Hunters Out of Space Part 4

What he had hated about his own world above was its constantly increasing speed. Like a squirrel caught in a cage, his world had gone faster and faster until reality had vanished into a mad blur of turning wheels and running feet. Oh, well, he thought, a man is like a pup. Contented enough until life takes him by the scruff of the neck and shakes him up and proves to him that things change and a pup's world changes and he had better accustom himself to new standards or be shaken up again.

So they sped on through the low waves while the Tower loomed nearer and taller before them. Gunnar was guiding with one hand while he talked into a little square box of gleaming metal.

He turned his head, and the boat careened into a trough that set it to shaking. "I have contacted Wolden and Ato," he called cheerfully. "They are meeting us at the dock. Not the old dock--it is still under water. The new one is farther up the street."

As they neared Orthe-Gard, Gunnar slowed the boat. Looking down into the murky water, Jack Odin could detect, now and then, the faintly-traced shadow of a roof or tower. Once as he looked down at a finely-carved weather-vane, a huge fang-fish rolled between him and his view. A white belly gleamed through the water, and a serrated mouth opened wide. Its jaws bent out of proportion by the refraction of the water, it reminded Odin of the old story of the Monster of Chaos rushing with gaping mouth to swallow the works of men.

Then they were at the dock, which was scarcely a dock at all but a place where the waters ended halfway up the sloping streets of the city.

One thing had not changed. To the last the people of Opal refused to take part in any governmental excitement. A car was there. A driver. Wolden was there looking much thinner and grayer. Beside him was his son, Ato, inches taller and perhaps a bit thicker in the shoulders and a bit thinner at the waist. These were all.

He had nearly broken his neck half a dozen times to get there, but Jack Odin was glad that the old idea had survived. Being reared so near to Washington, he had been puzzled for years over his country's mile-long processions and the spectacle of thousands rushing to watch a parade for some visiting celebrity or some current politician who would be forgotten before the next snow.

He and Wolden shook hands. Odin was surprised at the change in him. When last seen, Wolden had been a man just leaving the prime of life. Too much of a brain, perhaps. A bit too curious and a bit too fearful of the affairs of the world. But now the hand was weak--the face was thinner and grayer, although even n.o.bler than it had been, but the eyes were sad and pained as though they had seen too much and had dreamed dreams beyond the comprehension of his fellows. Somehow, Odin found himself remembering a lecture about Addison, who probably knew as much as anyone about the hearts of men, but upon being made second-high man in his government could only stand tongue-struck in the presence of Parliament.

Then there was Ato. The months had changed him too. He stood tall and lean, and there was a deep line running from each cheekbone down his face. He looked older, but his eyes were piercing now, while his father's were somber. Strife and hard work had sweated all the fat from his bones. He seemed much stronger than when Odin had first met him.

But here was something more than strength. Ato had developed into a first-cla.s.s fighting man. Wolden could never have been a fighter.

There was something both terrifying and sad in the comparison. Ato looked like a man who could calmly send a hundred-thousand to their deaths for one objective, while Wolden would have theorized and rationalized until the objective was lost. The old comparison between the impulsive executive and the liberal arts man who has learned that there are only one or two positive decisions available in all the world of thinking.

But each in his own way was glad to see Odin, and welcomed him back to the ruins of Opal.

Then, just before the reunion was over, the clouds grew grayer and it began to rain. As they got into the little car, Wolden told Odin that they would have to circle the bay before going to the Tower on a ferry, since the lower stories were still under water. The city had once been beautiful with trees. Now they stood like gaunt skeletons, drowned by the sea water. Here and there a few limbs struggled to put out their leaves. The rain was cold, colder than Odin had ever felt in Opal before. He shivered, but there was something more than the cold dankness of the air to make him shiver.

Then they came to the ferry, and the ferryman was so old and bent that Odin looked twice at him to make sure that he wasn't one-eyed. He wasn't. So the ferry creaked its way out to the Tower--to an improvised landing just below the sixth-story windows. They climbed through the windows into a huge room that seemed to be carved of fairy-foam, and behind them the rain grew heavier and the thunder rolled in the distance and the lightning flashed like witch-fires across the jaded sky.

Three days had pa.s.sed since Gunnar and Odin had returned to Opal.

Doctor Jack Odin stretched out on a huge bed and felt the strength of the ultra-violet light upon the ceiling pour into his shoulders. In the next room, Gunnar was bathing and complaining about the sea water.

Drinking-water in Opal was now at a premium.

Odin had been in the dumps. Now he was feeling better, although memory of the sodden ruins that he had seen in the last three days would never leave him.

"And are you howling, my strong little man?" he called out cheerfully. "In Korea I once bathed in a mud puddle and enjoyed the bath."

Gunnar's first few words were unprintable. "There was a river close to my house where the water ran silver over the stones of the ford. And there Gunnar used to bathe. This is slop, Nors-King. Nothing but slop."

Odin laughed again. "You are getting old, Gunnar. Did anyone ever guarantee that ford to you for always?"

Gunnar, dripping water, and with a towel wrapped around his middle, came dashing into the room. He stood there, his arms and shoulders flexed. "And does Gunnar look too old to fight?" he asked.

Odin blinked. Gunnar's muscular development had always amazed him. The short man stood an inch less than five feet. His chest and shoulders must have measured more than that, his muscles writhed like iron snakes as he moved. His biceps and forearms were those of a smith--which indeed Gunnar had been, for Gunnar had been many things. The huge torso slanted down to narrow waist and hips. Then his short legs propped him up like carved things of oak. Gunnar had once killed a bull with one blow of his fist.

He had once snapped a man's back across those bulging, stubby thighs.

Gunnar disappeared in search of fresh clothing. Odin lay there, thinking of all the things he had seen since returning to Opal.

Although the water level was still high up on the Tower, the lower floors had been made water-tight and had been pumped dry. On his first trip to the Tower, Odin had little chance to survey the rooms. Now he knew something of what Opal had lost. Curtains, paintings, rugs, statues, the finest furniture. All these had been ruined or damaged by the flood. Each room of the Tower had been a work of art. Both Brons and Neeblings had contributed to it, back in the days when they were working shoulder to shoulder.

In spite of his thoughts for Maya, he could not help thinking that the Brons had brought this on themselves. When they tried to put the Neeblings in second place, that was when the bell had sounded. Even so, why had this splendor been reduced to ruin? Oh, there were jewels that could be salvaged. And statues. But the Tower was a work of art from top to bottom.

The finest lace. China as thin as paper. Paintings. These were gone. One might as well salvage Mona Lisa's eyes and swear that they were the original. Higher up, where the water had not reached, the machines had been stored along with other treasures. But Opal's best had been water-logged.

And the trip that Odin had made with Wolden into the tunnel. That was the most heart-breaking of all. The Brons and the Neeblings had saved the treasures from the warring civilizations of the world above. The statues could be preserved. Some of the machines might possibly be restored. But the paintings, the art, and the books. All gone. Wolden especially mourned a Navajo sand-painting, which he compared to Goya. Not a trace was left of it.

Wolden had taken him into the tunnel, just as he had once before. It was dripping now, and the sound of the pumps throbbed through the ruins like the struggling heart of a wounded thing. Their little car moved slowly down the old tracks. Occasionally it had to stop, where some disintegrating pile of treasures had spilled out. One sack of diamonds had broken. Wolden stopped and kicked the stones away. An ancient Ford, with its back seat piled high with rotting and sprouting sacks of prize-winning oat seed, was both heart-breaking and ludicrous.

The Brons and the Neeblings had been the true antiquarians of the world.

And they had taken centuries to gather their collection. A dinosaur skeleton stared at them. The salvaged carved prow of a galleon leaned against a gaping whale's jaw. A model of the first atomic pile supported a score of leaning spears, but the feathers and artwork on those spears were now stains and shreds. An English flag, delicately embroidered, drooped beside the dripping tatters of the Confederacy. A Roman eagle was lifted high beside the crudely beautiful banner of the Choctaws--on which Odin could barely make out the three arrows and the unstrung bow.

Chinese vases, thin as egg sh.e.l.ls, most of them broken, lay in a tumbled pile beside ancient cradles and spinning wheels.

A Neanderthal skull was staring hungrily at a twelve foot skeleton of a giant bird. And a restoration of a tiny little equus was looking up like an inquisitive mouse at a huge ruined painting by Rosa Bonheur.

Thousands upon thousands of relics of the world above--some taken from the jetsam of the sea and others taken by exploring parties from Opal during those long glad years when the inner-world was as comfortable as Eden and almost as happy. Gems by the millions, gold and silver coins, trappings inlaid with diamonds, furs, silks, bone instruments and ivory carvings. A Stradivarius was warping apart, and a Gutenberg was swollen to twice its size, its moldy pages curling away from the parent-book. The books had fared worse. Great stacks of leather-covered libraries were turning into moldy, starchy mounds. Papyrus and lambskin scrolls were falling apart.

Once, when they stopped for Wolden to thrust some moldy folds of Hindu thread-of-gold weaving from their path, Odin stopped and picked up the cover of a book. It was soggy and faded. But he could make out the t.i.tle: "Poems by a Bostonian."

So they had gone on, but slower now than on their first journey into the tunnel which led to the floor of the Gulf. An odor of dankness and decay hung over everything. The air was cold and damp. And everywhere were the footprints and handprints of Death who had spared this galley for so long, but who had come back with his flashing scythe to claim his own. The stinking carca.s.s of a hammer head shark, washed in by the flood, lay sprawled across the sodden sarcophagus of an Egyptian princess.

And a gloomy sickness fell upon Jack Odin there in the tunnel as he thought of all the splendor that had died here, and the ages and ages of sweat and blood that had gone into these treasures. A thousand, thousand treasures were trying to whisper their stories to him, but the dripping water was drowning them out. Thousands of men, some slaves and some kings, were trying to tell him what the jewels and books, and swords and cradles had meant to them--but the drip-drip-drip of the water choked the echoes of their voices. The darkness that was ever crowding in seemed to be filled with the shadows of beautiful women in fine laces, with flashing jewels about their throats, and pendants brushing their half-covered b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They were trying to smile out of the dark, but a cold fog was creeping from the walls of the tunnel, settling about the shadows, and driving them back, farther and farther into all pervading nothingness.

Seeing his misery, Gunnar had clutched Odin's arm. "These were things of the past, Nors-King, and the things of the past belong to the old dragon.

Let us not complain if he has taken them at last. We have things to do and we cannot do them if we are sick at heart. Did I tell you that four of my children died in the flood?" The voice of the broad-shouldered dwarf sounded husky and far away.

"No, Gunnar. You never told me. Indeed, old friend, I am sorry. Very sorry. And ashamed that I sit here mourning the past and forgetting your troubles."

"Yes. They died. My Freida and the other three are coming here. And we will eat at the same table again--and I will tell them that their grand-sire and their great-grand-sires were men among men. And that Gunnar himself has often sat high at the councils. Then we will go out to find Grim Hagen--and Freida and the three will go back to rebuild the farm. For that is the way of things--and as long as there are strong ones left to rebuild, Loki cannot altogether destroy us."

The car moved slowly forward. The dismal fog grew heavier. Until at last they came to the place where the Old Ship had stood.

Now there was a new ship taking form within its huge cradles. Lights were everywhere. The red lights of the forge. The blue lights of the welding torches, the white light of the workbenches. The yellow lights that surrounded the high scaffolds went up and up to the top of the hour-gla.s.s figure.

"This is our second," Wolden explained. "Our first was much smaller.

We had been working on a smaller model long before Grim Hagen got ambitious. Some of our scientists have already gone into s.p.a.ce. We are in touch with them. They went quietly and noiselessly. There was no need for all the destruction and havoc that Grim Hagen worked. But this model is larger even than the Old Ship, and all the improvements that we once dreamed of are here. You see, Odin," Wolden continued, "the Old Ship was ours for centuries. We of Orthe-Gard have exploring minds. We went over the ship thousands of times. We knew where every bolt and pin was located. We improved it. In the beginning, when it brought our ancestors here, it must have been comparatively slow. But during the past forty years we learned much from your scientists about s.p.a.ce. Einstein was the only thinker in a century gone mad from bickering. About ten years ago we perfected what I call The Fourth Drive. It would take days to explain it, but it can throw a ship into Trans-Einsteinian s.p.a.ce. We had equipped the Old Ship with the new invention. Our experimental ship was so equipped. And this newer, larger one will also have The Fourth Drive.

But we have made a few improvements at the last."

It was all too deep for Odin. And there was so much to see that he did not ask any questions.

Workers and smiths were everywhere. They crawled over the scaffolding like ants. They hammered and pounded at the framework. They were bent over the furnaces and the anvils. The presses and the shapers were pounding away.

Never before had Jack Odin seen so much activity in Opal.