Synopsis
The story opens in the middle of danger: Captain America is attacked by a huge purple alien while investigating a UFO that has landed in a farmer’s field. The farmer, Jim Hendricks, picks up an alien weapon and blasts the attacker, who falls dead then fades out completely. Hendricks, who called Cap after seeing him on a talk show discussing UFOs, explains that the ship came from a black hole. How does he know? The pilot is at the farmer’s home. Meanwhile, out in space, the creature’s controllers, who sent the Stalker to capture the ship’s pilot, decide to send the deadlier Combatron. Cap talks to the frightened alien pilot, who resembles a human being, calling himself the Captive, explaining how he managed, after a million years, to escape from the black hole which was his prison, and now his captors are trying to take him back. The Combatron arrives and Cap manages to elude its deadly weaponry as well as a heat ray fired from the warship in orbit, until he can decoy the ray into destroying his fearsome opponent. Discovering the telephones have been cut off, Cap and Hendricks try to drive the Captive to safety but a heat blast destroys the car. As the Captive and Hendricks run for safety to the former’s ship, Cap sees a galactic assault ship disgorge dozens of Magnoid hunting robots. Spotted by his enemy, Cap manages to fight them off and take refuge in the Captive’s ship. There he receives a shock: Jim Hendricks is dead, drained of his life-force to power the Captive, who is a space parasite, justly imprisoned to protect the universe. The monster, last of a feared race, now plans to absorb all of Earth’s energy and continue to terrorize the galaxy. Cap tries to stop him but he is ineffective against an energy parasite; he barely manages to hold the creature at bay with his shield. The Magnoids arrive distracting the Captive so that Cap can bonk it with his shield, allowing the robots to seize and restrain it. The bound Captive is replaced in its ship which is flung to the farthest reaches of space, where it falls into the heart of a star about to go nova, destroying the threat forever. In an epilogue, Captain America reports the incident to a high-ranking government security committee, who decide to hush up the matter to preserve the sanity of mankind.