* RED GHOST (Ivan Kragoff) appearance

Garbed in his Fantastic Four uniform, Reed Richards stands next to a small space rocket at the Cynthian Associates research facility. At his side is his captor, the supervisor of the complex. Reed asks him why he is willing to pay out a fortune to help Reed reacquire his stretching power. What does he want in return? The man does not answer but simply states that if Reed does not do as he is told, his teammates will be killed. Reed declares that his calculations are complete and that he is ready to take off, and asks to see his wife and friends before he leaves. The supervisor declines, stating that they will remain his prisoners until Reed returns repowered. Then Reed climbs the ladder into the shuttle-craft and straps himself into his seat. For months, he muses, he fantasized about regaining his powers, but he realized that it would take the resources of a small country to do so. Now, as his dream seems to be coming true, Reed wonders who the mysterious person is who financed the operation, and to what end. And why, Reed wonders as the ship lakes off, does the supervisor seem so hauntingly familiar?

Dismissing these thoughts, Reed turns his attention to the compu-screens. The supervisor reports to Dr. Doom that Reed is on his way. With a rasping laugh, Doom declares that Operation: Coronation is proceeding on schedule. It is time to return to Latveria, he says, where the destruction of the Fantastic Four will take place and where he will become the ruler of Earth. In space, Reed discovers that his ship's controls are all preset, so that he can make only very minor course alterations. His costume, which the supervisor returned to him, feels quite comfortable, like a second skin, even though it nas been a long time since he has worn it. As he monitors his trajectory, however, he remains unaware of a strange scarlet mist that envelops the ship and seeps into the cabin. Awaiting the moment when he must deploy the adjusting pods, he wonders why he and his teammates received superhuman powers from cosmic radiation but astronauts after them did not. Then he discovers a very slight course error that he corrects in time. When he disengages the equating pods, he muses, everything must be exactly as it was that day years ago. Otherwise the cosmic rays could turn him into anything from a monster to a microbe.

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