[Superman is carrying a woman as they fly through the sky.] Superman: What do you think of the view? Woman: It’s lovely but you should take me back. I’m going to be late for work.
Superman: Not to worry, i can have you there in the blink of an eye.
[They zoom through the air at superspeed.]
Superman: There see? No probl—
[Superman looks over to see the skin is missing from the woman’s face, revealing her skull.]
VIII
This is more serious than it looks.
Consider: these sperm are virtually indestructible. Within days or weeks they will die for lack of nourishment. Meanwhile they cannot be affected by heat, cold, vacuum, toxins, or anything short of green kryptonite. (And other forms of kryptonite. For instance, there are chunks of red kryptonite that make giants of kryptonians. Imagine ten million earthworm size spermatozoa swarming over a Metropolis beach, diving to fertilize the beach balls… but I digress.) There they are, minuscule but dangerous; for each has supernormal powers.
Metropolis is shaken by tiny sonic booms. Wormholes, charred by meteoric heat, sprout magically in all kinds of things: plate glass, masonry, antique ceramics, electric mixers, wood, household pets, and citizens. Some of the sperm will crack lightspeed. The Metropolis night comes alive with a network of narrow, eerie blue lines of Cherenkov radiation.
And women whom Superman has never met find themselves in a delicate condition.
Consider: LL won’t get pregnant because there were too many of the blind mindless beasts. But whenever one sperm approaches an unfertilized human egg in its panic flight, it will attack.
How close is close enough? A few centimeters? Are sperm attracted by chemical cues? It seems likely. Metropolis had a population of millions; and kryptonian sperm could travel a long and crooked path, billions of miles, before it gives up and dies.
Several thousand blessed events seem not unlikely. (If the pubescent Superboy plays with himself, we have the same problem over Smallville.)
Several thousand lawsuits would follow. Not that Superman can’t afford to pay. There’s a trick where you squeeze a lump of coal into its allotropic diamond form…
IX
The above analysis gives us part of the answer. In our experiment in artificial insemination, we must use a single sperm. This presents no difficulty. Superman may use his microscopic vision and a pair of tiny tweezers to pluck a sperm from the swarm.
X
In its eagerness the single sperm may crash through LL’s abdomen at transonic speeds, wreaking havoc. Is there any way to slow it down?
There is. We can expose it to gold kryptonite.
Gold kryptonite, we remember, robs a kryptonian of all of his supernormal powers, permanently. Were we to expose Superman himself to gold kryptonite, we would solve all his sex problems, but he would be Clark Kent forever. We may regard this solution as somewhat drastic.
But we can expose the test tube of seminal fluid to gold kryptonite, then use standard techniques for artificial insemination.
By any of these methods we can get LL pregnant, without killing her. Are we out of the woods yet?
XI
Though exposed to gold kryptonite, the sperm still carries kryptonian genes. If these are recessive, then LL carries a developing human fetus. There will be no more Supermen; but at least we need not worry about the mother’s health.
But if some or all of the kryptonian genes are dominant…
Can the infant use his X-ray vision before birth? After all, with such a power he can probably see through his own closed eyelids. That would leave LL sterile. If the kid starts using heat vision, things get even worse.
But when he starts to kick, it’s all over. He will kick his way out into open air, killing himself and his mother.
XII
Is there a solution?
There are several. Each has drawbacks.
We can make LL wear a kryptonite (For our purposes, all forms of kryptonite are available in unlimited quantities. It has been estimated, from the startling tonnage of kryptonite fallen to Earth since the explosion of Krypton, that the planet must have outweighed our entire solar system. Doubtless the “planet” Krypton was a cooling black dwarf star, one of a binary pair, the other member being a red giant.) belt around her waist. But too little kryptonite may allow the child to damage her, while too much may damage or kill the child. Intermediate amounts may do both! And there is no safe way to experiment.
A better solution is to find a host-mother.
We have not yet considered the existence of a Supergirl. (She can’t mate with Superman because she’s his first cousin. And only a cad would suggest differently.) She could carry the child without harm. But Supergirl has a secret identity, and her secret identity is no more married than Supergirl herself. If she turned up pregnant, she would probably be thrown out of school.
A better solution may be to implant the growing fetus in Superman himself. There are places in a man’s abdomen where a fetus could draw adequate nourishment, growing as a parasite, and where it would not cause undue harm to surrounding organs. Presumably Clark Kent can take a leave of absence more easily than Supergirl’s schoolgirl alter ego.
When the time comes, the child would be removed by Caesarian section. It would have to be removed early, but there would be no problem with incubators as long as it was fed. I leave the problem of cutting through Superman’s invulnerable skin as an exercise for the alert reader.
The mind boggles at the image of a pregnant Superman cruising the skies of Metropolis. Batman would refuse to be seen with him; strange new jokes would circulate the prisons…and the race of Krypton would be safe at last.