by Libbylawrence
As she walked through the Hall of Justice, Commander Erin Venture couldn’t help but be impressed with all she saw. Photos lined the walls, along with displayed costumes, tools, gadgets, and awards.
Mister Scarlet, Sunbeam, Minute Man, Lance O’ Casey — all the great heroes of history used this base! she mused. They even taught others here, too, like Spectra Girl!
Captain Marvel placed the aliens within a containment cell and said, “They will be safe here. The temperature will be comfortable for them, and they won’t be able to do any harm until we take them back to your time! I guess your arrival here was an accident?”
Commander Venture nodded. “Yes, I was fighting them. They often attack our planet. They work for the Empress. She has multiple alien races working for her. Her goal is to rule Earth just as she rules most of the known universe! When I encountered a weird colorful phenomenon, I hit the quantum engine, and it threw us all back here. I’m originally from around five hundred years in the future!”
“When I deposed the Dragon Men of Saturn in 1941, I never expected them to rise up again!” said Captain Marvel. “You say they serve some Empress?”
Commander Venture nodded eagerly. “She is their Empress, although she calls herself the Rightful Ruler of the Universe!” explained Erin.
“She sounds like Sivana himself!” said Mary.
Commander Venture frowned and said, “That’s right! Her name is Sivana! In fact, that’s her in that photo!” She pointed at a framed glossy photo that showed an incredibly beautiful blonde woman.
“Holy moley! She’s Sivana’s daughter! Her name is Beautia!” said Captain Marvel in surprise.
As Commander Venture moved closer to the glossy photo on the wall of the Squadron of Justice Headquarters, the auburn-haired pilot nodded in confirmation.
“This woman you call Beautia is an exact double for the woman who is threatening all of Earth,” she began. “Her name is Magnifica. She is Empress of Venus and has added countless other worlds from both within our universe and from multiple worlds of hyperspace to domain. She is brilliant and ruthless, and she uses her stunning beauty to dominate more than one species!”
“The Beautia Sivana we know is a good person,” explained Captain Marvel. “She’s as beautiful in character as she is in appearance. Her brother Magnificus is also a good man. They did not inherit their father’s madness. Dr. Sivana is notorious for both his ambition and his villainy. I can only guess that Empress Magnifica is a descendent of the siblings I know. Her name certainly sounds like Magnificus.”
“It sure sounds as if Magnifica takes after Dr. Sivana himself!” said Mary.
“She seemed to come out of nowhere,” said Commander Venture. “Her rise to power was swift and deadly. She enslaved the carnivorous frogs of Venus, and the Dragon Men of Saturn obey her willingly as well. She has the capacity to travel freely from one dimension to another. She has drawn together beings from hyperspace worlds, and they are strange and threatening to those of us from poor, battered Earth!”
Mary frowned as she leaned closer. “Commander, I understand the term hyperspace to mean something like a space outside of or between traditional space, but I wonder if you could elaborate?” she asked.
Captain Marvel looked at his sister and said, “Actually, I think I can help. I once went to Saturn and fought the Dragon Men Commander Venture referred to. However, I also know from our files here that our old friend Captain Midnight met an entirely different race on Saturn. (*) In a similar fashion, Midnight captured a space pirate from Pluto when he tried to raid Earth, and when we all fought together against Sivana’s space invasion back in 1960, the Plutonians were likewise a hostile race. (*) Yet while you and I and Junior found no life at all on Pluto during the case of the beings from Infinity, we did encounter Martians who were not only hostile but decidedly humanoid, and thus very different from the Spider Men from Mars I once fought!” (*)
[(*) Editor’s note: See “Without a Body,” Captain Midnight #66 (August, 1948), “Versus the Space Raider,” Captain Midnight #52 (June, 1947), “The Marvel Family Battles the Invaders from Infinity,” The Marvel Family #36 (June, 1949), and 2nd story, 64 Pages of New Captain Marvel Adventures #2 (Summer, 1941).]
Mary snapped her fingers and said, “Holy moley! I get it! You’re saying that there are multiple versions of the planets we know like Venus, Mars, and Saturn, et cetera. Some exist within our universe, while others exist in a kind of pocket dimension called hyperspace. The Spider Men came from one Mars, while the more human-looking Martians we met later on came from what was really a pocket dimension version or alternate Mars! You and I have been to Earth-Two and Earth-One, so I guess the analogy makes sense!”
Commander Venture smiled broadly and replied, “Exactly! You Marvels really are amazing. You easily grasp concepts that won’t become common knowledge for centuries! Empress Magnifica has managed to gain alliances with beings from more than one version of Mars, Venus, and so forth. We call these slightly out of sync worlds hyperspace planets!”
“We’ll help you,” vowed Captain Marvel. “What can we do first?”
“If we could liberate the humans on Saturn from the Dragon Men like you said you did back in 1941, that would reduce her supply of warriors!” said Erin.
Captain Marvel smiled boyishly as he declared, “We’ll do it! We’ll help those poor people and put the Dragon Men on the run!”
***
Meanwhile, within a massive luxurious palace on the planet Venus, a gorgeous blonde woman reclined on a divan while slave girls in brief white tunics awaited her every command.
The walls of the palace were covered with tiny crystals that depicted different images of the same stunning woman. An observer visiting the palace would be hard pressed to find any object within the palace that wasn’t in some way a reflection of the lovely ruler of the tropical world.
Empress Magnifica was a very tall woman with long, flowing blonde hair and the grace of a dancer. She wore a red and gold top that left her stomach bare above a shimmering golden skirt and matching gold lace high heels. She didn’t wear jewelry because she considered herself to be the only adornment she needed to captivate any audience.
Pouting suddenly, she abruptly sat up as if an idea had flashed across her brain without any previous warning. She was, in fact, a creature of instinct, and girlish whims dominated her thinking in spite of the fact that she was also a brilliant scientist.
“The Universal Engine nears completion, but I am in a hurry. My crusade cannot be delayed. The poor, pitiful masses of the cosmos have suffered for too long. It would be cruel of me to hesitate one second longer. Bring me status reports, and hurry!” she snapped. “Oh, and bring me my silver brush with the cute little gemstones on the handle! Not the gold one!”
Slave girls hurried to obey her, and she settled back down on her cushions. It was good to be Magnifica, and oh how she knew it.
***
Commander Venture was an experienced pilot who had traveled across the universe. Yet she still felt an almost girlish thrill as she gazed upon a sight few mortals could claim to have seen.
Sitting at the controls of her star cruiser, she expertly guided the sleek ship in the wake of the flying Marvels, who smiled knowingly as they glanced back to see Erin’s reaction to the amazing spectacle before them.
They gazed up at a seemingly endless mountain of timeless stone that loomed up amidst a sea of stars.
The Rock of Eternity is a dazzling sight. I remember the first time I saw it! thought Mary.
The World’s Mightiest Girl and her brother had led Commander Venture through space to the mystical dwelling place of the ancient wizard Shazam, whose acronymic name represented the Elders whose powers they possessed. From the Wizard’s home, a traveler could access all of time and space, and it was via this route that the heroic siblings guided their new friend toward her proper time.
In a flash of light, the trio left the Rock and found themselves five hundred years in the future.
Captain Marvel assumed a quizzical expression as he thought about the Rock of Eternity and its many odd properties. Holy moley! he thought. I wonder if it was a fragment of the Rock of Eternity that passed close to Captain Venture’s ship back in 1960 and warped his craft through time? We know his daughter said that he told her he left his era after coming close to a meteor or comet of some kind.
As the trio soared through space toward the planet Saturn, he also recalled some of his own past trips through space. I beat the Dragon Men a long time ago. They were ruthless, but they weren’t much of a challenge. I was pretty inexperienced back then, too. I hope Mary and I can stop them as easily as I did back in 1941!
Reaching Saturn, they landed in a clearing near the still-rugged jungles that dominated the planet. “The Dragon Men sure don’t need those thermo suits here!” said Captain Marvel.
As Commander Venture emerged from within her own star cruiser, she was thankful that her own flight suit contained the necessary environmental protection to regulate her temperature. She knew the atmosphere of the planet was safe, but the extreme temperatures were a real peril. “The Dragon Men are warriors, but they aren’t thinkers,” she explained. “Magnifica uses them as storm troopers. Cutting off her supply of them would do a lot to help our cause.”
“There are plenty of them here now!” said Mary, pointing to where a vast number of the scaled green humanoids soared into view on mini sky sleds. Each sled was armed with a mounted cannon that emitted energy beams.
“Allow me to run interference for you girls,” said Captain Marvel. “That will give you time to take more decisive action!”
Flying upward with the Speed of Mercury, Captain Marvel deftly knocked the flyers out of the sky with ease, though he was careful to do so before they reached sufficient elevation to be killed from a fall. People often remarked about his incredible strength, his ability to fly, or his invulnerability, but the Captain’s sheer speed was equally impressive. In the time it took for the Saturnians to register awareness of his presence, he was already gone and in action. As a blur of red and gold, he crippled their entire squadron of sky sleds in seconds.
Meanwhile, Mary Marvel was conferring rapidly with Commander Venture, who felt a bit of need to assert her own authority, if only to feel as if she was contributing something to the effort.
“The Dragon Men thrive in this temperature,” said Erin. “If only we could do something to slow them down just as breaking those therma suits did on Earth!”
Mary smiled and said, “Your wish is my command! I should be able to put a bit of one-girl climate control into place in a few minutes!”
She flew off with the same easy confidence normally displayed by her bother. Mary was used to working miracles, and she did it all with the same modest and pleasingly demure grace with which she conducted even her smallest affairs.
Using her strength and speed to collect a large number of stones, Mary Marvel fused them together into a gigantic slab with her super-strength and friction from super-swift polishing. Then she flew into the atmosphere of the jungle planet and very deliberately smashed her creation until it became an all-enveloping cloud of dust that filled the atmosphere and began to drastically lower the temperature of the planet.
“This should slow down the already sluggish metabolisms of the Dragon Men long enough for us to contain them and collect their weapons!” she said. “Then we’ll eliminate the dust and restore the normal climate!”
As she zoomed downward to join Commander Venture and Captain Marvel, she smiled winningly. “Now let’s wrap this up quickly before the human inhabitants suffer from our instant Ice Age!” she said.
Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel rapidly built a crude but sturdy prison out of gathered debris, then placed the stricken Dragon Men within its confines.
“You two work wonders!” Commander Venture said, shaking her head slowly. “I used the communications system on my star cruiser to pick up a bit of chatter. The human inhabitants are still here, but most of them are within a prison camp! Some of them were sent off-world to work as slaves for Magnifica.”
Captain Marvel frowned as he listened intently to her words. “I don’t like to see folks pushed around!” he said. “I’ll be glad to free those poor slaves!” He scooped Commander Venture up in his arms, and they soared upward as Mary followed with an amused smile on her pretty face.
Even Commander Venture is a bit taken with Captain Marvel! she thought. I guess even a tough space heroine can be impressed by his warmth and compassion!
They stopped several times to either destroy a weapons center or to imprison fallen Dragon Men. By the time they reached the main command center, they found themselves flying through a heavy snow.
“Look! I see people!” said Commander Venture as they drew closer to the silent compound. “No one is talking! Are they mute?”
“They are happy to see us, but they sure are a quiet lot!” said Captain Marvel, landing in front of a group of weary but jubilant humans. They looked like Earthlings, although their years of confinement had marked them with despair and lethargy.
“The Wisdom of Solomon enables us to understand all languages,” he said. “I was able to talk to the Saturnians I met back in 1941 without any trouble at all!” He said to them, “We’re here to help. Are you okay? We’ve captured the Dragon Men. You’re all free now!”
He gasped as he felt an odd sensation in reply, like the faint tickle of a gentle breeze.
“The Marvel Family! We are honored to be visited by the hero who saved our people long ago. Your names are honored by all of our storytellers. We are Ursula!” The words echoed within Captain Marvel’s mind as he heard the thoughts of a pretty blonde girl who seemed to be a leader.
As the visitors exchanged startled glances, the girl smiled broadly. “Yes, we communicate entirely by transmission of thoughts. That is also how we receive information. Your minds were read by us upon your arrival. We assure you that we only received enough data to understand your reasons for being here! Violation of another’s mind space is abhorrent to our people!”
“Ursula,” said Mary, “we have captured the Dragon Men and broken down their weapons. We can also restore your climate. Is there anything else we can do for you?”
“We owe you all a great debt,” said Ursula. “We would help you in your efforts to bring down the tyrant Magnifica!”
The blonde girl turned to stare intently at Erin as she continued. “We know you are Earth’s greatest defender in this era, and we defer to you, she said. You resonant greatness!”
Commander Venture noticed the admiring glances the Saturnians were throwing her way, and she had at first wrongly assumed it was a reaction to her form-fitting flight suit, but she now felt humbled by a sense that they saw something in her that she had never realized existed.
“You are a heroine! Our people sense more than other races, and we know you are destined to triumph over Magnifica! The brutish Dragon Men knew that she was building a super-weapon on Venus. If you take us with you, we will locate it via our mental powers.”
Commander Venture nodded eagerly and said, “Of course, we accept! But do you mind if I ask you a question? Why do you refer to yourself in a plural format?”
Ursula giggled and stepped forward. “Forgive us. Your question seems a bit silly to us, but then we were born here, and what makes us symbiotic seems obvious to our kinds!”
She brushed back a lock of her long blonde hair to reveal a curious object within her left ear. At her touch, it moved out and crawled down her earlobe. It appeared to be a small green worm.
“Holy moley! It’s Mister Mind!” sputtered Captain Marvel.