TIM - Sun Bath 1

“If you can’t bear to be made red-hot like me, then you are weaker than I am, and I have won, and you are my slave.”

The monster began to laugh.

“All right,” he roared. “Build the fire, and I’ll lie on it.”

He laughed again. He knew the Iron Man couldn’t build a fire the size of Australia. But then his laugh stopped. The Iron Man was pointing upwards, at the sun.

“There is the fire for you,” he shouted. “You go and lie there. Go and lie on the sun till you are red-hot.”

The monster gazed up at the sun. He felt strangely cold suddenly. But how could he refuse? All right! And he set off.

With slow giant wingbeats, he lifted his immense body off the earth, and flew slowly up towards the sun, while the whole earth watched …

Slowly he covered the distance, getting smaller and smaller as he went. At last he landed, a ragged black shape sprawled across the sun. Everybody watched. And now they saw the monster begin to glow. Blue at first, then red, then orange. Finally his shape was invisible, the same blazing white as the sun itself. The monster was white-hot on the sun.

Then they saw him returning, a blazing shape tearing itself off the sun. This shape became red as it flew. It was writhing and growing larger. Slowly once more it became the black bat-winged shape of the dragon flying back to earth, down and down, bigger and bigger, cooling as he came, until

BUMP!!!!

He landed – this time much more heavily than before, on Australia. He landed so heavily that all over the world bells tumbled out of church towers and birds’-eggs were jarred out of their nests. The monster stared down at the Iron Man.

But it was hardly the same monster! His horns drooped, his face was wizened and black, his claws were scorched blunt, his crest flopped over limply and great ragged holes were burned in his wings. It had been terrible for him on the fires of the sun. But he had done it, and here he was. The fires of the sun are far, far hotter than any fires here on earth can ever be.

“There,” he roared. “I’ve done it.”

- The Iron Man, Chapter 5