Beastchild

feet above the shuttlecraft roof again. It was as large as a two passenger aircraft, three times the size of their car. Again, its wake struck them like a wave of water, bounced them sideways, the heaving wheeling wrenching back and forth. Hulann managed to hold it this time, having been prepared for the attack, but having possession of it did little good. The wind thrust the car where it wished regardless of what his hands commanded the wheel to perform.
        The shuttlecraft slid sideways through a cactus, smashing the growth into dozens of pulpy pieces. The watery sap splattered over the craft, streaking the window. Instantly, the whirling sand stuck to the fluid and opaqued the window.
        Frantically, Hulann sought to reach the windscreen washer and wipers, but the jerking of the craft kept tossing him away from the dash. If he couldn't get the window cleaned, he wouldn't be able to see to steer when the wind died-and that would be deadly…
        Abruptly, even that problem seemed academic as the bat thing zoomed back, crossing from side-to-side this time, and the car was sent on an even wilder, more dangerous careening plunge across the sand.
        There was a jarring thud as they struck something more solid than a cactus. The frame of the shuttlecraft rang like a bell, and the rear window on Leo's side smashed into countless fragments of glittering plastiglass. They rebounded and were carried elsewhere on their nightmare ride.
        Hulann expected the beast to collide with them at any moment. It could not kill itself. It was part of the mother mass of the Isolator-and, therefore, immortal. It could ram the shuttlecraft head-on, totally demolishing it and turning the two of them into blood jelly already packed neatly in the can. Why it had not already done this, he could not fathom; but he gritted his teeth, waiting for it.
        The roar of wind died and the craft began to stabilize again. While movement was possible, Hulann leaned forward, turned on the washers and wipers and watched as the thick coating of sand and watery sap were sluiced away. As visibility returned, he saw they were cruising toward a thrust of weathered rock five hundred feet high and at least a mile long.
        "Hulann!" Leo shouted.
        But he didn't need advice. He threw all of his weight into the wheel, brought the car around in the last moment before impact.
        The side of their craft, as they made the nerve-shattering turn, scraped the rock wall; they drove along the cliffside for more than a thousand feet while Hulann fought to keep them from total disaster and to get them back onto open land. The metal whined and squealed much as if it were alive. Sparks leaped up the stone walls and danced against the plastiglass only inches from Leo's face.
        The rock passed so swiftly that it had no form and registered only as a gray-brown swath of moving color. Pieces of it snapped loudly and broke away. The exterior doorhandle on that side exploded away as the bolts and rivets refused to meet the strain.
        The seatbelts kept them from being thrown forward into the windows, but they did nothing to counteract the up and down motion of the car as it bucked and kicked like a wild horse under them. Leo's head bounced off the ceiling, and as he reached up to rub the sore spot, he saw Hulann was taking worse blows than that since his greater height required less of a bounce to bring him into contact with the roof.
        Then they were away from the rock wall, though still following it, and a semblance of sanity and safety returned.
        "Where is it?" Leo asked.
        Hulann scanned the sky, discovered the bird to their left, out in the open desert, flying fairly low and slowly along the parched earth. He pointed to it, then put his mind back to driving.
        "Why doesn't it attack?" the boy asked, craning his neck to get a good look at the behemoth where it soared along the ground, rushing toward them with great wings flapping like blankets. It was watching them-or at least it had its milky blue-white eyes turned in their approximate direction-but its intent was unclear.
        "I don't know," Hulann said. "I would feel much better if I did."
        "Do we have a weapon?"
        "Nothing."
        Leo shrugged. "I guess not much would be of use against it anyway."
        They drove on.
        The rock fled by on their right.
        The bat thing paralleled them on their