Adam Strange, Vol. 1 (The Man of Two Worlds)

Sardath has revealed that he had stopped Zeta Beam transmissions some years ago. It took four and a half years for the Zeta Beam to travel to Earth, and Sardath said that he had stopped transmitting after five years because he hadn’t received a response from Earth. Thus, the whole history of Adam Strange, from teleported adventurer from Earth to his current married state, had taken at most four and a half years. But before Sardath had stopped transmissions, he had replaced the Zeta Beam with something called a Mega Zeta Beam that, he calculated, would not wear off, allowing Adam Strange to remain on Rann permanently with Alanna, who was now pregnant. In case Adam misses the first Mega Zeta Beam, Sardath sent two.

As the last Zeta Beam wore off, Adam Strange kisses Alanna, as he often did when he felt himself returning to Earth. On Earth again, he begins wrapping up his affairs. He tells his family, including his dying father, that he had been voyaging to Rann and that he was relocating there, but they do not believe him. Drinking, he spends a night with a nurse named Eve the night his father dies. Finally, putting Earth behind him, he catches a one-way ride to Rann on the Mega Zeta Beam.

Meanwhile, on Rann, we get increasing glimpses of what was really going on. Examining Alanna earlier in the story, after Adam had defended her from a monster attack, Sardath had mentioned that hers was the first baby conceived in twenty Rannian years. Alanna had questioned why Sardath hadn’t told them earlier about the Mega Zeta Beam, but Sardath hid behind his usual absent-minded scientist façade. With Adam gone, Alanna begins questioning why so many Rannians seemed to hate Adam, and Sardath simply explains that they hated someone more powerful and capable than themselves. But readers are treated to scenes in which several Rannian policemen complained that, while Adam had helped the planet, they themselves could have done what Adam had done. It seemed that many resented Sardath and his fertile celebrity son-in-law from Earth, and some seem to have formed a resistance movement.

As Alanna and others wait for Adam to appear from the Mega Zeta Beam, he at first fails to do so. Alanna and others wonder if Adam had chickened out and decided to permanently abandon his Rannian family. When he appears, however, he was deranged, having been driven mad by the Mega Zeta Beam, in which he had somehow remained conscious to experience frightening hallucinations. Thinking them monsters, the crazed Adam Strange lashes out at the Rannians, injuring Sardath before being wounded and driven off into the planet’s desert wastelands.