A pleasant story, made so by the family of archaeologists. Pretty much simple and straightforward, my sense was that parts of it felt condensed, like the writing was trying to be minimalistic when I could have spent a bit more time saying what it had to say. Maybe not a whole novel to be had there, but it probably could have used a slightly higher page count to breathe a bit more.

gundagums are adorable. theres not much else to this story though

A very fine story in this anthology book, but not necessarily anything special. There’s not really anything new done at all, but that’s fine, I don’t anticipate every story to be doing something particularly groundbreaking.

Bernice arrives on Wyzyn, home of the Zulawy, with the express intention of finding this archaeological site where the leader of the planet has granted the members the ability to excavate the land as long as tourists are allowed to visit and practically intrude on the whole site, which is rather silly. She finds the Professor, and then they soon unearth the skeletal remains of a Mtongl, a warring species who went extinct centuries ago, which confuses Bernice as she was aware that their species never stretched as far as Wyzyn. Professor Niwlog, another member of the dig, denies Bernice’s insistence that they evidently did arrive on Wyzyn.

She, as well as some of the other archaeologists, are able to eventually unearth more of the remains and discover one of the Mtongl spacecrafts. Niwlog is allowed to investigate the ship, under the belief that the Mtongl invaded the Zulawy, and blasts open a sealed door into one of the burial chambers, accessible by a mural. However, the blast destroyed the mural, and they all learn too that the entire chamber was cleaned out of riches.

I like this new species, the Gandagums, though. They’re pretty cute, I love armadillos.

Overall though, yeah, just a basic and by-the-books Bernice Summerfield story.