Leo Frankowski

day
collecting up his two secretaries, Senator Beinheimer, and the staff of the Crystal City
installation. He had piled them, along with absolutely no baggage, into his Cessna and
topped off his fuel tanks. The senator’s name was sufficient to get them immediate clearance
for takeoff at 1545.
    Dusk was coming down
even more rapidily than the twin engine turbo prop. Very few lights showed in the farming country, and
none of those lit up a suitable stretch of highway.
    Von Bork continued
due west, heading for Life Valley, hoping that a lighted highway or—please God!—an
airport would appear.
    At a thousand feet,
he settled for the planted field up ahead. Lowering his landing gear and flaps
(they worked!),
he came in to what he thought was a wheat field.
    “Dear God…
dear God… dear God,” Beinheimer muttered, clutching the armrest with
fear-whitened fingers.
    “That the only
prayer you know, Moe?”
    “The only one,
by God, but it’s sincere! After this, I’ll learn some more. I swear I will!”
    “Hang on,
gang!” von Bork shouted into the intercom. “The old barnstormers could do it,
and we’re only eighty ahead of them in technology!”
    Von Bork was no farm
boy, and what with the speed, altitude, and darkness, he was wrong about it being a wheat field; it was
corn, tall Kansas corn.
    The Cessna’s landing
gear had been designed for use on a surface infinitely harder than rich, tilled soil.
All three
wheels sheared off within twenty yards of touchdown. This was good, because
von Bork’s air-speed indicator had been rendered grossly inaccurate by two metal-munching
larva. He had come in more than eighty knots too fast.
    The Cessna sliced
through the mile-wide cornfield, narrowly missing the center pivot irrigation
machine. The wings took an
amazing beating, each cornstalk sending its
own thump through the airframe.
    The plane had slowed
to sixty before the wing strut gave way almost exactly in the center and both wings tore off together.
This too was lucky, for had one gone before the other, the plane would have
rolled.
    The battered
fuselage skidded to a stop, and all was suddenly quiet.
    Von Bork took his
hands from the wheel, hardly able to believe it was over and he was alive. He
said into the intercom: “How’s it going back there?”
    “We’re all okay, Mr. von Bork.”
    “Well,” von
Bork said to Beinheimer, “I guess that was a good landing.”
     
    Public consternation
was, of course, extreme. Every political body in the world sat in emergency session. Crash programs and
task forces were funded, but none had time to accomplish anything. Research
takes years. The larvae took only days. Accusations and counter— accusations flashed
across national borders.
    India abruptly
ceased all communication with the rest of the world on the same day that the
swans flew. Israel, the fifth most powerful nation after Russia, the U.S., China, and India,
took her silence as an admission of guilt for the metal-eating plague. The
Israelis’ aircraft and missiles were already useless, but their tanks were made of thicker
metal. Even perforated with holes, char— bram armor could stop most projectiles, and
turbine engines contain
little iron or aluminum. Damaged fuel tanks
were fitted with plastic liners, gun barrels were given a cursory inspection, and the attack was
launched.
    The last tank stopped
twenty kilometers from its depot. A tread weakened by hundreds of holes had broken.
    So ended the last
mechanized war the world would ever see.
     
    Radio and television
stations suspended their regular programming, devoting their time to emergency
broadcasts,
but the messages from the world’s governments were monotonously similar: “Don’t
panic. Stay in your homes. We’ll take care of you.”
    But there was nothing
that anyone could do.
    Air time was also
allotted to religious programs. A thousand priests, ministers, and shamans
called on as many gods to help them, but the gods remained silent.
    Many of the religious
leaders proclaimed that the end of the world was at hand. And in a sense, they
were right.
     
    Trains, being made of
thicker metal, lasted a week longer than cars or trucks. Their last freights were mostly food and water
for the cities; very few places on Earth had more than a week’s supply of food
on hand. Canned
food became useless as the cans were slashed and destroyed. And the larvae soon riddled the refrigera tor units that kept frozen food fresh. The trucks
and trains that