THE dust-cloud was farther away than Ato had guessed. Long before they reached it, his instruments began to waver.

He looked at a star-map. Meanwhile, Nea fed rows of figures into a humming calculator.

“We’ll never make it this way,” Ato said. “Not even the emergency storage would help us. Here,” he pointed to a pinpoint of light upon the map. “A white star. We can reach it, I think.”

Nea sighed. “That dust-cloud is beyond our calculations. We should be nearly there, but it’s still far-off. I think it is shrinking and expanding. At the same time it’s dashing off into space at a terrific rate of speed. You’ll have to swing toward that star, Ato. I’ll try to probe the cloud some more. My father would have liked this problem—”

“I don’t like the problem at all—” Gunnar complained. “Just where is Grim Hagen?”

“He must be having as much trouble beating his way to that dust-cloud as we are,” Ato assured him. And then, doubtfully, he added. “But he has more energy. The Old Space Ship was sitting there below Aldebaran for years and years. He surely took advantage of the time to replenish his fuel. All the while, we were using ours up in an effort to find him.”

Jack Odin’s science did not go far enough to pursue the conversation. He knew that their power was something like a solar battery. When in gear, the current that went through the “frame” of the hour-glass-shaped craft turned it into a huge blob of plasma, a miniature nebula, and hurled it into space. As for the Fourth Drive, he hadn’t the slightest idea how it worked. Ato had said that the scientists who developed it were not sure—just as men had developed generators long before they knew the laws that governed them. Ato had a theory that the Fourth Gear slid the ship from plane to plane. If a bug were crawling along a million mile spiral of wire, he might go on until he died before getting anywhere—but if he simply lumbered across the intervening space to the next coil, would he have traveled a short distance, or a million miles? Ato had also told Odin that the ship took energy from the gravitational field that it created when traveling at tremendous speeds, so that the motors were 99% efficient.

Ato set a course for the distant star, and in a short while it was looming upon the screen with sheets of atomic flame leaping out like the teeth of a circular saw. One huge explosion flicked a long tongue of heat at them. The corona of the sun gleamed and writhed like a thin band of quicksilver.

“We’re going in there,” Ato decided. “It’s the quickest way.”

Warnings were sounded all through the ship. The screens were turned off now, as no eye could have survived the sight of that flaming ball which was rushing toward them at such extraordinary speed.

The ship groaned as it hit the corona. Vast whirlwinds of flame shook it. The motors coughed and spat. Then the gyroscopes took over. It steadied itself and went through. Like a moth fluttering through a candle-flame, The Nebula drew away from the star. But this moth was unharmed—and a million cells had drunk so much energy that the ship reeled with its power.

On and on. In zig-zag pursuit of Grim Hagen, they crashed through Trans-Space. The dust-cloud loomed larger now upon their screens. It was still no larger than a baseball, though it must have been millions of miles across.

Three times they had to sweep from their course to renew their energy from straggling suns that seemed to be farther and farther apart. The first was a tiny blue sun that burned its way through the emptiness. The second was a huge nebula that pulsed and spouted flame and protean worlds into space—enveloped them again as it breathed, scared them, and cast them out once more. And Odin wondered if in such a furnace and such torment his own world had been born. He had now seen as much of space as any man, with the exception of Grim Hagen, and so far it had been a tumultuous creation that he had watched. Nothing was still. The forges of space were white-hot. As they sped toward this sun, they passed two planets, perilously close together, pelting each other with splashing gobs and spears of flame and slag. The third was a red sun with lonely burned-out planets circling wearily about it. As they skimmed above its surface Odin slid a dark plate over the screen and watched. Here were molten lakes of metal rimmed by red flames that looked like writhing trees. The surface was splitting and bubbling. A mountain of molten ooze swiftly grew to a height of thirty miles. Then it burst into red flame from its own weight and came toppling down.

As they hurled away from the red star, Ato turned to Odin and Gunnar and said: “I’m afraid that will be the last. Even the stars are behind us—”

The screens now showed nothing but the dust-cloud, with specks of light and coils of darkness threaded through it. It loomed larger and larger until it filled the screen.

“Ragnarok,” Gunnar growled in his throat. He adjusted the shoulder strap that harnessed his broadsword to his back and looked at Odin curiously.

“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 space 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 space 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 space 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 space 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. Space 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 space 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 space 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 space. Even now, it might be on some planet, puzzling and worrying the natives. For the Kalis were almost like living things—and almost like gods.

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 assured 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 space.

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

Table of Contents