Perry kept the small communications device on a shelf in his office. A year went by. Jimmy was promoted to senior researcher and was trying his hand at photography. Several of his pictures had already made it to the front page of the Planet and Perry had started actually sending him on shooting assignments.
Jimmy and Lucy Lane, Lois’s younger sister, had met at Lois’s funeral. They were now engaged to be married, although neither was willing to set a date. Life was looking up. He still missed Lois and Clark, but he wasn’t looking up at the elevators quite so often, expecting them to walk in.
Perry had finally hired some new people to replace his two star reporters, but he had refused to assign the title ‘hottest team on the Planet’ to anyone. That had been reserved for them.
“Olsen, my office, now!” Perry bellowed. Jimmy grabbed his camera, expecting to be sent off to take pictures of some disaster, or be yelled at for a flaw in composition he’d missed, although those were few and far between these days. He stopped inside the door to Perry’s office.
“Shut the door,” Perry ordered. Jimmy closed the door behind him. A closed door meant the discussion was serious, possibly career threatening.
“Yes, sir?” Jimmy managed to squeak out.
Perry looked over at him, surprised. “Oh, it’s not you. The communications gizmo Lady Zara gave me just went off. There’s a life pod coming to Earth from New Krypton. Ching sent me the coordinates and asks us to help the two survivors.”
“Did he say what was going on?” Jimmy asked.
Perry shook his head. “Only that is was urgent we protect the survivors. It sounded like there were explosions and fighting in the background.”
“So, where do we find this life pod?” Jimmy asked. Perry handed him a set of map coordinates. Jimmy checked the numbers against Perry’s atlas, then double-checked them on Map-Search. About a hundred miles north of Metropolis, in an area of farms and second and third growth forests.
“It’ll take us about two hours to get there,” Perry calculated. “We should be there about the time they land.”
They took Perry’s car, speeding up route 87, towards the map coordinates Ching had given Perry. Perry slowed the car as night fell and they got closer. There was a streak of light overhead and almost immediately after a small explosion. Perry stopped the car and the two men ran across the field toward the impact crater.
They stopped at the edge of the crater, staring down at a tiny metallic craft in the bottom of the newly formed pit. The smooth metal was still glowing, but appeared to be cooling rapidly. Jimmy walked, slid, fell, into the pit.
“It’s way too small to have an adult in it,” Jimmy told Perry as he looked it over for some way to open it. Cautiously, he put out his hand to touch the craft. It was already cool to the touch. The hull separated, the top moving up and away from the small passenger compartment.
Jimmy was greeted by two wails. There were two dark-haired infants inside the pod, one maybe three months old, the other a newborn. Both were wrapped in blue and red blankets that no earth bound loom had any part in making. The blankets of the older baby were emblazoned with a symbol Jimmy recognized. The ‘S’ shield of the house of El. The symbol on the other baby’s blanket looked more like an ‘L’, only upside down.
He grabbed both children and clambered back to where Perry stood waiting. He handed the children to his boss and went back into the crater to retrieve the navigation module and several metallic wafer-like objects. He stuffed the small globe and the wafers into his coat pockets.
Perry handed the newborn back to Jimmy as they made their way back to the car. “I hardly thought we’d be needing car seats,” Perry complained mildly. He loosened the blankets around the child in his arms. “It’s a boy,” Perry announced, rewrapping the child who had begun to protest the cold.
“Do you think he’s Clark and Zara’s son?” Jimmy asked.
Perry peered at the infant, who looked back with large brown almond shaped eyes under a cap of soft black hair. “There is definitely a resemblance to Clark, so I’d guess yes.”
“But then, who’s this?” Jimmy asked. The newborn was female. Her eyes were still the blue gray of newborns, dark hair fine against her scalp.
Perry shrugged. “First things first. We need to get to the closest town, find a Costmart and get ourselves some supplies. Then we can worry about the rest.”
The next town was less than five miles away and the Costmart was on the outskirts of town. Perry left Jimmy with the children while he went shopping, coming back forty-five minutes later with two car seats, diaper bags, diapers, clothes, baby bottles and formula, baby blankets and two teddy bears. The red and blue blankets were folded up and put in the trunk. Before the two men left the Costmart parking lot, both babies were dressed, fed, and safely ensconced in their seats for the trip to Metropolis.
The two children were asleep in no time, obviously exhausted from their trip, the changes around them. Jimmy found himself dozing off as well.
He woke at Perry’s shake and found himself still in the car in the Daily Planet parking garage. They grabbed the two children and all the new paraphernalia that now came with them, and made their way to Perry’s office.
“Chief, how are we going to explain them? We can’t tell anybody they’re from New Krypton . . . I mean . . .”
“I know what you mean, son,” Perry assured him. “I know some people who can help, including your dad. But first, let’s see if that globe thingy can tell us anything more.” He pointed to the communications device on the shelf. The normal white had turned a soft green. Perry picked it up and Ching’s voice began to speak.
“This will be the last communication to Earth from the colony of New Krypton. I send this in hopes that the last two survivors have been retrieved safely because by the time you hear this, there will be no sentient life left on New Krypton. There may, in fact, be no planet at all.
“As I’m sure you have surmised, the male child is the clone of Kal-El born of Zara. His name is Ler-El. The female is his birth-wife, Lausa Gem-Ar, last daughter of the House of Ar, an old and noble house.
“Despite our best efforts to avoid conflict, Lord Nor and his followers attempted a coup against the Houses of El and Ra, making claims that the union of Zara and Kal-El was a subterfuge, that the child in her womb was not his. Civil war broke out, many died. When it became apparent to Nor and his followers that they could not prevail militarily and relocating the colony to Earth was not an option, they attempted to coerce the population into accepting his rule by threatening to use weapons of mass destruction.
“I do not know how the weapons were deployed, if they were set off accidentally or deliberately, but within moments of launching the life pod to Earth, fusion devices were set off both on the surface and below ground. Zara is already dead as is most of the council of Elders, killed when the council chambers collapsed. By the time you hear this, the rest of us will have joined them.
“Please, take care of our children. They are all that are left of a once great people. They are our gift to you. Love them, as we should have done.”
The globe stopped speaking, but remained green. Perry put it back on the shelf and when he turned back to Jimmy, the young man could see tears in his eyes.
Perry blinked away the moisture. “I’d like to keep this as close to the family as I can. I’ll call Clark’s parents, let them know their grandson is here.”
“What about the girl?”
Perry gave him a appraising look. “I know you and Lucy are probably not ready for this. Hell, Alice and I weren’t ready when Perry Junior was born and we’d been married five years. But I have a feeling about that little girl. And I think you and Lucy will be the perfect parents for her.”
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“I’m getting to be an old man,” Olsen berated himself silently. Then he realized, not for the first time, he was the same age Perry had been on the night New Krypton died.
The elevator doors opened and the hottest team on the Planet stepped out, arm in arm, grinning like two cats who’d feasted on a whole cage of canaries.
“We’ve got the goods on the mayor!” Olsen’s dark-haired, hazel-eyed daughter yelled.
Her tall partner grinned, white teeth bright against olive skin. “And, of course, we have the exclusive on Superman and Ultrawoman handling the dam break in northern China.”
“That’s Ultrawoman and Superman,” the woman corrected. “The straight man always gets top billing.”
“And she just has to be on top,” he quipped, laughing.
The hottest team on the Planet: Lois Joanne Lane Olsen and Clark Joseph Kent, last survivors of Krypton.
