Devil Crystals of Arret Read online

apparentlylifeless there on the metal floor-plate.

  * * * * *

  It was shaped like a huge egg, a little over a yard long, and wasapparently composed of a solid lump of some unknown crystallinesubstance that closely resembled very clear, pale amber. Embedded inthe heart of the strange egg were clearly visible objects whichcaused Marlowe and Powell to gasp in mingled horror and amazement.

  Chief among the things imprisoned in that amber shroud was theSilver Belt that Joan had worn, but the Belt was now looped over thebony shoulder of a skeleton that by no possible stretch of theimagination could ever have been that of a creature of this Earth.

  The skeleton was still perfectly articulated, and gleamed throughthe crystalline amber as though its bony surfaces were encrustedwith diamond dust. The bones were apparently those of a creaturethat in life had been half dwarf-ape and half giant rat.

  The beast had stood a little under a yard in height. The legs wereshort, powerful, and bowed. The long arms ended in claw-liketravesties of hands. The skull was relatively small, with a sharplysloping forehead and projecting squirrel-like teeth that weremarkedly rodent.

  Around the skeleton's neck there was a wide band of some strangegray metal, with its smooth outer surface roughly scratched incharacters that resembled primitive hieroglyphics.

  Marlowe's face was white with grief as he turned to Powell. "Joanmust be dead, Larry," he said sadly. "Otherwise, she would surelynever have allowed her Silver Belt to pass into the possessionof--this! She knew that the Belt represented her only hope of everbeing brought back to this world."

  * * * * *

  For a moment Powell stared intently into the heart of thecrystalline egg without answering. Then suddenly he straightened upwith marked excitement upon his face.

  "There's a small sheet of paper entwined in the coils of that Belt!"he exclaimed. "It may be a message from Joan!"

  Swiftly the two men lifted the amber egg up to the top of aworkbench. Powell took a small hammer to test the hardness of thestrange translucent substance.

  He struck it a sharp rap, then recoiled in surprise at the effect ofhis blow, for the entire egg instantly shattered with a tinklingcrash like the bursting of a huge glass bubble. So complete was thedisintegration of the egg and the skeleton within it that all thatremained of either was a heap of diamond and amber dust. The onlythings left intact were the Silver Belt and the metal collar.

  Powell snatched up the Belt and extracted the small piece of paperthat had been firmly tucked into its coils. Hurriedly written inpencil upon the paper was a message in a handwriting familiar toboth Powell and Marlowe:

  Help! I am held prisoner in the Cave of Blue Flames! --Joan.

  "Larry, Joan must still be alive over there in Arret!" There was newhope in Benjamin Marlowe's voice.

  "Yes, alive and held captive by whatever monstrosities may inhabitthat unknown plane," Powell agreed grimly. "There's only one way inwhich we can possibly rescue her now. That is for you to send meinto Arret with a reserve Belt for Joan. I'll be ready to start assoon as I get a couple of automatic pistols that I have up in myroom. It's a sure thing that I'll need them over there in Arret."

  * * * * *

  Five minutes later Powell stood ready and waiting upon thefloor-plate in the focus of the big atomic projector, with thecentral lens of the apparatus levelled down upon him like a hugesearchlight. Around Powell's waist were strapped two Silver Belts,and a cartridge belt with a holstered .45-calibre automatic oneither side. His wrist-watch was synchronized to the second withBenjamin Marlowe's watch.

  "Joan's twelve-hour time limit in Arret will expire at one o'clocktomorrow morning." Powell reminded Marlowe. "That gives me nearlysix hours in which to find her and equip her with a Silver Belt. Youwill broadcast the recall wave at exactly one o'clock. If I haven'tsucceeded in finding Joan by then, I'll discard my own Belt and stayon over there in Arret with her.... I'm ready to start now, wheneveryou are."

  Benjamin Marlowe raised his hand to the switch in the projector'scontrol panel. "Good-by, Larry,"--the old man's voice shook a triflein spite of himself--"and may God be with you!" He closed theswitch.

  A great burst of roseate flame leaped toward Powell from theprojector. The laboratory was instantly blotted out in a swirlingchaos of ruddy radiance that swept him up and away like a chip upona tidal wave. There was a long moment during which he seemed tohurtle helplessly through a universe of swirling tinted mists, whilegreat electric waves tingled with exquisite poignancy through everyatom of his body.

  Then the mists suddenly cleared like the tearing away of a mightycurtain, and with startling abruptness Powell found himself again ina solid world of material things. For a moment as he gazed dazedlyabout him he thought that the roseate glow of the projector muststill be playing tricks with his eyesight, for the landscape aroundhim was completely and incredibly red!

  * * * * *

  He soon realized that the monochrome of scarlet was a natural aspectof things in Arret. The weird vegetation all around him was of auniform glossy red. The sandy soil under his feet was dullbrick-red. High in the reddish-saffron sky overhead there blazed alurid orb of blood-red hue, the intense heat of its ruddy radiancegiving the still dry air a nearly tropical temperature. From thisorb's position in the sky and its size, Powell was forced toconclude that it must be the Arretian equivalent of Earth's moon.

  For a moment he stood motionless as he peered cautiously around him,trying to decide what should be his first step in this scarlet worldthat was so utterly alien in every way to his own. On every side thelandscape stretched monotonously away from him in low rolling duneslike the frozen ground swell of a crimson sea--dunes covered withvegetation of a kind never seen upon Earth.

  Not a leaf existed in all that weird flora. Instead of leaves ortwigs the constituent units of bushes and grasses consisted ofglobules, glossy spheres of scarlet that ranged in size frompinheads to the bulk of large pumpkins. The branches of thevegetation were formed from strings of the globules set edge to edgeand tapering in size like graduated beads strung upon wire,dwindling in bulk until the tips of the branches were as fragile asthe fronds of maidenhair fern. The bulk of the shrubbery washead-high, and so dense that Powell could see for only a couple ofyards into the thicket in any direction.

  The stillness around Powell was complete. Not even a globular twigstirred in the hot dry air. Powell decided to head for the crest ofone of the low dunes some fifty feet away. From its top he might beable to sight something that would give a clue to the location ofthe "Cave of Blue Flames" of which Joan had written.

  * * * * *

  He arrived at the foot of the dune's slope without incident. Butthere he came to an abrupt halt as the silence was suddenlyshattered by a strange sound from the shrubbery-covered crest justabove him. It was a musical, tinkling crash, oddly suggestive of ahandful of thin glass plates shattering upon a stone floor. A secondlater there came the agonized scream of some creature in its deaththroes.

  The tinkling, crashing sound promptly swelled to a steady pulsingsong like that of a brittle river of crystalline glass surging andbreaking over granite boulders. There was an eery beauty in thattinkling burst of melody, yet with the beauty there was anintangible suggestion of horror that made Powell's flesh creep.

  The crystalline song swelled to a crescendo climax. Then there cameanother sound, a single resonant note like that given when a stringof a bass viol is violently plucked--and the tinkling melodyabruptly died. Immediately following the resonant twang some objectwas ejected from the midst of the thicket on the dune's crest, andcame rolling and bounding down the gentle slope toward Powell.

  It finally came to rest against the base of a bush almost at hisfeet. He whistled softly in surprise as he saw the nature of thething. It was another of the yard-long egg-shaped crystals oftransl
ucent amber like the one that had been materialized inBenjamin Marlowe's laboratory. Imprisoned in the clear depths ofthis amber egg was the sparkling, diamond-encrusted skeleton of whathad apparently been a small quadruped about the size of a fox.

  Powell's eyes narrowed in speculation as he realized that he hadbefore him the first slight clue as to what might have happened toJoan. Her Silver Belt had been enclosed in one of those amber,crystalline eggs. Apparently her capture had been in some wayconnected with that sinister, unseen Tinkling Death.

  * * * * *

  Powell began cautiously working his way up the slope of the dune,with an automatic pistol ready for use in his right hand. Silencereigned unbroken now in the thicket on the crest, but with eachupward step that he took there came with constantly increasing forcea feeling of some vast, alien intelligence lurking