Direwolf: Silken Threads - part 4 "She's just too damned fast..."
by Direwolf

"By Gaea, this can not be!" Eve exclaimed.

But she couldn't deny the proof of her eyes. The huge gray and black wolf spider racing across the grass of the Central Park commons was outrunning her arrow. Not only was the massive spider faster then her Living Arrow but it also understood the danger and was actively evading the attack.

In response to the Ant's warning, Minute Man had quickly assembled a strike team to investigate the possible invasion of giant spiders in Central Park. He had selected Eve on the basis of her nature powers, and then recruited Bullet for his speed and Blackbird for high cover since El Diablo was away from the Fortress. Minute Man led the team himself.

When they reached the park, they headed to the zoo and discovered that the Ant had been right. The spiders were there and hunting. Eve was sure she would never forget the sight of the one of the massive wolf spiders running down a grown rhinoceros. The two giant Brown Recluses were loose in the deer enclosure, snatching the terrified herbivores at their leisure. The team had attacked at once, and discovered that they were in for more of a fight then they had anticipated.

The spiders were impossibly fast and recognized threats, responding accordingly. Bullet was the first to experience this. He had raced over to the nearest Brown Recluse and unleashed a fusillade of high-speed punches into the thing's head.

"She's tougher than she looks!" Bullet had shouted as the spider recoiled from his attack. Then the other had landed on him from behind. His silver armor hadn't protected him from the thing's venom filled fangs. Bullet went down hard as his body's rapid healing tried to deal with the massive amount of necrotic poison injected.

The battle had been indecisive ever since.

Blackbird had been able to finish off the spider that Bullet had wounded using her Seeking Beam. The last Brown Recluse and the two Wolf Spiders had retreated at that point, escaping from the zoo by climbing the fence with negligent ease. Minute Man had been forced to abandon the wounded Bullet, to await a medical evacuation by Mentor, and the three of them had gone in pursuit of the spiders. Blackbird had been able to follow them from the air as they moved into the park.

Eve had tried to use her connection with nature to reach the huge spiders but they resisted her call. There was something unnatural about them, though Mentor insisted that there wasn't enough Energy X infusing them to account for their increased size or intelligence. It was eerily similar to the giant ant invasion that occurred months ago, but while there were far fewer of the spiders, Eve sensed they were more dangerous. These were consummate predators who would consider people just another food source.

No sooner had she caught one spider with an arrow, than they figured out how to evade her shafts. The same thing happened with Black Bird's Seeking Beam. Eve tried catching them with Entangle attacks, but the spiders were too strong. They simply tore free of the gripping vines and they were so fast Minute Man couldn't catch up to them. Right now, they were just trying to keep the spiders from escaping before help arrived. Mentor was coming to help with Alchi-Miss. Diablo was flying in as well.

Eve's arrow fell at last to the ground, its momentum spent. The spider turned towards her. Minute Man ran to intercept but the wolf spider nimbly evaded his swing and closed on Eve. She held her ground, and nocked another arrow. She fired at the last moment, the arrow striking so close that its acid nearly splashed her as well as she threw herself to the side. But her shot had flown true. The spider's eyes smoked as the acid burned inwards.

Eve was up in a moment, her leafy clothing none the worse for her tumble on the grass and was drawing a bead on the veering spider. She didn't fire. Black Bird managed to predict the spider's path and caught it with a Sonic Wing. The blast tore up the ground and flipped the spider onto its back. It lay twitching while Eve sank another arrow into it and Black Bird caught it with a Seeking Beam. She could tell that spider was out of the fight but the ground seemed to whisper to her of another threat.

As she turned, she saw the Brown Recluse emerging from the foliage of a tree directly above Minute Man. The spider had been stalking him while he was after the wolf spider.

"Minute Man, above you!" she shouted, drawing her bow sting back to touch her cheek.

In response to her command, the willow branches wrapped around the spider's legs.

It took the huge arachnid a few moments to tear free but that was enough time for Minute Man to turn to face it. The spider dropped on its prey only to be smashed aside by a powerful sweep of Minute Man's staff. While the monster was off balance, Eve managed to sink a pair of arrows into its abdomen. Minute Man closed to finish it off.

Eve sensed the tide of battle was finally running in their favor. She turned her attention to trying to deal with the second wolf spider.

In the basement of the City University Administration Building, Jason Cross knelt down to examine the corpse of the huge, male back widow spider. To his enhanced sense, the dead spider smelled bitter, like a burnt alkali salt, and there was something about the scent that made the hackles on the back of his neck rise and a deep primal growl gather in his chest. Even dead, the creatures seemed very ‘wrong', more so than the other spiders he'd fought this morning. And it seemed to trigger a deep focused hatred. It wasn't like a predator seeking its prey. This was the reaction of a predator to an invader. Its intensity frightened him. He could feel it licking at his reason like a wave washing over a beach.

With a mental shove, Jason pushed the hunter back and let the scientist examine the corpse.

"You're right," he said calmly. "It was partially eaten after dying."

"That's typical of black widow mating habits," Skip noted. "The females will consume the males to make sure they have enough protein for the eggs to form."

"Talk about sacrificing for the children!" Miss Mantis offered.

Direwolf chuckled. " I doubt he went willingly, you can see how the dust is disturbed. He fought back but lost. Ok, so she mated. Now what?"

"She'll look for a secure place to lay her eggs," Skip said emphatically. "I'll bet she's somewhere in the building right now."

A rifle shot sounded in the distance. Everyone flinched.

"Sharp shooters dealing with the giant garden spiders," Direwolf announced as another shot sounded. "With Freedom Force at the park according to Ant, we'll assume that the female black widow is the last one unless we hear otherwise. Come on, people."

"Be vewy quite, we're hunting wascawy spid-wers," the Ant quipped.

As feeble as it was, the Ant's joke was enough to defuse the tension coiling through the basement. Direwolf shook his head. He moved away from the spider's body and focused on the lingering scents. He could tell the two spiders had come in through the air shaft then it seemed as if one of them had left that way as well.

"She went back into the air ducts," Direwolf said, from beside a five foot diameter airshaft near the furnace. Once again, the grate over the end appeared to have been pried off and then reset.

"I assume we aren't all going to go trooping through the air ducts?" Miss Mantis asked.

"You're right," Direwolf agreed. "Too tight a fit for me and even with the support of the building I doubt they'll handle my weight. And even if they did, do you really want to fight her from inside one of these? She could take us one at a time that way."

No one seemed to think that was a good tactical choice, so Direwolf led the way up the stairs from the basement. The interior door was locked but that didn't stop them. Direwolf gripped the knob and shoved with his shoulder. The door burst open, revealing a large office space. Jason had been here before; it was the scheduling office.

Two women were sitting at a desk, obviously early arrivals that had made it to the office before the campus locked down. They were chatting over cups of coffee about the recent jailbreak of the man known as The Judge as the door splintered open. One of them screamed at the masked man looming in the doorway. The other hefted her coffee cup as a dubious improvised weapon.

"It's all right, ma'am, I'm here to help." Jason's words were lost in the sounds of panic. He stepped into the room and the Ant followed him. The women obviously recognized the red and brown clad hero.

"Save us from Direwolf, Mister Ant!" The woman wielding the coffee mug shouted.

The Ant moved forward to calm the two women.

"See what a little bad press can do?" Direwolf hissed to Miss Mantis.

Miss Mantis smiled behind her mask. She made it a point to read John Jagger's columns since so many of them had to do with the rise of ‘super powered vigilantism' and its impact on Patriot City. Direwolf was still Jagger's favorite target, despite the more balanced reporting in Miss Weather's articles but no ‘self appointed costumed rogue' was safe. Casey kept waiting to see her name crop up in one of Jagger's columns. She thought of it as a sort of rite of passage.

Right now, she was seeing an excellent example of the power of public opinion. Aside from the disparity in size, there wasn't that much difference between the Ant and Direwolf yet the two women were reacting very differently to each. They were shying away from Direwolf who was trying to give them all the room they wanted while he hunted for the spider's trail and turning to the Ant for protection. Casey assumed that was since the Ant was known as part of Freedom Force, which was viewed as almost an extension of the city authorities. Even though Direwolf seemed to have a close association with the Patriot City police, the public viewed him as a loner, someone far outside the system. That distinction spawned distrust.

Miss Mantis felt the glimmerings of an idea that was yet to form. She was on to something, that much she knew, but it wasn't there yet.

"It's not here," Direwolf announced with one last sour look at the two women. "Come on."

"Really, it will be all right. Professor Snyder has approved what we are doing," the Ant said as he headed after Direwolf who was stalking out of the office, head high and sniffing the air.

Miss Mantis followed with the two graduate students who she gathered were named Skip and Devon.

In the hallway, Direwolf turned slow circles that made Casey think of a hunting dog. He looked confused.

"Too many scents. I can't tell if she is here or not!"

She detected a rising note of frustration in Direwolf's voice. This was only the second time she had seen him in action, the first being the battle with Silver Scarab, and she was getting a sense of his power and personality. Whoever was behind the mask, he took his responsibility very seriously. Direwolf was not someone to abandon an important project because it seemed too hard or the director yelled ‘cut'. Direwolf would push himself to his limits and beyond rather than give up. Casey respected that and hoped she had the same force of will.

In addition, Direwolf was a natural leader. They were all following him not because he shouted orders or threats, but because he seemed to understand the situation and could instinctively find the best solutions. None of them had said ‘we'll follow you', they just found themselves doing so.

But right now, their leader seemed to be at a loss for leads.

"There's just too much going on to lock onto the scent." Direwolf snarled. He was pacing up and down the corridor, ignoring the curious looks of the few other people in the building who were watching cautiously from their offices.

"Then we need to think about it and outsmart her," the Ant suggested. "Where will she go to lay her eggs?"

"Well, she left the cellar after her wedding night snack," Skip noted.

Miss Mantis looked up, along with all the rest of them. She wasn't sure which of them was the first to give voice to what they were all thinking.

"The attic."

"Makes sense," Direwolf said, "we'll take the stairs."

They climbed four flights of stairs and found the offices of the university chancellor and the department heads. Fortunately, there were very few people here, just a few early secretaries and administration staff. They stared in wonder at the costumed trio and the two students decked with ropes and axes following along.

"Can you smell anything?" Miss Mantis asked.

"Someone tossed a bologna sandwich in the trash last night that hasn't been picked up," Direwolf said. "Ant, you interested?"

"No, I'll leave it for our newest recruit, RoachBoy. I think she meant do you smell anything like giant black widow spider?"

"Faintly. But I would swear she's not on this floor..."

Devon was looking out a window. Casey watched him crane his head around and look up.

"You know, this isn't the top most floor. Looks like there's another one." He noted.

"There were no more stairs up," Miss Mantis said. "And the elevators don't go any higher. The attic must be closed off."

She walked over to a cleaning lady who was carefully watching them from beside her cart. "Excuse me, do you know if there is a floor above this?"

The woman nodded slowly. "Yes, the dead records storage. No one ever goes up there."

"How can we get up there?"

The cleaning lady led them to what looked like a large closet door in one of the outer most offices. It was actually a small room with cardboard file boxes lining the walls and another door leading out of it.

"Do you have a key?" Miss Mantis asked.

The woman found an old brass key on her ring and fit it into the door. It opened with a creak, admitting a wave of musty, dust-scented air. A low growl rumbled through the small room. Casey looked at Direwolf and saw that his lips were pulled back into a snarl.

"Let me guess, it's up there?" She asked.

He nodded as he started up the narrow staircase.

Miss Mantis couldn't imagine trying to walk up the flight of stairs with a box of records. The stairs were old and worn, creaking under Direwolf's weight and the passageway so small that his shoulders nearly brushed the walls and his head was in danger each time they passed a dark light fixture. Fortunately, it was fairly short as well, opening into a clear space in the cavernous attic room.

The ceiling was a good twelve feet high though it sloped down from the center. Casey figured the roof of the building was right overhead. The only light came from a series of grimy windows located near the floor and didn't get much past the walls since the floor was crowded with row upon row of old wooden shelves. Stacks of boxes or just bundles of decaying paper rested on the shelves. The air was still and dry.

There was a mechanical click from the top of the stairwell.

"Lights are out," Devon said, releasing the switch and pulling out his flashlight.

The two flashlights cast cones of brilliant light through the shadowed attic. As the beams swept over the rows of shelves, the shadows moved like massive cards being slowly shuffled.

"I hear something moving," Direwolf announced. "But this place has weird acoustics. I can't pin down where it is."

All Miss Mantis heard was the rasp of her own breath through the green fabric of her mask. But she had already seen just how amazingly sharp Direwolf's senses were. If he said the spider was here, she was prone to believe him.

"Well, let's see if we can find her." The Ant was about to step out onto the dusty floorboards when Direwolf's hand shot out and caught him by the shoulder.

"Not so fast. Look closer at the floor. Devon, shine your light right at the top of the stairs."

Miss Mantis crouched down to examine the floor were Direwolf was pointing. In the bright beam of the flashlight, she saw a faint line tracing over the dust. She looked closer and realized what it was. A silken thread nearly lost in the gloom. Once she knew what to look for, she spotted more of them, mazing the floor in all direction.

"It's a web," she hissed. "The spider laid down a web across the floor and hid it in the dust!"

"Yes, and it's not to trap prey, "Direwolf said. "It's too fine. It has to be a warning system. If we walk on it, she'll know exactly where we are. The only thing to do is go up.

"Skip and Devon, you stay here. You have two jobs. Keeps your lights over the tops of the shelves as best you can and try to slow her down if she makes a break for the stairs. I don't think she will but we can't be sure. Ant, can you climb the wall to play high lookout and help Devon and Skip if she tries to escape? Miss Mantis, you and I are going to take the high ground and see if we can flush her out."

"High ground?" the Ant asked.

"Like this." Direwolf jumped. It wasn't one of the impressive leaps that could get him to the top of a building but it was enough, he landed spread out atop one of the shelves. The wooden structure groaned under his sudden weight but the shelves were made of thick oak boards and held up. "Come on."

With a shake of his head, the John headed up the wall with the methodical precision of his namesake. Skip and Devon stood at the top of the stairs and raised their flashlights as high as they could, shinning the beams out across the shelves.

"My turn," Casey muttered. In a gesture she hadn't made since grade school but which suddenly felt very right, she crossed herself and murmured a quick ‘hail Mary'. She planted her staff at the top of the stairs like a pole-vaulter and jumped, triggering the internal controls as she did.

She didn't understand the technology that went into the battle staff. It was a gift from her mysterious benefactor. From his comments, she knew it was some sort of titanium alloy and was controlled by studs mounted in her gloves. The power was somehow magnetic and the shaft could expand and contract in an instant. Now, she extended it and the momentum swung her up to the top of another shelf near Direwolf. She landed lithely and contracted the staff to a four-foot club. She figured that was about the right size to use in quarters this tight.

"I'm in position!" the Ant called from the center of the ceiling over the stairwell. "I don't see anything so far but I'll call out if I do."

"I'll lead, you follow. " Direwolf hopped to the next shelf, his eyes scanning the darkness.

The two of them moved out, trying to look into every pool of darkness to spot the malevolent gleam of eight eyes. Casey found it nerve wracking. The only sounds were those of their own passage and shouted questions from their allies. The air was still as death and she was sure she would never get the smell of dust and old paper out of her nose. And the constant tension of expecting an attack wore on her nerves. Sweat slicked her hands inside the gloves. She wanted to wipe her eyes but was sure if she did, the spider would somehow know and choose that moment to attack. A prayer to Saint Michael, the patron saint of warriors, cycled through her mind.

They reached the far wall without incident. The attic seemed deserted.

"Which way?" She hissed.

Direwolf paused and looked up and down the length of the room. "Hard to tell. I can smell her but I can't tell where she is in here."

Casey was about to suggest they split up when a massive black form rose from the shadows between the shelves. In the dim light, she had a confused image of long, seemingly spindly black legs enfolding Direwolf and dragging him back into the shadows. He was gone in an instant.

"She's here!" Cassandra shouted out, hearing the tremor of fear in her own voice.

"I'm coming!" cried the Ant as he scuttled across the ceiling. She could tell Skip and Devon were heading her way as well.

Then the real noise started. Direwolf must have gotten his footing back. There was a sudden crash as one of the shelves tipped over, spilling papers across the floor. The shelf Miss Mantis was on rocked. She scrambled to the edge and looked down into the tangle of shadows. There was movement, then Direwolf erupted up from the floor.

The huge spider obscured the upper half of his body. She saw that he had his arm protecting his face from its fangs as he used his momentum to crash it into another shelf. The wood split from the impact and the spider was shaken loose. Direwolf cocked back his fist to strike but the spider moved with impossible speed, vanishing again into the darkness.

Miss Mantis was sure that only a few seconds had passed since it first appeared.

The Ant landed beside Direwolf, steadying him.

"We're almost there!" Skip shouted.

"No!" Direwolf roared.

And Miss Mantis understood. The spider had outsmarted them. It waited to attack until they were the furthest from the stairway. She had to be heading for it, which meant she was going to go right through Skip and Devon.

Miss Mantis ran like she had never run before, leaping from shelf to shelf without pausing to think or try to judge distances. The only chance she had was that the spider had to still be on the floor, dodging around the shelves while she could travel in a straight line.

There was a harsh cry from up ahead.

"She's just too damned fast," Cassandra snapped.

Without pausing to think, Miss Mantis jumped. She landed on the floor only a few feet in front of the two young men who had skidded to an abrupt halt as the vast spider raced at them, her black chitinous armor bright in the flashlight beams. Miss Mantis turned to face her, settling slightly. It was like staring down a speeding car. In her hands, the staff extended.

Casey only had one chance. She took her best shot as the creature's legs moved past her and the body was about to bowl her over. Her father, Tony Corelli, didn't have a son, so he had tried to teach his only daughter how to play baseball. Cassandra never cared for the sport, he father always said she wasn't a team player, but she remembered a few of the lessons. Like how to swing a bat.

Cassandra wasn't large and imposing like Direwolf. At just a shade over five and a half feet tall, she had a lean, dancer's body. But she had honed that body to be the best weapon she could make of it, including studying a fighting style known as kung fu. She braced herself with her feet, centered her energy and swung, combining her martial training with what her estranged father taught her.

"Keep your eye on the ball, Casey," he said. To her, it had always meant staying focused on what needed doing, even it that meant opposing everything he stood for. Now, it had a more literal meaning.

The titanium shaft struck the huge spider on the side of its head, square on one of the primary eyes. The eye shattered. With a hiss like steam escaping from a broken heater, the Spider reared back, towering over her. The flashlights cast the scene in stark relief. The huge spider loomed over her, the red hourglass on her abdomen brilliant against the glossy black armored body. A thin trickle of dark fluid dripped from the shattered eye as fangs like long daggers extended. The forelegs reached for her, impossibly quick and agile.

Cassandra was sure she was going to die, the mantis consumed by the spider.

There was a crash that shook the entire building as Direwolf landed between Miss Mantis and the giant spider. It threw off the spider's attack. Her long legs enfolded Direwolf, drawing him back towards her with a strangled roar. Miss Mantis saw the fangs flash black as they pierced through the shoulder of Direwolf's long brown coat and sank into his flesh. The roar became a scream of raw pain.

As a child, Cassandra had been warned about black widow spiders and their venom and how a single bite could kill a child. Now one the size of a car had just injected a massive load of toxin into Direwolf's chest. It had to be lethal. But if so, Direwolf showed no sign of dying quietly.

Direwolf struck upward with his balled fists, smashing them into the spider's head with enough force to shatter concrete. He glanced off the carapace but the shock threw the spider back. Miss Mantis saw Direwolf shake himself like a wet dog. His shirt was torn from the thing's fangs and she realized his skin was already mottled and black around the bite. The venom was warring with his amazing regeneration. She couldn't tell which was winning.

The spider charged again. Miss Mantis threw herself into a rolling dive that knocked Direwolf from his feet. The spider trampled over them, destroyed another shelf and gathered itself for another charge. The Ant was shouting as he raced towards them, but she knew he was going to be too late.

With a snarl of rage that sent a shiver of panic up Casey's spine, Direwolf charged as well.

He met the spider with a reverberating crash that Casey was sure was going to crack open the floor. The spider tried to bite him again. Direwolf evaded the flashing fangs and gabbed hold of a leg. Then from out of the darkness a stream of milky white fluid splashed over both Direwolf and the spider. The huge creature hissed and lunged away, snapping off the piece of leg in Direwolf's hand as it leapt for the safety of the stairs.

Direwolf wasn't going to let it go.

As another stream of white splashed over the spider, Direwolf charged it again. He hit it with his shoulder. Man and arachnid hit the wall by the staircase. The wall gave way with a ripping crash. They tumbled out into space.

It was a long way down. Miss Mantis reached the hole torn through the wall before they hit ground. She grabbed the edge of a splinted board and leaned out to see what was happening.

Direwolf and the massive spider, surrounded by a rain of debris, smashed into the grass. Direwolf made a decent crater with his impact. He was still moving so Miss Mantis assumed he was stunned or winded from the fall. The spider landed in an awkward sprawl. Despite several more damaged legs and a massive rent in its abdomen that was leaking clotted yellow fluid, the giant spider lurched to its feet and advanced on Direwolf.

"He'll never get up in time", she thought.

There was only one quick way down. Miss Mantis jumped.

She knew simply dropping five stories would kill or cripple her. So she leapt for the huge elm tree growing along side the Administration building. The tree was nearly as old as the campus and right now, Miss Mantis was praying its branches were as sturdy as they appeared.

From the ground, it looked as if the woman in green dove out the hole with her short staff in front of her as if it would let her fly. It didn't. She fell towards the tree, and as she passed through the limbs the staff suddenly extended. Miss Mantis allowed herself one shuddering breath of relief as she realized that she had judged correctly. The gray staff stuck two limbs solidly, locking into place and becoming a bar.

The force of the impact nearly tore her hands from the staff, plummeting her to the ground. But she held and used her momentum to swing up and over the bar, slowing her fall. After two quick revolutions, she contracted the staff and let gravity have its way. She landed on her feet, flexing her knees to take the impact.

"Points for the dismount," She muttered, elated at herself. Moments like this made the pain and fatigue all worthwhile. But there wasn't time to revel in her success. The spider was nearly on Direwolf and though he was up to his hands and knees, pulling himself painfully up from what could have been a shallow grave, he wasn't ready to fight.

The Spider moved over Direwolf who Miss Mantis could see was still trying to draw a breath without much success. His right arm was hanging limp at his side and she assumed that was an effect of the poison. Another bite had to be more than he could take. Miss Mantis put everything she had into a single massive strike. She aimed for the crack in the creature's side.

The force of the blow numbed her arms and she felt sure the staff was going to break. To her surprise, it held. The spider tumbled backwards as a spray of viscera splattered her. It was twitching, trying to move, but it seemed to be malfunctioning as if it had forgotten how to coordinate its legs. Nevertheless, it was dragging itself at her and Casey's arms quivered with strain. Between the shock of her improvised arboreal trapeze act and the massive blows on the spider, her muscles felt like jelly.

"My turn," she thought as the spider loomed over her.

Then a slender form in red and brown crashed to the ground in front of her.

"Looks like mantises can fly better than ants," the Ant shouted as he shoved the huge spider with all his might.

The spider flew back like a shot from a catapult. It hit the trunk of the elm tree with crushing force. That was more than even its mutant resilience could handle. The body split like an over ripe melon and the spider lay twitching in a pool of its own gore.

"I think that's a field goal," the Ant observed.

Miss Mantis was already moving to Direwolf who was trying to get to his feet. She tore open his damaged t-shirt, exposing the widow's bite. The skin was dark mottled gray but even as she watched, she saw the color fading back around the edges. His superhuman healing had overcome the venom at last.

"Good work, you two," Direwolf wheezed, still trying to catch his breath.

Skip and Devon raced into view, both panting with the effort of running down five flights of stairs.

"Wasn't just us," the Ant noted. "Something was weakening her even as we fought her. It was what made her slow enough that we stood a chance. And it was more than just having you smash her through a wall and falling five stories. What was that white stuff she got sprayed with?"

"It was trichloro chlorophenyl ethane," Skip gasped, falling to his knees under the weight of the spray tank on his back. "More commonly known as DDT."

It was well after eleven o'clock and Professor Zachary Snyder sat alone in the control room of the cyclotron. He had an open notebook in front of him and was carefully checking over his notations. It had been a long day, but one well worth the effort.

All of the giant mutant spiders were accounted for. Aside from the two tarantulas, now in the Patriot City Zoo, the rest had all been killed either by the police, Freedom Force, or the collection of ‘volunteers' that assembled on the campus. Snyder considered the puzzle of how those five had come together but it was a minor issue compared to his real interest. At last, he had found a species capable of surviving a massive dose of hard radiation. And to Professor Snyder, this was a major point of interest.

While working on the Manhattan Project in the 1940's, a deep fear had taken root in the recesses of Zachary Snyder's mind. It flared to life when the first real test took place at Trinity. As the bright glare of the first fission bomb burned over the landscape, a much younger engineering technician was suddenly sure that some day he would die from this awesome destructive power they had just unleashed. And he swore to himself that he would find some way to keep that from ever happening.

Rather than tell anyone of his fear, Zachary hid it away but never forgot. He studied everything he could on atomic physics in an effort to know his enemy. Then he turned his attention to the question of survival. Nothing could stand the heart of the blast, so that was a closed subject. But if you were at the edge of the blast, perhaps you only had to survive the radiation. Though that was a complex problem itself. Bomb shelters were not the solution. There was too much risk of not being able to reach them and then there was the matter of surviving the post-blast radiation.

As the years passed, Snyder's obsession grew. He came to the conclusion that the key lay in finding some species that was resistant to radiation and somehow, gaining that resistance himself. Certain insects were candidates, notably cockroaches, but he wasn't sure if Kafka had the right idea. But now, he sensed he was near a breakthrough and that spiders would prove to be the key.

Professor Snyder stood up from the desk and moved towards the target area. He wasn't concerned with being disturbed. In the aftermath of today's events, it had been easy enough to tell the rest of the department that the cyclotron was down for repairs and ‘recalibration' until he could figure out what had gone wrong. The doors had been reprogrammed so that only Professor Snyder's card would open them. He considered it a wise precaution.

The door to the chamber had one more level of security, added this afternoon. There was a number pad beside the latch. Snyder quickly entered the eight-digit code that unlocked the door. It swung open and he paused for a moment to admire his find, what he had located along with one of the guards in a shadowed corner in the Administration building attic. It looked rather like a ball of lint the size of a rolled up sleeping bag. But it wasn't.

"It seems as if you will be a mother after all," Professor Snyder whispered in the silent chamber.

To be continued...