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landing and the waiting gem.
    Before they could get there, Freeze yelled, “Hit me!”
    Batman came to roost on the landing mere inches from the gem, Robin right behind him. But an Iceman skated in from the wings and, with a slapshot, sent the diamond flying across the room . . .
    . . . right into Freeze’s waiting glove. Batman saw the villain’s fingers close over the gem, securing it.
    “Thanks for playing!” Freeze crowed.
    Then he dropped into the cockpit of his giant drilling truck and began to slide the hatch closed above him.
    Batman turned to his protégé. “Work on the thugs,” he said. “I’ll take care of Freeze.”
    Before the words were out of his mouth, he saw a capsule rise out of the drill truck on some kind of ejection cylinder. He had to move quickly.
    Leaping onto a banister that ran beside the landing, Batman retracted his skates. Then he slid down the rail on the soles of his boots and jumped when he got to the bottom.
    For a heartbeat, he sailed through the air. Then he dropped into the cockpit. A fraction of a second later, the hatch closed over it.

    Inside the capsule, Freeze was starting to feel the rush of victory. Making his way to his control console, he started to hit a button—when something dark and leathery caught his eye.
    He whirled. And saw Batman standing there.
    Of course. The fellow was nothing if not tenacious.
    “Freeze,” said the crime fighter.
    Freeze smiled. “Nice of you to drop in.”
    Then he hit the button. A tremendous roar went up, and the capsule—set on the end of its ejection cylinder—blasted out of the drill truck. It rose like a rocket toward the roof.
    Batman was thrown to the floor by the powerful acceleration. But Freeze remained upright, protected by his mighty suit.
    “Pity the poor Bat,” he said. “How weak you are.”
    As he made the comment, he saw something flash by one of his observation ports. A black-and-red blur that looked disgustingly like Batman’s sidekick. And judging by the gloved fingers he saw clinging to the raised edge of the port, that was exactly who it was.
    But he wouldn’t be able to hang on long. Freeze was certain of that.
    As if to underline his thought, the capsule blew through the ceiling at an angle, then blasted its way through the museum roof. They were suddenly surrounded by the starry night sky as the rocket continued to climb.
    But Robin was still clinging to the side of the rocket for dear life. Freeze grunted thoughtfully. Perhaps the junior crime fighter’s demise would take longer than he’d imagined.
    Batman glared at his adversary as he got to his feet. “You were a great scientist once, Freeze. A great man. Don’t waste your genius on evil.”
    Freeze looked at him. “I hate being lectured,” he said.
    Then he shoved Batman into the bulkhead with bone-jarring force. And before his enemy could recover, the villain brought his cryo-gun to bear.
    Pressing the trigger, he froze Batman’s ankles and wrists to the bulkhead in chunks of dense, unbreakable ice.

    Batman cursed himself inwardly. He had allowed Freeze to get the drop on him. And in a game like this one, it was difficult to come back from an early deficit.
    “If I were you, I would watch the numbers,” Freeze told him. He tapped his silver-gloved finger on the transparent face of the altimeter. “They are the harbingers of your doom.”
    Batman glanced at the altimeter. Their capsule was at ten thousand feet and climbing steadily.
    “Can you feel it coming?” Freeze asked him, his voice as clinical as a scalpel, his eyes glazed with intellectual curiosity. “The embrace of the void? The icy cold of space?”
    Batman didn’t answer. He was thinking. There was a way out of this, if only he could find it.
    “To freeze to death,” his adversary went on. “What blissful agony. At ten thousand feet, a small quiver, a tiny quake. The body resists, thus far unaware that its fate is sealed.”
    Still, Batman refused to answer. In his mind,