Read Online Beastchild by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page A

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        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