Henry Pym was one of the world's foremost scientific minds. His past successes put those of men twice his age to shame. He also lived out the dream of many scientists and those of their ilk, he worked shoulder to shoulder with heroes like the Avengers League.

Recently a good friend of Pym's, J'Onn J'Onzz, had approached him with a problem. J'Onn remembered a Martian holiday, 'The Festival of the Emerald', which his people believed brought them good luck for the next year. However, the festival wouldn't be happening this year. For one thing, there was no intelligent life on Mars. Another, the Emerald was missing several pieces and the only way to even have a chance to find them was to contact the Martian criminal Z'Onn Z'Orr, who was locked in a vortex he could never escape from.

The problem J'Onn put forth to Pym was simple: Find a way to open the vortex so that J'Onn would be able to contact him, interrogate him, and, hopefully, find out the information he needed in order to locate the missing fragments of the crystal.

So far everything Pym had done boiled down to nothing. He presently sat in his personal lab with his feet up on his desk and his head cradled in his hands behind him. He closed his eyes and tried to think, fighting to keep sleep from claiming him.

There has to be some way to do this! Pym thought. Nothing is impossible. That much I'm sure of, but opening Martian portals, especially ones opened by lunatic old profs, isn't exactly rocket science.

With his eyes still closed and one hand holding his exhausted head Pym reached over to his radio and flipped the switch. That probably wasn't a good move, he thought, I'll definitely pass out now. After a few moments of listening intently, hoping to blank out his thoughts, Dr. Pym heard a song he hadn't heard in a long time, which, in turn, led him to think of an old friend.

Ah . . . The Spirit in the Sky . . . Hank sighed as he leaped from his lounging and made for the phone.

Finally, Forge got up and walked to the phone.

"Yes? Yes, this is Forge."

" . . . "

"Henry Pym! It's good to here from you too!"

" . . . "

"What's that? No, no, I'm not that busy."

" . . . "

"What am I doing?"' a moment's hesitation. "Oh . . . uh . . . 'Final Fantasy XII'."

" . . . "

"J'Onn J'Onzz. Yes, yes, I see. Can I ask you one question, Henry? What made you think of me for this problem?"

" . . . "

"'Spirit in the Sky', huh? Odd . . . "

" . . . "

"Yes, I will be there soon."

" . . . "

"No, no, I can build a transporter and be there in about thirty minutes."

Forge put the receiver back on the hook. He went back to his game and pressed 'Save'. Much to his chagrin it didn't save, but Forge wouldn't know about that until later and what he doesn't know can't hurt him. It might hurt the TV though.

"This is Foster," Ben Foster replied, thinking that he knew the other man's voice.

"Henry Pym. How are ya?"

"Hank Pym! I'm good, little under worked recently but who am I to complain?"

Hank smiled.

"Well, I may have just the thing you need."

"Yeah? What's that?"

Hank explained the problem. After a few moments of listening intently Ben Foster snapped to more life than he had since he left SHIELD.

"How do I get there?"

"I can arrange for Forge to pick you up if you like."

"Forge? The Forge?! Well, hell, it's like a class reunion, huh?"

"You could say that," Henry Pym thought back to his class reunion, he really was in need of sleep.

"When can I expect you, Ben?"

"When are you expecting Forge?"

"What's Forge got to do with anything?"

"Hank, quit fooling around, he's picking me up. I'll be there when he gets there."

"Oh, yeah, yeah . . . " Hank laughed. "See you then, old buddy."

Ben hung up the phone, a little flustered, and awaited Forge's arrival.

He began to close the medicine cabinet then saw another bottle there and reached for it, unaware that he had no real need.

Forge and Ben Foster arrived a little later. Hank greeted them warmly and after catching up on what the others had been doing the three men set up a makeshift 'think tank' and set to working on J'Onn J'Onzz's emerald dilemma.

"So catch me up with this Dr. Erdel, Henry," Forge said when they began.

"Well, not that much is known really. Professor Erdel was a genius in his heyday but he went a little off the rocker in his older years and started trying to contact life on Mars."

"Doesn't sound like too much of a crackpot. J'Onn came through right?" Ben said, sipping his coffee and grinning at Hank.

"Touché," Hank replied. "Nonetheless, when he brought J'Onn to Earth, a Martian criminal, Z'Onn Z'Orr, materialized too. He killed Erdel, and with him the method he used to open the vortex. So then J'Onn captured Z'Orr, and, being unable to place him in a Martian prison, J'Onn trapped him in the vortex that delivered them both to Earth."*

* (All of this happened in Detective Comics #5-6)

"Sort of a 'Phantom Zone', huh?" Forge asked earnestly.

"Yeah, I guess you could put it that way."

"How very humane," Ben commented.

"So you're caught up friends and comrades. What J'Onn needs us to do is find a way to reopen this vortex - "

"Phantom Zone," Forge asserted.

"Fine, 'Phantom Zone', so that he can contact Z'Orr."

"How does J'Onn know that, if by opening this 'Zone', that Z'Orr won't break loose?"

"Because, if I'm right - which I hope I am otherwise my name for this place loses relevancy - much like the spirits Z'Orr's time on our plain has run its course. He is, for all intents and purposes, dead."

"I'm curious as to how J'Onn and Z'Orr came from Mars when there is no known life there," Ben said.

"That's not important right now, Ben," Hank said. "We have to do this, J'Onn has earned our help time and again. Now, we know the history. We know what's required of us, let's get this done!"

"But, of course," Forge responded as he doodled on a piece of paper.

"Let's hope that's not a picture of Spider Man," Ben said.

"No . . . This is Mars," Forge said as he tapped a shaded circle with his pencil. "And this is Earth." He moved the pencil down to another circle. "Now this," he said as he drew a shaded line, "this is the boundary which no law of physics has any knowledge of, even this line is hypothetical. But, my theory is that it exists just as the 'Rainbow Bridge of Heimdall' exists."

"You're saying that Mars is in another dimension Forge?" Hank asked, puzzled as to where this was going.

"Well, no, not Mars at least not our Mars. Just J'Onn and Z'Orr's. If they are, in fact, true Martians, then they must be from either the past or the future. I'm sure that's been suggested, no?"

"Just the other day actually," Hank said.

"So I'm not completely alone in that theory, good to know."

"All you've proposed is hypothetical theory Forge, is there a point?" Ben asked, a little perturbed.

"Yes. I propose we build a 'vortex generating device', for lack of a better name, much like Erdel's to open the portal. Now, that's sounds like I'm rehashing what we all know we need. But, this is more of a time machine . . . I'm sorry I lost track of my idea. The problem lies not in what we need to do but in what Erdel did."

"Building on that," Ben began. "We haven't been thinking about this for years nor do we live in the same world that Erdel did. Thus, we need to know what time era we're shooting for. Your idea of a 'vortex generating device' is a sound one but so is mine, I think."

"So now we reach the wall," Hank said. "Our only real way of getting a 'target' to 'aim' for, if we're all agreed on the gun analogies, is by guessing and hoping we're right."

"Oh ho! Mr. Pym you are a true rebel! No other scientist I know would ever even use the word 'guess'!" Ben laughed as he poured down another cup of coffee.

"We can't do that, Henry. Like you said J'Onn deserves better than that." Forge said.

Hank leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. "Then what are we supposed to do?!"

Forge began a slow boil.

Forge slammed his hands down on the workbench in excitement. Hank jumped in his chair and Ben spilled his coffee all over himself. After a few mumbled not so nice adjectives Ben rushed to the table.

"What's up, Forge?" Ben and Hank asked in unison.

Forge rose from his seat and began to orate to them as he paced back and forth.

"As you well know I am a spiritualist. Though you may not believe it, I have contacted the spirits of many wise men over the years. Some would even go as far as to say that I am a stronger shaman than I am a scientist even."

Ben and Hank looked at him curiously as he smiled and proudly said three words, "Process of elimination."

Again, in unison, "Huh?"

"Everyone dies boys, except for immortals, gods, and Golden Age mystery men. I have contacted the dead and years ago learned how to hone in on a specified spirit."

"Are you saying that you can contact a dead Martian, Forge?" Hank asked.

"Why, yes. Yes I am."

Then, his Avengers League membership card sounded off. J'Onn surprised himself when he jumped up to answer it.

"J'Onn! We have it! By God WE HAVE IT!" Hank Pym's face screamed into the card. In the background J'Onn could hear shouts of delight.

J'Onn smiled. "By the moons of Mars they have it," he whispered. He shoved his card into his belt and sped to the moon.

"Whenever you're ready, Dr. Pym," J'Onn J'Onzz said, his voice filled with a strange mix of warmth and dread for what was ahead of him.

"All right . . .

"The problem, as we learned, lay not in what we did but when we did it. As it would happen, the face on Mars, according to Dr. Ben Foster, isn't what we have recently believed it to be. It is, in fact - "

"Remains," J'Onn cut in.

"Uh, yeah . . . remains. So, that in itself points to an ancient civilization."

"That simple, huh? Find the face on Mars and base your entire theory and in turn invention on it? Why ain't I a scientist?" Hawkeye asked. Cap nudged him, silently telling him to shut up.

"No, Hawkeye, it's a little more involved in that. The face theory comes from our lead theory. That being, when Dr. Erdel opened his infamous vortex that brought Mr. J'Onzz to Earth, he transcended time and space. In doing so he plucked two beings from the past of another world and brought them to the present of our own.

"Now, Forge, Dr. Foster, and I were assigned to find a way to contact Z'Onn Z'Orr, who J'Onn trapped in the vortex or as Forge calls it, 'The Phantom Zone'. After much hypothesizing and talking things over we committed a scientific mortal sin. We used magic to reach our goals.

"As some of you may know Forge is a shaman of high caliber. His idea was that he could isolate his 'soul searching' to just Martians and by doing so discover when they existed."

"How so, Hank?" Cap asked.

"Very simple . . . He asked them nicely." Hank said smiling.

"Anyway, this Martian told us what we need to know. That, in turn led to the face theory but that's not important now. Once we had this down we devised a machine that could open this portal."

"Just curious, if you open this portal so that J'Onn can talk to Z'Onn isn't there a chance that ol' Z'Onny will break lose and kill us all?" Flash asked.

"I'll cover that, Henry," Forge said, standing up from his chair. "You see, Flash, I call the vortex Z'Onn is trapped in 'The Phantom Zone' because simply by being there he is the equivalent of an Earth born spirit. His time here is run and he can gain no more. Put simply he is the living dead and no threat of any sort to us."

"Oh," Flash said, slightly embarrassed.

"Anyway," Hank continued. "We have solved the problem and devised an invention that we will now use so that J'Onn can contact Z'Orr." Forge started up the machine as the others left J'Onn to his own.

"Good luck," Forge whispered to J'Onn as he exited the room.

"Indeed," J'Onn replied although Forge never heard him say it. "Indeed."

J'Onn was home.

He had dreamed of Mars for the longest time, now he was there.

Or at least he was in a reasonable facsimile.

"Very beautiful Z'Onn," J'Onn 'said' to his old foe. Even though he was nowhere in sight, J'Onn knew Z'Orr was there and that he had heard him. Telepaths could hear each other no matter where they were unless they just didn't want to and J'Onn was sure Z'Orr, for all his air of insufferable evil, would be glad to hear anyone's 'voice', even that of the reviled J'Onn J'Onzz.

Z'Orr materialized out of nowhere, apparently he still had his Martian born abilities even in what amounted to death.

"Hr. Even you are more beautiful than this white, void of a hell you condemned me to."

J'Onn said nothing in reply.

"What is your business here?" Z'Orr growled. "Be warned, I will suffer nothing from you."

"Z'Onn, you are much too weak for combat. You will deal with whatever I feel is fit."

The Martian landscape that had held J'Onn enthralled was suddenly replaced with nothingness. Z'Onn smiled a razor tooth grin as J'Onn turned to face him. The immensity of the white momentarily blinded J'Onn who too soon realized that now Z'Onn could kill him.

"Do not be so sure," the Martian hissed.

"Z'Onn . . . " J'Onn said pleadingly, "I need your help Z'Onn."

"You need my help."

J'Onn nodded, his hand still covering his temporarily useless eyes.

"And why should I help you? You who placed me here."

"It . . . It's a chance for redemption." J'Onn said, hoping that would work yet knowing it would fall flat.

Z'Orr backhanded J'Onn and J'Onn flew for a distance that didn't exist.

"Redemption!" Z'Orr screamed. "Do you think I seek your redemption?!"

J'Onn staggered to his feet.

"Please . . . "

"Why? Why did you come here? Why do you think I would help you? More importantly, what made you think I want your damned redemption?" Z'Onn hissed as he glared at the felled Martian policeman.

"There was a holiday . . . On Mars . . . The Festival of the Emerald. Do you remember it?" J'Onn asked him.

"Yes, I was a staunch believer."

"You?" J'Onn asked, unable to believe this.

"You think purely because I am, according to your laws, a criminal that I have no belief?" Z'Onn said, apparently hurt by this.

"No . . . I . . . " J'Onn began but was silenced as Z'Orr unleashed unimaginable pain upon J'Onn's mind.

"Silence!"

J'Onn shuddered to his feet.

"I am a believer. That I will harbor no questioning of, and because of that I will listen. Tell me what you seek from me."

"The Emerald . . . I remembered it only recently . . ."

"Unbeliever!" Z'Orr hissed as he prepared to unleash another psychic attack. This time J'Onn was able to get his mental shields up. One more attack like the previous two could have killed him.

"No . . . No, it's not that."

"Then what?"

"I just . . . forgot."

Z'Orr glared at him.

"I thought the Emerald was on Earth. I captured it but one of the Earth men scientists discovered that this was only a fragment. I need to find the other pieces." J'Onn explained. "For one with religion you don't seem very worried."

"Why did you seek me out?"

"I thought you might know where I could find the other three pieces of the Emerald."

"Yes, and do you know why you thought that?"

J'Onn honestly didn't know.

"Because I wanted you to."

"Wh- What?"

"From this hell I can not break free but I can only observe. However, I am a telepath and in certain situations like the one with your 'Captain America' I am able to make subtle suggestions. It is because of me that you are here."

"Then why did we go through all of this? Time is of the essence!"

Z'Orr smiled. "I wanted to see you beg."

J'Onn rushed into the meeting room. He was exhilarated. Upon his entrance they all rose to their feet.

"What did you find out?" Cap asked.

"How'd it go?" Flash asked as he rushed to him.

"Are you okay?"

"We were afraid you got lost!"

"I am fine and my ordeal proved to be a worthwhile one after all. I have the knowledge we need."

"Then let's get to work," Captain America said.

Everyone was gone. It had been a long morning and a new day faced them. The Watchtower was empty and silent. Then, out of nowhere a low buzzing began. Something was on somewhere in the lab.

Had anyone been there they would have seen Forge's machine flip on. Had anyone been there they would have seen the planet Mars in all it's crimson glory. Had anyone been there they would have seen a, to quote Stephen King, "Walkin' Dude" approach on the horizon, just beyond the hills, and they would have watched in terror as he grew in size as he approached. Had anyone been there the might have seen a Martian hand reach out, then a Martian body. Had anyone been there they might have saved the machine from being destroyed. But no one was there.