The question has arisen as to why this story interested me. As I have mentioned before, the original story, The Atlantis Crystal, was incomplete and inactive and featured a damaged and dispersed alien object. I've long been a fan of science fiction, but I find too many stories in this genre where an alien shows up somehow and gives the guy who finds it amazing powers in trade for something. I've always been skeptical about how a being or race so powerful and advanced that it can accomplish interstellar travel and manipulate time and matter needs to bargain for some item which can only be found on Earth. (Gold or some mineral needs to be dug up here on Earth, with all the problems that will cause, rather than undetectable asteroid mining? Seems unlikely to me!) RobberBaron's story instead had an alien object which gave the finder powers, but the object was damaged and uncertain of what had happened and why and did not have the ability to rebuild itself without assistance. That seemed like a more realistic bargain.