should give them to Nagikra again."

Nagikra shook her head as a look of terror crossed her face. "No!" she said. "No! Not again! You want me to kill myself? Is that your sick idea of revenge?"

"No," Supergirl said. "When the power comes back into your body, it will heal all of your injuries more or less instantly. After that I recommend that you do only things that require no exertion so that you won't be in a bad position when the power goes away again."

"It's some kind of trick," Nagikra said in accusation. "There's something you can do with those powers to hurt me, isn't there?"

"No," Supergirl said. "If there were and I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it yesterday. No, you have been hurt far more than you hurt me, so even if I wanted revenge on you, it has certainly been satisfied. All I want is for your mistake to be corrected and then for all of you to correct the mistake you made in bringing me here."

Nagikra made a kind of inarticulate hissing sound, but allowed Dvorla to help her get up onto the transfer pedestal. H'ngidra pressed the red button and again Supergirl felt her superpowers vanish, bleakening a previously rich world of perceptions. Again H'ngidra pushed the blue button and turned Supergirl into an inflated plastic punching bag, which she took out of the cage and set by her apparatus. This time, though, Nagikra stepped into the cage. She had already torn off the casts and bandages and now indicated that H'ngidra should transfer the superpower nimbus from her to Dvorla. When this was done, the women left and H'ngidra carried Supergirl back to her bedroom.

Standing in the middle of the bedroom, Supergirl watched as H'ngidra opened her closet door and beckoned. A young Wexrian woman wearing only a puffed-out plastic shower cap and a raincoat made of soft, skin-smooth transparent-white plastic with opaque-black floral patterns printed on it came out of the closet and stood before H'ngidra with her head bowed.

"You remember Tgoskk Srepa," H'ngidra said to Supergirl. "Well, this is his granddaughter, Jantifra Seveca. She was part of a plot to interfere with our mission, so I made her my personal love slave." She put her left arm around Jantifra's shoulders and patted the woman's belly. "She makes a much better bedwarmer than a busybody, don't you think?"

H'ngidra released Jantifra,took off her clothes, and put on her shower cap. Then she went to embrace Supergirl. "Now, dear Jantifra," she said, "get ready for bed!"

Slowly, reluctantly Jantifra began pulling open the magnetic patches on the front of her raincoat. As H'ngidra watched with deeper and faster breathing, Jantifra slipped off the raincoat and tossed it onto the inflated clear-pink plastic chair by H'ngidra's double bed. Supergirl felt H'ngidra begin to tremble slightly as Jantifra laid herself down on the bed, lying on her back with her hands at her sides.

Unable to contain her lust any longer, H'ngidra went to her bed, laid herself down next to her compliant living doll, and then rolled over to mount her. She slid her left arm under Jantifra's back and pushed her right leg between Jantifra's thighs, then heaved herself on top of her toy and put her right arm around her. Standing helpless to intervene, Supergirl saw H'ngidra's right breast flatten out against Jantifra's left breast and watched as H'ngidra began to rub her crotch up and down Jantifra's right thigh while at the same time rubbing her own right thigh against Jantifra's crotch.

The soft swish of the two girls' shower caps kissing and caressing each other as the girls writhed together provided an undertone to H'ngidra's panting. Soon Supergirl heard a rhythmic squeaking that she assumed was coming from the bed, but the squeaks rapidly evolved into quavery squeals that were clearly coming from H'ngidra as she tautened her arousal. After a minute she paused, whimpering and kissing Jantifra. Three more times she pumped herself almost to climax; the third time she pushed herself all the way. She jerked as if she had been slapped on her fanny, then writhed and squirmed on her prisoner while half-sobbing "Oh, Jantifra!" over and over. Finally she stopped moving and let out a long whimpery groan. For a long time Supergirl heard H'ngidra's labored breathing become slower and quieter. Sometime later H'ngidra roused herself enough to take off her shower cap and toss it onto the chair with Jantifra's raincoat, then she went back to sleep.

eeefff

The next day H'ngidra brought a large brown-paper envelope with her. The envelope bulged slightly and had Wexrian lettering on it. When H'ngidra opened the envelope she commented that it was a new apron, one that she wanted to share with her very special plastic prisoner. She slid the folded up apron out of the envelope onto her bed and then discarded the envelope.

H'ngidra seemed to tremble slightly as she picked up the apron. The apron was made of almost-clear, transparent-turquoise plastic on which pale yellow, pale pink, and pale blue polka dots had been printed. The wide calf-length skirt had a two-inch wide ruffle and the tie and yoke were made of doubled inch-and-a-half wide plastic. H'ngidra commented that the skin-smooth plastic felt rubbery and seemed mesmerized by the waxy sheen of the highlights rippling across the plastic draped limply over her hand.

After a long moment H'ngidra came out of her trance and put the apron on Supergirl, saying, "Here, keep this warm for me!" The bag that Supergirl had been turned into was too big, so the apron's yoke didn't fit properly and the apron hung with its bib over Supergirl's face. H'ngidra brought the ties behind Supergirl's back and looped one end over the other in a kind of half knot. Then she left.

Late that afternoon, with a cool breeze blowing through H'ngidra's bedroom and making Supergirl wobble slightly, H'ngidra returned and tossed something onto her bed. Supergirl's view through the plastic of the apron was hazy, so she only gained an impression of a dark-blue rubber belt. But the apron did not obscure the fact that H'ngidra was taking off all of her clothes. She came to Supergirl, took the apron off her, and put it on herself. "It's almost time," she said in a quavery voice. She retrieved the belt from the bed, held it up to reveal a limp six-inch rubber penis dangling from its midpoint, then knelt before Supergirl to put it on her. She slid the belt around Supergirl's hips and brought its ends together behind her back. When the ends met they merged and tightened the belt. Supergirl felt the belt tighten and then seem to vanish, leaving only the sensation of extra weight on her clitoris.

Taking care not to step on the apron, lest she tear it. H'ngidra got up and held Supergirl at arm's length with both hands. She was starting to breathe heavily as she said, "Now I'm your pleasure slave." She pulled Supergirl against her, took her in a full embrace, pressing her left cheek against Supergirl's, and began rubbing her pelvis against the bag.

Supergirl felt H'ngidra's softness, smoothness, and warmth against her bare skin; she felt H'ngidra's soft red-orange hair warm against her face; and she felt the plastic of the apron rubbing across the top of her clitoris. She felt pressure rising in her crotch, but this time she did not feel her clitoris sliding forward in its sheath. Instead, as the pressure in her crotch grew she felt the apron pressing ever harder against the top of her clitoris, then, as H'ngidra pulled her pelvis back in preparation for another thrust, she felt the apron slide forward on her clitoris, stroke its tip, and then press against its bottom. Immediately she figured it out: her clitoris was receiving sensations from the rubber penis and she had just felt the penis coming erect in response to being rubbed by the apron. The pressure continued to grow as H'ngidra rubbed the apron up and down against the penis and Supergirl felt quivery all over, felt her heart pounding, and would have been panting if she had not been an inflated plastic bag.

Just when Supergirl began to fear that she would burst, H'ngidra took a deep breath, pushed her belly harder into her, and kissed her. Sliding her hands down to the small of Supergirl's back, she leaned back. "Oh, I am so hot for you!" she said, gasping for breath. She released her grip and watched Supergirl bounce lightly off her belly. Then she stepped back, took off the apron, and tossed it onto the chair.

She picked Supergirl up and set her onto the foot of her bed facing her pillow. Supergirl felt especially warm inside as she watched H'ngidra crawl onto the bed, lie on her back facing up at her, and spread her legs. Then something pushed Supergirl from behind, tilting her down on top of H'ngidra. She felt an internal quivering, as if a handcount of flowerflits were fluttering inside her stomach. She felt the ghostly force arch her back, poke her penis/clitoris into H'ngidra's crotch, slide it into her vagina, and then press her down on H'ngidra's body.

"No, please," H'ngidra moaned, as if the sight of Supergirl coming down on her was giving her second thoughts. But then she let out a gasp and groaned, "Oh, Supergirl!" as the rubber penis penetrated her vagina. She embraced her prisoner and began uttering quavery squeals.

"This must be how it feels for a man to do it," Supergirl thought as the force flexed her back, making her hips move to and fro, which pushed the rubber penis deep into H'ngidra's vagina and pulled it partway out for another thrust. She pumped slowly at first and then faster as H'ngidra began panting and her quavery squeals segued into squealy grunts. She became even more aware of the pressure in her penis/clitoris, then she felt a tickling in its tip and suddenly she felt the pressure come rushing out of it in long, hard spurts. She felt H'ngidra squeezing her harder and writhing under her. For a long minute the two women convulsed together and then went limp, H'ngidra panting from her exertion. A moment later Supergirl felt a flash of heat come from H'ngidra's post-coital blush as blood rushed back into the Wexrian's skin. After a time the rubber penis slid out of H'ngidra's vagina and Supergirl bounced upright to stand over H'ngidra as H'ngidra took a nap.

eeefff

H'ngidra seemed to be running a fever. Supergirl could feel it every time H'ngidra held her. For almost two weeks H'ngidra ran hot. Then one day, about noon, she came into the bedroom. Seeming to be in a kind of half-trance, she folded a bath towel and laid it onto her bed and then laid herself naked upon it, lying on her back. With both of her hands she stroked her belly and the insides of her thighs. She began to pant and moved her hands closer to her crotch. She squirmed rhythmically and soon Supergirl saw something protruding from her vagina. For half an hour H'ngidra was in ecstasy, stroking herself and groaning as if in a sexual climax and in that half hour a duplicate of the apron Supergirl had worn emerged from her vagina. When the last of the apron fell out onto the towel H'ngidra did actually climax, convulsing on the bed for several minutes before going limp.

After a time of resting, H'ngidra got up and confronted Supergirl. "Now it's your turn to get pregnant," she said. "Today you will become plastic in the way that Jantifra is. And tonight, when I get on top of you in bed, I will make you pregnant. You will be my hot, plastic bride." She then embraced Supergirl and kissed her.

eeefff

Late that afternoon, H'ngidra put Supergirl into the cage as she had done every day for two weeks now. She closed the door and locked it, then pressed the blue button on her console. In the cage Supergirl felt herself regain her solid form and then felt superpower flow back into her but, as before, feigned dizziness and fatigue, as if her powers were coming back slowly. In fact her powers had returned almost instantly and she shifted immediately into superspeed mode. She looked inside the machine with her x-ray vision and found a good wire to break, one that was visible through the ventilation slits on the side of the machine. She fired a millisecond burst of x-rays through one of the slits to cut the wire.

To the inattentive it would have seemed like merely a casual look around, but in reality it was a carefully choreographed move. By cutting the wire Supergirl had disrupted the functioning of the machine. Now she stood up and gave the impression that her powers had returned fully. Kaiboka stood on the other focus and waited for H'ngidra to transfer Supergirl's powers to her. Nothing happened when H'ngidra pressed the button. She let out an expletive and the other women turned to look at her.

Had anyone of them been watching, she would have seen Supergirl dissolve into a blur. With the Wexrian women distracted, Supergirl plucked a hair and used it to cut the lock on her cage. Before anyone could react she opened the door, stepped out, and herded the women away from the cage lest they knock some lead off the bars, then she tied them up. Moving at superspeed, she was an effective cage herself. The Wexrian women could only go whither she wanted them to go. In a very short time she had the women tied up in the room where they had conducted their phony trial.

She took H'ngidra with her to H'ngidra's bedroom and left her hogtied on the bed. Then she went around the house gathering up the kryptonite: the cocoon with its green stripes; the chunk in the phony scientific apparatus that the women had used to capture her; and the cage on the transformer pedestal. The latter item she carefully carried outside the house and set on a boulder that she had partially hollowed out. Standing over one hundred feet away from it, she hit it with a small stone to knock some of the lead off one of the bars. She stared hard at the exposed kryptonite and watched it seem to leap at her, growing until it seemed gigantic, and then she stared heat at it. Suddenly the cage sagged into the hollow in the top of the boulder and Supergirl felt an intense wave of heat wash over her as all of the kryptonite melted.

As she waited for the kryptonite to solidify she gathered up steel scrap from a junk pile at the rear of the estate and formed it into two cargo pods that she would use to carry the things that she intended to take back to Earth with her. She then took lead scraps back to where the remains of the cage had cooled enough to become solid, though still hot. From a safe distance she tossed the scraps onto the hot kryptonite and watched them melt and cover the green-glowing metal. Leaving that to cool further, she went back into the house. H'ngidra's henchbimbos were still tied up and docile, so she went to the bedroom. She had a hard task to undertake and felt that the sooner she did it, the less likely it was that she would weaken and do the wrong thing.

She found H'ngidra crying. When she came into the room, her erstwhile captress looked up at her with pleading eyes.

"Take me with you," H'ngidra begged. "Turn me into plastic if you must and make me your slave. I can be your maid. Just don't leave me here."

Supergirl was puzzled. "Why do you want to go with me?"

"They'll hang me," H'ngidra said. "Because of what I did to Jantifra, the State will kill me. Please," she moaned. "I know you're a good person. I know I could be happy as your toy. At least I would be alive."

Supergirl felt as if she had been released from some new kryptonite trap. Because H'ngidra was the only person who knew how to repair and maintain the transfer and the transformation devices, Supergirl had already intended to turn her into a living plastic doll and simply keep her deflated. For H'ngidra to ask for such treatment made it so much easier to apply.

She took H'ngidra to the laboratory by a route that prevented the women tied up in the living room from seeing her. She also had H'ngidra's shower cap with her. In the laboratory she told H'ngidra to undress and to put on the shower cap. When H'ngidra had complied Supergirl told her to stand on the pedestal.

"Give me a minute," H'ngidra said as she stood ready to be transformed. She concentrated and Supergirl saw after a moment her clitoris sliding out of its sheath at the top of her cunnus. H'ngidra puffed out her belly and said, "Now1"

Supergirl pressed the blue button and with a soft whump H'ngidra became an inflated plastic doll. Supergirl deflated her and then took her and her clothes back to her bedroom. H'ngidra, her raincloak, and her aprons then went into a travel case that Supergirl loaded into one of her cargo pods. She then brought Jantifra out of the closet and led her to the laboratory.

Jantifra needed no prompting to step up onto the pedestal. Supergirl pressed the blue button again and heard a thoomp as Jantifra was restored to her normal state.

"Oh, thank you, Supergirl!" Jantifra said.

"You speak English and you know who I am?" Supergirl said.

"Yes," Jantifra said. "I had to learn your language and know who you are because I was to be part of a mission to Earth to warn you of this plot and to gather evidence against the Five Clans."

"But instead you ended up in H'ngidra's closet," Supergirl said as she began disconnecting cables on the transformer.

"The Five Clans apparently have sympathizers," Jantifra said with a sigh. "But we will find them and call them to account for their actions. And this whole Revenge Squad fushbah will end. I don't know how long it's been going on, but there will be no more Superman or Supergirl Revenge Squads."

"Thank you," Supergirl said as she started lifting components of the transformer into the cargo pod she had set just inside the laboratory's wide outer door. "Now I wonder if I could ask you for a small favor?"

"Certainly," Jantifra said. "Whatever I can offer is yours."

"Do you think you could use H'ngidra's spaceship and take me back to Earth?"

eeefff

The entire eastern seaboard was covered by a seemingly endless expanse of dazzlingly bright clouds. Jantifra cruised the little spaceship just above the highest cloudtops.

"Whither now?" she asked.

Supergirl looked down and the ship and the clouds went transparent for her. She saw, miles below, only dark, heaving, rolling water. She shifted her gaze and saw only more ocean. When she did finally see land, it was an area that didn't look familiar.

"Huh," she muttered and leaned back in her chair. Closing her eyes, she listened; not for the jittery little to-and-fro dance of air molecules, but for the more rapidly undulating pas de deux of electricity and magnetism. She listened for a particular beat.

"...on WAGG in Stanhope," she heard, "this is 'Do-Ron' Ronkowski spinning the platters that keep your day rocking and rolling. Right now we have a special dedication from all the women on Sorority Row right here in Stanhope. This goes out to a very special sister whom we have not seen for a few weeks."

She had to laugh when she heard the opening notes of The Lettermen's "Come Back, Supergirl". With only a faint impression of the direction whence the signal was coming, she pointed and said to Jantifra, "That way."

Jantifra rolled the craft into a sweeping left turn and flew in the indicated direction, skimming the cloudtops, then sinking into swirling gray mist. Soon Supergirl began to see familiar landmarks and gave Jantifra more precise directions. A little over an hour after leveling off the spaceship's flight path above the clouds, Jantifra brought the little craft down on the same meadow whence Supergirl had been abducted less than a month before.

As Supergirl lifted out of the spaceship's hold the two cargo pods that she had made, Jantifra stood in the open hatchway. A light drizzle kept her from coming outside.

"It's really sad," Jantifra said. "By blaming you for the embarrassment that they brought upon themselves, the Five Clans have only ensured themselves further humiliation."

"Which they will likely continue to blame on others," Supergirl said. "It's a vicious cycle that will only make them weaker and more of a threat to whomever they choose as their scapegoats."

"They will be kept under tighter surveillance from now on," Jantifra said, "the ones not kept under estate arrest." She paused and then said, "Thank you again for freeing me."

"You're welcome," Supergirl said. "And I thank you for bringing me home."

"You're welcome," Jantifra said. Then, with nothing more to say, she pressed the button to close the hatch.

Supergirl stood and watched the spaceship leave. Her hair, cape, and skirt billowed in the blasts from the craft's maneuvering jets as Jantifra used the ship's ætherjet drive to lift the ship into the clouds and thence into space. After a moment of savoring her return to Earth, Supergirl picked up the cable attached to the two pods, each shaped like one of the lifting bodies that NASA engineers were experimenting with, and levitated straight up. Hauling the pods behind her, she accelerated into level flight and headed north.

She intended to bring the pods' contents to her wing in her cousin's Arctic Fortress of Solitude. H'ngidra's transformer would bear study, certainly, and the kryptonite would be sent into Kandor to provide more power for the shrunken city. The soft plastic items in the travel case she would take to her foster parents' house in Midvale, where she would have to explain her absence to the Danverses. Then she would return to Stanhope in an appropriately public way. Linda would delay returning to Stanhope a week, lest someone infer too much of a connection between Supergirl and her brunette doppelganger.

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Back from a patrol over Stanhope, Supergirl got ready to go to bed in her bedroom in her foster parents' house in Midvale. She could barely stand the wait to open the Wexrian travel case in her closet. Late at night, when Fred and Edna were sound asleep, she prepared to play with her special toys.

First she exposed her special tape. This had originated in an experiment she had performed when she was still at the Midvale Orphanage. In the wee hours of the morning she had gone to the little laboratory that she had secretly built behind one of the orphanage's basement walls, put on a coverall and hood made of Mylar™ film impregnated with lead dust, and built her variable-exposure device. She had pulverized a small sample of kryptonite and mixed it with a suitable binder, then she had painted a green stripe down the center of a half-inch-wide Mylar™ tape of the kind use in magnetic recording tape. She had then used a sewing-machine-like heat sealer to weld a second tape over the first to prevent the kryptonite dust from abrasion. When she was finished she had a fifty-foot long kryptonite-bearing tape with a clear two-foot leader. She had then attached the tape to and wound it upon a small reel inside a lead can that had an angled slit through which the tape could pass without allowing any radiation from the tape still in the can to get into the outside world. She had then attached the leader to a second reel outside the lead can. She had so built the device that she could turn a knob on the spindle carrying the second reel to pull out a certain amount of tape or to allow the spring-loaded first reel to retract so much of it. A dial on top of the housing told her how much of the tape was exposed.

Once she had made the device she took it to her room and hid it with a notebook behind the false wall in her closet. Thereafter, in the small hours before dawn, before the folks without superpowers woke up, she conducted her experiments. She had dialed out increasing lengths of the green tape and noted in her log what effects it had upon her and then she had dialed out a length that caused the most pain she could endure and made note of how long she withstood the pain before she allowed the tape to retract into the lead can. The data she gathered were certainly useful, but her experiment had failed to achieve what she had hoped for: it didn't make her immune to kryptonitic radiation.

Thereafter, she had used the green tape to suppress her superpowers and diminish her natural strength so that she would not destroy her playthings when she masturbated. On this special night she brought the device out and set it to weaken her as much as possible without causing discomfort.

Next she took off her wig and all of her clothes, put on her Pert and Pretty™ Fairy Princess shower cap, and blew up H'ngidra. At first H'ngidra draped limply over Supergirl's arm, but as she filled up with air Supergirl was able to embrace her, holding her from behind and appearing to be kissing her neck. Soon she felt H'ngidra firm up and grow body warm. Blown full, the Wexrian woman began to squirm and then stopped when Supergirl turned her around to confront her.

"Now, my plastic prisoner," Supergirl whispered.

She picked the blue-rubber belt up off Linda's bed and offered it to H'ngidra. Bowing her head, the Wexrian woman took the belt and put it on. Then she looked up at Supergirl and put her hands together as if pleading for mercy.

With a coy look at H'ngidra, Supergirl picked Linda's apron up off the bed and put it on. The apron was the Spring in Missinoia number from Pert and Pretty™'s Hausfrau collection of plastic aprons. It was a long, full apron made of limp, smooth, transparent-light-brown plastic on which brightly colored zinnias had been printed. It had a wide, ankle-length skirt with an inch-wide ruffle and the plastic of the bib made Supergirl's nipples swell and stiffen as it brushed across them. Supergirl felt a delicious warmth blossom inside her when she felt the apron's plastic grow warm on her naked body.

Her breathing grew heavier as she backed H'ngidra against Linda's bed. She felt the rubber penis push her apron's plastic into her crotch as it began to come erect. And she felt her clitoris lengthing and stiffening in response.

"Oh, H'ngidra!" she moaned in a soft, quivering voice. She took her prisoner in an embrace and kissed her, getting even hotter over the sensation of H'ngidra's breasts pressing against hers. She had her left arm around H'ngidra's shoulders while her right hand pressed against H'ngidra's buttocks. She rubbed her crotch against H'ngidra's stiffening rubber penis and nearly climaxed.

H'ngidra put her arms around Supergirl and squeezed her as hard as she could. She thrust her hips to and fro to rub her penis against the smooth, warm plastic of Supergirl's apron. Even though she knew that she could not achieve climax in that way, she continued to push rhythmically against her mistress, striving to get her hot enough to take her to bed.

It didn't take long. Supergirl was panting as her body quivered with lust. Her clitoris was as hard as it could get and she felt wetness beginning to creep down the insides of her thighs. She stopped pushing against H'ngidra then and kissed her lips, then released her. She took off her apron and got into bed, slipping a small towel under her buttocks to sop up her crotch drool. Then she beckoned H'ngidra to her.

H'ngidra slid herself under the covers next to Supergirl and put a hand on Supergirl's chest. Supergirl took her in her arms and pulled her closer.

"Now I'm yours," Supergirl whispered. "Take me!"

H'ngidra mounted her then. She lifted herself on top of Supergirl's soft, warm body and slid her legs between Supergirl's thighs as Supergirl spread her legs to accommodate her. Her penis pressed against Supergirl's clitoris and nearly brought Supergirl to climax.

Supergirl put both her hands on H'ngidra's buttocks and pulled her down and forward, making her rub her penis against the top of Supergirl's crotch. Supergirl was making squeaky little moans and soon she pushed H'ngidra down so that the plastic woman could push her penis into Supergirl's vagina.

Again H'ngidra began thrusting with her hips, moving them to and fro, pushing her penis deep into Supergirl and then pulling it partway out again, only to push it back in with as much force as she could muster. Supergirl was half sobbing as she squirmed under H'ngidra, growing hotter inside as she felt H'ngidra's shower cap kissing her cheek. She felt H'ngidra thrusting faster and harder, then suddenly she felt something hot blossom deep inside her belly in long, hard spurts that became shorter and more rapid. She jerked and writhed in climax, convulsing under H'ngidra as she felt the sexual tension within her release in pulses.

"Don't stop!" Supergirl whimpered. "Don't stop!"

But all too soon H'ngidra had to stop. The force behind her climax was entirely spent and the rubber penis was softening. There was nothing more that she could do.

Supergirl, too, was exhausted. Her own libido showed itself to be finite. Perhaps her superpower nimbus would have given her infinite libido, but it would also have made it impossible for H'ngidra to penetrate her or to survive her climactic convulsions. Supergirl relaxed and gave H'ngidra a burst of extra warmth from her post-coital blush, getting a tender kiss from H'ngidra in return. She lay awake for a long time after that and as she examined her thoughts and fantasies, she discovered that nothing got her as hot as the prospect of going to bed naked with a warm plastic woman.

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Ey-shantaru

ho Zeletanu Twingwa dwe ho Zharu'stushfolani

iyeku k'Raop'toshongva

k'Alura geZor-El, P. n'Sh.

Translated from the original Kryptonese with notes by Sammy Teo.

Useful Properties and Applications of Kryptonite

by

Alura Zor-El, Ph.D.

Abstract of the Technical Text

Thus has Rao dreamed the nature of kryptonite:

Fundamentally, we have found, it is an alloy of nickel and iron with impurities, those impurities being an ultrafine-grained distribution of submicroscopic solitonic interdimensional spacewarps. It has a structure that implies an origin in the mineral tetrataenite, which was abundant in Krypton's mantle and contains equal amounts of nickel and iron. For two fundamental properties we measured:

a. Density = 8.107 gm/cc (compared to standard tetrataenite's 8.275 gm/cc). Of that density 4.159 gm/cc is of Nickel and 3.948 gm/cc is of Iron (4.245 E+22 atoms of each element).

b. Melting Point = 1417 C (compared to 1450 C for tetrataenite).

The diminution of those properties reflects both the expansion due to the presence of the hyperspatial inclusions and the weakening of the atomic bonds due to those impurities.

Our attempts to measure a half life of the radiation led to answers substantially greater than the known age of the Universe and yet the radiation displays an intensity that should quickly deplete the source. From those facts we infer that the radiation does not originate in any decay of nuclear or subnuclear particles. Further study and experiments led us to devise the following theory:

From the impurities a kryptonic forcefield (k'Raop'toshodku pne-ludzeh is translated kryptonic push-cloud - Trans.) permeates the material, organizing the outer electrons of the nickel atoms into bound pairs and making the material a type II superconductor. Interaction between the kryptonic forcefield and the zero-point energy of the quantum vacuum causes the field to vibrate and release radiation, both green light from the ionic cores of the nickel and the actual kryptonitic radiation that afflicts and kills us. That radiation consists of kryptinos emitted at a rate of 8.22 E+18 per second from each gram of material.

The 100-foot range of the deadly radiation implies that it is manifested in a virtual particle whose mass comes, in accordance with the relativistic mass-energy principle by way of Tlura Vor-Mak's indeterminacy principle, from the quantum vacuum. We were surprised to learn that only the nucleus of lead can stop such a large particle: with respect to all other substances, it might as well be a neutrino. Because it is the nucleus of lead that absorbs the radiation, any chemical form of lead will suffice as shielding. However, if the radiation is sufficiently dense, a saturation effect comes into play, allowing some radiation to pass until the excited lead nuclei regain their ability to absorb the particles. Thus a certain minimum amount of lead is always required for shielding. (That amount isn't large. In most cases a single coat of lead-based paint will stop kryptonitic radiation. - Trans.)

As to the green light emitted with the deadly radiation, it is primarily a surface emission. It is a secondary radiation that comes about due to the effective removal of two electrons from each nickel atom and subsequent excitation of the atom by particles of kryptonitic radiation drawing energy from the quantum vacuum, yielding a chemical ion that emits green light when excited. It is monochromatic with a wavelength of 5110 Ångstrom (pronounced Awng-strm -- Trans.) and it carries 2.428 electron-volts of energy per photon (3.89 x 10^-19 Joule). Although the appropriate atoms within the material are excited by the kryptonitic radiation, the excited states cannot collapse and release the light: in essence kryptonite is a laser that cannot lase. Within the mineral the deadly radiation comes out unimpeded, but the green photons remain trapped as excited states in the ionic cores that generated them, trapped by the presence of superconducting material around them. Those excited states represent a source of energy that gives kryptonite one of its more important properties.

Those facts lead us to state the following useful properties of kryptonite:

1. Negative heat of fusion. Unlike normal materials, kryptonite gives off extra heat when it melts. Melting of the material disrupts the crystalline structure of the mineral and negates its ability to support the kryptonic forcefield. When that field collapses the excited states release their stored energy as heat, 2035.3 Joules per gram, thereby overfilling the normal positive heat of fusion of the nickel-iron alloy (849 Joules per gram needed to melt the material from normal room temperature). Thus melting of kryptonite generally occurs instantly due to a positive feedback process. When the substance begins to melt, the collapse of the radiation field and associated excited states generates heat that melts more of the material, which generates more heat, and so on. This property limits our ability to work with kryptonite because it prevents us from welding kryptonite parts; we could only braze them. This property also appears to violate the law of conservation of energy, but in fact the energy seems to come from the inexhaustible zero-point energy of the quantum vacuum.

(Translator's note: In certain instances Superman and Supergirl have been able to exploit this property to save themselves from kryptonite traps. By zooming in on the material with their telescopic vision to isolate a small portion of it, the superheroes raise that portion of the kryptonite to the 1417 Celsius melting point of the material and then melt it, instigating the catastrophic melting of the entire sample. With restrengthened heat vision they can then keep the kryptonite molten until they can retreat the necessary one hundred feet to get outside the range of the radiation field.)

2. Superconductivity: Kryptonite, being based on an alloy, is a Type II superconductor. Vong-Twuh pairs created from the material's valence electrons (analogous to the Cooper pairs that are the foundation of the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superconductivity theory of 1957 -- Trans.) by the kryptonic forcefield conduct electricity until they encounter a phenomenon that will overcome the binding energy that the forcefield gives them.

The kryptonic field decouples the Vong-Twuh pairs from the lattice vibrations (i.e. heat), thereby raising the critical temperature while allowing a relatively modest critical magnetic field (relative to what we might expect from a high critical temperature). We don't know the actual critical temperature, because the material loses its superconductivity when it melts. We attempted to quench the superconductivity with magnetic fields near the melting point and found that the field was, within experimental error, the same as the critical field at cryogenic temperatures. If the critical temperature were equal to the melting temperature, we would expect the critical field to have a strength on the order of 4000 Tesla. The fact that our greatest efforts can only create fields of 27 Tesla tells us something about the nature of kryptonite as a superconductor.

We have theorized that the Vong-Twuh pairs come about when the kryptonic field coordinates the valence electrons in each nickel atom (or in each iron atom in the red version) and then isolates them from the atomic lattice of the material. If the critical temperature equaled the melting temperature, we would expect the energy gap, the pseudo-binding energy of each electron pair, to equal 0.257 electron-volts. In a typical superconductor the energy gap is on the order of 0.001 eV and in kryptonite we measured an actual energy gap of 0.0094 eV. Combining that figure with the density of nickel atoms in the material (which is also the density of the Vong-Twuh pairs) tell us that the energy gap imposes an energy defect of 6392 joules per cubic centimeter or 788.45 joules per gram in the material. On that basis we calculate a critical field of 10.086 Tesla and experiments confirm the result.

Unlike the usual type II superconductor, kryptonite has only a lower critical magnetic field. Further, that critical field destroys the superconductivity, not only by breaking the Vong-Twuh pairs, as in an ordinary superconductor, but also by distorting the crystalline structure of the mineral until it becomes unable to bear the load of the kryptonic forcefield. Ironically, it is the kryptonic forcefield that weakens the interatomic forces enough to enable this effect to occur. Again, the collapse of the forcefield precipitates the catastrophic melting of the material.

Although based on a ferromagnetic alloy, kryptonite lacks one important property of such a material: it has essentially no hysteresis. The magnetized state of kryptonite is unstable, which means that once the coercive field is removed or diminished the material begins to demagnetize spontaneously. The energy stored in the magnetization field is then absorbed into the material as heat. Again, this effect comes from the distortion of the base material by the kryptonic forcefield.

This suggests that some technological applications might exploit the cycle of magnetizing a sample of kryptonite, harnessing the heat that comes from the collapse of the radiation field, removing the magnetizing field, and repeating as desired. As with most uses of kryptonite, this one gives the laws of thermodynamics a beating.

We might also exploit the Pingla-Zee repulsion (the Meissner effect - Trans.) in many applications that require the application of a magnetic force. A block of kryptonite can be clad in lead and then mounted in a load-bearing structure that will then receive the repelling magnetic field. We might, for example, use such blocks on the conveyors that carry people, robots, and materials around the city (meaning Argo City - Trans.) by applying them to maintaining the vehicles' positions on magnetized track.

3. Two basic states (red and green), which can theoretically be transmuted, one into the other, though the procedure requires hyperspatial manipulations not currently available. A third state is a metastable variety midway between the red and green varieties: it generates both red and green light, producing a metallic yellow (or golden) glow. That latter form seems to do no immediate harm to Kryptonese life, though further experiments will have to wait until we obtain another sample of it. It would be most desirable to be able to convert the green and red forms into the gold form. (Not so harmless, gold kryptonite destroys permanently the Kryptonians' ability to acquire and hold the aetherial nimbus that confers superpowers upon them. - Trans.)

4. Power generation: We have devised a means of generating electricity from kryptonite (the k'Alura ploy, named for Supergirl's mother -- Trans.) by interleaving sheets of kryptonite foil with photocells. Kryptonite emits green light at a rate of 0.744 kilowatts per square meter. The metal must be at least one micron thick (one percent of the thickness of a standard sheet of 20-pound paper -- Trans.) to emit that much glow, so maximum power can be derived from such sheets of the alloy. From one kilogram we can get, in theory, 184 kilowatts (both sides counted on a sheet 11.1 meters square). In practice, of course, we obtain substantially less than that, due to our inability to make one-micron kryptonite foil, inefficiencies in the photocells, and so on. However, we also gain special efficiencies that partially compensate the inefficiencies: we can use the superconducting kryptonite itself as a lossless electrode that picks up the loosened electrons and sends them to the accumulator and we can tune the semiconductor in the photocells to respond maximally to 5110 Ångstrom light.

Further, because kryptonite is a superconductor, we would also expect it to conduct heat efficiently. But such is not the case: the decoupling of the Vong-Twuh pairs from the crystalline lattice prevents them from absorbing heat from that lattice efficiently enough to provide superconducting cooling. The material must be cooled through normal thermal conduction through the conduction electrons in the iron content.

To prevent inefficiencies in the photoelectric conversion of light into electricity from heating the material to its melting point and thus destroying the power cell, we must build the cell with channels through which we can pump a suitable coolant. If we use helium and dump the waste heat into space at temperatures approaching the 2.735 Kelvin sink temperature, we can achieve overall conversion efficiencies of over 99%.

Another possible use would involve a tub through which refractory tubes run. Molten kryptonite would be poured into the tub and allowed to harden. Compressed helium or other suitable working fluid would flow through the tubes and turn generators. The cycle would keep the solid kryptonite at or above 1415 Celsius, just below the melting point. A small burst of energy melts a part of the kryptonite, causing the rest to melt with the release of excess heat. The working fluid takes the extra heat away as heightened pressure to run the turbines. When the extra energy has been used up, the kryptonite resolidifies and becomes ready for the next cycle, the time depending upon how long it takes kryptonite to repopulate the excited states within its structure. Comparison of the emission of green light from the material with the number of nickel atoms exposed on the surface indicates that each atom must wait 637 seconds after releasing the radiation before it can do so again.

Another factor in the use of kryptonite to operate heat engines is the heat released by condensation of the Vong-Twuh pairs. In a last contact with the atomic lattice before they come decoupled from it, the electrons of each pair give up 0.0094 eV as heat. Each gram of the material thus gains 788.45 joules of heat, which is very close to the 849 joules per gram need to melt the material from room temperature. As a consequence, kryptonite resolidifies slowly unless it is in intimate contact with a suitably large cold heat sink.

Thus has Rao seen fit to dream the nature of kryptonite. That which brings us slow and agonized death also benefits us with unending power. I will now display the details of our studies of the above facts.

*********

[Special Translator's Notes: Misconceptions: because kryptonite is so rare and the government keeps all that it had confiscated under the kind of security reserved for nuclear weapons, certain urban myths and tabloid follies have proliferated among the gullible public;

A. It's a transparent crystalline substance: Like any other metal, this basically nickel-iron alloy has a crystalline (technically, quasi-crystalline) structure; that is, its atoms are arrayed in repeating units. It is nonetheless a metal and thus, under bright light, appears opaque silver-gray. As the ambient light dims kryptonite shows more of its green or red glow, but the luminescence is a surface phenomenon, so the metal continues to appear opaque.

B. It induces bizarre changes in terrestrial life-forms: There is no scientifically credible evidence of any such thing. Indeed, on at least one occasion Lex Luthor infused encapsulated kryptonite dust into his bloodstream to defend himself against Superman ("The Kryptonite Man", Action Comics #249, Feb. 1959 - TdC) and suffered no ill effect. The cold fact is that kryptonitic radiation only affects those living structures that support the superpower nimbus that they draw from the spooky realm of jinnispace. Any alleged effects it may have on terrestrial life are merely more cesspool soup from tabloids like the Federal Inquisitor or from the drug-fueled fever-dreams of Highlyweird writers and producers.]

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In the spring of 1964, in our world, the Lettermen put out a recording of a song, "Come Back, Silly Girl", that Steve Lawrence had sung a few years earlier. The lyrics to that song were

I go 'round moping and I go 'round blue.

I made you cry for I have been untrue.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

And now I cry for you.

Won't you come back, silly girl,

Come back to me?

Come back, silly girl. Can't you see

I'm in love?

Your mother tells me that you're not at home

Each time I call you on the telephone

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Oh, I'm so lost and alone.

(Repeat Chorus)

Don't know how long I can go on this way.

I think of you most every day

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

I only hope and pray

That you'll...

(Repeat Chorus)

Come back, silly girl, can't you see I'm in love?

(Repeat and fade).

At the time I knew that the song could be rewritten as "Come Back, Supergirl", though I didn't work out any lyrics. For this story, though, I went back and devised lyrics as they would have been written in the world of superheroes. So we have

I go 'round moping and I go 'round blue

'Cause you told me I'm just not right for you.

You wouldn't tell me what I had to do

To give my love to you.

Won't you come back, Supergirl,

Come back to me?

Come back, Supergirl, can't you see

I'm in love?

You broke up with me the other night.

You said I'm worse for you than kryptonite.

I watched you fly 'til you were out of sight

as I cried out my plight.

Won't you come back, Supergirl,

Come back to me?

Come back, Supergirl, can't you see

I'm in love?

I think of you now every day.

And I vow that I will find a way

To find the dragon that I have to slay

To bring about the day

When you'll come back, Supergirl,

Come back to me.

You'll come back, Supergirl, and you'll see

I'm in love.

With you...Supergirl.

I'm in love with you, Supergirl.

(Repeat and Fade)

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This story was inspired in part by "Krypto's Mean Master", Superboy Comics, 1959 (reprinted in Superman Family #169, Mar 1975). The Supergirl Revenge Squad did not exist in any of the comic books that I use as references, but it seems an obvious adjunct to the Superman Revenge Squad, which was part of the Superman mythos since 1962. It also seems like a remarkable oversight on the part of the writers at DC Comics in the '60's that they did not conceive such an obvious set of villains to harass Supergirl.

The green-tape device in the epilogue was inspired by the Supergirl story "Supergirl's Greatest Victory", which appeared in Action Comics #262 (March 1960) and was reprinted in Superman Family #167 (Oct-Nov 1974). In that story Supergirl finds a kryptonite meteor, nudges it into a cave, and then gradually exposes herself to it over a period of weeks in an effort (and a futile one at that) to develop immunity to the deadly radiation.

If you want to see what inspired the scene of H'ngidra first masturbating on Supergirl in her bedroom, go to www.iloveinflatables.com and on the home page click on About Us, scroll down and click on Free Pictures, and then click on Alex.

If you want to get acquainted with the real deal, the authentic Supergirl from the Silver Age of Comics, you cannot do better than to go to www.budplant.com and request a copy of the Supergirl Archives. These books present the original comic strips, in their entirety, on high-quality paper, in full color, apparently from the original artwork. As far as I am concerned, these books are well worth the fifty bucks I shelled out for each of them.

Volume One of the Supergirl Archives presents the entire story content of Superman #123 (August 1958), in which story Jimmy Olsen uses a magic totem to create a Super-Girl, whom Olsen was later obliged to destroy. It was the positive reader response to that story that led DC Comics to assign science-fiction writer Otto Binder the task of creating a permanent feature to appear in Action Comics. The first seventeen episodes of that feature, from "The Supergirl from Krypton (Action Comics #252, May, 1959) to "The Mystery Supergirl" (Action Comic #268, September 1960), are reproduced in Volume One along with one other extra episode and other small features.

Volume Two of the Supergirl Archives presents the next eighteen episodes of Supergirl, from "Supergirl's First Romance" (Action Comics #269, October 1960) to "The World's Greatest Heroine" and "The Infinite Monster" (Action Comics #285, February 1962) along with a Superman story in which Supergirl played an important part.

These books are the only good thing that DC Comics and Time/Warner have done for Supergirl in over a quarter century of years. Enjoy it while it lasts. - TdC.