* Authors : C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner * Narrator : Kaitlyn Zivanovich * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Weird Tales, November 1937 CW for torture PG-13 Quest of the Starstone – Part Two by C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner Yarol landed on his feet like the cat he was, gun still gripped and ready, black eyes blinking in the starry dark. Smith, hampered by the terrified Jirel, sank with nightmare ease to the ground and rebounded a little from its sponginess. The impact knocked the stump of sword from the girl’s hand, and he pitched it away into the blinding shimmer of the star-bright dark before he helped her to her feet. For once Joiry was completely subdued. The shock of having her sword melted by hell-fire in her very grasp, the dizzying succession of manhandling and vertigo and falling into infinity had temporarily knocked all violence out of her, and she could only gasp and stare about this incredible starlit darkness, her red lips parted in amazement. As far as they could see the mist of stars quivered and thickened the dim air, tiny points of light that danced all around them as if thousands of fireflies were winking all at once. Half blinded by that queer, shimmering dazzle, they could make out no familiar topography of hills or valleys, only that spongy dark ground beneath them, that quiver of stars blinding the dim air. Motion swirled the shimmer a little distance away, and Jirel snarled as Franga’s dark-robed form came shouldering through the stars, spinning them behind him in the folds of his cloak as he moved forward. His withered features grimaced into a grin when he saw the dazed three. “Ah — you have her!” he rasped. “Well, what are you waiting for? Take the stone! She carries it on her.” Smith’s pale eyes met the warlock’s through the star-shimmer, and his firm lips tightened. Something was wrong. He sensed it unmistakably — danger whispered in the air. For why should Franga have brought them here if the problem was no more complex than the mere wresting of a jewel from a woman? No — there must be some other reason for plunging them into this starry dimness. What had Franga hinted — powers here that were favorable to him? Some dark, nameless god dwelling among the stars? The warlock’s eyes flared at Jirel in a flash of pure murder, and suddenly Smith understood a part of the puzzle. She was to die, then, when the jewel could no longer protect her. Here Franga could wreak vengeance unhampered, once the Starstone was in his hands. Here Joiry was alone and helpless — and the flame of hatred in the wizard’s eyes could be quenched by no less than the red flood of her bloody death. Smith glanced back at Jirel, white and shaken with recent terror, but snarling feebly at the warlock in invincible savagery that somehow went to his heart as no helplessness could have done. And suddenly he knew he could not surrender her up to Franga’s hatred. The shift of scene had shifted their relations, too, so that the three mortals — he could not think of Franga as wholly human — stood together against Franga and his malice and his magic. No, he could not betray Jirel. His gaze flicked Yarol’s with a lightning message more eloquent than a warning shout. It sent a joyous quiver of tautening along the little Venusian’s body,