The wind was carrying him toward the hotels that stood along Waikiki Beach. He wanted to go more to the left, more toward Diamond Head. He experimented with the control stick and with the throttle. He banked left and kept the power on high. He looked around.

He did not want to be blown into the city; that would be certain death. He would be crushed by traffic or sucked into the air-conditioning of a building. So he increased the power to EMERGENCY MAXIMUM, and kept his course toward Diamond Head. A screen flashed a warning: EXCESSIVE BATTERY DRAIN. Remaining flight time: 20:25 min…18:05 min…17:22 min…the remaining flight time was dropping like a stone. He would run out of power in minutes.

He checked his airspeed. The readout showed 7.1 MPH / 11.4 KPH. He found the radio panel and switched it on. “Mayday. Mayday. This is Daniel Minot. I’m in a small plane. A very small plane. Does anybody hear me? Mr. Drake, are you there? I can’t reach Diamond Head…I’m being blown into the city…oh my God!”

A hotel loomed up like a first-order battleship from outer space. He saw two giants standing on a balcony, a man and a woman, holding drinks in their hands. His plane rushed toward them uncontrollably, carried in the wind. Their heads were bigger than Mount Rushmore. The man put his drink down and reached toward the woman, and pulled down the shoulder strap of her dress, exposing a colossal breast with an erect nipple standing out six feet. The man fondled it with a hand of horrifying size, and their faces closed in for a kiss…As his plane rushed toward a collision, he screamed and fought the controls, and passed between their noses under emergency power, propeller churning, and the plane was caught in an eddy of wind and swept around the corner of the building and out of sight.

The man jerked away from the woman. “What the hell-?”

She had seen something weird. A tiny man flying a tiny plane. Lights blinking on the wings. The tiny man had been screaming. She had distinctly heard his insect-like whine over the sound of a buzzing motor, and she had seen the open mouth, the staring eyes…it was impossible. One of those waking dreams. “The bugs are awful out here, Jimmy.”

“It’s these flying cockroaches they got in Hawaii. They got wings.”

“Let’s go inside.”

Danny regained control of his aircraft as the wind seemed to decrease. He flew across Kalakaua Avenue, where he looked down on the nighttime crowds. He noticed that he had stopped being blown sideways. His plane was flying faster than the wind was blowing; he was making headway now. He banked and headed northeast, and flew along the length of Waikiki Beach, straight toward Diamond Head.

Now, as he peered at the famous shape of the headland in the moonlight, he saw a blink of light. On, off. Darkness. On, off. It was the lighthouse.

“I’m saved!”

He backed down the power a little, and left it at FULL CRUISE, because it would be a disaster if the battery ran out now. He was getting the hang of this. It was a matter of technique.

He gained altitude. He wanted to stay above the buildings, keep plenty of distance above them. It was funny how life could turn around so fast. One moment you think you’re ruined and dead, the next you’re on your way to the best hospital and admiring Waikiki Beach in the moonlight. Life was good, Danny thought.

A shape came out of the night. He saw a flash of wings-he threw the stick over, and just missed the thing.

“Stupid moth! Watch where you’re going.” That had been close. “Absolutely no brain,” he muttered. A collision with a moth could drop him in the sea, and he could see breakers below him.

Then a peculiar noise reached his ears. Sort of an echoing whish-whing…He heard it again… whish-whing. Whoom…Whoooemm…eee…eee… What was that? Something was making freaky noises in the dark. Then a drumming noise started up: pom-pom-pompompom. He saw another moth, and the drumming sound came from the moth…and then the moth suddenly wasn’t there.

Something had swept the moth out of the sky.

“Oh, fuck,” Danny said.

Bats.

They were painting the moths with sonar. He had gotten himself into the middle of some kind of a bat situation. This was not good.

He advanced the throttle to EMERGENCY MAXIMUM.

He could hear the sonar pulses ringing in the darkness, left, right, above, below, nearby, far away…but he couldn’t see the bats. That was the worst thing. Above, below, on all sides, the predators were moving in three dimensions around him. It was like treading water at midnight surrounded by feeding sharks. He couldn’t see anything at all, but he could hear them snatching prey. Whoo…whoom…whooom…eee…eee…eee/ee/ee… that had been a kill.

And then he saw it. A bat killed a moth right in front of him. He got a glimpse of a spiky shape as it swept by, and the plane shuddered and jumped in the turbulence of the bat’s wake. Holy God. The bat had been far bigger than he thought it would be.

He had to get to ground. Just land, anywhere, even on top of a hotel. He pointed the plane into a dive, and went straight down, engines shirring at full power, aiming for the nearest hotel…but he was headed for the beach…oh, shit…too far away from the building, too close to the water…

The bat-sounds got louder. Then a sonar beam raked over him, and went away. There was a pause…then the beam hit him full-force, making his chest flutter- WHOOM…EEEP…EEEP…EEE-EEE-EEE… The bat was painting him with a beam of ultrasound. The pings shortened and became focused. A chaos of sound enveloped him.

“I’m not a moth!” he cried. He threw the stick hard over and pulled sideways in a screaming dive-turn. With his good hand he began pounding on the outside of the cockpit, trying to imitate the drumming of the moths, thumping his hand on the plane. Maybe it would jam the bat’s radar…

Too late he realized that by banging on his plane, he had told the bat exactly where he was.

He saw a flash of brown fur gleaming with silver-tipped guard hairs, a pair of wings flaring impossibly wide, blocking out the moon, and a wide-open mouth filled with a set of canines like chisels…

The micro-plane spiraled down, its wing broken, its cockpit empty, and landed in foam slick near the beach, where it vanished.

Chapter 44

Diamond Head Lighthouse 31 October, 11:45 p.m.

Rourke dozed for a while, but awoke when he became aware that Danny Minot had not returned from the privy. Time had passed; the fire had burned down. He got up and hurried down the tunnel toward the privy; Danny wasn’t there.

The Redoubt was a sprawling warren, with many unused tunnels; perhaps Danny had gotten lost in a tunnel. Rourke went into a side tunnel, and called, “Mr. Minot! You there?” Nothing. Another tunnel yielded silence. Then Rourke noticed air moving in the tunnel. The hangar…he ran to the hangar, and found the doors open, a plane gone.

He closed the doors, then woke Rick and Karen. “Your friend has gone. He took a plane.”

They weren’t sure what had gotten into Danny. Perhaps he had become frightened, gone into a panic, with his arm in such bad shape, and had decided to fly to Nanigen on his own. It showed more courage than Danny seemed capable of.

“Maybe we should fly out and try to find him,” Karen suggested.

Rourke forbade it. “He’s gone. The wind could take him anywhere over the island.” And he said it was too dangerous to fly after dark; the bats were out. “It’s almost suicidal.”

Danny might already be dead. And if he survived the flight, it wasn’t clear how he planned to get inside Nanigen.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Karen said.

“Sheer panic,” Rick said.

Vin Drake sat in his car. The beam from the lighthouse swung around above, shining through the branches of trees overhead. The moon washed the scene with silver. What a beautiful world it truly was. He felt almost placid. He was high above the world, walking on a tightrope and doing it well.