Spiderman 3 Read Online Free

It was a terrific place for stargazing, a pastime that was hard to indulge in the city, where the lights made quality viewing difficult. Up in the Palisades, overlooking the Hudson River, the view was unimpeded. Peter thought with amusement that it was almost up to the level of the fake stars that had dotted the Broadway stage where MJ had made her debut. To top it all off, a spectacular meteor shower was underway, dazzling streaks of light zipping within and around the constellations.
    The ground was a bit damp, making lying down problematic. Peter was unfazed. He rolled up his sleeves, exposing the spinnerets on his forearms, and in short order had fashioned a web hammock between two large trees. With his bike parked nearby, he and Mary Jane lay in the hammock, swaying gently in the breeze, gazing up rapturously at the array of stars and the meteor shower overhead. He was busy imagining Mary Jane descending from the stars above on an invisible staircase when she spoke with an air of wonderment, "Where do they all come from?"
    "Maybe Mars, a hundred million years ago," he replied carelessly. He could have given her a detailed dissertation on the falling space rocks burning up in the atmosphere, and on the big bang and the forces that had created a billion balls of gas, but he didn't think she was really that interested.
    Once again, he had sussed her out correctly. "You know what?" she said. "I'd like to sing on the stage for the rest of my life with you in the first row."
    "I'll be there." He gestured toward the heavens as if an earthbound stage were simply insufficient to contain her talent. "I'm going to build you a stage on the Milky Way."
    She laughed. "Can you swing that high?" she asked teasingly.
    "I'm working on it."
    Mary Jane paused, and then, her voice dropping low and becoming filled with intense need, she said, "Tell me you love me. I like to hear it. It makes me feel safe."
    He turned slightly so that he was looking into her eyes, their faces only a few inches apart. "I will always love you, Mary Jane. I always have."
    Their lips came together. "Mmm… strawberry," he murmured.
    For a second, Peter noticed something flashing high in the sky. Another meteor, this one very close. Shooting stars. Heralds of great changes to come for anyone who witnessed them. Then he put such unscientific thoughts out of his mind and focused his attention instead on the woman he loved.
    The shooting star that Peter had observed, speculated about, and then given no further thought to, thudded to earth in a nearby field. A small, smoking crater provided evidence of where precisely it had struck.
    Had Peter endeavored to turn his analytical eye upon the aftermath of the space rock's fall, he would have seen something that defied any manner of scientific explanation.
    It was a thick, black gooey substance, which oozed from the meteorite's porous surface as if the space rock were a car and the hard landing had caused an oil leak.
    To describe the behavior of something from space as "unearthly" would certainly seem, on the face of it, to be belaboring the obvious. Nevertheless, it would have been warranted in the case of the black substance, for it now wasn't merely oozing from the rock. Instead
it
was as if it was pulling itself—extracting itself—consciously from the meteorite.
    The black goo separated from the meteorite entirely and sat there for a moment, an animated puddle getting its bearings. Then it started across the field, propelling itself a few feet, halting as if trying to orient itself and acquire a sense of its surroundings, then undulating forward once more.
    Then it reacted to something, some sort of growling noise. Even though it was a newcomer to the planet, it could still differentiate between a sound made in nature and something that was technological. It sped toward the source, eager to see what this world had to offer. It was impossible to determine whether the black goo was some sort of higher species of