Chapter 1

Howard Farrell assessed the situation quickly: Three punks with Technicolor hair and an assortment of weapons against one guy in a suit who looked like he'd never clenched his fists in his life. It was none of his business, but three-against-one was not something he was prepared to tolerate. He took a deep breath and rushed the trio, drawing back his fist and taking down the one with the purple mohawk and crowbar as he was turning to see what the new sound was. Suit Guy took off when the other two toughs turned their attention to the aggressive newcomer. He was limping; unless Howard beat these two or at least slowed them down long enough for him to get a taxi, they would catch him and resume their malicious intentions.

"Bad move, guy." said one of them, whose hair was green on his left, orange in the center and blue on the right. "I don't put up with resistance. Ever. There's only two ways to go in this world: My way, or the die way." He started reaching for a gun, but Howard kicked it out of his hand before he had the chance to use it.

"Did you hurt yourself coming up with that one?" Howard quipped. A shot from the other guy, solid blue hair in spikes, nicked Howard's left shoulder.

"What the hell kind of shooting is that?" the leader demanded of his cohort. Howard kicked the weapon from the other's grip and broke his nose with a hard right punch. The leader was coming up from behind, so Howard kicked backwards as hard as he could. A girlish scream confirmed that he had hit his target. His left shoulder was throbbing, so he threw another right-handed punch, knocking teeth from the spike-hair and sending him to the ground for the foreseeable future. The other was crawling toward his gun, so Howard stepped on his hand.

"I don't put up with three-on-one." Howard said. "Ever." He picked up the weapon and looked it over. "Cheap gun for a cheap crook." He delivered a vicious kick that sent Mr. Rainbow Hair into unconsciousness, picked up the other gun, and took both out of the alley with him.

"Nice." said another voice. Howard turned, ready to meet a new threat, but the person he found was dressed in business-casual attire, and his body language was non-threatening. "You're wounded, though."

"I'll put some iodine on it when I get home."

"What are you going to do with the guns?" the stranger asked.

"I'm going to get rid of them." he said. "My mom has a trash compactor."

"I believe I can save you some explaining when you get home." the stranger said, and like magic, the two guns floated out of Howard's hands, coming together and suddenly glowing bright yellow, melting into a ball of metal and plastic. The ammunition went off under the intense heat, but Howard could see a weird force field containing the little explosions.

"How'd you do that?" Howard asked, gaping in shock as the wad of material cooled and floated into a nearby trash can.

"A question for another time, I'm afraid." the man said, handing him an embossed business card. He touched Howard's shoulder and walked off. Howard glanced down at the wound, but though he found torn, bloodstained and scorched cloth on his sleeve, the flesh beneath was as pristine as the day he was born.

"Whoa." he whispered. He looked back to where the man had been, but he was gone. Looking down at the card, he found only the emblem of the Zak Starborn Foundation, a charity group that, as far as Howard knew, spent most of its time funding medical and scientific research and writing scholarship checks for kids with a genuine desire to become scientists or doctors. On the back was a notation:

Victor Phillips

Pan-Galactic Hotel

Rm 1985

Fri 6pm

BE THERE!

"Huh." he mumbled to himself as he headed home. Victor Phillips was a weird guy, always hanging out with pregnant women. He had a son by his rich fortune-teller wife and an adopted daughter, owned a hotel, ran a charity group with a guy who looked like someone had fused Adam and Jamie from Mythbusters, but still worked at the local TV station. Why would he want to talk to a young would-be vigilante who wasn't even out of high school yet?

Friday came, and Howard left for the hotel early in case of traffic and flat tires and other misfortunes, parking his mom's car in the underground parking garage at just shy of three-thirty. He set his watch to go off at five-thirty and leaned the seat back to take a nap. Soon, he was in the grip of an erotic dream. Naked women surrounded him, caressing him, pleasing him in ways he had never imagined. When he woke up, he found to his embarrassment that he had made a bit of a mess in the front of his pants. Reaching into the back seat, he grabbed a jacket to cover himself with while he did his best to clean up with the squished roll of Charmin in the center console. His father had left a bottle of Aspen cologne, which Howard used to try to conceal any tell-tale smells.

The Pan-Galactic Hotel was a strange building. Its sleek lines, the sweeping wing-like structures connecting outlying service areas to the main body, and the strange architectural features up near the roof made it look like a space ship on a launching pad. The inside was neither Spartan nor ostentatious. "Tasteful" was the first word that came to Howard's mind as he took in his surroundings--quite a contrast from the one other time he'd been in an actual hotel (and not a motel), where he had been made to feel they were charging him for the very air he breathed. The uniforms of the staff were a far cry from the stereotypical monkey-suits--functional, not demeaning. There were tasteful displays of space memorabilia--autographed pictures of astronauts, a copy of the local newspaper from the day of Sputnik's launch, and Howard saw a chunk of meteorite in a glass case when some of the younger guests made a gap. The carpet was nice, too.

"You should definitely visit the pool at night." said a female voice. Howard turned in surprise to see a girl in a blue uniform smiling so sweetly he couldn't help but smile back. "That's when they start projecting Hubble images up on the dome ceiling. I never get tired of them."

"Thanks, um..." he began.

"Teddy." she responded. "Actually, Theodora, but my parents were weird." Howard nodded, still smiling, until he remembered the card, which he handed over to the girl. "Huh." she said. "The public elevators don't go up to the nineteenth floor. Guess I gotta take you. Upstairs, I mean ... um, I mean, to your appointment." She was blushing prettily now, her short, strawberry-blonde hair falling into her face for a moment.

"It's okay." Howard said. Teddy called another girl to cover the desk for her and led Howard through a maze-like assortment of hallways. She put her hand on a hand-shaped piece of glass, then put her eye to a slot from which a green light was emitted.

"Teddy Benden and guest." she said into a little microphone. Howard looked around to see if he could catch a weapon retracting, so he missed seeing her put his card in a slot. The elevator opened, and Teddy led him inside.

"Would I have been shot if you hadn't added that 'and guest' part?" Howard asked.

"Oh, no." Teddy said. Howard sighed with relief. "They would have filled the elevator car with sleeping gas and dealt with you after we passed out." He looked at her, but her expression told him she was joking.

"Why don't the public elevators go up to the nineteenth floor?" Howard asked.

"Because the top three floors belong to the Foundation." Teddy said. "Mr. Starborn and Mr. Phillips do a lot of good things, and bad people hate when good people do good things, so good people have to defend themselves. You can't see it unless you know what to look for and how to look for it, but the front desk has a force field based on the containment fields some science labs use to isolate antimatter. They teach us how not to be obvious about pushing the button when we let people back behind the desk, but we do have to push one to disable the field long enough to get someone in."