The death crystal

CHAPTER ONE

The Shape of Danger

They looked at the crystal in horror.

It was the horror of the serpent, or of the Gorgon's head. They were fascinated; in that moment not one of them could have torn his gaze away. All work ceased. The noises in the concrete-walled room died until the whish of breathing and the thumping of hearts could be heard.

Then panic caught them, and fought against training. Panic cried,Run! and training said,Remove yourself quickly.

With the motion-saving efficiency of the emergency drill, each man turned from his position and walked rapidly towards whichever exit was nearest.

Actually, they could not outrun the danger any more than one can duck a rifle bullet or outrace the atomic bomb. But they went, five men and one woman, out through the zigzag corridors towards a mirage of safety.

One man remained.

Dave Crandall stepped forward and picked the crystal from its place in the evaporation dish. He turned, doused hand and crystal under a faucet, and then dropped the crystal on an anvil. He hit it with a heavy hammer. Anvil and crystal rang musically, and the crystal rebounded and flew through the air unharmed.

Cursing under his breath, Dave Crandall darted, picked it up again, and looked around wildly.

There were vats of acid handy; an electronic furnace glowed white-hot through its slit; a tunnel gaped unexcitingly but in its depths were the invisible radiations of the atomic pile. None of these would work soon enough.

Dave turned to the desk. He flipped open the end of the pneumatic message tube and popped the crystal into the chamber. There was thewhroooom! of pumped air, a few tinkles as the crystal hit the sides of the tube on its way down.

Then from somewhere outside the concrete-walled room came the awesome blast. The wave-front traveled down the zigzag passages and Dave thought he could almost see it. The roar deafened him.

Dave went out through the zigzag passage.

A mile across the plain, a billowing white cloud was rising.

Claverly greeted Dave. Claverly was a bit shaken, and more than a little abashed."The relay station," he said, pointing at the rising cloud.

"Oh?" remarked Crandall. He asked, frowning,"Anybody in there?"

"No."

Crandall smiled wryly."That's a relief," he said."But I didn't have time to ask where that tube went. I might have blown up the administration building."

Claverly laughed."About all you've done is to cut a large hole in the coast-to-coast pneumo," he said."No jury in the world would convict you."

DeLieb came around from the other side of the building."There," he said,"but for the Grace of God—" pointing at the billowing pillar of smoke."Thanks, Dave. This makes you unique, you know."

"Unique?"

"You are the only living man who has seen one of those devils' rocks in operation."

"We were all there," objected Dave,"and how about the Manhattan Crystal?"

"In the first place, the Manhattan Crystal is furnishing New York with electrical power—from a generating plant twenty miles outside New York, telemeter-controlled, and completely unattended. Montrose and Crowley and their associates who first made the crystal went up trying to reproduce it at Brookhaven. So did Brookhaven. Harvard, Purdue, Caltech, and Argonne went up trying to make one, too."

"But you were there, too, and you've seen it."

DeLieb nodded."It is a six-sided crystal about three inches long, with a pyramidal point at either end, and about three-quarters of an inch across the hexagonal flats. It is clear with a trace of blue tint. So much we know, Dave.But what shape was it when you tossed it into the tube?"

"Cubical, and full of flashing red glints," said Dave.

"And why were we suddenly scared bright green?"

"Because it began to change shape before our eyes," said Dave.

"And it was still fluid when we—left."

"I think so," said Dave uncertainly.

DeLieb tur