III + 

The Singing Crystals + 

They found it at last, a jagged, slowly revolving ball that looked incredibly desolate, slag from some solar furnace. The telescope showed no life. The ball had hardened as it whirled, and the molten rock had frozen instantly, in frigid space, into spiky, giant crags and stalagmites. No atmosphere, no water, no sign of life in any form. + 

The crystal O’Brien held had changed. A pale light streamed from it. O’Brien’s face was tensely eager. + 

“This is it. Set the ship down, Hastings.” + 

The pilot made a grimace, but bent toward the controls. It was a ticklish task at best, for he had to match the ship’s speed to the speed of the asteroid’s revolution and circle in, describing a narrowing spiral. Rocket ships are not built for maneuverability. They blast their way to ground and up again through sheer roaring power. + 

She settled bumpily on the iron-hard surface of the asteroid, and Arnsen looked through the thick visiglass at desolation that struck a chill to his heart. Life had never existed here. It was a world damned in the making, a tiny planetoid forever condemned to unbearable night and silence. It was one with the darkness. The sun-glare, in the absence of atmosphere, made sharp contrasts between light and jet shadow. The fingers of rock reached up hungrily, as though searching for warmth. There was nothing menacing about the picture. It was horrible in its lifelessness; that was all. + 

It was not intended for life. Arnsen felt himself an intruder. + 

O’Brien met his glance. The boy was smiling, rather wryly. + 

“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t look very promising, does it? But this is the place.” + 

“Maybe⁠—a million years ago,” Arnsen said skeptically. “There’s nothing here now.” + 

Silently O’Brien put the crystal in the giant’s hand. + 

From it a pulse of triumph burst out! Exultation! The psychic wave shook Arnsen with its intensity, wiped doubt from his face. Invisibly and intangibly, the jewel shouted its delight! + 

The glow within it waxed brighter. + 

Hastings said abruptly, “Time to eat. Metabolism’s higher in space. We can’t afford to miss a meal.” + 

“I’m going out,” O’Brien said. + 

But Arnsen seconded the pilot. “We’re here now. You can afford to wait an hour or so. And I’m hungry.” + 

They opened thermocans in the galley and gulped the hot food standing. The ship had suddenly become a prison. Even Hastings was touched with the thirst to know what awaited them outside. + 

“We circled the asteroid,” he said at last, his voice argumentative. “There’s nothing here, Mr. O’Brien. We saw that.” + 

But O’Brien was hurrying back to the control cabin. + 

The suits were cumbersome, even in the slight gravity. Hastings tested the oxygen tanks strapped on the backs, and checked the equipment with stringent care. A leak would be fatal on this airless world. + 

So they went out through the airlock, and Arnsen, for one, felt his middle tightening with the expectation of the unknown. His breathing sounded loud and harsh within the helmet. The tri-polarized faceplates of the helmets were proof against sun-glare, but they could not minimize the horrible desolation of the scene. + 

A world untouched⁠—more lifeless, more terrible, than frigid Jotunheim, where the Frost Giants dwelt. Arnsen’s heavily-leaded boots thumped solidly on the slag. There was no dust here, no sign of erosion, for there was no air. + 

In O’Brien’s hand the crystal flamed with milky pallor. The boy’s face was thin and haggard with desire. Arnsen, watching, felt hot fury against the incubus that had worked its dark spell on the other. + 

He could do nothing⁠—only follow and wait. His hand crept to the weighted blackjack in his belt. + 

He saw the hope slowly fade from O’Brien’s eyes. Against his will he said, “We’re only on the surface, Doug. Underground⁠—” + 

“That’s right. Maybe there’s an entrance, somewhere. But I don’t know. We may be a thousand years too late, Steve.” His gaze clung to the crystal. + 

It pulsed triumphantly. Pale flame lanced joyously from it. Alive it was; Arnsen had no doubt of that now. Alive, and exulting to be home once more. + 

Years too late? There was not the slightest trace of any artifact on this airless planetoid. The bleakness of outer space itself cast a veil over the nameless world. The three men plodded on. + 

In the end, they went back to the ship. + 

The quick night of the tiny world had fallen. The flaming corona of the sun had vanished; stars leaped into hard, jeweled brilliance against utter blackness. The sky blazed with cold fires. + 

Lifeless, alien, strange. It was the edge of the unknown. + 

They slept at last; metabolism was high, and they needed to restore their tissues. Hours later Arnsen came to half wakefulness. In his bunk he rose on one elbow, wondering what had roused him. His mind felt dulled. He could scarcely tell whether or not he was dreaming. + 

Across the ship a man’s head and shoulders were silhouetted against a port, grotesquely large and distorted. Beyond, the stars blazed. + 

They moved. They swirled in a witch-dance of goblin lanterns, dancing, whirling, spiraling. Blue, yellow, amethyst and milky pearl, streaks of light golden as the eye of a lioness⁠—and nameless colors, not earthly, made a patterned arabesque as they danced their elfin saraband there in the airless dark. + 

The dark swallowed Arnsen. Slumber took him.⁠ ⁠… + 

Slowly, exhaustedly, he came back to consciousness. His head ached; his tongue was thick. For a moment he lay quietly, trying to remember. + 

Dream? Arnsen cursed, threw his blankets aside, and sprang from the bunk. + 

O’Brien was gone. Tex Hastings was gone. Two spacesuits had vanished from their racks. + 

Arnsen’s face twisted into a savage mask. He knew, now, what had been so wrong about his vision of the night. The man he had glimpsed at the port had been outside the ship. Doug? + 

Or Hastings. It did not matter. Both men were gone. He was alone, on the mystery world. + 

Arnsen set his jaw, gulped caffeine tablets to clear his head, and wrenched a spacesuit from its hooks. He donned it, realizing that sunlight once more was pouring down from the distant sun. + 

Soon he was ready. He went out of the ship, climbed atop it, and stared around. Nothing. The bleak, light-and-shadow pattern of the asteroid stretched to the sharply curving horizon all around. There was nothing else. + 

Nor were there tracks in the iron-hard slag. He would have to search at random, by pure guesswork. In the low gravity his leap to the ground scarcely jarred him. He gripped the billy at his left and moved forward, toward a high pinnacle in the distance. + 

He found nothing. + 

Worst of all, perhaps, was the horrible loneliness that oppressed him. He was too close to Outside now. He was the only living thing in a place never meant for human life. The ghastly bleakness of the asteroid sank like knife-blades into his mind, searing it coldly. There was no relief when he looked up. The distant sun, with its corona, was infinitely far away. The rest of the sky held stars, remote, not twinkling as on Earth, but shining with a cold intensity, a pale fury relentless and eternal. In the light the heat seared him through his armor; in the shadows he shivered with cold. + 

He went on, sick with hate, seeking the unknown thing that had taken Doug. + 

The boy was a poet, a dreamer, a fool, easy victim for the terror that haunted the asteroid. + 

Exhausted, he turned back. His air supply was running low, and there was no sign of either Doug or Hastings. He headed for the ship.⁠ ⁠… + 

It was further than he had thought. He sighted it at last, beneath a towering stalagmite that thrust up into the harsh sunlight, and his steps quickened. Why hadn’t he thought to bring extra cylinders of oxygen? + 

The lock stuck under his gloved, awkward fingers; he wrenched at it savagely. At last the great valve swung open. He went through the airlock, opened his visiplate, and took great breaths of the fresher air. Oxygen cylinders were racked near by; he swung several into position on his back and clamped them into place. He gulped more caffeine tablets. + 

Some instinct made him turn and look back through the port. Over the uneven ground a spacesuited figure was staggering, a quarter of a mile distant.⁠ ⁠… + 

Arnsen’s heart jumped. In one swift motion he clamped shut his visiplate and leaped for the airlock. It seemed an eternity before he was outside, leaping, racing, straining toward the man who had fallen helpless, a motionless shadow amid the glare. Doug? Hastings? + 

It was O’Brien, his young face gray with exhaustion and flushed with oxygen-thirst. For a moment Arnsen thought the boy was dead. He thrust one arm under O’Brien’s back, lifting him; with the other hand he fumbled at an auxiliary air-hose, thrusting it into the valve in O’Brien’s chin-plate as he ripped away the useless hose. Oxygen flowed into the boy’s suit. + 

His nostrils distended as he drank in the precious air. Arnsen watched, teeth bared in a mirthless grin. Good! Color came back to O’Brien’s cheeks⁠—a healthy flush under the deep tan. His eyes opened, looked into Arnsen’s. + 

“Couldn’t find her,” he whispered, his voice hollow through the audiophone. “Deirdre⁠—I couldn’t find her, Steve.” + 

Arnsen said, “What happened, Doug?” + 

O’Brien took a deep breath and shook his head. “I woke up⁠—something warned me. This.” He unclasped his gloved hand and showed the milky crystal. “It knew⁠—she⁠—was close. I felt it. I woke up, went to a port, and saw the⁠—the lights. Hastings was out there. She’d called him, I guess. He was running after the lights.⁠ ⁠… I had sense enough to put on my suit. Then I followed. But Hastings was too fast for me. I followed till I lost him. Miles⁠—hours. Then I saw my oxygen was low. I tried to get back to the ship⁠—” + 

He tried to smile. “Why did she call Hastings, Steve? Why not me?” + 

Arnsen felt cold. “We’re getting off this asteroid. Right away.” + 

“Leaving Hastings?” + 

“We⁠—I’ll look for him myself. There’s life here, malignant life. Plenty dangerous.” + 

“Not evil. No. Beyond evil, beyond good. I’m not going, Steve.” + 

“You’re going if I have to hog-tie you.” + 

O’Brien’s gloved hand tightened on the milky crystal. “Deirdre!” he said. + 

And, in the emptiness above them, a glow brightened. + 

There was no other warning. Arnsen tilted back his head to see⁠—the incredible. + 

Deirdre, he thought. Then, unbidden, another name leaped into his mind. + 

Circe! + 

Circe of Colchis, goddess of Aea⁠—Circe, Daughter of the Day, who changed men to swine! Circe⁠—more than human! + 

For this was no human figure that hovered above them. It seemed to be a girl, unclad, reclining in nothingness, her floating hair tinted like the rays of a dying sun. Her body swept in lines of pure beauty, long-limbed and gracious. Her eyes were veiled; long lashes hid them. + 

There was tenderness in her face, and aloofness, and alienage. There was beauty there⁠—not entirely human beauty. + 

Rainbow crystals garmented her. + 

Some large, some small, multifaceted gems danced and shimmered against the blackness of the sky and the whiteness of Circe’s body. Moon-yellow, amber-gold, blue as the sea off Capri, green as the pine-clad hills of Earth⁠—angry scarlet and lambent dragon-green! + 

With some distantly sane corner of his mind, Arnsen realized that it was impossible for any living being to exist without protection on the frigid, airless surface of the asteroid. Then he knew that both air and warmth surrounded the girl. + 

The crystals protected her. He knew that, somehow. + 

O’Brien twisted in his arms. He saw the girl, tried to spring free. Arnsen gripped him. + 

The boy swung a jolting blow that jarred the giant’s helmet. His mailed glove smashed against the metal plate. Dazed and giddy, Arnsen fell back, clawing at O’Brien. His fingers slipped along the other’s arm; he felt something drop into his hand, and clutched it. + 

Then O’Brien was free. He wrenched an oxygen-tank from Arnsen’s shoulders, whirled, and took a step toward the girl. She was further away now.⁠ ⁠… + 

Arnsen staggered up. His head was throbbing furiously. Too late he realized that, in the scuffle, his air-valve had fouled. He fumbled at it with clumsy fingers⁠—and fell. + 

His helmet thudded solidly against hard slag. Blackness took him.⁠ ⁠… + 