Kal-El stepped out into the bright, dewy morning, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and trying to smooth his mussed hair. The crowd outside went silent instantly as the dark head came into view, with Lyla peeking around him, and Lara and Jor-El making their way down the stairs. The sunlight made sparkling rubies all across the wet grass, gems that shrank and soon disappeared as the temperature began to climb.
For a long moment, no words were spoken. The family stood in the door, looking over the expectant faces in the crowd. There were people dressed professionally in their work clothes, many white tunics splashed with various family crests. There were some who seemed to have tossed on whatever they could find, and others who were still in their thin nightclothes. Most were holding copies of that morning’s Metropolis, and all of the faces were turned right to Kal.
“Uh…Hello,” Kal started, clearing his throat and stepping out the door, despite Lyla’s confused glare.
“Is it true?” One voice called out, young and afraid as its owner clutched his paper. Other voices started to murmur the same questions, one talking over another until the crowd was once again roaring.
Behind the doorway, Jor-El grabbed up the morning paper and scanned over his son’s words. Just as the shouts of the mob were growing deafening, the old, respectable man stepped up beside Kal, commanding silence just by his presence.
“Unfortunately, I must admit that what you have heard is true,” Jor-El began, holding up his hand to stifle the fresh mutters and shouts. “Fortunately, we are doing all that we can to stop the damage that has been done to Krypton. The Board of Scientists has been informed, and is working as hard as it can.”
“So why’d it have to be you telling us?” The question rang out over the field and sparked more shouts.
“When were they going to let us know about this!”
“How much time do we have?”
“What are we supposed to do?”
Kal stepped in front of his father, closer to the first people in the crowd, and looked over all of the faces that had turned to him in an hour of need. “The very first thing we have to do is not panic,” he said. “I’m confident we’re going to be able to solve this problem. Running around screaming isn’t going to get anything done any faster.”
Jor-El smiled proudly as he watched his son addressing the people. Their faces showed a wide mix of emotions—some were in shock, others angry, most afraid, but all taking some amount of comfort from Kal’s strong voice. Jor-El only wished he could share their comfort, and believe that everything was going to be alright.
“Now, I understand your concerns. But there’s no reason to be afraid. This is why—“ Kal stopped in mid-sentence, the awful truth hitting him too late. He had been about to assure the crowd that Krypton’s space colonization program would be able to save them. In theory, this was true; the colony on Argo was flourishing and other settlements were to be populated in the near future. But Argo was much smaller than Krypton. The colony was only a few cities, unable to support the kind of population it would need to take on to save the entirety of Krypton. With so many hopeful, expectant eyes staring up at him, Kal gulped and tried to regain his momentum. “We can’t let ourselves panic. If…if any of you were planning to join the colonization efforts… don’t change your plans. But otherwise, just hold on and have faith. We are the brightest and most civilized minds in this galaxy; we will not lose our home.”
A cheer rang out from the more easily calmed members of the crowd. With their new store of confidence and comfort, the people began to disperse, and finally the path to the house was clear and empty once again. Kal was the last to go back inside, standing in front of the door and looking out at the last retreating figures until they had finally all faded away.
Jor-El looked over the other three people, all still quiet and Lara still rubbing sleep from her eyes. The old man ran his hand over his wife’s dark hair with such tenderness, and took too long a moment to hold her before shaking off his own uncertainties, and turning his inventive mind back to the task.
“You handled that as well as I think you could have,” Jor-El said to his son, beginning to pace around the entry hall. “Now we must make good on your promises. I have been thinking, and I might have an idea to at least slow the progress of these heat pockets.”
“That’s great, Dad,” Kal’s face lifted at the hopeful idea. “Just tell us what you need and we’ll all help however we can.”
“No.”
All three other heads turned to see Lyla, huddled in the corner of the room and softly shaking her head. The girl’s knees were buckling, one hand kept running mechanically through her blonde hair, and the tears on the edge of her long lashes were refusing to fall and clear her vision. With a worried frown, Kal wrapped his strong arms around her and brought her back to the middle of the room.
“I can’t do this…I’m sorry, I just can’t,” Lyla said hurriedly, as if she only had this minute to get the words out. She tried to both shake Kal’s arm away and cling to it at the same time, only succeeding in making a sudden, frustrated movement. “I can’t even think about it.”
“Lyla, it’s okay, we’re gonna get through this,” Kal started, letting her go when she started to struggle harder.
“No, it’s not okay! The world’s ending!” Lyla’s tears started to fall and she stood shivering with the cold thought. “I’m sorry…I can’t…I’m going to go.”
“Go?” Kal stared at her, his own soft blue eyes wide.
“I’m going to Argo…” Lyla wiped her tears on her sleeve, only glancing at Jor-El and Lara for half a second before turning her entire focus back to Kal. “Where it’s safe. I just want to be safe…I can’t deal with this, Kal,” she added, pleading without words as her hand made its way back to his arm.
There was a long and painful pause before Kal spoke. “I understand. I do. Go…take care of yourself, Lyla.”
“Kal—“
“No, I do understand.” Kal looked her straight in the eyes and let his fingers trail through her hair. “I do, Lyla. I want you to be safe. I love you. You’re right, I can’t keep you in danger here.”
“Well, then, let’s go! Let’s get ready, I know I can get us the passage, thank Heaven for connections…” Lyla trailed off, biting her lip as she saw the look in her fiancé’s face. She had known even before she made the decision what Kal’s reaction would be. She had just been hoping that she could change his mind. “Kal, Love, please, come with me!”
“I can’t,” he answered quietly, just as she knew he would. “I’m going to stay. I
have to stay. I have to help.”
“But what can you do?” Lyla shouted desperately, clinging to Kal’s arm. “What could you possibly do?”
“Whatever I can,” he said, something catching in the back of his throat as he slowly pulled his arm away. His eyes were filled with deep sadness, but it was too calm a grief to change his mind. That didn’t stop it from making his strong fingers quiver as he reached again for her shoulder, pulling her into a tight, longing embrace. “Oh Lyla…” he whispered, his heard breaking from the feel of her body in his arms, and the knowledge that she might never be there again.. “I can’t ask you to stay for me.”
Lyla held on to him for as long as she could before her arms began to hurt. “You are a beautiful, wonderful person, Kal,” she told him, taking one more long look into his eyes. “You’re too good for me.”
“Never,” he said, and pressed his lips to hers for a farewell kiss. “Go…be safe. Take care of yourself…just never forget me.”
“I couldn’t if I wanted to.” With one last kiss stolen from his lips, Lyla hurriedly climbed the stairs to gather up her things.
Kal stared after her until he felt another soft hand on his shoulder, and turned to see his mother looking at him with shared pain, and with pride.
“As I was about to say,” Jor-El cleared his throat to break the silence. “I’ve had an idea that may get us out of this trouble yet. At least, it should slow the progress of our hot spots for a while longer.”
“Go on, dear,” Lara said, still keeping by her silent son’s side.
“I was looking back in the history records,” he began, “on the off-chance that something like this had happened before. I believe I was able to find one such time. Around a century ago, just after our people discovered the way to harness Core energy, there were reports of strange temperature shifts, cold springs turned hot, a few similar phenomena. The Board at that time concluded that we were drawing energy out of the core at too fast a rate, disturbing the equilibrium of the very reactions that we were relying on. The energy of one reaction in the core fuels its opposite reaction, and by siphoning too much of that fuel too quickly, we interfered with the breaking-down of matter deep in the core. There was too much magma with nothing to control it, and the extra mass and heat began to melt down parts of the crust, much like a volcano but much faster.
“Fortunately for those a century gone, lowing the rate of collection was enough to put the system back in balance. Unfortunately for us, I believe that the years of slight imbalance have caught up with us, and the same thing is happening again,” Jor-El finished.
“That’s certainly helpful,” Lara said, “and hopeful, to know that we’ve stopped this before.”
“So, what’s your idea to stop it this time,” Kal asked, finally regaining his focus.
“Well, to begin, we put a halt to all extraction of Core energy. Then we use the extraction facilities in reverse, to introduce more energy back into the system.”
“And that should work?” Kal asked hopeful excitement creeping back into his voice.
“With a bit of luck,” Jor-El replied.
Kal managed to smile, and fought one last look back up the stairs. “Let’s get going then. We have a lot of work to do.”
*****
Jor-El had placed an uncomfortable metal chair in front of his most worrying machine. Each night since he had first noticed the trouble, he had sat in his lab late into the night ,watching the trends and praying that they would not continue. Tonight, only days after his plan had gone into action, the weathered, worried, wise old man buried his face in his hands when he saw the screen.
He had underestimated it. He had assumed, falsely, that the phenomena would continue along the same gradual path that he had been seeing. But it seemed now that the dangerous reactions, once started, were speeding up at an incredible rate. Each new hot spot triggered a fellow to spring up elsewhere on the map. Everywhere, the angry little dots blinked and flickered, twinkling like burning stars over Jor-El’s tired head.
The people of Krypton had taken to the plan with varying degrees of skepticism and annoyance. With the Board’s backing, Jor-El had been able to force all of the Core Energy plants to cooperate, but that force had a bad effect on the mood of the public. He did not need to read the papers or listen to the news broadcasts to know what the people thought of him. It was not the first time that the well-heard personalities had spoken of his theories as conspiracies, or otherwise scoffed at the so-called “Cult of El” made up of his supporters. But with so much on the line, this was the first time that those harsh words hurt them. There may not be time for this disaster to make itself believable before the damage became too great to fix.
The man sighed and pulled himself out of the chair, stepping up to the machine’s keyboard with a slow, heavy gait that made him too aware of his age. Somewhere out the window, a night creature howled dismally. Jor-El set to work, his fingers flying along the keys and adding cool blue streams to the map for each energy plant now working in reverse. When the map was fully updated, Jor-El took a deep breath and ran a simulation. He watched on the screen as time sped up, hours passing in seconds, the man’s eyes going wide as the whole map began to glow red, spot appearing after spot until there was nothing untainted by the blinking crimson, and finally there was nothing on the screen but cold, black space, empty of everything but a few floating fragments of what was once Krypton.
It wasn’t until he let it out that Jor-El realized he had been holding his breath. He set the monitor back to the way it had been, to show him the state of the world as it was. There was nothing left to do but try to sleep, and try to think, and try to dream up an answer. He shut down the lights and made his way through his home with one thought left in his mind.
They were running out of time. Quickly.
*****
The room that held the Board of Scientists was spacious, cold and pristine. The footsteps of father and son echoed over the marbled stone and pale crystal that made up the floor and walls. Seated in their tall seats were five of the elite members of the Board, all formally dressed in flowing silver. Their seats were built into the walls at about a man’s height, arranged in a wide crescent, so that when Jor and Kal-El stood on the patriotic crest in the center of the floor, each esteemed colleague had a clear view of both faces.
“You have called this meeting as a matter of extreme urgency, Jor-El,” began one of the two women. “Therefore we will not waste our time with pleasantries. What is your news?”
“Thank you, Marya. I am sorry to have to report that my initial predictions were…optimistic, to put it lightly.”
The man called Dax-Ur put a hand to his temple. “I sincerely wish I did not need to know how the end of the world could be an optimistic prediction.”
“I wish I did not need to tell you,” Jor-El replied. “I had built my plan on the assumption that we had several months remaining in which to work. Unfortunately, my latest simulations have indicated much less time, despite our best efforts.”
“How long?” The other woman, called Fedra, was watching Jor-El with as much awe as fear.
“Days,” he answered. “Perhaps a week, at the outside.
Dax-Ur stood from his chair, his robe flying out with the movement. “You aren’t serious.”
“I hardly think that we would be here if he weren’t,” another man said.
“Garf-Og is right,” said the final board member, standing as well in his place at the center of the crescent. Sul-Van was the oldest member of the current Board. His hair was snow-white and his hands weathered with age. He looked down at the two men. “Despite the feelings of some in the public sphere, you have earned the trust of this council. I have trusted you with my daughter,” he said with a small smile at the memory of Lara’s wedding. “I trust you with our world. What do you propose we do?”
Kal took a long, deep breath, and spoke for the first time. “I have an idea…”
*****
If Lyla had still been there to talk him out of it, Kal knew that he would never have even suggested this solution, let alone volunteered for it. He stood alone in the middle of a large, barren field, staring up at the monolith that was an energy plant, and he could feel the heat of the world gathering beneath his feet.
Two days had already gone by, two more days of heartache and fear, of disbelief and thick, destructive denial. Despite the official pleas from the Board, and despite the few ready rockets off-world that had already left for the colonies, most of the population refused to budge from their homes on only the word of Jor-El.
Kal’s breathing was quick and nervous in the heated air. All of those people were depending on his bravery, his intellect…
…and on the nuclear bomb strapped to the hood of his small electric car.
Kal had proposed the new plan precisely because he knew that no one else would want to do it. No one could have asked for volunteers—unless one came forward willingly.
Kal could see the tower on the pant that was his destination. It stood tall, slowly steaming under the hot sun. That tower lead all the way through the crust, making it possible for the people of Krypton to collect the energy they needed.
Kal’s job was to carry the missile to that tower, drop it in, and run faster than any wind he had ever raced before.
If the amount of energy that they were putting into the planet had been too small, Kal had reasoned, the answer was to put more power in. The bomb was heavy in his hands as he unstrapped it and began to walk. It was as compact as possible—though light enough to carry, it had the destructive power to level entire cities. It was suicide to even think about using this little machine to rescue the world.
But it would be worse a thousandfold to do nothing at all.
With a final steadying sigh, Kal walked through the plant. The deserted halls were eerily prophetic; Kal shivered at the thought of every home on Krypton being this empty. The thought spurred his feet to go faster, and Kal-El was standing before the long, scalding drop before he was quite aware of having gotten there. Somewhere deep, far below, he could make out a burning prick of light that was the inside of the planet.
It finally hit Kal exactly what it was he was doing. The heavy missile was remote-operated, theoretically. If all went well, if the heat-retarding varnish on the bomb was working, if they had calculated the density of the magma closely enough, if Rao in heaven were on their side after all, Kal would be able to run out of the plant as soon as the bomb had fallen and drive a thousand yards away before detonation. Then he was to keep driving, as far and as fast as he could manage, to try to outrun the blast. His brave knees nearly buckled, but Kal steadied them. The knowledge of what could happen to him was nothing compared to the knowledge of what could happen to his entire people. This was their last chance.
He looked down into the tall tower. Kal could have sworn that the lava was higher now than it had been seconds ago.
There was no more time for fear. Now was the time for bravery. This was his chance to be a hero.
He held the missile over the wide hole, and let it fall from his hands. Kal couldn’t resist watching until the bomb was out of sight, before he turned and began to ran back out of the building. His own footsteps echoed around the empty halls, applauding him as he ran, like so many crowds had done what seemed like so long ago. Before he knew it, Kal was back outside, then in his car, then on the road, watching for the sign he had left to show him the farthest distance he could go. And then he had reached it, and Kal-El looked back at the tall tower now in the distance before he pressed the button.
The earth shook. This far away, Kal could feel a hot blast of air, knocked aside by the force of the bomb deep inside the magma. His mind went blank, and then he began to pray. He dived back into his little car and sped along the road, planning not to stop until he saw civilization again. He ground to a halt along the side of the road much, much sooner than he had expected.
“Lyla?” He asked as he stepped onto the ground, feeling it hot under his shoes, certain that he was imagining the beautiful blonde in front of him. She was flushed and out of order, her hair frizzing and clothes wrinkled, and she was panting even before she ran up to hug Kal as she had never held him before.
“I was driving…I crashed…that earthquake,” she managed to choke out, her arms tight around his shoulders. Kal wrapped her in a long embrace, and leaned to kiss her frowning lips.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came back…I wised up. Oh Kal, I couldn’t have left without you, why did I ever think that I could?”
“Shh…” he pulled her even more tightly to him, as close as they could possibly be while they lived in separate bodies. “You came after me…”
“I wanted to be with you…in the end…” Lyla’s blue eye were wide and tearful, but somewhere deep in her mind was a profound sense of contentment, knowing that they were together again.
Another quake shook the ground, and the pavement cracked on the road. Lyla and Kal clung together, both feeling the heat from the new fissures, and neither willing to voice what they both knew it meant.
“They told me where you were going,” Lyla explained. “What you were going to do…you did it?”
Kal only nodded, the lump in his throat at seeing her again too thick to talk around.
“Kal,” Lyla whispered, pulling herself away to look into his eyes. “Will you marry me? Now?”
Another harsh blow struck Krypton from within and both of them lost their footing, holding on to each other to stay upright. Kal stared down at her and broke into a grin, and he took both of her hands tightly in his own.
“Lyla, daughter of Ler-Rol,” he began in little more than a whisper. The sharp venting of steam rang out from somewhere too close by.
“Kal, son of Jor-El,” she followed, clutching his hands as they performed the ceremony together. “I vow to love you, heart, mind and soul, now and forever.”
“I vow to love you,” he repeated, staring only at her, ignoring the sweat on a stray lock of her hair. “Until….
never shall we part.”
“Never,” she whispered, her grip tightening and tears glittering in her eyes. The planet gave another violent shake, and Lyla threw herself forward into Kal’s arms. “Will you take me to be your wife?”
“If you will take me to be your husband,” he answered, clutching her, feeling her heart race next to his.
“I do.”
“I do, too,” Kal chuckled with a boyish grin, and spoke low into her ear. “Then be with me forever…Lyla-El.”
He kissed her, long and loving and true, husband and wife clutching each other as the heat around them grew and grew, became too much to bear, they were lost in each other as the pressure built beneath them, the rolling drum building and growing, louder and wilder and more and more dangerous until sudden silence…
*****
There was a dark, empty gash in the star system; a black, gaping wound. Chunks of softly-glowing rock floated through the void, the only evidence that there had ever been a life-giving planet around that star.
Many small colonies were destroyed by the blast from their mother planet. Only a few pockets of wide space still held Kryptonians, a few thousand now all that was left of the proud, bright, ever-growing people. The universe may never have noticed the demise of one bright point in the sky, but these few survivors would forever mourn their brothers and sisters, and tell their children stories of the last days of Krypton.
