Werwile of the Crystal Crypt

His black science threatened the whole cosmos. Against him frail Princess Nuala thrust her ancient knowledge--but he sneeringly smashed that. And space-toughened Clark Travis stood by helplessly. Of what use here was a pair of ready fists?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Summer 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

He should have known better. He admitted that, now. Listening to the spacemen in Trixon and Cleg would have saved his skin. They told him that Flormaseron was a hellhole where Creation had run mad. The only thing was, even they hadn't known how bad it was. Clark Travis worked the walnut stud of his stil disintegrator hopefully, but when it sputtered he gave it up.

The arklings were coming for him. Through the opening in the stone traceries of the ancient doorway, he saw the red aura that floated over them as they came up the stone ramp. Clark turned and ran along the sloping floor, down into the black, labyrinthine windings of the ancient city. His spacebooted feet made soft, slapping sounds. His beamlight cast a white brilliant glow ahead of him. He ran past several intersecting corridors before he skidded around a corner into one.

Clark Travis lost himself in the ruins. He went down into the bowels of this city that was in its glory before the Earth had been more than a spinning ball of fire in space. He saw odd animals carved in the walls, queerly human things at work on ships and weapons, tall men and lovely women etched in bas-relief in the marble.

The deeper down he went, the more he was putting himself in the arklings' power. They were familiar with this rotting pile of masonry, where the tunnels were dark strips out of Hades. Their red aura lighted the winding passageways. Clark only had his beamlight for the blackness.

He snapped off the power, stood waiting. His breath came softly. The tunnels were black, as black as space itself; as black as Martin Kent's eyes had been when he first told him about Flormaseron and the sleeping goddess of the crystal crypt.

"She isn't a goddess, of course," Kent had said, seriously. "She's the last remnant of the first race that ever came into existence. The product of a million generations of culture and scientific knowledge. When the disaster struck at her people, the chief scientists encased her in a block of crystal and hid her somewhere on Flormaseron. She's still there--and still alive.

"Think of it, Clark! A woman with the knowledge of such a race. Before they enclosed her, they thought-fed her brain with knowledge, and so arranged the crystal that during all the years of her interment, she would learn! A brain like that--why it would revolutionize our own culture. The Earth'd go millions of years ahead in science, if we could only find her--and bring her back to life!"

Travis had said, "If she's entombed on a hellhole like Flormaseron, how'd you ever hear of her?"

Martin Kent took Travis by the arm, led him out the door of his office and into the museum corridor. Here in Solar Museum, Mars Division, Kent was absolute ruler. Behind him he had the billions of credits that Earth and Mars and Venus poured into their cultural endeavors. From all over the solar system Solar brought stuffed animals, crumbling bricks from ancient cities, rusted weapons that experts studied and reconstructed in glittering stil.

They walked past a panoramic window of a Venusian sea-bottom and into a narrow room that held a safe inset in its east wall. Kent put the flat of his hand on the lock, and waited. A deep humming throbbed from behind the glistening metal wall. The huge door swung open.

Kent reached in and brought out a tiny vial of green metal. He unscrewed the lid, withdrew a folded scroll. "It's all here, Clark. Stylogrammed on flexible metal. It's ages old. One of our field parties came across it in a dried sea-bed on Clex. It puzzled us a long time, until Fielding came across a key to the writing, and translated it."

Travis turned the metallic paper over, looked at the queerly graceful writing. He looked at Kent inquiringly.

Kent smiled, "Well, what do you say? I'd go myself if I were younger. And, if it didn't cost so much, I'd send a field party. But it's a gamble, and the Board probably wouldn't agree to spending credits on it. But one man could go. One man--like you."

Travis grinned. He was tall and saturnine, brown with the heat of many suns. His body had been hardened on the deserts of Proxima Centauri, and under the seas of Venus.

Kent went on, "You're the best archaeologist I know. You've been in tight spots before. You can fight, if you have to. A thing like trouble is an old friend to you."

Travis remembered the polyps in the Venusian water-caves where he'd almost lost an arm before he got past them to bring the museum the only specimen of the primal undine race of Venus ever seen above the sea-mists. He had found a petrified boat on Sirius' third planet, to prove that at one time there had been seas on that baked potato of a planet. But for the last six months he had moped around Mars Port, studying alluvial deposits, wishing for something to take him and his equipment out into the star-paths again.

"I'll go, Mart. And if you'd only shaved this morning I might kiss you for the chance!"

Kent laughed and waved a hand. "Order what you need. I guess the museum can afford a few thousand credits, considering your record--even on such a gamble."