“It just looks that way,” Lois answered. “From way down here on Earth, the moon appears full for several nights in a row. But a true full moon lasts less than a minute.”

“And that’s our window,” Coralis said gravely. “A matter of seconds.”

“It’s just a little farther,” Joseph said. Henry could sense the tension in the man’s body language. But he also sensed something else—the raw power of the Earth.

A yellow mineral peppered the walls. He searched through the geology drawer he had created in his mind. “Carnotite,” he said.

“Very good,” Coralis replied.

Then the walls began to show traces of something silver-gray. Like veins on a human arm, they ran in streaks before branching off. The farther they walked, the greater the concentration of gray, until the entire tunnel was nothing but a solid silvery sheen.

He reflexively reached for the wand in his pocket. If his instincts were right, he would need it soon. As he started to take it out, something began to vibrate in his other pocket. Panic and dread hit him like a bulldozer, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

Coralis pulled up short behind him. “What’s wrong, Henry?”

“It’s the gold nugget,” he said fearfully. “Something’s happening to it!” When he brought it into plain view, it flashed a brilliant green. A tongue of flame erupted from it and struck at Coralis. No, not at Coralis—but at the quartz ring on his finger.

Coralis shouted and whipped his hand away a microsecond before the flame could reach it. The ring responded, the angry tendrils of energy twisting and surging to be released. Coralis screamed as it began to burn his finger.

“Joseph! The uranium!” He gripped his wrist with his free hand, willing the power in the ring into submission. The smell of burning flesh permeated the tunnel. “Joseph!” he yelled again.

With speed belying his age, the Navajo chief withdrew a wand and blasted chunks of rock from the tunnel wall. He grabbed one of the larger rocks and pounded at a smaller one, reducing them both to gravel. “Place your hands over the rocks!” he said with such urgency that it frightened Henry.

Coralis’s face was drained of color and etched with pain as he struggled to the tunnel floor.

”Henry, on the count of three, toss the gold piece into the uranium!” Joseph shouted.

Henry stared at the gold nugget, suddenly mesmerized by the wisps of energy that continued to flare, searching longingly for Coralis’s ring.

“One!”

He felt warmth penetrate his hand and creep up his arm. The flares subsided and the globe pulsed with a singular inner light as if the evil energy within it no longer needed the ring.

As if it had found a home in Henry.

“Two!”