Dean Koontz - Beastchild

He braked, fought the wheel to keep the tilted blowers from carrying them toward the guardrails and into the fields beyond.

The blades whined, ground as if tearing through metal grit. The shuttle bumped, started a spin. They were going backwards now toward the shimmering green fire.

Then they were around, had swung an entire three hundred and sixty degrees.

He steadied them.

The speedometer read fifty miles an hour. The edge of the crater was only a few hundred yards away. He could see the great black depression, the sheets of energy shimmering and exploding across its vast length.

He pushed the brake into the floor, stomped and stomped it like a madman. The engine stalled. The blades clattered to a halt. He braced himself for the impact to come.

The rubber rim of the shuttlecraft sloughed into the ground as they dropped (now without an air cushion under them) onto the road. The craft bucked, leaped, came down hard again. Hulann was thrown forward, had the air knocked out of him as he struck the controls with his chest.

Then they were sliding. There was a jolt as the rubber cushion rim began to rip free. He saw a great snake of it spiral into the air and fall away behind them. The bare metal grazed the road, sent up sparks of yellow and blue.

The craft listed, then righted, turning sideways.

And then, they were still.

Hulann sat, his head bent over the wheel, taking in heavy loads of air which felt good in his lungs. It could have been the stalest, most polluted air in the galaxy, and yet it would have been a treasure to him. For, had they slid another fifteen feet, he would never have breathed again. That close, the rim of the crater gleamed with its jeweled flames "That was close," Leo said from his nook next to the far door.

Hulann sat up. "Very. Perhaps you don't know how close."

The boy leaned forward and stared out the window at the seemingly endless expanse of the crater. He watched it making its lights for a while, then asked, "What is it?" "Come," Hulann said. "I'll show you."

They got out of the car and hunched against the power of the winter night. Winter morning, now. Leo followed the naoli to the edge of the depression, stood with him, staring across the nothingness.

"What did it? What exploded?"

"One of our weapons," Hulann said. "Although it was not quite what you would call an 'explosion'."

Leo stepped closer to the crater and cocked his head, pushed his long, blond hair away from his ears. "What's that noise?"

There was a faint hissing noise, now and then a grumble like the first stirrings of a volcano.

"That's part of it," Hulann said. "It wasn't a bomb really. Not as you're thinking of a bomb. All along your ' Great Lakes, there was, at the start of the war, a vast complex of factories, robo-factories producing the vast quantities of materials needed to wage a galactic battle. Not only was ore mined from your own world, but brought from your moon, from the asteroid belts of your solar system. It was a formidable complex. The easiest way to wipe it out was to drop a few conversion cannisters on it."

"I don't understand," Leo said. "We weren't told the Lake production centers had been hit."

"Only seven years ago. It was the final blow. Otherwise, the planet would have held us off incredibly long."

"You said 'conversion cannisters'?"

The constant sheet of green fires that played across the crater from rim, up and down, zig-zagging, puffing like balls of burning gas, now flashed through with a faint streak of purple that caught their attention and held it for some minutes.

"Conversion cannisters," Hulann continued, "contain one of the most virulent bacterial lifeforms in the known universe. The bacteria are capable of attacking certain forms of matter and converting them to energy. In the labs, various strains have been developed, some of which will attack only fixed nitrogen, others which will convert only iron, others for calcium, lead, on and on for as many elements and types of elements as there are."

"The hissing — "

"Is the conversion of matter taking place. The variety of strains included in the cannisters dropped here during attack, only the elements in your chief building supplies — and in the average sample of your topsoil for this area of the earth. The bacteria will convert everything in its path, convert it to a slowly-leaked form of energy rather than explosions of the atomic sort, down until it hits bedrock which it is not equipped to devour, and onward until it reaches water or some other 'indigestible' barrier."

"And the green light is the only result?" Leo asked, stepping back as the edge of the pit came almost imperceptibly closer.

"No. The green light energy is what we can see. Above your range of audio reception — even above mine — there is a great deal of sound energy generated. Also, there is an enormous amount of energy consumed by the bacteria themselves to enable them to continue their conversions and to reproduce at the rate the lab men set for them."

"And it'll go on until there's nothing left?"

"No. We don't want to destroy a world. Within a few days, a special naoli team will arrive to begin antibacterial work to halt the progress of the crater and destroy the mites."

"But the air will carry them," Leo protested.

"No. Such catastrophes have been guarded against. The bacteria are designed to anchor themselves to whatever elemental molecules they are bred to attack. Thus, a wind would have to blow away the entire linkage of ferrous trace elements in an area to also spread the iron-eating bacteria. And if a bacteria cannot find, within moments, any of its particular 'tropic' substance to latch on to, it dies. There are all sorts of built-in protections."

"Why not a series of nuclears to wipe out the Lake complex?"

Hulann shook his head. "Nuclears cannot damage well-shielded underground establishments. The bacteria can — by dissolving the earth that covers them, then converting the very structural materials of the installations."

They watched the pit, the shimmering, glimmering flames. Faint heat waves rolled over them and kept the snow melted around the perimeter of the hole. If they strained their ears, they could hear the sound of the energy of conversion being released far up the scale of vibrations.

"We didn't really have a chance against you," Leo said at last.

Green erupted, staining their faces.

"No," Hulann agreed.

Leo went back to the car. Hulann followed.

"Will it still fly?" Leo asked.

Hulann bent and inspected the bottom of the craft. There was almost nothing remaining of the heavy rubber cushion rim. The metal frame was bent and ripped, but not so severely that it would push in against the blades in the recessed undercarriage. If there still were any blades under there. He looked back on the snowy highway but could not see any large dark objects that might be shafts or rotars.

"Let's see," he said.

The engine coughed, but turned over. They rose on the wind of the blades, though there was a steady vibration that gently rattled the frame. "Well, it runs," Hulann said. "But where do we go from here? The road ends, as you see."

"Over the median," Leo said. "On back to the next exit. We'll just have to take secondary roads until we're past the crater and can get back on the good beater surface of the throughway."

Hulann took the shuttlecraft over the concrete bump in the center of the highway, wheeled the craft around and started back, looking for a way off the useless expressway — a way that would take them west where they wished to go.

The Hunter will soon be awakened.

The Hunter will rise up in his glory and take upon him the robes of his power.

The Hunter will seek.

Before, there has always been success.