Gripping his ’47 firmly in his right hand, he flung open the door and immediately came face-to-face with two guards, just as shocked to see him as he was to see them. With lightning-quick reactions, Adam blasted the first one through the chest with a bolt from the MK, and then swung his left fist at the second guard. To Adam’s surprise, his fist sank completely into the guard’s skull and exited out the other side, effective hooking the alien’s head onto Adam’s forearm, in a bloody spray of brains and shattered bone material.

Damn! What else could go wrong?

Just then a whole array of bolt streaks filled the hallway, as yet another group of armed guards appeared to his right. Adam needed a new exit strategy…

One of the good things about a low-gravity world was that construction did not have to be as strong and sturdy as on a heavy-gravity world. Even though atoms were atoms everywhere in the universe, the strength of the compounds and building materials varied from world to world. So what Adam had discovered about construction on Hildoria — and Bundnet’s house in particular — was that everything was essentially built of material about as strong as balsa wood and popsicle-sticks.

So Adam leaped across the hallway, through the blaze of energy bolts, and smashed through the opposite wall with little effort, dragging the dead alien on his arm as he did so.

Stumbling through a fallen metal shelving unit, Adam found himself in the home’s kitchen area, and as he ran between rows of preparation tables, he continued to try and shake the stuck alien off his arm. At that moment, he could hear the words of Riyad Tarazi echoing in his head, as the Human leader of the Fringe Pirates had told him how Humans were the supermen of the galaxy. As he feverishly tried to dislodge the lifeless guard from his arm, Adam was pretty sure Clark Kent never had to deal with a problem like this…

Finally, the lifeless alien slipped from his arm.