Free Terrors by Richard A. Lupoff Page A

needed in the great majority of situations.
    She wore no headgear, no mask, yet those who encountered her were strangely baffled when asked, later, to describe her face. She had been photographed a few times, most notably by Della Marston of the Seacoast City
Daily Sentinel
. Della doubled as resident sob-sister on the paper’s features page andsometime photog. Using her heavy Speed Graphic as a bludgeon she had brained more than one wise guy or thug, sendinga couple of them to the hospital and a few others to the city jail.
    But even Della’s shots of the Golden Saint showed only a blur where the crime-fighter’s features should have been.
    Strangest of all were a pair of shimmering shapes that extended from the crime-fighter’s shoulderblades. Or did they? Witnesses differed. Some said that they were wings, others denied that they existed at all. Some said that the Golden Saint could fly—and if she was indeed a saint, perhaps she could. Others insisted that she merely had unusual powers of agility and strength.
    It was late afternoon in Seacoast City. The sun made only a faint, feeble glow through dense cloud cover, and a heavysnowfall was covering the gray slush and ice that covered the city’s streets and walkways with a new coating of white. For a brief moment the city would be turned into a Christmas card image of shimmering white and glittering crystal. Then it would turn gray again.
    But why was this happening in August? Why were children not playing in water from the city’s opened hydrants? Why were last summer’spennant-winning Seacoast City Superbas forced to play all their games on the road? Why was the Saturn River frozen over, and the waters of Seacoast Harbor perilous with floating floes?
    The freakish weather had begun with an unexpected cold snap on the last day of June. The air had grown chillier over the next seventy-two hours. Forecasters broadcasting from the city’s radio stations commentedlaughingly on the possibility of a small chunk of winter having been jarred loose from its moorings and plunked down in the middle of summer.
    Businessmen in the city’s exclusive clubs, women in checkout lines at grocery stores, children in playgrounds, all shared a common topic: the strange weather.
    When the first snowfall began many of Seacoast City’s younger set were delighted by the novelty.Photographers like Della Marston of the morning
Daily Sentinel
and Stan Sterling of the evening
Herald-Reporter
competed to produce the more striking images.
    By the middle of August the novelty of winter-in-summer had worn thin. Mayor Howard Harkness of Seacoast City declared a state of civic emergency. At the mayor’s direction, Police Chief Alf O’Brien ordered his men on a full alert, cancelingall leaves and placing his officers on double shifts. Governor Oliver Buckman, sweating in his shirtsleeves in his office at the state capital, could hardly believe hisears when he received a request from Mayor Harkness for emergency food and medical supplies.
    The governor traveled to Seacoast City by railroad car and climbed onto the platform wearing a short-sleeved shirt and panama hat, tobe greeted by a howling gale and cutting sleet.
    On the city’s most influential radio station, newscaster Joseph Van Horn wrapped up his daily report with a succinct item.
    “The unprecedented summertime cold spell that has gripped Seacoast City has claimed another victim, twenty-year-old Mary Esther Jamison, an elevator operator at the Central Railroad Tower. Like earlier victims of the freakweather, Miss Jamison appeared to be frozen to death. The office of Coroner Walter Hopkins has withheld details of the autopsy.”
    In the studio of WSCR, Van Horn carefully dropped the top page of his script to prevent the sound of shuffling paper from going out over the air. From the next page he added, “Mayor Harkness and Police Chief O’Brien urge all residents to stay indoors as much as possible,and keep your thermostats turned up.