The Announcement

Basically, the idea was to escape from the Galaxy Building and get well on the way out of town before the associate producer arrived and told everyone to do something else.  The escape was Jimmy Olsen's idea, and Ev and Jerry didn't much care whether it worked or not.  They played along because the alternative to following Olsen upstate was probably to sit on the Fifty-ninth Street Tramway and shoot film of cars sliding into one another's fenders on the bridge below.  Going along with Olsen would, at worst, make for an interesting day and, at best, it would give Ev and Jerry a story to tell their grandchildren someday.

Reporters, secretaries, technicians, staffers of one sort or another were beginning to blow out of the snow into the WGBS-TV newsroom adjoining Studio B.  When Jimmy had arrived at work - as was his custom, snow or no snow - fifteen minutes early at eight forty-five, he turned on the United and Associated Press tickers in time to get a list of the major anticipated stories of the day.  Clark Kent, the associate producer, was responsible for assigning reporters to their stories.  The moment Jimmy saw the name Lex Luthor type itself out on the rolling yellow paper, he started wanting Clark to arrive at work late.

Years ago James Bartholomew Olsen Senior had told Jimmy that once a man knew what he wanted, he was halfway to having it.  By that reckoning, Jimmy reasoned, Clark ought to be late for work half the times Jimmy wanted him to be late for work.  Whenever a story about Luthor tapped itself out over the wire, Clark invariably assigned it to himself.  Clark was almost never late.  Jimmy looked out at the snow and figured that he had a lot of potent wanting saved up.

Because of the snow, Jimmy thought it was fair to wait for Clark for an extra fifteen minutes.  When Clark was still somewhere out there at ten past nine he decided that no one would haggle over five minutes. He signed out the four-wheel drive newsvan and hustled Ev and Jerry into the freight elevator.

"Excuse me, sir," the freight elevator operator said, "but you ain't carrying any freight."

"Pardon?" Jimmy said as he pressed the button for the basement and blocked the elevator operator from keeping the door open.

"Freight.  You've got to carry freight.  Packages or heavy equipment or something."

"Oh that's all right.  See my press pass?" Jimmy smiled as he pulled out a laminated card from his ski jacket.  He wore the pass on a rawhide shoelace around his neck.  "I'm with WGBS News, you see, and Ev and Jerry here are my cameraman and sound technician. They carry heavy equipment all the time."

"But they ain't carrying it now.  This is a freight elevator."

"Right.  Yes.  You're new here, aren't you?"

"I've been working here for twelve years."

"Right.  Well, you must've seen a lot of strange things.  A lot of strange things happen here, you know."

"Not on the freight elevator."

"Not until today, huh?"

"Eh?"

"Well, thanks for the ride," Jimmy said as he pulled Ev and Jerry by the elbows off the elevator into the basement garage. "Hope your next twelve years are just as interesting."

They couldn't take the regular passenger elevator down, Jimmy said, because they might run into Clark coming up.  They couldn't leave through the lobby because that was the way Clark came in.  They couldn't drive toward the East Side although that would have been the best route out of town because they might see Clark plodding through the snow, having missed his bus and unable to hail a cab, and the crew in the newsvan would have to offer him a ride and explain where they were going.  Unfortunately, when Jerry, at the wheel of the oversized minibus, turned left onto Fifty-second Street, Clark Kent stepped off a bus that happened to be driven by a very patient and pleasant member of the overworked Transit Workers' Union.

"Uh-oh," Jimmy said and slouched in his seat.

"Jimmy?" Clark asked himself and then waved and yelled, "Jimmy!  Where are you going?"

"Gotta watch Luthor escape.  See you later," Jimmy yelled back and told Jerry to throw on the four-wheel drive and get out of there fast and to hell with the snow.  Before Clark Kent had slogged across the street, through the lobby, up the elevator, and into the newsroom, Jimmy and the newsvan were on the Westway heading upstate.

Jimmy turned on the car radio and slid up and down the tuner until he found a weather report.  Evidently it was snowing nowhere except in the immediate vicinity of the city.  It was bitterly cold for hundreds of miles around, but outside Metropolis the air was crisp and clear.  Maybe Superman really had caused this storm.  Jimmy would have to remember to thank him for seeing to it that Clark was late the day Luthor showed up on the morning newswire.

The rolling yellow sheet from the Associated Press had said, simply, that Lex Luthor would hold a press conference at the criminal's residence, which happened to be on the grounds of the Pocantico Correctional Facility sixty miles north of Metropolis.  Luthor's conference would be at two in the afternoon, and Warden Haskell would meet with the press an hour earlier.  It would be at least noon before the newsvan broke free of the blizzard.  The sound man drove and the cameraman navigated through the slow line of traffic filing up the Westway as Jimmy slouched among the equipment in the back of the van and wrote the story that had not yet happened:

Last year, the criminal scientist Lex Luthor escaped from Pocantico Prison eight times.  The year before last he broke out eleven times, and one of those times he broke back in and then out again to retrieve something he had left behind.  He has broken out only once so far this year, but it's only the beginning of February.  He has broached walls, dug underground, flown overhead, set up disasters or mirages of disasters, and slipped away in the confusion.  He has simply vanished, leaving no explanation for his disappearance.  Today, however, he did something he hasn't done before.  He called a press conference to announce plans for his next prison break.

Jimmy assumed that was the most likely reason Luthor might want to meet with reporters.  It was not that the criminal had ever wanted to talk with a reporter before about that or anything else.  It was not that Jimmy had any special information other than what he had learned from the AP report.  It was not even that Jimmy had flashes of extrasensory perception.  It was simply that, having been around news and newspeople constantly since the age of sixteen, by the time Jimmy was in his mid-twenties he was as aware of the patterns and probabilities of important events as he was acquainted with the phases of the moon or the floor plan of his apartment.  Very little took him by surprise.  His effusive and volatile personality was largely an unconscious attempt to provide himself with some internal excitement, since he was effectively jaded as far as the external world was concerned.

By the time Jimmy looked up from his scribblings, Jerry was wheeling the newsvan on a snowless highway through Scarsdale and it was half past noon and a forty-five-minute drive to Pocantico without traffic.  Jimmy suggested that Jerry drive faster.  Ev strongly suggested that the trio be prepared to split the cost of any speeding tickets because Clark was a stickler for obeying the law and the station would not cover it.  They would be late for the warden's show, but they would catch the main event.

In a cubicle on the third floor of the four-tiered maximum security cell block at Pocantico sat a man who possessed probably the greatest intellect of any Earthman of his day.  Luthor was talking to himself.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said.  "No, gentlemen . . . no, esteemed members of the press - the mass media?  Umm."

Luthor got up from his cot, paced back and forth over the length of the cell, stared up at the gray back wall of the cell as if it had a window in it.  "Simple," he told himself.  "Direct, concise, simple.  You're not running for office."

He sat on the cot again, sat back against the wall and picked up his yellow legal pad and his pen.  "Three main points," he mumbled, and he listed them:

1.	Have discovered new energy source which can be developed and made practical immediately -
2.	Have petitioned Justice Department for permission to work on development either in or out of prison & have submitted funding proposals to 20 major industrial corporations in return for 49% share of new process - all rejected -
3.	Submitted proposals out of courtesy and in all good faith - not surprised by rejection - therefore will demonstrate process by using it to escape sometime during next 7 days -

Luthor looked over his note pad and his three points, paced up and down the cell some more, waved a hand as he mumbled approximately what he had to say that afternoon, and looked up through the bars at the other inhabitants of Cell Block Ten.  All the men in sight were quietly watching him, wearing various expressions of hero-worship and awe on their faces.  Luthor smiled, tossed the pad on his cot and said in a clear, loud voice, "Any questions, class?"

Somebody hollered, "All right!" and two hundred or more men within earshot whooped and applauded for the greatest criminal mind of all time.

A kilometer away and thirty meters underground, Warden Haskell, the man who ran this prison complex when Luthor was away, was briefing the press.

"As you can see," Haskell said, "these walls are sixteen inches thick and this door weighs seven hundred pounds and takes three men to open it even when it is unlocked.  We were very careful, by the way, in choosing the titanium alloy this is made of to see that there was no lead mixed in the material.  Hence Superman will be able to monitor the prisoner if he so chooses.  The lock, part of which you can see in the doorjamb here, consists of eight bolts which have to be opened both here at the midpoint of the door, and in my office by a special electronic control for which only the Attorney-General and I know the combination.  Any claims the prisoner makes to the effect that he is being held incommunicado will be unfounded, as you can see from this press conference as well as the fact that we will provide him with - "

The reporters, fifteen men including four television technicians, were standing in the large super-security prison cell listening to the warden when they heard a crash out in the hallway.  Then a man yelled "Stop!" and there was another crash and the warden walked out to see what was happening.  There he found three strangers standing with their legs spread and hands on the wall while one of Haskell's prison guards held a gun and another one frisked them.  Haskell wondered what was the matter until he recognized one of the three strangers.

"Curtis," he said to the guard with the gun, "what's the problem here?"

"Unauthorized personnel, sir."

"Unauthorized hell," Jimmy Olsen said as he pressed his hands against the wall.  "Didn't anybody ever read the First Amendment to you guys?"

"This individual showed me a false press pass," the guard said, "and upon detection he became indignant and tried to force his way in."

"When're you guys gonna learn to talk English?" Jimmy wanted to know.

"Mind your manners, punk, or I'll break your face," the guard told him.

"That's enough, Curtis.  You too, Murphy," the warden said. "Back to your posts.  I'm sorry about this incident, Mr. Olsen.  I'm Warden Edmund Haskell.  I don't think we've met before."

"I was planning on being pleased to meet you, Warden," Jimmy extended a hand.

"The men are on edge today because of the heavy security around moving Luthor.  I hope you understand.  What's this problem about a press pass?"

"I don't know."  Jimmy pulled his card out from under his shirt as the guards trudged off and Ev and Jerry went to check their two cases of camera equipment that had been thrown against a wall.  "Here's my pass if you want to see it.  It got me past three checkpoints just fine until I got down here to the dungeon."

"I see," Haskell snorted as he read the information that hung around Jimmy's neck.

"You see what?"

"I'll have to have a few security drills, Mr. Olsen.  This card shouldn't have gotten you this far.  It's your season pass to the indoor courts at the Metropolis Racquet Club."

"How do you like that?" Jimmy looked at it.  "I wonder if my socks match."

Jimmy Ev and Jerry followed the warden into the dungeonlike room and the other reporters tapped their feet, looked at their watches and gave each other impatient looks as Jimmy's crew set up their sound film equipment.  Nobody said a word of complaint, though, as the warden waited for Jimmy Olsen before continuing his remarks.  It was great to be a star.

The room was ostensibly built for occasional high security cases.  The federal grant said that some examples of the room's uses would be for suspected assassins, spies during wartime, an emergency bomb shelter, terrorists whose friends were likely to try to break them out of jail, that sort of thing.  It would not do, Constitutionally, to build a special facility for a single prisoner, since that would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.  During the construction of the facility, no one besides reporters mentioned the fact that the super-security cell was being built in the same prison where Lex Luthor had spent slightly more than half his time since he became too old for the East Kansas Juvenile Reformatory.  But sure enough, the very day Luthor decided to call a press conference - something most convicted felons do not often do - Warden Haskell decided to announce that the new facility was complete and ready for its first occupant: Lex Luthor.

"As I was saying earlier," the warden went on, "any claim that the prisoner might make to the effect that he is being held out of touch with his attorney, his friends, his colleagues in either criminal or legitimate pursuits - anyone at all - will not be borne out.  As you can see, there is a functioning private telephone on the wall between the television and the camera through which the prisoner is monitored, although the numbers of all outgoing and incoming calls will be recorded automatically, and you will notice that there is a switch under the camera with which the prisoner can turn off our audio monitor for up to fifteen minutes of any twenty-four-hour period.  Thus, the room simultaneously provides redundant security and maintains a convict's rights to limited privacy."

Luthor had been bragging during these past days that he would escape this week.  The man was not generally given to boasts of either the hollow or the dense variety.  Haskell was the ninth warden at this prison in eight years.  Four had been fired; two had had nervous breakdowns; one had had a heart seizure after seven months here, following a history of anemia; and one had actually turned out to be one of Luthor's many fictional alter egos.  This last case was such an embarrassment that the governor lost his own job over it.  Haskell had entered public service twenty-nine years earlier in order to have job security.  He was eight months from retirement and did not intend to screw up as had his predecessors.  No one would blame Haskell if Luthor escaped from him every once in a while.  The man had not stayed in jail long enough to go to trial more than once since he was a teenager.  But if Luthor managed to get out after announcing his plans to the press, Haskell would have the same job security as the forgotten pitcher who was dumb enough not to walk Babe Ruth after the hitter pointed out the place in the bleachers where the next pitched ball ultimately landed.

"Well, I wouldn't dream of taking any time away from our star inmate," Haskell concluded.  "I wouldn't want to be accused of emotional brutality." No one laughed but Haskell.  "There will not be any time for questions, gentlemen."

"Wonder why," the reporter from Newark said, loud enough for Jimmy to hear him.

Almost immediately, there was a shuffling and the muffled sound of men's voices from the hall.  Before anyone could get out of the room, three prison guards, each with a .38 calibre pistol in one hand and a set of complicated work orders on a clipboard in the other, rushed in and ordered everyone into the hallway.  The warden went with them to stand on one side of the door as a horde of prison guards - none of them was shorter than six-feet three - burst through the translucent, wire-reinforced glass door at the far end of the hall.  Ev and Jerry recorded the scene for Galaxy News.  As far as any eye or any camera could detect, no one was saying a word, but as the swarm oozed into the narrow space, reporters could gradually make out the sound of a man's mouth moving faster than any biologically sound mouth ought to be able to move.

"Hey cauliflower-head," were the first words that the reporters were able to distinguish from the clapping of cleated boots, "don't you ever have trouble getting fitted for earwax? . . .

"Watch those size fourteen hooves of yours, Elmer.  I don't want instant fallen arches.  Look, when you get a new pair of shoes can I have those?  I need a spare rudder for my yacht. . . . .

"Will you look at old granite-face here, about to crack his first smile since kindergarten?  Last time he did that they had to call in an orthodontic stone mason and a cement truck to repair him. . . ."

It was unmistakably the voice and attitude of Lex Luthor, dwarfed and invisible among shoulder-to-shoulder prison guards.  The lump of guards passed, knee-to-knee, holster-to-clipboard, through the hallway toward the reporters and the warden, then turned right into the super-security cell like water over a dam.  The only way to determine where among the swarm Luthor walked was to try to figure out at what point the stream of invectives sounded the loudest before it faded into the reinforced room.

"That was my groin you hit, ape-arms.  Wanna find that clipboard in your spleen some morning? . . ."

Luthor could say anything he chose to the guards.  Once, when Luthor was working a rock pile, a rookie guard shoved him onto a heap of stones that cut his face.  Luthor never said a word to anyone else about the guard or the incident.  All he did was suggest to the young man that he apologize.  Luthor told the guard that he did not even have to act as though he was sorry, only that he should say the words.  When the guard declined the suggestion, Luthor simply heaved a sad breath, wiped a grimy hand over his face and went back to work.  One morning not long afterward, while accidently dozing for a moment during the night shift, the young guard woke up with the initials LL carved in his forehead.  Luthor was accounted for during the time it happened.  He certainly would have arranged for an alibi had he done it himself, but he had nothing to do with it.  It was simply the work of one of the inmates, angry over his hero's indignity, serving notice on the prison administration - as the inmates did in one manner or another from time to time - that Lex Luthor was not to be touched.

"Hey, where's the innkeeper?  Where's former Warden Half-skull?  You out there, Warden, scraping the governor's shoe polish off your tongue again?  Hey, I don't like to kiss and tell, but I think one of your hired thugs just tickled me."

Eventually the entire company of prison guards flowed into the super-security cell and the wind began to die down for a few moments.  Seven guards came back out of the room and solemnly assembled in the corridor - one on either side of the cell door facing three who lined up opposite them looking into the open room, and two at the translucent wired-glass door at the end of the hallway.

"All right, gentlemen," Haskell said to the company of reporters who were amazed by the security precautions, "I think we're ready."

The newsmen, with their notepads, flash cameras and video equipment, all filed into the room.  Spiffily uniformed men, pistols and clipboards in hands, lined all four walls, and in the far left corner, dressed in fatigues and a cherubic grin, stood Lex Luthor, lighting a pipeful of tobacco.

"I do wish you'd thought to put some ashtrays in here, Half-skull."  Luthor dropped his match which fell straight for half the distance to the floor and then spiraled the remainder of the way from the height of Luthor's knees.  Imprisoned, handcuffed, dressed in dull gray, surrounded by eighteen men, all of whom were appreciably more massive than he, the bald, stocky man looked for all the world as though he were in charge.

Luthor greeted the reporters, taking care to pay special attention ("Your acne clear up yet, puss-face?") to Jimmy Olsen.  He made his three-point statement, embellishing it suitably; Haskell once again assured the reporters that the room was quite escape-proof; during the drive back to Metropolis Jimmy began writing the story of Luthor's escape, which would certainly come in handy sometime during the coming week.

In two weeks Warden Haskell would be transferred to the East Kansas Juvenile Reformatory where his salary, and consequently his retirement pension, would be reduced by about 20 percent.

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