The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [166]
Jor-El recognized a handheld device—a reflective scrambler that could block incoming communications, effectively preventing anyone from sending a message. He himself had invented the device years ago, but the Commission for Technology Acceptance had banned it. Just another one of the inventions that Zod had kept for himself.
With widening eyes, Jor-El went to the next display deck and found the original plans for the Rao-beam generator, then rocket engine designs, satellite launchers, thrust enhancers, heat concentrators. Jor-El wondered how often Zod had censored scientific work for the express purpose of keeping it for his own private arsenal.
“I should have ignored the Commission, never brought any of my inventions to Zod.” His throat was dry, and his eyes burned. “Damn the old Council and its foolish rules!”
Lara had moved out of view into a small side chamber. Her voice shook when she called out. “Jor-El, you’d better come in here. You need to see this.”
In a small room of its own, Jor-El saw the greatest secret that General Zod had been hiding. Along with a complete control console studded with crystalline rods, a silver-ringed frame hovered in the center of the room, holding open the singularity Jor-El had created.
The Phantom Zone.
And in the flat opening between dimensions, he saw hundreds of despairing faces crowded against one another, flattened and overlapping. Their open mouths shouted. Their eyes pleaded.
He didn’t need to recognize any of the faces to know who they were. “So this is what happened to anyone who spoke out against Zod.”
Some of the more vehement dissidents had probably been killed outright—he guessed the brutal work of Nam-Ek there—but the Commissioner would have considered the Phantom Zone to be a much neater, more satisfying way to dispose of his enemies.
Jor-El froze, feeling his anger increase even further. “We have to get them all out of there.”
When the imprisoned faces spotted the two of them, their expressions changed as they begged, but the dimensional barrier muted all sound. Jor-El went to the control console and raised his hand, trying to reassure the trapped ones.
“I’ll help you release them.” Lara’s lips quirked in a smile. “I’ve done this before, remember?”
On the control panel, he changed the polarity of the crystals so that the glowing red shards became green. Amber shifted to white, reversing the flow into the Phantom Zone and releasing the first prisoner. As if he’d been ejected from the other universe, a man spilled out of the vertical, flat circle, so weak he collapsed to his knees. Trembling and unable to speak, he looked at Lara and Jor-El with haunted eyes. Lara helped him up.
Jor-El recognized the man as Tyr-Us, son of the old Council Head Jul-Us, and a friend of Zor-El’s. He had vanished under mysterious circumstances.
The remaining faces continued to clamor in total silence while Jor-El worked the control crystals. A second man, balding with a long walrus mustache, collapsed onto the stone floor. His eyes looked sunken and hollow. Gil-Ex. “We’ve spent…an eternity in there. It’s Zod. Do not trust Zod!”
“No one needs to worry about Zod anymore.”
Jor-El continued to release prisoners from the Phantom Zone. One after another, they emerged, terrified, breathless, and glad to be freed from the maddening dimension. Dozens of those who had tried to issue warnings against Zod, those who had complained about his policies…those who had supposedly “retired from public view.”
The last to emerge was a servant named Hopk-Ins who had worked in the halls of the Commission building in Kandor—the first person Zod had exiled to the Phantom Zone, just on a whim.
One by one, the rescued people staggered up the stone steps, out of the dim museum chamber, and into the fresh air and warm red sunshine, emerging to a whole new Krypton.
CHAPTER 80
General Zod seethed inside the transparent prison. Together, defeated, he and his companions stared through the impenetrable dome at the