Nearby, Robotman, Namorita and Negative-Man were combing the north beach of the little Island. So far, they had found no sign of anything unusual. That was about to change.
"This has been a real bust!" Larry said. "Monster hunting on Gilligan's Island."
"And you're Gilligan," Robotman said, and then turned his attention to Namorita. "Ya find anything with that sonar o' yours, Nita?"
Nita looked tense, alarmed. "There's something approaching, Something very large!"
The robot crashed through trees and reached the beach. It's shadow covered the Doom Patrol members.
"I am Intergalactic Sentry #459, Instrument of the star-spanning Kree Empire," the robot said. "You are unauthorized. You must be destroyed."
"Kree?" Robotman repeated. "What in the blue hell is a friggin' Kree?"
"No clue," Larry said. "But I'm guessing they're not friendly."
"What was your first clue?" Robotman asked, sarcastically, as he charged the gigantic mechanoid. He rammed his heavy metallic body into the Sentry . . . And bounced off. He landed on his back.
"Holy spittle!" Robotman said. "That's one tough robot!"
The Sentry grabbed Robotman before he could get back to his feet. "You do me a disservice by labeling me a robot. I am far, far more. I am the supreme cybernetic being. I am a Kree Intergalactic Sentry!"
The Sentry hoisted Robotman in the air like he was a little doll. It slammed the Doom Patrol member down into the sand so far that he disappeared from sight.
"Cliff!" Larry yelled, enraged. Immediately, he released the crackling, black, featureless Negative-Man from his body. Larry fell to the ground, weakened, while the Negative form attacked the Sentry.
Stretching out like a rubber band, the Negative-Man wrapped itself around the Sentry and tried to overwhelm it with both microwaves and an EM Pulse. However, the Sentry was shielded against both. Realizing that the attack wasn't working, the Negative-Man became incorporeal and passed through the Sentry's impenetrable metal hide. He hoped that he could short out the Sentry from inside. However, the Sentry was powered by a mini-nuclear power cell. Not only did Negative-Man's attack do no harm, the hero nearly found his own Bio-atomic energy absorbed into the Sentry. He barely escaped!
Weakened, the Negative-Man returned to Larry's body. Larry blacked out, falling to the ground, senseless. Namorita activated the emergency signal to summon her other partners. Then she leaped into the fray!
On the other side of the Island . . .
Mr. Terrific and Elasti-Girl walked along the south shore of the Island. While they waited for the T-Spheres to complete their scans, the lovers walked hand-in-hand.
"Even if there are monsters here, it's still very romantic," Elasti-Girl said.
"Don't say that until you see the monsters," Terrific answered.
"You're such a mood breaker!" she snapped.
"Sorry," he responded. "I'm out of practice."
"We'll have to do something about that," she said. "I missed you so much those months you were gone!"
"I was suffering, too. I thought about you constantly. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw your face."
"You don't have to imagine any more, Michael. I'm right here, face and all."
"And a beautiful face it is. I missed that face."
"No more talk."
Michael and Rita embraced and kissed passionately. The T-spheres beeped out the results of their scans, but neither one noticed.
They did, however, react when the emergency beacon sounded.
"I guess they found some monsters!" Rita said.
Back on the north beach . . .
Namorita realized that she couldn't hurt the Sentry. She was trying to use her natural speed to stay out of its reach, hoping to keep it busy until the others arrived. But the Sentry had some more surprises in store. Raising its large hand, it unleashed a bolt of energy, which struck Namorita. Had she been human, the shock would have been fatal. Her Atlantean strength allowed her to survive, but she fell unconscious.
Meanwhile, Robotman was digging out of the sandpit. "OK, that's it! No more mister nice guy!"
He saw the Sentry closing in on the defeated Namorita with murderous intent. "Oh no ya don't, C-3PO!"
Stretching out his extendible hands, he did the old 'Schoolboy trip' routine. An oldie but a goodie! he thought, as the Sentry tripped and fell.
As the Sentry climbed back to his feet, Robotman jumped on the mechanoid and pummeled it savagely. Unfortunately, it did no obvious harm. A backhand slap from the Sentry knocked Robotman away. He splashed down in the sea. It took him a few seconds to reorient himself and even longer to drag his heavy body back to the shore.
Halo, who was hovering above, saw the Sentry preparing to smash Namorita and Larry into bloody mush. She had to act! Focusing her Light-form into a laser blast, she hit the Sentry with her full power. The Sentry was shaken by the attack, but not seriously damaged.
"Where did that last attack come from?" the Sentry asked.
Halo assumed her human form. "I will not allow you to hurt my friends!" she yelled.
"You cannot stop me," the Sentry said.
The Sentry swung a metal fist at Halo, but she reverted to her Light-body and the fist passed harmlessly through her. The Sentry tried an energy blast, but it was equally ineffective.
"You can't hurt me, either!" Halo said.
"I have observed and studied your powers," the Sentry said. "You are not beyond my power to harm."
From out of his eyes, the Sentry released a multicolored flash of light, encompassing every color in the spectrum. The colored lights affected Halo's Light-form like an energy overload. Halo screamed and fell to the ground. The Sentry lifted his hand to squash her.
Just then, Mr. Terrific and Elasti-Girl came running to join the fray. Terrific yelled a code to his T-Spheres, and one of them swooped down and knocked Halo out of the way. The Sentry's fist missed her by inches.
"Rita, keep him busy!" Terrific ordered.
Rita grew to her maximum size of forty feet. She grabbed the Sentry and wrestled with it for a few seconds, until it released an electrical charge from its body. Rita's elasticity made her somewhat more resistant to electric shocks than a normal person. That, combined with her enormous size, saved her life. She staggered away, stunned, and involuntarily shrank back to her normal height. Then she blacked out.
The Sentry tried to finish her off but Mr. Terrific pulled her out of the way. The Sentry looked puzzled. "The female seems to have the power to levitate out of danger while unconscious," the Sentry said.
Mr. Terrific immediately realized what the Sentry meant. Mr. Terrific was a walking blind spot to technology. No machine could register his presence. From the Sentry's point of view, it must have seemed that Rita floated away, rather than being carried away by Terrific. That gave Terrific an advantage.
Terrific pulled a device off of his belt. It was a disc, based on the anti-gravity combat discs designed by the Wizard. Terrific had prepared the device as a means of fighting monsters like Godzilla. He brought it with him to the Island in case they came across a creature they couldn't handle.
Since the Sentry couldn't see him, Terrific crept up on the mechanoid and slapped the device on its back. It latched on magnetically. Once attached, it activated. It reduced the Sentry's gravity to zero, and caused the Sentry to be pushed away from larger objects, rather than being attracted to them.
"What is happening?" the Sentry asked, confused, as it started to float upwards. "This is not logical. What is happening?"
The Sentry continued to float up, disappearing into the clouds.
Robotman finally got back to shore. Larry regained his senses. They joined Terrific as he watched the Sentry drift higher and higher.
"How high is he gonna go, Mikey?" Robotman asked.
"To the stratosphere," Terrific said. "Where he'll stop his assent, begin to fall and hopefully burn up in re-entry. Even if he doesn't, I've calculated his descent so that he'll crash down in the middle of the ocean, and sink like a stone. He won't be bothering anybody."
"You're a genius, Mike," Robotman said.
"Don't give him a swelled head," Larry commented.
Mr. Terrific checked on his fallen teammates. Rita recovered quickly. Namorita took a bit longer to revive. She was groggy for a few minutes, but after a quick dip in the ocean, she was as good as new. Halo was the last to awaken. She opened her eyes to see the Doom Patrol looking down at her.
"Uh . . . Hi," she said.
"Are you all right?" Terrific asked.
"Physically I'm fine," she said. "Just a little shaken up."
Terrific's tone turned harsher. "Your lucky that's all you are, young lady!" he yelled. "It was very stupid of you to follow us!"
"Give the girl a break, Mike!" Larry interrupted. "She did save me and Nita."
"I was just trying to help," Halo said.
Terrific sighed. "We don't have time to go into this now, and we don't have time to bring you home. Our time frame is getting tight. So you'll have to come with us. But I want you to follow orders and do exactly as I tell you! Understand?"
"Of course, sir! Anything you say, sir!" Halo said.
Terrific addressed the group. "We're obviously on the wrong island. Aquaman didn't report anything like that robot thing on Monster Island, and we haven't seen or detected a single dinosaur. Also, there's nothing here to keep a creature from leaving the Island anytime it wished. Therefore, we should check the other island."
Everyone agreed. They boarded the jet and took the short hop to the next Island. It was only a mile away. Mr. Terrific was wondering about the purpose of the Sentry and about its creators, these mysterious "Kree". Just then, he detected something on his scanners. Some sort of energy field.
"Larry, turn us around!" He yelled, alarmed. "Turn, quickly!"
Larry tried to make an emergency turn, but it was too late. They passed through the energy field. As they did, the ship lost power. All systems were dead. The engine wouldn't re-start.
"Nothing's responding!" Larry yelled. "We're going down!"
"Crash positions!" Terrific shouted.
Larry hit the manual controls and then released the glider additions, which popped out of the wings. Larry tried to aim the jet toward the stretch of beach he spotted to the east. He had brought planes down without landing gear before, and hoped that he could do it again. Everyone else braced for the impact.
Larry managed to steer the gliding jet toward the stretch of beach. With the skill of an experienced pilot, he succeeded in bringing the ship in for a non-lethal belly landing. The ship skidded down the long beach, ultimately coming to a stop just before it hit a large hunk of stone.
"Whew!" Larry breathed.
"Nice work, Larry," Terrific said.
"Good job," Rita added.
"I gotta admit, ya done good, kid!" Robotman said.
"I want a raise," Larry quipped.
The Doom Patrol disembarked and studied the Island. Terrific wondered about that energy field. "Larry, see if Negative-Man can get passed that energy barrier."
"I do all the work," Larry said, and then released Negative-Man from his body. The crackling Negative form flew up, until it rammed into the energy wall. Negative-Man bounced off. He made a few more attempts to pass through the barrier but failed repeatedly. He returned to Larry's body.
"No soap," Larry said, weak. "Can't do it."
"That must be the field Aquaman talked about," Namorita said. "Its supposed to be impenetrable."
"Did he happen to mention how he got out?" Terrific asked her.
"Well, uh, not exactly," Namorita said. "He mentioned a gateway. But I was so excited about the news that I left before I found out exactly where it was."
"That ain't a good detail to overlook, Nita!" Robotman snapped.
"Everybody relax," Terrific said. "We know there's a way out. We just have to find it."
"So this energy field lets things in but nothing can get out?" Halo asked.
"That seems to be the situation," Terrific said. "Although you can probably leave. Light penetrates the field, so you can escape. If worst comes to worst, we can send you for help. As for right now, though, let's try to avoid that. Halo needs to keep a low profile. We don't want people finding out about the Inhumans. So, let's start looking around and see if we can find the door on our own."
Their search didn't take long before. They quickly ran into a monster!
The beast was a quadruped, standing fifty feet long, from tail to snout. It had a heavily spiked protective shell on its back, horns on its head, long fangs and spikes on its tail. It roared at the Doom Patrol and charged. Halo blinded it with a light burst and Robotman socked it in the snout. The creature retreated.
Mr. Terrific saw a pterodactyl-like creature sailing overhead. "We seem to be definitely on Monster Island. And the fact that our flying friend hasn't visited in the mainland only proves that the field surrounding this Island is impenetrable. It's a perfect place to strand Godzilla."
"We just have to get ourselves out of here," Rita said.
Using the same search strategy again, combining Namorita's sonar with Terrific's T-Spheres, they scoured the Island. Their search led them to a cave mouth.
"I'm sensing movement deep in the caverns," Namorita said. "They go down a long way."
"I'm getting some strange readings too," Terrific said. "Heat images of unknown creatures. Smaller than the creatures we've seen so far."
"We haven't found a way off on the surface, so we may as well look underground," Elasti-Girl said.
"Maybe there's a tunnel to the sea," Namorita said. "That could be how Aquaman got out."
Terrific nodded. "It seems to be the logical step. All right, team. Let's go spelunking."
They went into the cave. Winding tunnels led them down deeper into the ground.
They didn't notice the little creature that resembled a chimp, watching them from the stalactites. The creature bounded off, making its way quickly through the darkness. It made its way down, passing the tunnel of the winds and the valley of diamonds, finally getting to the center of the maze of caves. There, it entered a decorated chamber, made to look like a throne room. Small, yellowish humanoid beings with blank, staring eyes stood motionless, as if awaiting orders.
On the throne in the center of the room, was a small, homely man, dressed in green, with a clock. He held a staff and wore dark glasses. The little chimp-thing chirped at the man on the throne. The little man seemed to understand.
"So, we have visitors, do we? Well, we don't like visitors here. They will regret their uninvited arrival. The surface people will not leave these caves alive. So swears your king . . . The Mole Man!"
Next: Can the Doom Patrol find a way to escape Monster Island? And who is the mysterious Karnak?