File:Fantastic Four Vol 1 161 001.jpg

Description
A salvo of mini-missiles erupts from the wall of the Fantastic Four's battle-simulation chamber, where Reed Richards is exercising. Using his stretching power, he dodges most of them, but one hits and leaves him stunned. As soon as he recovers, a laser opens fire from a far wall. The weapons in the chamber, designed by Charles Xavier, are set to test the Fantastic Four's battle skills to the limit, and when Reed realizes that his stretching power is not reacting quickly enough, he hits the emergency master switch and turns the devices off. As his right arm slowly and painfully returns to its normal form, Reed knows he must inform his teammates as soon as possible. If his power were to fail him during a crucial situation, it could endanger all their lives. He suspected that he would lose some of his resiliency with old age, but it is difficult for him to face the fact, and he wishes he had more courage. When he slams the door behind him, the noise brings Sue, who asks what is wrong. But instead of telling her that his career might be finished, Reed says he is worried about Johnny, who angrily left a short while ago when he learned that Reed was going to sell The Fantastic Four, Inc. to A. E. DeVoor's company. Johnny, meanwhile, is walking through the streets of New York talking to himself, becoming angrier by the minute over Reed's decision. It was all right for Reed to incorporate the team with himself as majority stockholder, he muses, because it is the income from Reed's patents that finances them. But to sell out at a profit smacks of betrayal. Then, to the surprise of some bystanders, he suddenly flames on and soars into the air. Since Crystal is no longer available, he decides to search for sympathy elsewhere, and he heads for a certain plot of swampy land on Long Island. When Johnny arrives, he stands in the precise Location Valeria showed him and quickly fades away. Gripped by uncontrollable forces, he crosses the turbulent barrier into the Fifth Dimension, but when he enters, a group of guards mistakes him for a mechanical 'Androne'• and aim their weapons at him. Puzzled and irritated by this reception, he flames on and starts to melt the weapons with firebolts. This, however, simply confirms the suspicions of the Guardsmen of Gomath—the Fifth Dimension's capital—and they cover him in ice. This extinguishes his flame, and the guards take him to the center of the plaza for dismantling. Fortunately, Phineas and Valeria are flying overhead in an air-car, and they order the troops to release Johnny. Phineas says that Johnny is not a robot but a flesh-and-blood person, and he orders the guards to disperse and search out the real Andrones, who may be striking secretly elsewhere this very moment. After the guards depart, Phineas explains to Johnny that the Fifth Dimension is at war—and the enemy is Reed Richards. Minutes after Johnny left the Fifth Dimension the last time he was there, continues Phineas, an alien craft materialized in the city and let loose the Andrones, which are large, formidably armed metallic androids under the apparent control of a distant, unseen power. They laid waste to much of the city of Gomath before they were driven out, but they may return anytime. Johnny remarks that whoever is responsible for the Andrones was probably waiting for Xemu to fall from power, thinking that the pickings would be easier against less aggressive rulers. Phineas, Valeria• and Johnny then enter a room where Phineas turns on a multi-viewer. It displays scenes from the enemy dimension, whose identity has been determined by Fifth Dimension scientists. Johnny can see that it resembles Earth, although Nelson Rockefeller is president of the United States. For reasons still unknown, says Phineas, this dimension has declared war on the Fifth Dimension. The Andrones were designed by the Reed Richards of the hostile dimension for Inter-Related Technocracies, Unlimited. Then a picture of that Reed Richards flashes on the monitor, and Johnny can see that he looks exactly like the Thing. Thinking that Phineas has Reed mixed up with Ben, Johnny explains that the Thing knows nothing about androids. But then the wall behind him shatters and a trio of Andrones attacks. Johnny makes short work of them, and Phineas asks him to lead the Fifth Dimension's armies against the hostile world. Johnny agrees, at least until they can discover who or what is behind this. Meanwhile, in the home dimension of the Andrones, that Earth's Ben Grimm and his wife, Sue Grimm, are still talking with the "real" Thing. The Thing says that he once met the "Reed Richards who looks like him," and he did not seem to be the type who would associate with a corporation like Inter-Related Technocracies. Then the Thing, Ben, and Sue leave the front gate of Reed Richards Robotics, Inc. and enter their air-car. The Thing says that Lockjaw will remain behind, gnawing on the robots that the Thing just destroyed, while the three of them head for New York. They soon arrive at the otherdimensional metropolis, where they see a large tyrannosaur wreaking havoc in the streets and Vikings attacking bystanders. As they hover overhead, the Thing is attacked by a pterodactyl, and when he tries to defend himself, he tumbles out of the air-car and falls directly onto the dinosaur. He avoids the creature's jaws, but he bounces off its back into a store window. When the dinosaur attacks, he lays it out with a single punch. A crowd of bystanders gathers as Ben and Sue descend, impressed with what the Thing has done. But as they run up, a television in the shattered store window starts to broadcast an emergency address by President Rockefeller. The Thing is astonished that the president is not Gerald Ford, and as he, Ben, and Sue listen, Rockefeller explains that their world is being attacked with "time-probes" from another Earth that exists in a different dimension. As the Thing ponders these words, a gas pellet suddenly bursts nearby, and he falls to the ground unconscious. Ben tells Sue that if he had not used one of Reed's gas capsules, the approaching troops might have killed the Thing. Within moments, the soldiers carry the Thing away, saying that they now have a hostage from the world that is attacking them. Hoping that he did the right thing, Ben, accompanied by his wife. walks away. Back on Earth, Reed Richards wonders why Johnny does not answer their signal and where the Thing may have disappeared to. Then Sue runs into the room and tells Reed to turn on the newsbreak monitor. Scenes of massive destruction—glaciers crushing cities in Canada and Scandinavia—appear on the screen, as the announcer says that a strange radiation source from a hitherto unknown Fifth Dimension is creating a new ice age. Sue remarks that this must be a reference to the world of Phineas and Valeria, and Reed says that he has been working on establishing one-way visual contact with that world as a surprise for Johnny. Then he turns on that monitor and receives an image. Reed and Sue can hardly believe their eyes when they see the Human Torch himself, alongside Phineas and Valeria, leading a massive army of Fifth Dimension soldiers obviously poised to strike at the Earth. Reed does not notice that the logo emblazoned on the soldiers' weapons—Inter-Politan Thermo-Dynamics Unlimited—bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Interlocking Technologies, to whom he sold The Fantastic Four, Inc.