"You should have rest, Nors-King. You look gaunt and tired--but stronger too. I wonder if I have changed as much as you since we started this trip.

Eh, Nors-King," he chuckled, "if you had but one eye, I would swear that you were old Odin himself, rushing out to the edge of s.p.a.ce to start that last bonfire of suns."

"Quiet," Nea pleaded as she worked with the calculator. "So far this has defied computation. It's unstable, Ato. Before I can identify it, a factor is added or taken away."

"Grim Hagen went in there," Ato replied as he studied his instruments. "If he can, we can."

"Perhaps," she answered. "But s.p.a.ce out there is curdling in his wake." She shivered. Nea's shoulders were beautifully shaped, and Odin found himself thinking that they were made for a man's arms instead of bending over calculators and machines.

"Oh, well!" he thought. "They are not for my arms, but why doesn't Ato wake up and claim her? Then there wouldn't be distractions like this--"

With one warning blare, The Nebula plunged into the fringe of the dust-cloud.

The boat rocked. A spattering sound like the falling of heavy sleet filled the control room. Needles jumped and wheeled. Dials turned madly, spun back and forth, and jammed.

The lights flickered on and off. For a time they were in darkness. Then the lights came back, but continued their flickering. The screens were dark.

Nea worked with the instruments. When power enough was available she began probing the dust-cloud as though nothing had happened. Then she fed more figures into the calculator and handed the result to Ato.

"Try this," she said in a tremulous voice. "It may work."

Ato took the tape from her hands and set the controls accordingly.

The lights dimmed again--came on--and remained steady. The expanses of dim yellow light through which coils and ellipses of darkness crawled like black worms.

Odin knew that such a feeling was impossible out here, but it seemed to him that The Nebula leaped forward.

Ato cried out in triumph. "I've got another fix on Grim Hagen. He's much nearer now."

"Hurry, Ato. Hurry," Nea was pleading.

They drove on and on. The screens remained as before. Yellow light and crawling shadows. Then, suddenly, the screens were filled with dancing circles of flame. They blazed brightly, and thrust out little fiery arms and took their neighbors' hands. They danced. They gleamed and glistened.

They became circles of flame. They grew toward each other and ran together into little puddles of light.

"Ato. Hurry," Nea screamed. One of her instruments melted as she stared into it and she jumped back, her hands to her eyes--

Then they were out of the cloud, and s.p.a.ce lay empty and free before them, with only one tiny sun in view.

Jack Odin twisted the controls to take a look at what was happening back there in the cloud.

Just as he got it in view, the moiling s.p.a.ce out there coalesced into one smoldering ember. Crushed by the awful weight, that single giant of flame suddenly burst into a thousand pieces. Comets streaked away. Dripping suns streamed across the mad sky. Worlds spewed out--and moons dripped tears of light as they followed after their mothers. They crashed and wheeled. They merged in gigantic splashes of fire. Pinwheels rushed across the screen.

Rockets flashed. And fountains of flame spilled sun after sun into the sparkling void. Odin stood transfixed by the sight.

Then, momentarily, the holocaust of flame was over. New suns and new worlds drifted calmly, with only a few erratic meteors and some settling dust-clouds left to tell of the explosion that had shaped them.

All was as bright and calm out there as the day after creation. But only for a while. For a very short time the new suns sparkled clean and fresh.

Then one by one they guttered and winked out. They drew closer together as though afraid of the dark. Then smoldered and flickered. Then they were gone. And all that was left was one dark cloud that slowly drifted away.

"It was an artificial explosion," Nea murmured in a puzzled voice. "Grim Hagen's ship and ours destroyed the balance and caused a premature burst.

There must be some law--some time and weight factor that governs these things. I would judge that the explosion was not violent enough."

"Not violent enough," Odin exclaimed. "How violent can an explosion be?"

Her eyes were still wide and creamy with wonder when she replied. "I don't know. Something went wrong. Relatively speaking, it may have been a mild explosion. At any rate, that new galaxy was unstable. I wish we had time to go back and make some tests--"

Gunnar shivered. "Not back there. I have seen enough. Now, Ato, what lies ahead?"

Ato shrugged his lean shoulders. "I still have a fix on Grim Hagen. And there seems to be but one place for him to go."

He turned a dial and the screens picked up one lone red sun far away. One tiny black dot slowly circled it.

That was all. s.p.a.ce itself was wrapped in primeval darkness. And the sable wings of nothingness spanned the void. Odin's eyes ached at sight of the awful emptiness. His heart felt heavy as the weight of dread distances pressed upon him. Could s.p.a.ce itself reach some limit and curve wearily back upon itself? Like folds of black silk, the emptiness out there shimmered and flowed away--

One other speck now appeared upon the screen. A pinpoint of light that crawled toward the lone sun and its single huge planet.

Grim Hagen and the Old Ship!

Time, if time existed at all, went slowly by. They ate and slept. Nea and her workers were busy with the Kalis, as she called them. Four were now finished. A fifth had been fashioned, but Nea had sent it through the locks into s.p.a.ce and it had been lost. It had simply sailed out there and disappeared.

"Sunk from sight," were Gunnar's words, and this explained the disappearance as well as anything. It was as though they had been on a boat and the thing had dived overboard.

Nea, who had been trained to scientific thinking since she was knee-high, had to think up an answer. Her explanation was that it had slid down a plane into three-dimensional s.p.a.ce. Even now, it might be on some planet, puzzling and worrying the natives. For the Kalis were almost like living things--and almost like G.o.ds.

That was like Nea, Odin thought. A scientist, always. Anything unexplainable must be immediately attached to a theory--whether the theory were right or wrong. Just as long as there was an explanation to hang upon a phenomenon she was happy enough. She might blithely think up a new theory tomorrow and throw the old one away, but that was of no consequence. Odin had grown skeptical of such thinking when he was a medical student. Each doctor had his own pet diagnosis--and too many tried to fit the patient to the cure instead of working out a cure for the patient. Oh, well, that was far away and long ago.

How far away and how long ago!

Meanwhile, the red sun and its planet were looming large upon the screen.

The shining light that was the Old Ship was crawling nearer to them. Twice Grim Hagen had hurled sheets of flame at them. And once he contacted The Nebula on the speaker--and cursed everyone fluently in three languages. He a.s.sured them that he now had a fighting crew and would soon join up with others. He had a dozen new weapons. So why didn't they simply get lost?

Sleep after sleep went by and still the two ships crawled toward that last port on the edge of s.p.a.ce.

Until, finally, they saw the Old Ship leave Trans-s.p.a.ce and glide down to the huge planet. And with a last burst of speed, Ato came in behind it.

CHAPTER 14

The two ships landed a few miles apart at almost the same time.