Louie had recovered enough to stagger over to them. His face was full of pain and rage.

"You broke my hand, bitch," he croaked. He held up his hand, now swollen and red. SG raised her head and tried to focus on him. She was seeing double, and she felt dizzy and nauseous.

Then someone broke out of the crowd and lunged toward the men. It was Estelle.

She had just arrived and had seen her friend absorbing a terrible beating.

She tried to push Louie aside, but he grabbed her by the throat with his left hand and kneed her in the groin. She moaned and sank to her knees. Then he kicked her in the face, and she plunged face backward to the ground, blood spurting from her mouth and nose.

SG struggled to free herself and help Estelle. But the man holding her tightened his grip, and the other began pounding her with renewed fury. Her head snapped back and forth from his punches. The crowd surged forward, and Marston women began pulling at the men, holding their arms and clawing at their faces.

Finally, sirens overwhelmed the cacophony of the crowd, and the police pushed in. A captain in charge took one look at the situation - two women badly beaten and a crowd of witnesses - and decided that he and his men could no longer protect Louie Ungtjur from the consequences of his thuggishness, uncles or no uncles.

An ambulance arrived just as Louie and his friends were being handcuffed. Louie begged them not to be careful of his injured hand, but the captain took on the task personally and managed to be unusually rough. Louie screamed, cursed and, to his enormous shame, wept.

The ambulance crew moved Estelle gently onto a stretcher. SG insisted on walking, though she was wobbly and obviously dazed. The ambulance crew and many in the crowd noticed something amazing: She hadn't shed a drop of blood, despite the terrible beating she had endured.

The meeting, organized via phone by Dean Toopermann and Oscar Ungtjur, was held that evening in the board room of the Lackanooka National Bank. The topic, of course, was what to do with "Sallie Gale."

Though Toopermann and Ungtjur had only a nodding acquaintance and didn't particularly like one another, they recognized that they shared an urgent need to get rid of this troublesome young woman. Louie's Uncle Smithson, the county commissioner, was there, too - along with the police chief, the local circuit court judge and an emissary from Metropolis who owned a paving firm in Lackanooka. The firm had several country contracts and was useful in laundering money generated by less reputable business operations in the big city.

"Let's get right to the point," said Ungtjur. "This Sallie Gale, or whatever her name is, has created a difficult situation. Miss Toopermann has been reluctant to discuss her reasons for wanting to eliminate this problem, and I respect her wishes to keep whatever it is that bothers her confidential. But let me be perfectly frank about myself. The young woman has injured my nephew Louie, physically, and has hurt his reputation. Louie is not a bad boy. Just a bit rambunctious."

"She ain't been good for my reputation and the reputation of my force either," said the police chief.

"And I don't relish having to deal with the charges and countercharges arising from this afternoon's fracas," said the judge. "If I don't dismiss the laughable assertion that Miss Gale and her friend initiated the assault on your nephew and his buddies, I can forget about re-election - no matter how much you and the bank invest in my campaign."

"I understand," said Ungtjur. "So we all have our reasons for wanting Miss Gale to disappear. The problem is, how do we go about it? The doctor in the emergency room says that the other girl, Estelle Baroque, suffered several broken bones and lost a few teeth, but our remarkable Miss Gale suffered no visible injuries. And X-rays showed no bone fractures. Yet Miss Gale was much more severely beaten."

He paused, momentarily flustered as he realized what his words suggested. "Beaten as a result of her unprovoked attack on my nephew, of course."

"Of course," said Toopermann, with a wry smile. "I can't believe I find myself in the same camp as your nephew, Mr. Ungtjur, but war creates strange alliances, and this is war. Miss Gale is a formidable enemy. While she does not appear to have powers at anywhere near the level of Superman, I believe she was telling the truth when she said she was sent here by him. And I believe we cannot do her serious and permanent harm by the usual means. I can testify that what would kill a normal girl - or even a normal very strong man - is not going to work for her."

"I think I know what will," said Silvio Mozzarella, the road contractor. He spoke quietly but with authority.

"Miss Gale, as you call her, was not exaggerating when she said she has superhuman powers," he continued. "We know her. We've had unfortunate dealings with her in Metropolis. And we know that Superman sent her here."

"To break up a minor drug ring?" Toopermann asked skeptically.

"To get her out of Metropolis," answered Mozzarella.

"Why?"

"She was getting a lot of attention in the newspapers," Mozzarella said with a shrug. "It makes sense that Superman was jealous. She's just a kid, but she was putting almost as many of my associates behind bars as he was. And she pulled off some pretty spectacular rescues, like saving an entire village full of people from that volcano in Nicaragua."

"An intriguing theory," said Toopermann. "Now, let me suggest another, based on my academic training in psychology and long years of watching interactions between men and women. I think Superman wanted to get this young woman far away from him because she presented a sexual temptation he found very difficult to resist. What I learned about Miss Gale during my evening of interrogation suggests that she is, quite simply, a nymphomaniac. And she has a predilection for situations in which she is powerless and vulnerable. I would not be surprised if she seduced Superman and was sent here as punishment."

"Maybe so," said Ungtjur impatiently. "But I'm less interested in Superman and his motives than in how to get rid of this bitch. Pardon my French."

Toopermann chuckled. "You think I don't use such language myself, Mr. Ungtjur? Yes, she is a bitch. She roughed up my sister this morning, in my very own house. But excuse me. I believe we interrupted Mr. Mozzarella and his thoughts on how to eliminate this 'bitch' of a problem."

"Yes," said Mozzarella. "Well, eliminating her permanently - killing her - is beyond the capabilities of my organization, at least at the moment. But we know how to incapacitate her for a long, long while. And while she's out of commission, maybe we will develop the means of finishing her off - her and Supreman."

"And what is this incapacitating agent?" asked Ungtjur.

"Kryptonite," answered Mozzarella.

Toopermann snorted derisively. "You sound like a comic book villain, Mr. Mozzarella. My area of expertise is psychology, not chemistry. But I've studied the physical sciences enough to know that krypton is an inert gas, and you cannot make a mineral out of something inert."