A sudden explosion filled the air, one that he knew was unmistakably a sonic boom, followed seconds later by a blinding streak of flame that cut across the road in front of them. A louder, ground shaking explosion followed as whatever it was impacted in the middle of the cornfield.
"Jumping Jehosophat!" the middle-aged man cried out as he hit the brakes and brought the truck to a screeching stop.
They quickly made their way to the impact site, avoiding the numerous small fires that dotted the field. At first, Jonathan thought it might've been a meteorite, having seen one that was pretty large in the natural history museum in the state capitol when he was young. Then, as they got close enough to get a look at it through the smoke, he realized that it was something man-made, possibly a satellite.
"Be careful, Jonathan," Martha warned as he tried to get closer to the object, knowing full well how easily her husband's curious nature could overwhelm his sense of caution.
"Listen," he said as he moved to within a few yards, "I think there's something in there."
They both knew they had to be hearing it wrong, the noise sounding for all the world like a baby crying. Ignoring the danger, the farmer tossed enough dirt on the satellite to put out the worst of the flames and, using his work gloves to protect his hands, tried to open what looked like to be a hatch.
As soon as he touched the metal, which was inexplicably cool despite the fire around it, a beam of light unexpectedly shot out from the ship, causing his entire body to tingle. Having read about it enough times in the sci-fi books he had enjoyed as a child, Jonathan had the impression that he'd just been scanned.
A scan that must've found him acceptable, it seemed, as the hatch abruptly opened of its own accord. With a quick glance back to his wife, Jonathan cautiously moved closer to get a better look inside.
"Dear God in heaven!" he cried out when he saw the contents of the strange ship.
Ignoring any other possible dangers, he rushed forward and pulled the baby out of the ship, cradling it in his arms. Turning around to protect the child with his body, he carried the colorfully wrapped bundle to his wife a few yards behind him.
Equally shocked, Martha took the baby and carefully looked to see if it had been burned. To her relief, not even the blankets had been scorched.
Quickly putting as much distance between them and the still smoldering craft as they could, they discussed what was happening but were unable to come up with an explanation, at least one that was halfway believable. When Jonathan actually suggested that the child might've been from another world, Martha brushed away any such suggestion by saying this wasn't one of those science fiction magazines that he used to be so fond of.
"This baby is as human as you or I," she insisted as she looked down at the beautiful face now smiling up at her, "and I don't care what anyone says, whoever sent up that rocket is not getting it back."
Glancing back in the direction of the spacecraft, for that was what he now knew it to be, Jonathan Kent allowed his gaze to lift upward into the mid-morning sky. From what he'd seen of the ship, it was decades if not centuries ahead of anything NASA or the Russians could have build. He was as certain that this child had come from another world as he was of the fact that his wife intended to keep it as her own. They'd tried to have a child for years, with no success and after two decades of praying, it was obvious that Martha saw this all as a gift from God.
"Maybe it is a gift," Jonathan thought as he looked down from the empty sky. Probably the greatest gift they ever could've gotten. They'd always wanted a daughter, and now it seemed like they had one.
-=-=-=-
"Look, up in the sky!" a well dressed, middle aged woman standing at the Swan Street bus stop cried out as she caught a flash of red and blue passing overhead.
"It's a bird," a second woman, half her age, exclaimed as she tossed her head back to get a better view.
"No, it's a plane," an elderly man standing next to the two of them insisted, joining in on what had become a familiar refrain all over Metropolis these last two weeks.
"It's Supergirl!" four children, also standing at the bus stop with their mother, chorused as they pointed at the now fading figure that had been just above them only moments before.
Even though she was already more than a half mile away by the time the children had cheerfully called out her name, the last daughter of Krypton still managed a smile. Technically, she thought, it really should be Superwoman now; after all she was closing fast on her twentieth second birthday, at least by the Terran calendar. Still, the name she had been known by since going public in her late teens did roll off the tongue a lot easier than the more adult polysyllable.
Such trivial concerns, however, were quickly brushed aside as she left the city behind her and she focused her full attention on her destination, still some miles in the distance. No longer concerned with speed limits and the window shattering sonic booms that exceeding them might cause, the Girl of Steel doubled her velocity, gliding into a parabolic arc that would cut her travel time in half. As she descended down through the heavy cloud cover, she reviewed the threat briefing she had been given by the FBI only ten minutes before.
Two days ago, a letter had been delivered to the office of the President of National Rail, containing a threat to destroy the Gotham- Metropolis Express unless a million dollars in bearer bonds were delivered to a location on an enclosed map. Lacking in details, the letter hadn't been taken that seriously but turned over to the FBI just in case.
Then, a little over an hour ago, another package had been delivered to the offices of National Rail, this one containing a repeat of the original threat and demand, along with a highly detailed schematic of an explosive device that the FBI now took seriously. More so since the package was scheduled to have been delivered the previous day, but had been delayed due to some error on the part of the shipping company.
According to the train's schedule, the Express should be in the middle of its passage through the Shuster Mountain tunnels on the final leg of its journey, but all attempts to communicate with it by radio or cell phone had so far been unsuccessful.
Coming down just over the eastern terminus of the tunnels, Supergirl allowed herself a small sigh of relief as she saw the first car of the ten train Express emerge from out of the darkness. It had been the FBI expert's concern that the best place to detonate an explosive that would totally destroy the train would be inside the tunnels, burying it under the tons of rock that would've been dislodged.
With no more information than when she had left the railroad offices, except that the train was still intact, the Maid of Might set in motion the plan of action she had formulated during her high-speed transit. Circling behind and then coming in low over the last car of the train, Supergirl began to subject every square inch of it to a quick but intensive x-ray scan. For one brief moment, each section of the train became transparent to her eyes, her mind processing and identifying each image faster than any computer on Earth. It took less than a dozen heartbeats to cover the length of the train, and she found nothing out of the ordinary other than the young couple in the bathroom of the third car, doing their best to join whatever the railroad equivalent of the Mile High Club was.
A smile on her lips, Supergirl increased her speed to leave the train behind and subjected the rails below to the same scrutiny. Recalling the route map she had glanced out while in the National Rail office, the dark haired heroine visualized the Simon's Gorge Crossing, some three miles ahead. A two thousand foot span that joined the two states that Metropolis and Gotham City called home, it seemed to her a much more likely target that the tunnels behind her.
From her experience, madmen like their mystery bomber wanted attention as much as they want the ransom they demand. Bringing down the Shuster tunnels would indeed have caused a disastrous loss of life, in addition to the financial cost to reopen them, but it wouldn't have been spectacular - at least not visually. As she glanced right and left across the tree topped hills around her, she was sure that if she'd had the time to search them, there would be at least one camera out there focused on the Simon's Gorge Crossing. The images it might record would undoubtedly be sent to every major news outlet in the country, where they would be endlessly repeated, much to the bomber's delight.
Flying across the center of the concrete and steel span, Supergirl found the object of her search. Hidden on opposite sides of the single track, covered by metal boxes that had been camouflaged to appear as part of the structure itself, rested two full sized versions of the device that had appeared on the diagram sent with the ransom demand. They were for all purposes indistinguishable from a dozen other similar boxes that lined the route, except of course to someone with x-ray vision.
A few seconds' analysis of the triggering mechanism told her that while it was possible to deactivate both devices, it might take more time than she had. To simply try and physically remove them without first doing so would initiate the detonation she was trying to prevent. The only remaining solution, then, was to stop the train.
In the days following her public debut, as new stories about the Supergirl from Smallville began to appear on the national news, one well know commentator had coined a description of her abilities that included the phrase "more powerful than a locomotive." Subsequent events had proven that comparison woefully inadequate, but it came to mind as she reversed direction and considered just how difficult it actually was to stop a speeding train on not much more than a dime. At least not without tearing it to shreds in the process.
While still several hundred feet in front of the train, Supergirl focused a carefully aimed blast of heat vision at the exact spot on the locomotive's undercarriage that would trip the braking system. Unfortunately, when you took into consideration the multi-thousand ton weight of the assemblage racing at her, coupled with the fact that it had been traveling at top speed to make its way up an incline, it was obvious the behemoth wasn't going to come to a stop in time on its own.
Landing on the front edge of the diesel engine, the Girl of Steel placed her hands against the heavy superstructure, taking a grip so tight that her slender fingers actually pressed into the metal. Then, lifting the rest of her body back into the air, she began to apply an ever increasing reverse thrust, much in the way an airline pilot would throw his engines in reverse once on the ground. The combination of braking and reverse thrust rapidly reduced the train's forward motion, until it reached a point where Supergirl felt it safe to apply one hard push and bring it all to an abrupt but still controlled stop. The sudden halt would still be hard enough to cause a few bumps and bruises, but they were much more preferable than the inevitable fatalities that waited just a hundred yards down the line.
Letting out another sigh of relief as she released her hold on the engine, Supergirl realized that it had been less than five minutes since she'd let out her first. The entire incident had taken place in that short a time.
Within another minute, the Chief Engineer and some of his associates were climbing down out of the engine's cabin, eager to learn what was going on. Softly gliding over to them, Supergirl set down on a small clearing and waited for them. As she explained what had, or rather what had not just happened, the Maid of Might recognized the expression on some of their faces. It was one that she'd become accustomed to over the years, usually after she'd performed some unbelievable demonstration of strength.
Standing five foot nine and only a bit over a hundred and thirty pounds, the black haired, athletically built young woman hardly looked like someone who could've done what she just had. Yet, if she really had wanted to, Supergirl could just as easily have lifted the entire ten-car train up and over the threatened span. That course of action, however, would've brought with it a whole different set of problems, such as how to prevent one or more of the cars from decoupling under the stress and falling back to Earth with disastrous consequences.
As the Girl of Tomorrow finished explaining the situation to the train crew, she noticed that a large number of passengers had likewise disembarked and were gathering around her. It wasn't that they didn't recognize her; actually it was quite the contrary. The long sleeved blue blouse with the stylized red and yellow pentagon, along with the bright red skirt, boots and cape that made up the rest of her uniform had become quite familiar over the last few years, having been exhibited on every imaginable form of mass media there was. Yet people were still taken aback when they actually saw her in person. It was as if they wanted to assure themselves that despite all the evidence to the contrary, she was indeed real and not just some urban legend. Much like the rumored Bat-Man that was said to prowl the nighttime streets of Gotham City.
