The Last Days of Krypton Read Free Page B

handsome face was the only answer she needed. “Don’t worry, I’ll figure some way to get you out of there.”
     
    Drifting in the numb and empty void, Jor-El experienced a moment of bitter irony: For so many years he had dreamed of a place of absolute quiet where he would not be disturbed, a place where he could let his thoughts wander and follow them through to their conclusions. Now, trapped in this dead and surreal silence, he wanted only to get out.
    In the initial moments of being trapped here, he had lost his telescoping rod and the imaging crystal. As soon as he had reoriented himself to face the window to his own universe, he had poked at the opening with the rod in his hand, but the barrier recoiled, somehow at a different polarity from this side. The imaging crystal had shattered, the rod had bent and shot out of his grasp, tumbling off into the nothingness. Jor-El just hung there like a disembodied spirit.
    Some time later, almost like a consolation prize, his stylus drifted into reach. Jor-El grasped it, not knowing what might eventually become useful.
    He had no way to measure how much time had passed. He calmed himself and turned his mind to the challenge rather than succumbing to panic. Normally, when faced with an insurmountable problem, Jor-El would have used his best calculating devices, worked with endless strings of equations, and followed his mathematics to often startling conclusions. Here, though, he had only his mind. Fortunately for Jor-El, his mind was enough. Time to think!
    He applied himself to the physical explanation of this hole in space, trying to learn how he had been transported here and why he couldn’t simply step back out. Once created, the portal would be self-sustaining; he doubted he could close it if he wanted to. He pondered the resonances in his crystal control array, the coherent beams of red sunlight and the quicksilver parabolas, until he devised a technique that just might work to get him out of there. But from this side of the barrier, Jor-El was completely helpless. He needed someone to help him from the opposite side.
    Then, as he stared out into the laboratory, he spotted a face, a beautiful face like that of an ethereal dryad. Her lips moved, but he could not make out her words through the barrier. When Jor-El shouted back at her, she clearly couldn’t hear him either. They were cut off from each other, separated by a gap between universes.
    Jor-El thought he recognized the young woman, having seen her once or twice outside. Yes, she was with the muralists he had invited to embellish the structures on his estate. Maybe she would think to call for help—but who could help him? No one else, except possibly Zor-El, would understand his apparatus or what he had done. But it would take his brother days to arrive from Argo City.
    The young woman paced in his field of view, deep in thought. Jor-El found it maddening that he had concocted a possible solution, yet was unable to communicate it to her. If he could just get the young woman to reverse the polarity on the central crystals, he might be dumped back out. But Jor-El didn’t know how to tell her this.
    Demonstrating amazing patience, the woman cleared her sketchplate and began to write down the Kryptonian alphabet. He quickly grasped what she was doing. It would be a slow process, but since she could see his face, she would have him spell out words one symbol at a time.
    Jor-El clung to a thread of hope and began to compose his message.
     
    Lara stored her drawings in her sketchplate, cleared the screen, and got to work on the problem. At first she scribed questions that he could answer with a simple nod or shake of his head. Was he in trouble? Yes. Was he in pain? No. Was he in immediate danger? A hesitation, then no. Did he want her to help him? Yes. Did he know how to get back out? A pause, then yes.
    Soon it became obvious that she wouldn’t gather enough information this way. Finally, tapping one letter at a