Last Son of Krypton Read Free Page A

You been out of the country?"
    The old man wondered whether the policeman was simply being friendly or whether he recognized him. The tight woollen cap hid the distinctive flurry of white hair, and the fact of being in a totally unlikely place, he thought, served to complete the disguise. It did not occur to him that with four years of the kind of paranoia that war brings about, it might be hard for the officer not to be suspicious of someone with a thick German accent. It was necessary, though, to meet as many people as he could in the next several hours, so he treated Captain George Parker to an ice cream sundae and checked into the hotel as Calvin Eisner.
    In the hotel room he pulled the cap off and jiggled his head until his scalp could breathe. He sat on the bed, cupped his hands under his chin, stared out the window, and thought of Krypton. There were images, not only words, in the message from Jor-El. Images of a giant world circling a great red star. This world was huge, and not a gaseous, amorphous mass like Jupiter, but heavy with rocks and minerals and incredible gravity. Yet there were people there, walking and talking a completely foreign language, and living day to day in much the same way as those on Earth lived. This child on the way from that world would be quite an individual, born on Krypton and raised on Earth. The mere physical effects the change in environment would have on him would certainly be considerable.
    The youngster would be human, the old man decided, that was for sure. But he would be a tuned-up human, a Kryptonian.
    The old man imagined what it would be like to have muscle tissues heaped one on top of the other and ground together as hard as the composition of matter whose sub-atomic particles had fallen in on each other—to have a sun that makes normal skin tan make your supersensitive skin indestructible—to have every sensory nerve ending stimulated all the time—to be constantly aware of your environment's every aspect, every quirk—to be able to hear for perhaps as great a distance as there was a sound-conducting atmosphere—to see for incalculable reaches of space—to be able to negate even the tug of gravity with your own finely tempered mass.
    He imagined this, and then imagined growing from infancy in that state. Being able to develop your motor reflexes through a body designed to weather terrible wear before it reaches maturity. Growing inside that body in surroundings that nurture rather than hinder. He imagined to what ends such massive excesses in physical and freed-up mental capacity could be turned with the proper guidance. Imagined approaching the upper limit of human potential.
    The old man was never one to shrink from the wondrous and terrible places his analytical mind could take him; that was the source of his greatness. These thoughts, though, gave even him pause. There was the possibility that today the Earth would become home to a superman.
    The old man considered the immense possibilities for disaster that might accompany such an event. There were, of course, even greater possibilities for disaster that might accompany such an event. There were, of course, even greater possibilities for benefit, and it was only now beginning to dawn on him how squarely the responsibility for providing conditions favorable to those benefits fell upon his shoulders. There was work to be done.
    It seemed amazing, as he walked down the street with dusk beginning to fall, that he had received his mechanical visitor only about nine or ten hours earlier. Now, how did one meet people in Smallville?
    Unfortunately, Smallville was apparently closed. It was a dry town; that was a good sign. The only place of business he found open was a small general store on Main Street where he bought a local newspaper, a corncob pipe, and some tobacco, all of which he enjoyed immensely until he fell asleep in his hotel room.
    Morning was brisk, and the heavy woollen cap that hid his thick hair was almost