Destroyer 126: Air Raid

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

It was only three-quarters of an inch long, but it was more destructive than a billion atomic bombs the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima. At least that's what the scientist sitting before him claimed. But if there was one thing he'd learned in life, it was that a lot of times scientists said things that weren't exactly the unvarnished truth.

"Are you sure? Are you absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure?" Hubert St. Clair asked.

"I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true, Dr. St. Clair," replied the young scientist. The precious object was clamped snugly between the slender steel tips of a small pair of medical forceps.

When he saw the sudden withering look on Hubert St. Clair's face, the scientist suddenly remembered whom he was talking to.

Dr. Hubert St. Clair was the head of the Congress of Concerned Scientists, a group of pseudoscience worshipers that specialized in issuing dire predictions on epic, global scales, none of which ever seemed to actually come true.

"Oh," said the young scientist, offering a weak apologetic smile.

Dr. Brice Schumar was still holding his tight smile as St. Clair wordlessly pulled the forceps from the embarrassed scientist's hand. Lifting his glasses up to his forehead, he brought the tiny object close to his nearsighted eyes.

It looked like an ordinary plant seed.

The seed was a bluish purple. The two halves of its perfectly symmetrical bifurcated body were separated by a deep groove. One end was round; the other terminated in a blunted point. At the rounded end sat a fat blob of perfect azure.

St. Clair had never seen a more beautiful blue. His sour expression slowly melted back to joy. He stared, captivated by the little blue seed and all it represented. "It's magnificent," Dr. St. Clair said softly.

Squinting his right eye, he held the seed up to his left. It was just small enough to blot out his pupil. His reddish-brown iris and bloodshot white were still visible.