Waneta Young, a woman of Cherokee descent, finds a mysterious red crystal lodged in a piece of pottery discovered at an archaeological dig. This red crystal contains a centuries-old destructive force guarded by tribal shamans against those who might misuse its terrible power. When the Taelons discover the crystal, Zo'or is determined to wrest its power from its Native American guardians. Liam Kincaid and Renee Palmer find themselves caught in a desperate struggle between humans and Taelons, who would resurrect a creature only, the power of Cherokee legend can hold at bay.When the terrible power is unleashed, humans and Taelons discover a danger that threatens to end all life. A danger that seemingly cannot be stopped . . . < Glenn R. Sixbury has had stories published in various SF anthologies. He lives outside Manhattan, Kansas.< "Intelligent and multifaceted."--SFX on Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict series< CHAPTER ONE Dr. Waneta Long uncovered the rim of the vessel. Horizontal, intact, priceless. She knew how rare a find this might be, especially for a site so old. The few shards of pottery already found dated from the Woodland period, two to three thousand years ago. Long before her ancestors had come to these mountains. Long before Dr. Waneta Long was born.As a child, she had lived in the nearby town of Cherokee, North Carolina, tourist capital of the Eastern Band of Cherokees. The town provided a reasonably good museum, a way for casual drifters to touch the past on their way to the casino or a weekend of camping near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.But the town had not been kind to an unmarried woman with a young child. Waneta and her mother moved away when Waneta was only five, and she had never looked back. Not until this summer. Not until an anonymous donor awarded a grant to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville to explore this site.The grant was unusual not only because it was anonymous, but also because no one seemed to care about doing fieldwork in the United States anymore, not since Taelon artifacts were discovered in Ireland and Peru. More unusually, the donor of the grant specifically requested that Dr. Waneta Long be placed in charge of the dig.The request was not made because she was the most qualified--Waneta earned her doctorate only five years ago and had yet to receive tenure. More likely, the donor specified her name at the top of the project because she was Cherokee, not realizing this could complicate matters with the local tribal government rather than improve them.In general, Cherokees did not look kindly on archaeologists, especially women archaeologists who were fullblood Cherokee and therefore supposed to know that one did not dig in the ground to find the secrets of the past.Waneta's mother had taught her differently. She claimed that Cherokees did not know the facts of their own history, regardless of their rich oral tradition. Although a fullblood Cherokee herself, she nevertheless urged Waneta to think independently, to examine the world with a critical and logical eye. She encouraged Waneta to reject the traditions, the mythology, and the narrow-mindedness of the Cherokee cliques that protected the bones of their ancestors. She always wanted her daughter to be a scientist.Until the end. Until the sickness took away her mind.Waneta forced away those thoughts. Her mother had been dead five years, but the pain of her passing had never lessened.Pulling herself back to the dig site, Waneta focused on the late afternoon sunshine and the pine-scented air, on the rustle of trees in the soft breeze and the color of changing leaves. A glorious day atop Rattlesnake Mountain. One for which she had waited a very long time.She leaned forward and peered into the vessel. What little fill existed appeared as nothing more than a shadowy mound of dust, which might be exactly what it was. If she wanted, she could have reached her hand inside--the mouth of this pottery jar was a full ten centimeters across--but she forced herself to wait. She would need to weigh the vessel's contents and possibly run them through a water screen, either the temporary one they had built on site or the custom-made tank back at UT.This site had originally been the interior of a dry cave whose roof had recently collapsed. Although sediment had surrounded this jar since the cave-in, its interior had remained untouched, perhaps for thousands of years.During the next forty-five minutes, Waneta troweled around the vessel to a depth of twenty-five centimeters, careful to stay away from its sides to avoid scratching it. The dirt went into a white plastic bucket, and like the fill, it would be water-screened to reveal tiny fragments of the past.Most days she pulled her hair back, but today she had forgotten. Spiral-permed, it fell in black Read Less