Nea went back to the lab. Odin and Ato continued their study of the maps.

Gunnar was putting a fine edge to his broadsword.

Then the warning buzzer sounded its alarm. Odin dived for the screen and turned on the controls.

A long procession of mauve shadows was approaching. Already inside the barrier, they came single-file and slowly circled The Nebula.

Even in the pale weird light, they certainly seemed to be men.

Ato ordered "Battle-Stations" and sirens sounded all over the ship.

But the circling host made no offer to attack. Odin turned the receiver up to its highest point, and speaking brokenly in the language of the Brons a voice came through.

"Men of the strange ship. Men of the strange ship--"

"Yes," Odin answered.

"Good. You hear me. We are those who have been driven out of the city. We would visit you in peace. We are called Lorens."

Within a few minutes, a dozen of the strangers had been brought aboard The Nebula. Ato summoned Nea and the rest of the captains.

The leader of the visitors was a man by the name of Val. He was a tall, lean man with a Norman nose and his dark skin was drawn so tightly about his face that he looked a bit like a mummy. Val was over sixty, Odin judged, and though his wrists were skinny the tendons and muscles on his arms stood out like taut lengths of cable. He and his men were dressed alike--a sleeveless shirt of walnut-brown plastic, dark peg-bottomed trousers of corduroy, and footgear that looked like engineer's boots with rippled soles. The tops of the boots were tight-fitting and the peg-bottomed trousers were drawn snugly over them. Odin learned later that what had appeared to be green moss out there on the weathered plain was a kind of thistle with cat-claw thorns.

Each man wore a heavy black belt about his waist. Attached to the belt were at least a dozen weapons: several grenades, a pistol, another pistol with a flaring muzzle, a long knife, a gla.s.sy looking tube fitted to a pistol-b.u.t.t, and a blue-black ugly thing which was shaped like an over-sized toadstool.

In addition to this odd a.s.sortment of gear, each man carried something in his hand which greatly resembled the frame of an old-fashioned umbrella--except that half a dozen vari-colored b.u.t.tons were set into the handles.

"It was nearly thirty years ago," Val was explaining, "that the voice of Grim Hagen began to interfere with our broadcasting system. Some said it was a G.o.d. Some said it was a devil. It came from s.p.a.ce. It came from almost anywhere. We have been an intelligent race, but we were sore beset.

Our sun was dying. All that we had was our sun and a huge dust-cloud in the distance. In times past, our astronomers had seen the glow of millions of suns, millions upon millions of miles away. But we were never able to perfect a telescope that could bring a single sun into view.

"Nor did we ever have a chance to do this. The dust-cloud surged out toward us every twenty years, and our scientists were able to use a gravitational beam to deflect a part of it toward our sun. In this way we kept it alive and might have been able to do so for ages. But now the dust-cloud is gone."

Val paused to sigh, and then resumed his story. "The voice--I mean the voice of Grim Hagen--promised my people that if they would accept him he would take them forth into the stars. They would plunder thousands of worlds and they would live for centuries while generations died. Also, he said, he was on the brink of discovering eternal life--"

"He was playing at being the eternal Loki--the old mischief-maker--" Gunnar interrupted and went on edging his sword.

"Well," Val continued, "I cannot blame my people too much for believing this story. Our plight was desperate. But there were those of us who did not believe him. He seemed to know too much, when according to our philosophy the only wise man is the one who admits that he knows nothing--"

"I am not a philosopher," Gunnar interrupted again. "I only know that once you have thrust a foot of steel into a man he does not bother you again."

"Please, Gunnar," Ato begged. "Let Val go on with his story."

"The rest of the story I do not understand at all," Val said with a shake of his grizzled head. "This Grim Hagen said that he did not age until he stopped to conquer a planet and replenish his ship's energy. It was thirty years ago when he first spoke to us. He looks like a man of forty-five now. Could he have been an upstart of fifteen when he first spoke into our receivers?"

"I will try to explain that later," Ato answered.

"Well, there were those of us who could not agree with the general idea.

There are even some of the Lorens in the Violet Dome who think he is a G.o.d.

We think he is an evil man. We have no desire to plunder the stars. If he is so great, why doesn't he give new life to our feeble sun? That is what we really need. Meanwhile, the people of the Dome are building five new ships, as Grim Hagen directed. They have been working upon them for years--"

"Good G.o.d," Jack Odin was thinking, "what a hideous propaganda machine these ships are? To condition and instruct a whole generation while you flash through s.p.a.ce in the twinkling of an eye!"

"And that is all," Val finished with a shrug of his lean shoulders. "Those of us who had never agreed with the idea were thrown out of the city as soon as Grim Hagen arrived. We have come to join forces with you."

"How did you get through the barrier?" Nea asked.

Val lifted the umbrella-frame. "We have had the barrier for years. There are strange beasts out there on the plain. This instrument allows us to go through the barrier when we please."

"Then we can go to the city?" Gunnar exclaimed with a joyful war-whoop.

"To kill, and kill, and kill--"

"You are right," Ato admitted. "Delay will only increase Grim Hagen's advantage. To the city--as fast as we can--"

CHAPTER 15

Val and his men had brought along enough of the umbrella-shaped defenses to get them through the barrier.

They held a short council of war. It was agreed that every able-bodied man would go into the city. Nea and a few of the older men were detailed to stay by The Nebula and take care of the women and children.

Nea had screamed and protested against that. She had only agreed to stay upon one condition: That she be left one of the umbrella-skeletons.

The nights, Odin learned, were about sixteen hours long on this dying planet. It was toward midnight when they started out from the ship toward the violet dome. The strange half-light still hovered over the ground. In the sky, splinters of mauve tore at curtains of purplish flame. Something like northern lights, they glinted and gleamed, wrestled and writhed. There was no peace up there in that abandoned sky. But there was enough of that unearthly light glimmering below for him to watch his footsteps.

They had brought every kind of weapon that they could lug with them.

Atomic machine-guns. Needle-nosed things that spat blobs of flame.

Anti-gravitational bombs. Bombs that swirled slowly toward the enemy and cut him down with scythe-blades.

Gunnar had laughed at that. "Hang on to your sword and knife, Nors-King.

We will need them yet."

With the umbrella frames held over them, as though protecting them from a flood, they went through the barrier. Beyond it, thousands of men rose up from the scarred plain to join them. Val had a much larger following than Odin had ever guessed. These men were swathed in long coats and capes.

Similar items of apparel were hastily furnished the crew of The Nebula--for when they were through the barrier the temperature dropped to about thirty.

Once they pa.s.sed through a thin swirl of snow.

Then something screamed at them out there in the night and came at them like a juggernaut. It must have stood nearly fifty feet high, and came rushing at them on a score of legs, with dozens of eyes flashing green as it hurtled forward.

The men of Loren were not greatly worried. They began to fire at it with the pistol-shaped weapons. There was only a popping noise, but Odin could hear the bullets smashing into the onrushing thing. Others used the tulip-flared guns, which made no noise at all, but bolts of lightning sank into the sides of the behemoth.

After it was dead its furious drive sent it nearly a score of yards forward. It slid into a clump of twisted trees and tore them to splinters before it stopped quivering. Finally the way was clear.