Beastchild

cracked as an arm of the jell soared upwards toward the roof of the vat, waving lazily in the darkness and the steamy mists that now rose from the main body of the Isolator. The hand-like ball at the end of the "arm" broke free and continued to soar upward, as if it were lighter than air. As it rose, rolling slowly, slowly, it began to lengthen from a sphereoid into a streamlined form in the fashion of a knife, though a great deal larger. From either side, thin membranes spread outward to help it ride on the mists. These wings were more in the nature of the appendages of a bat than of the feathered limbs of a bird. They flapped wetly, cracking in the confines of the great tank.
        Birth had been given.
        Slowly, the creature took on features as the mother body smoothed its work. The face was thin, wicked, and marked with two deep eyes with cataracted blue-white surfaces that see in all ranges of light. Through these, the mother mass in the vat would see all that the "child" saw. The beak was long and horny, razor-edged. The small, reptilian hands that grew from beneath it were tipped with sharp, impressively lengthy claws.
        The mother mass burbled happily again.
        The bat thing flew to the side of the tank, crystalline eyes glittering despite the fact there was no light within the subterranean chamber, and attached itself to the warm metal wall "after growing suction caps on the rounded bulge of its belly. Quietly, efficiently, it began to lose its form, to congeal into the amber-green-gray jelly once more. In moments, it had melted through the wall of the chamber, its own molecules juggling through the molecules of the metal, onward into the sands of this alien earth. It rose through the loosely packed soil and broke the surface, puddling on the ground above, shapeless, quivering to begin. When all of the thing had exited the station and the presence of the mother mass, it swiftly regained the bat-like form once again, much like a chunk of memory plastic returning to its structured form after being battered out of shape.
        It spread its wings. It flapped them experimentally.
        In the light of day, it seemed almost as much a vulture as a bat, though greatly larger than either of those things.
        It threw its neck back and screeched. The sound echoed across the flatland and sent rabbits scurrying into burrows.
        The cataracted eyes looked at the sun, at the blue sky. Without a moment's more hesitation, it rose from the dull earth with the speed of a bullet fired from a gun and sought out its prey with an inhuman relish for destruction, for destruction was its purpose and it had to meet its purpose if it were to have any meaning for existence…
        Hulann was conscious of the descending beast only a split second before the monstrous thing swept over the roof of the shuttlecraft at such a speed that the air currents of its passage ripped the wheel from his hands and sent the car careening across the desert, off the rugged but reliable path of the highway. There was a movement, an immense shadow, then the moan of its passage and the heavy turbulence in its wake. The shuttlecraft spun in a complete circle, its rotors whining as sand was kicked up into them and threatened to foul the system.
        Leo grabbed the dash against which he was hurtled, then wheezed as the belt caught him at the last instant, jerking him viciously backwards against the seat. His vision blurred for a moment, and he felt like a man falling in weightlessness, unsure of his directions, unable to tell up from down and left from right.
        Hulann grabbed the wheel, but another blast from the beast's wake shook them, spun the wheel the opposite direction, scraping his hands rudely as he grappled for control.
        Sand hissed across the windscreen.
        The craft hobbled dangerously, tilting back and forth, the rim brushing along the surface of the dunes that undulated gently toward the distant mountains. If the blades struck those dunes, there was nothing but disaster for them.
        "So big!" Leo finally managed to gasp.
        Hulann had the wheel now, gripping it firmly in all twelve fingers, hunched over it like a race driver or as if he thought he could mesh with it and thus make it impossible for the thing to be pulled loose of him. "It is smaller than I expected."
        Before either of them could say more, the Isolator fragment swept back at them streaked only