Hunters Out of Space Part 22

"There are a hundred more on the two ships," Maya told Odin. "Oh, Jack, we have Nea to thank for most of this. Nea and Wolden. After you and your men left, Nea took her Kalis, as she called them, and some of her people. They came through the barrier and made their way to the Old Ship. They surprised the few guards that Grim Hagen had left. They freed me and the other prisoners. Then we got our little army together and came to help. Without Nea, it could never have been done." She buried her face on Odin's shoulder. "Oh, Jack, when we were kids together we used to laugh at her."

He patted her shoulder comfortingly, for he could think of nothing to say.

He had seen soldiers like Nea--cast-offs from their home-towns gallantly going to their deaths. It was something that he could not understand. And being honest, he had nothing to say.

Clean-up was begun. Jack Odin left Val of the Lorens to take over. Then he rushed to the stairway where last he had seen Gunnar. The fires had burned out. The steps were blackened. A few smoking corpses were still upon the stairs.

Odin's face was covered with blood. His strength was nearly gone. But he went up the stairs two steps at a time, his spent breath whistling through his b.l.o.o.d.y nostrils.

There at the top of the stairs he found Gunnar. And Gunnar's dead lay thick about him.

Gunnar had moved himself to a sitting position against one of the railings.

His chin was upon his great chest and his eyes were closed as though he slept. But when Odin knelt beside him, he opened one eye and looked up with a twisted smile upon his broad face. One side of his face was barely recognizable. Gunnar was badly burned. He had been thrust through at least a dozen times. But Gunnar lived.

"Eh, Nors-King," he whispered, sitting up straight as Odin steadied him in his arms. "It was a long time to wait. And I thought sometimes that I would not make it. But I held on, for I knew you would come. Oh, it has been a long wait--and it took all my strength."

"As fast as I could," Odin answered in a choking voice. "As fast as I could, O Chief of the Neeblings. For Ragnarok is past, and the tree of life still reaches into the stars. The twilight is past and new suns and new earths are quickened. And Gunnar still lives."

"Part of him." Gunnar blinked his good eye. "What happened down there? Oh,"

he gasped in pain, "to have missed the fighting!"

"Maya lives and I live. Ato is wounded. Wolden came at the last to help us, Gunnar. We won. And I have killed Grim Hagen with my bare hands, even as I promised."

"Good, Nors-King. I knew always that one of us would kill him. Oh, it was a grand fight. But Gunnar will sharpen his sword no more. There was a ford near my father's house where the clear water ran fresh over the stones.

That might help me. But it is far away. And my father too. You tell Freida that we did not make the long trip in vain."

"If I can," Odin promised.

"Oh, you can. For we have won the stars and nothing is beyond us--except youth, maybe."

Gunnar closed his eyes and slept for a few minutes while Odin held him in his arms. Then Gunnar awoke.

He smiled at Jack Odin and murmured:

"To awake on the sea of the stars--"

Jack Odin had heard Gunnar sing those words before. They belonged to an old Norse lullaby that Gunnar's mother had crooned to him when he was a little boy.

Then Gunnar died.

And Odin knelt over him, tears streaming down his broken face.

CHAPTER 19

Six months had pa.s.sed since the battle.

The city of the violet dome was rebuilt. The ashes of the dead had been strewn upon the mossy plains. The two ships now stood in peace and gazed at each other across the expanse of moss and gra.s.s that had replaced the cinders left from the fighting.

Another city was being built a few miles away.

Ato had soon recovered from his wounds, and as ship's captain had married Maya and Odin.

So it was over. But Odin and Maya had asked for Gunnar's ashes, and had buried them out there on the plain, beneath a gaunt tree which was something like a mesquite. Gunnar would have liked that. Twisted, gnarled, and tough, the tree spread out its branches above him; and a bird had built its nest there and sang its old song of stars and men and time.

The Lorens were a happier people. One of the first things that the lights had done was to plunge back into s.p.a.ce. Within a few days they returned, trailing a huge dust-cloud behind them. It must have been the last salvage from the explosion that Odin had witnessed back there in s.p.a.ce. The cloud trailed out in one great streamer and slowly circled the ancient sun.

Slowly the spirals came nearer to the fires. The sun fed. Its old warmth returning, it smiled at its lone child. The air of the planet of the Lorens grew warmer and fresher. The plains seemed to shake themselves as a new spring returned to enliven the land and take up its old work of helping life to begat new life. Out there in empty s.p.a.ce, Odin fancied, Death lowered his scythe and smiled and shrugged his lean shoulders as he went away to harvest other suns.

Oh, it was a wonderful spring. The trip was over, but what a haggard few had beached the boats at the vast edge of s.p.a.ce!

The few surviving Brons were happy now. Those who had been Grim Hagen's slaves out of their loyalty to Maya were offered anything that they wished.

However, it turned out that most of them wanted little except peace and rest.

The families of Brons that survived were now building their houses above ground--although the Lorens had generously offered them quarters below the city. The Brons wanted no more of caves or tunnels. They preferred to live up there on this world's surface and take their chances with frost and flood.

Opal had been beautiful and wonderful. It had been like living eastward in Eden, but Eden's gardens were no more. And perhaps it would be better to face the elements and meet them head-on instead of seeking shelter. For time and chance were working everywhere--even in Eden--and as Gunnar had always said, a fighting heart could carry a man to the last.

The days and the nights were longer than on earth. The work was long and hard. But the world of the Lorens was being rebuilt. And at night, Odin usually set an hour aside to work on his notes.

At times he talked with Wolden, although he could never be completely at ease when talking to a light. Nor could he understand half the things that Wolden told him. Wolden quoted formulas on time and s.p.a.ce, ma.s.s and speed.

Odin guessed that the belt which he had once used so briefly embodied a No-Time and No-s.p.a.ce factor. But this was beyond him.

As for Ato, he grew moodier every day. At last he came to see Maya and Odin one evening. Sitting by the fire--for the nights there were chilly--he talked to them of his decision.

"It was a great fight," he said. "And I will always remember it. If Nea had lived, I might have felt differently. But Wolden and the others say that they will not stay here much longer. I have decided to go with them. Theirs is a sort of Nirvana, a timeless, dimensionless existence. Yesterday and tomorrow, near and far, are one--"

Maya shivered. "It sounds like a frightening existence. I don't understand it at all. It is as though they had become spirits without dying."

"Perhaps," said Ato thoughtfully, looking into the fire. "You may be right. But they say it is wonderful to be freed from the shackles of s.p.a.ce and time. You remember the belt, Odin? Wolden has merely improved upon it. Soon, I think, I will put on the belt that they brought for me and go forth with them like Laelaps to invade the night."

He paused a minute and then added cautiously, "They have brought two more belts with them. For you two, if you should decide--"

Maya shivered. Odin laughed, as he shook his head. "No. I am a man. Just flesh and blood, Ato. And I choose to stay here and take the blows of time. To endure to the end--even as my fathers before on earth--"

Maya snuggled against his shoulder as she nodded her agreement.

Ato smiled. "I thought so--But we will say no more about it. There is one thing that you may not understand. Wolden has tried to tell you. But he is a scientist, and his words are different and difficult to follow.

You and I have fought shoulder to shoulder. Perhaps I can explain--"

Then he talked for nearly an hour about the pa.s.sing of time--and how a ship could circle the universe at the speed of light--and upon returning it might find its home-port nothing but dust and memories. For while their hearts were beating once a month out there in s.p.a.ce tide after tide of years had flowed over their homes and their loved ones.

It was a sad, bewildering speech. It reduced time to nothing--and both Maya and Odin felt a lump of ice in their throats as Ato talked.