Once she’d submitted the article the next morning, Lois thought she’d finally be done with this submarine crackpot.

No such luck.

Before she’d even managed to sit down, the Chief shepherded her and Clark into his office.

“Looks like we aren’t done with this after all,” Clark commented.

Lois groaned. “Oh, joy…” For once, she wanted something routine, like a bank heist or prison break. Things that didn’t require too many people skills.

“There’s been a development in your submersible story,” Perry explained, “Dr. Timaeus’ workshop was broken into last night. The whole place was trashed, by the sound of it. Because you both did the interview there yesterday, I figured I’d send you down again to check it out.”

“What do you think it could be?” Lois asked, “Sabotage, maybe?”

“I don’t know, but what I do know is that it’s news. Now, get going, both of you.” Well, he didn’t have to tell her twice. Before she knew it, she and Clark were hustling out the door to catch a cab back to that godforsaken warehouse.

* * *


When they arrived back at the Timaeus’ workshop, it was much like they had left it the day before, except that the floor was littered with papers and overturned cardboard boxes. Thinking back on it, they had basically just walked in the day before. No press passes, no security, not even locks on the doors! Well, they had been expected. It was probably locked last night, she reasoned. The eccentric scientist was disorganized but hopefully not that disorganized.

From the outside, Clark didn’t think it would be a very enticing prospect to a thief. They’d passed plenty of better targets on the way here. The corrugated steel walls were bare and some of the windows were boarded up. No reason for it to warrant a second glance.

On top of that, the mess inside would be enough to turn off the average opportunist. So the thief would have to have known what they were going to take. The question was: what in here had actually been worth stealing?

While Lois wandered off to take some photographs, Clark went to talk to the police officer at the scene. The man was standing near Dr. Timaeus’ desk, his eyes scanning the area for clues. He looked up when Clark spoke.

“Can I ask you a few questions?”

The officer nodded.

“Was anything stolen?” He would have said the place looked like an earthquake hit it, but the higher shelves were left untouched. That betrayed some amount of intentionality.

“The place was such a mess before, it’s hard to be sure, but we know that the sub’s sonar device was taken.” Clark looked up and, lo and behold, there it was. Or more accurately, wasn’t. The bottom panel of the submarine had been unscrewed and the chunky sonar device ripped out, leaving just some dangling wires behind. “Even stranger, there’s no sign of forced entry.”

“Interesting, could’ve been an inside job… Have you found anything to help narrow down the list of subjects? Like a shoe print or hair, for instance?”

The police officer shook her head, then paused to think for a moment. “Wait, I think there might be something. The scientist, he had one of these specimen jars, I think. Whatever it was, it was full of this black slime that spilled everywhere when it broke. If the perpetrator had knocked it down, you’d think it might have caught a shoe print or two.”

“I’m guessing it didn’t, then. You think they could have… dodged it, maybe?”

“With the radius that thing left on the ground, no way. There were marks through the puddle, but not shoe prints.”

“What kind of marks were they?”

“Wheel tracks, by the looks of it. Thought it might have been from one of the shelves rolling over it, but they’re all clean.”

“Huh…” Clark pursed his lips and thought for a moment. Tipping his glasses down, he focused his vision on the puddle, finding tracks just like the officer said. In addition, he noticed a distinctive tread pattern. Nothing he recognized, but he filed it away for future reference. “Well, thank you for your time, officer.”

“No problem.”

Across the room, he spotted Lois tapping her foot impatiently, no doubt asking herself why Perry had needed to send both of them. He’d better wrap this up, then, before she got too crabby.

“Dr. Timaeus?”

The scientist spun around, sending his messy shoulder-length hair into a frenzy. It seemed that, in the chaos, he’d abandoned the ponytail. “Oh, it’s you, again,” he replied, sounding almost relieved.

“Is it okay if I ask you a few questions?”

The scientist nodded. “By all means.”

Clark thought back to the front door. It was strange that it had been completely intact. Who would have a key, besides the scientist himself? “Is there anyone who would have wanted to interfere with your research? You mentioned that a few assistants had left you over the years. Do you think any of them might have held a grudge?”

“My most recent assistant ceased their association not long after you both left yesterday. We’ve certainly had our disagreements but it’s never come to blows before, not like this.”

“What kind of disagreements?”

“Others in my field, my former assistant included, think I don’t deserve the funding I have. They’d prefer it went to their projects instead. A particular few have taken to calling me a ‘crackpot,’ as well.” He chuckled derisively. “I suppose that’s a sacrifice one has to make in order to push the boundaries of science.”

“Are there any cameras in here? Anything that could’ve recorded the break-in?”

The scientist shook his head vehemently. “No, no, I don’t like cameras. They’re watching, Mr. Kent. I can’t just let them pry into my private sanctum.”

“Who’s watching? Other researchers?”

“No, no!” he insisted, lowering his voice to a whisper, “They are the ones I’m searching for. They have spies everywhere. They won’t stop until they shut me down for good.”

Clark fought back a grimace. It looked like Lois had a point about this guy. It really sounded like he’d gone off his rocker. Even so, Clark decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Dr. Platt had seemed just as nuts, but Luthor and his cronies really had been out to get him. Tragically, Lois and Clark’s early inaction had meant that they hadn’t saved him.

“Do you think they’re responsible for the break-in?”

“I know they are. They took artifacts that once belonged to them. They were picked up by a trawler just outside of Metropolis Harbor. They’re worthless rocks to anyone else.” These artifacts must have the half-buried mechanism he’d shown Clark in the photograph. If what Dr. Timaeus had said was true, he was going to have to find them.

And that sounded like a job for Superman.

* * *


It seemed that their day was going to end like usual, on the couch fixated over a story. As much as Lois griped about this one, she was still unable to stop herself from helping. Her inability to leave things unsolved had won out for the time being.

Back at the Planet, Clark had tasked Jimmy with finding the names of the researchers competing against Dr. Timaeus for funding. It turned out to be a surprisingly long list.

Now, Lois scanned each page carefully for clues. Each scientist had their own little blurb about their research, who they’d worked with, and a picture. Jimmy had really gone above and beyond this time. She’d never get over how fast that kid could pull this amount of information together, but she was sure it had something to do with those wicked computer skills of his. Meanwhile, she hardly knew how to use her own e-mail account.

“I don’t know how much we’ve narrowed down the list. There’s more marine biologists in the area than I thought. Or else this guy has a lot of enemies.”

“From what he told me, it seems more likely to be the second option.”

Lois chuckled. “He’s almost as bad as I am.” She could tell Clark was holding in a laugh as well. She really did collect enemies like baseball cards. Much like her dad’s extensive collection of cards, she couldn’t seem to get rid of her enemies. Flipping to the next page, she was surprised to see a familiar face staring back at her. “Oh, look, Lori is on here.”

“They both specialize in the deep-sea side of the field. It makes sense that they’d end up in the same circles.”

“Maybe she’s here for the submarine launch,” Lois wondered aloud. “Did she ever say why she was in Metropolis?”

“I don’t think so. It could be a conference or something like that. That would explain why so many of their colleagues are in town.”

“It says that they worked together on a study in the past, so…” She flipped to the next page, then the next. “Oh, jeez, that’s a lot of names.”

“Anything else to help narrow it down?”

“Not that I can see. After that, it looks like he could only get students to work with him.”
And by the looks of it, he kept scaring them off. He couldn’t seem to keep an assistant for more than a few months.” Clark had a pretty good guess what was causing that. Either Dr. Timaeus' raging paranoia or another one of his many eccentricities. “It’s amazing that he got any work done at all.”

“Did you find anything more on his assistants?”

Lois frowned. “Nope,” she said, popping the ‘p’. “The guy keeps terrible records. All I could find were some first names. He paid them in cash… if he paid them, at all.”

“Great, so that’s a dead end.” Clark let out a prolonged sigh. “Did you see if they moved on to work for any of the others on the list?”

“Not that I can see.”

They read through Jimmy’s research in silence for a while longer before Clark commented, “He’s either a genius or a madman. It just depends on whether or not he’s right. Though, he seems pretty convinced that whoever’s down there are the ones interfering with his research.”

Lois laughed sarcastically. “Oh, that’ll go over great with Perry. ‘The merpeople did it.’”

“Well, does anything else on there catch your eye?”

“Nope.” She dropped the stack of papers onto the coffee table, then slouched down, in defeat. “Honestly, I’m stumped.”

“Ready to call it a night?”

“Yes, please.” She stuck out her leg and poked him with one of her bare feet. “Distract me, before I succumb to boredom.” Looking up at him with a mischievous smile, she beckoned him closer.

Now, how could he say no to that?