He tried to make a joke of the matter. "You sound like a beatnik."

"Perhaps," she answered slowly, still looking up at the screen. "They considered my father beat--dead-beat. But I know more of this science than you do, Jack Odin. What if I told you there was little chance of finding Maya. Or, if you found her, she might be an old, old lady."

"Well, I'd say 'Nuts.' We would keep on looking. But why such gloomy thoughts?"

"You do not understand. Here, flashing through Trans-s.p.a.ce, we are in another time. Oh, it goes by. But not as the clocks of Opal. Once a ship slides out of here to a planet it is caught in a web of time and s.p.a.ce. The clocks resume their old work of grinding the minutes and the hours to bits.

The black oxen of the sun take up their measured march. Oh, I could show you the mathematical formula to prove this, but it would take a blackboard larger than the screen. Don't you see! While we search through Trans-s.p.a.ce, it is highly possible that Grim Hagen, Maya, and all their crew are growing old on some planet that you might never find."

Odin drew his hand across his face in dismay. "You make all this sound like a mad voyage. Why, this is insane!"

"Check with Ato if you wish." Her sad smile was almost a sneer. "And men talk of going to the stars. Where is the clock they will use? Where is their yardstick? Where is the concept? Why, out there, for all you know, Huckleberry Finn is still floating down the river, and Macbeth walks through the halls of Dunsinane. And the last man, in the year one-million AD, may be squatting over a fire, watching his last stick of wood turn to ashes."

Lithely she got to her feet and reached a dial upon the screen. The lone star vanished. A thousand pinpoints leaped out.

"There is but a segment," she said, sitting back upon the ha.s.sock again. "I have known Maya all my life. I was the poor relation. I envied her, but I did not hate her. And so with Grim Hagen. I should hate him, but I remember him as a frustrated cousin who always ran second in the races. And all that--even my father--seems far away and long ago. Why do you bring love and hate with you out here to the stars, Jack Odin?"

"Because I am a man, I suppose."

She sighed again. "There is much more to this invention of mine that I showed you. Upon that screen there must be ten thousand worlds. Let us pick one, you and I. We can glide out of here at any time. And we can make that world over as we please. We might even eat of the fruit of life and become as G.o.ds--"

As though it came from the dark corridor of the years, Jack Odin seemed to hear the resounding echo of slow footsteps, and a deep voice that thundered: "For I, thy G.o.d, am a jealous G.o.d--"

She had almost hypnotized him with her weary, earnest voice. For a moment, it had seemed that all this frantic quest was nothing. That it would be far, far better to find a home with Nea and build a world of his own than to go on searching the stars.

Then he answered slowly, trying to measure his words, for he did not want to hurt her feelings. "No, Nea. If I go wandering forever, it will be no worse than my fathers did before me. For a man is vagrant and restless.

What he gets, he loses. And if he is lucky, he can hold fast to his dreams."

For a moment dark anger blazed in her eyes. Then they were calm and sad again. She got to her feet, as though she were very tired.

She smiled. "If I followed all the books, I would make a scene now. I have offered myself and a world to you and have been refused. But I wish you and your dreams well, Jack Odin."

She bent over him, and her lips brushed his. Faintly, like the touch of a rose petal, and the perfume of her hair seemed to fill the room.

Then she was gone.

Jack Odin sat there, looking long and long at the swarm of stars upon the screen, thinking of the unseen worlds about them--the worlds that he had just renounced.

Until finally he got up and went to bed.

CHAPTER 10

Ato's probing instruments still pointed the way to Aldebaran. In a surprisingly short time, the warning signals were flashing and jingling throughout The Nebula. There was that same sick feeling as it moved slower than the speed of light.

And there was a glowing sun with nine planets circling stately about it.

Slower The Nebula moved, and slower, until the outermost planet sparkled in the light of its sun below them. They swooped down.

Not a single blast was fired at them. Every man was at his post, while Ato guided them in, and Odin worked the screens.

Once more, Jack was disappointed. He had looked forward to some alien--even exotic--civilization. Here were fields and streams. And there were cities--looking very much like the cities of his world and of Opal.

Those other worlds which he had seen had been blasted. So there was no way of knowing how their cities had looked. But these were too recognizable.

He was certain that he had seen several of the taller buildings before.

Was s.p.a.ce no more creative than this? Had the worlds dedicated themselves to the same monotonous pattern? He had caught a glimpse of conventional, rocket-shaped s.p.a.ceships, plying their courses back and forth among the planets. He saw boats and cars and a few long-nosed airplanes, with the merest trace of vestigial wings far back near the empennage, streaking through the sky in high arcs, leaving curling trails of fog and smoke behind them. But there was little here that his world had not already mastered--or at least had on the drawing board.

The Nebula came to rest upon a bare plain not far from the nearest city. As he turned to the scanner upon it, Odin saw that while it looked familiar enough there was one exotic thing about it. Toward the outskirts of the city, in the bend of a wide river, was the Taj Mahal.

He felt nearly as bewildered as he had been when Nea explained her theories of the Time-s.p.a.ce Concept to him.

They had hardly landed before one of Ato's scientists announced that there was good clean air outside. Oxygen and nitrogen with good old water held as moisture within it.

The city sat there upon the plain and stared at them. The Nebula looked back.

At length a procession of cars moved toward them.

Grim Hagen's voice came thundering over the loud-speakers.

"A truce, Ato. I offer you a week's truce in return for a few meetings.

This world has seen enough destruction--"

Gunnar and his crew leveled their death-gun at the advancing party. Odin kept them on the screen. Ato and a few of his captains got ready to disembark.

As Odin watched, he kept puzzling over that voice. It certainly was Grim Hagen's. But it was different. Perhaps it was a bit lower, a bit more commanding. But there was just a bit of weariness in it. And the answer came to him suddenly--although he never knew why.

The voice was older!

Then Grim Hagen and his staff were below The Nebula. They were dressed in white and gold uniforms. That was not surprising, either. Ato and his men advanced for a parley. Odin watched and listened.

At first he could not get a clear look at the man for Ato's broad shoulders. Then Ato turned aside, and Grim Hagen's head and shoulders filled the screen.

Odin gasped in amazement. Grim Hagen was nearly twenty years older than when he had seen him last.

The shoulders and arms were larger although there appeared to be little fat upon Grim Hagen. The dark hair was streaked with gray. The face was seamed, and though the black eyes still blazed they now burned with a fanatic hate and desperation. Where pride and ambition had once made a face coldly handsome, there was now nothing but seamed lines like scars and blazing eyes. It was an evil face. Grim Hagen had become a devil.

Hagen looked at the much younger Ato and laughed. "So, the cub comes to fight with the tiger? Didn't you know? Didn't you guess? While you came galloping after me, I had already landed within this system. And time began its old alnage. These were a peaceful people. We wrecked them. We enslaved them and built the nine worlds in our own fashion. Nearly nineteen years, Ato! No Caesar ever dreamed of a larger kingdom. I even gave them a new G.o.ddess--for I did not want them to do much thinking. Yonder." He pointed to the duplicate Taj Mahal in the distance. "She sleeps. My only failure.

No older. And sometimes I go there and look at her, and my youth seems to walk beside me--"

"We want the people that you brought with you, Grim Hagen," Ato answered coldly. "And the treasures."

Grim Hagen laughed again. "Those that came with me willingly are dukes and kings beyond their wildest dreams. Those who would not take oath to serve me are still slaves. Except for Maya, who sleeps. As for the treasures, my treasure houses are so full now that I doubt if I could separate one thing from the other. So youth grows old. But you must admit that this is better than cringing in a hole in the ground--"

"None of us cringed, unless it was you," Ato retorted angrily. "We have come beyond time and s.p.a.ce--for Maya and her friends--for the treasures--and for you--"