File:Marvel Team-Up Vol 1 66 001.jpg

Description
When Spider-Man and Captain Britain regain consciousness, they find themselves sealed inside transparent spheres roughly six feet in diameter. The spheres, in turn, are inside what seems to be a Victorian drawing room bedecked with ornate fixtures and furniture. As he watches them on a monitor, Arcade sees that they have recovered, and his hands begin to play over the controls of an intricate computer. Assisting him are Miss Locke and Mr. Chambers. Arcade gloats that the Maggia will pay him $1 million to kill a college student named Brian Braddock because their computers indicate that he is one of 50 people who may be Captain Britain. Imagine what they will pay, he continues, when he turns over the good Captain himself—and Spider-Man as well. The globes containing Spider-Man and Captain Britain are actually the "pinballs" in an enormous, scaled-up pinball machine. Arcade's computers are keyed to a smaller pinball machine, which Arcade will play manually, so that the moves of the balls in the smaller machine are duplicated electronically in the larger one. Arcade calls his garish device Murder World. When everything is ready, Arcade pulls the plunger on his machine, and the globes containing Spider-Man and Captain Britain shoot into the Murder World arena. Each time Spider-Man or Captain Britain's sphere caroms into a bumper, an electrical shock of nearly killing intensity stabs its occupant with pain. The shocks, together with the erratic motion of the globes, keep Spider-Man and his companion from gaining the leverage to break free. Spider-Man has no idea why anyone would go to all this trouble instead of simply doing away with them. Suddenly a giant flipper knocks Spider-Men's sphere away from the "deadball" slot, and inspired by his second chance, Spider-Man exerts his strength and shatters his sphere. Then he spins a mound of webbing in the path of Captain Britain's globe that bounces it into the air, and when it falls back down, Spider-Man and Captain Britain combine punches to shatter it and liberate the Captain. Meanwhile, Arcade presses more switches, and another sphere starts to roll toward the two prisoners. It is as big as a house, and suddenly spikes pop out of its surface. Then Arcade throws another switch and the "doom ball" vanishes. It kept Spider-Man and Captain Britain frozen with uncertainty just long enough for him to activate a pair of trap doors that sends them falling on separate paths into the innards of Murder World. Captain Britain comes to rest in a chamber and sees his girlfriend, Courtney Ross, imprisoned in a large transparent capsule in an adjoining chamber. Arcade announces over a loud-speaker that Britain must drop her capsule down the clearly marked chute on the other side of the "prize chamber" to save her. She has just two minutes of breathable air left in her capsule. Britain runs to Courtney through a hall of distorting mirrors, but to his surprise, his images come to life and attack him. Although he quickly defeats the images, which are actually robots, the battle uses up precious time. There has to be more to this mad death-trap, he muses as he continues onward. Spider-Man slides down a chute and confronts a gun-toting, western-clad robot named "Kid Cyborg." He quickly knocks the robot's head off but suddenly finds himself on a battlefield dodging planes that are dive-bombing him. Part of this insane place is real and part illusion, he thinks as he runs, but he cannot tell which is which. He soon realizes that the battlefield must be the illusion and that he is still in the tunnel where the chute deposited him. So, ignoring the sensory images, he feels out the tunnel wall and tears it open. The illusion is so good that it seems as if he is tearing a hole in thin air. Then he goes through the hole into a maintenance shaft filled with a confusion of electronic hardware. Whoever built Murder World qualifies as a 100 percent genius, says Spider-Man. When Captain Britain enters the chamber in which Courtney Ross is encapsulated, he finds that her capsule is a prize in a giant treasure-scoop game. Just then a steel door slams shut behind him and water begins to fill the chamber. Arcade enjoys Captain Britain's discomfiture over the new incentive to hurry, but Miss Locke informs him that their sensors are no longer tracking Spider-Man, and Mr. Chambers points out a malfunction in the central power core. Arcade tells them to be silent and not to disturb him in the middle of a game. If there is a problem, he says, then deal with it. Confused by the welter of wires, Spider-Man simply smashes everything in sight. Unfortunately, this disrupts the controls of the treasure scoop, preventing Captain Britain from rescuing Courtney. As the water rises, he realizes that he has just one chance at her. If he misses, neither of them will live long enough for a second try. Meanwhile, Spider-Man clambers out of the maintenance tunnel, and Arcade's sensors suddenly pick him up right outside the door of the control center itself. Arcade is delighted that Spider•Man has demonstrated his worthiness as an opponent by accomplishing what no one has done before, and then he throws a switch that opens a sliding door next to Spider-Man. When Spider-Man looks down, he sees Captain Britain under water holding his breath, trying to operate the treasure scoop. Spider-Man web-swings into the room, bends back the bars above the water-filled chamber, and rescues Captain Britain. Then the Captain tells Spider-Man about Courtney, and they break open her capsule and pull her out just as she is losing consciousness. But then the room begins to fill with noxious gas. Apparently the damage Spider-Man did in the tunnel had no effect, but it did. Chambers warns Arcade that the systems are overloading, but Arcade cannot wait to see what Spider-Man does next. Suddenly the whole complex is rocked by a series of explosions. Using his spider-sense as a guide, Spider-Man bends back the walls of the chamber and he, Captain Britain, and Courtney escape. A few seconds later, as the three companions emerge from a manhole in a midtown Manhattan street, a police car illuminates them with its headlights and the officer, Willis, tries to arrest them. But then Jean DeWolff arrives, reprimands the man, and drives Captain Britain, Spider-Man, and Courtney away in her roadster. She informs them that after Interpol notified her of the million-dollar contract that the Maggia put out on Captain Britain, some unidentified "lone wolf" shot the Maggia's top European hierarchy, the Commission, to pieces. It will be months before the Maggia families recover. She wanted Captain Britain picked up to warn him of the contract when she heard he was in New York, but evidently she was too late. Then she lets Spider-Man go, saying that she will make her excuses to headquarters. As Spider-Man web-swings away, he has a feeling that they have not seen the last of Murder World or its unknown creator. Meanwhile, Arcade retrieves his hat from the shards of his wrecked machine. Miss Locke informs him that both Roak and Moran are dead and that the Maggia will not pay him. When Chambers asks what they're going to do now, Arcade replies that they're going to rebuild, bigger and better than before. When they are ready, he proclaims, they will have to invite Spider-Man back for a rematch.