Hunters Out of Space Read online

  CHAPTER 9

  The three sunlets of flame merged together and dripped yellow blobs oflight into the darkness. They grew into a great soap bubble that turnedto topaz.

  Like something moving in a dream it gained upon The Nebula, until itwas pacing beside them--a little larger now and still growing--dwarfingthem and filling half the screen.

  A shadow--no, two shadows--were growing within it, Odin tried tomake them out. But they were dark and wavering. Still, they lookedsomething like a high priest standing above a prone victim stretchedout upon some sacrificial altar.

  Odin was working the screens like mad. Keeping their entire crew beforehis and Ato's eyes and at the same time watching the topaz bubble.

  The bubble cleared. Over the loudspeakers came Grim Hagen's shriek ofwild laughter.

  Odin turned another knob and the bubble loomed larger.

  Grim Hagen stood there, one lean hand rubbing his chin as he laughed atthem.

  And the figure lying prone upon a couch beside him was swathed by a sheetwhich came almost to its eyes. But the shadows were leaving the bubble now.And Odin saw that it was Maya. Asleep. Statuesque. Like a carving upon atomb--but it was Maya.

  Then he cried out in alarm. For upon another screen he saw Gunnar and hiscrew swing their weapon into action. Shell after shell of greenish fireburst about the globe. Green flame thrust out tiny rootlets that crawledover it, outlining it in garish light. Another shell seemed to burst uponGrim Hagen's chest, tearing the bubble of light apart. And as Jack watched,horrified and sick, the shards of flame came back together. And there wasthe globe again--with Grim Hagen and Maya as whole as ever. And a greenstreak of fire--one of Gunnar's misses--went careening off into space untilit shrank to a pinpoint of light and then vanished.

  At a signal from Ato, the firing stopped.

  Grim Hagen was still laughing.

  "You are wasting your energy, Ato. I am only a projection. And so is thisthat is with me. I have Maya." He bowed mockingly. "See, Odin. Come and gether, Odin, so I can kill you. I had thought I was done with you but it isjust as well. Out here, somewhere, somewhen, I can kill you slowly. Look,she sleeps."

  Shrouded there within a bubble of changing light, Maya looked like abronze statue. Lying upon her back with her arms folded across her breasts,and with half of her face covered by the flowing folds of a coverlet, shewas like a bride of death, waiting the end of eternity.

  Hagen laughed again. "Here in Trans-Einsteinian space there is neither sizenor time as we once knew it. I could leave her on a giant planet, a statueten miles long for the ages to marvel at. Or I could cast her adrift tomake the trillion-mile-long trip with the suns until the last explosionwhen space will dissolve and be born again. So give up now. Bother me nomore. Space and its treasures are mine for the taking, and I have waitedtoo long."

  Then the topaz globe twitched as a bubble vanishes. And it was gone. Outthere was nothing but the night.

  * * * * *

  Ato set a course for Aldebaran. His watch finished, Jack Odin sat alone inthe lounge and watched the star upon the screen. It did not seem to be muchlarger. A single brilliant jewel of flame that beckoned them on.

  Gunnar had long since gone to bed, grumbling that the way order andmilitary discipline were maintained aboard ship they probably couldn't whiptheir way out of a child's wading pool. Odin was thinking of all the thingsthat had happened to him since that night when Maya and the dwarfs hadbrought the helpless Grim Hagen to the old Odin homestead. Lord, how longhad it been? Out here, where time could not be measured, and perhaps didnot exist at all, it seemed futile to count the weeks and the months.

  He stared at the single star upon the screen until he was half asleep.Behind it Maya's face, outlined in black curls, seemed to peer at him--andher pouting lips parted as she smiled.

  He stared and shook his head. The dream-vision vanished from the screen.Someone had entered the room.

  It was Nea. Dressed in slacks once more, she slouched over to his chair anddrew a hassock up beside it. As she looked at him, Jack Odin saw that hereyes were tired--tired--tired. As though they had not rested for months.

  "You ought to be asleep," he warned. "Now that your work is finished--"

  "And is it finished?" she asked. "Is anything ever finished?" Nea droopedupon the hassock. Resting her chin upon her hands she looked up at thescreen.

  "That is where we are going?" she asked.

  "Ato is certain that Grim Hagen is headed for Aldebaran," Odin answered.

  "One star out of millions. What difference does it make?"

  "You have been working too hard--"

  "Oh, damn!" she said angrily. "There is more to the work than you and theothers guessed. Now, we are going to rescue a cousin of mine and to punishanother cousin. The old rat-race. Tell me why don't people just go sit ina corner and enjoy themselves. So far, we have done nothing but increaseour scurrying a thousand-fold."

  * * * * *

  He tried to make a joke of the matter. "You sound like a beatnik."

  "Perhaps," she answered slowly, still looking up at the screen. "Theyconsidered my father beat--dead-beat. But I know more of this science thanyou do, Jack Odin. What if I told you there was little chance of findingMaya. Or, if you found her, she might be an old, old lady."

  "Well, I'd say 'Nuts.' We would keep on looking. But why such gloomythoughts?"

  "You do not understand. Here, flashing through Trans-Space, we are inanother time. Oh, it goes by. But not as the clocks of Opal. Once a shipslides out of here to a planet it is caught in a web of time and space. Theclocks resume their old work of grinding the minutes and the hours to bits.The black oxen of the sun take up their measured march. Oh, I could showyou the mathematical formula to prove this, but it would take a blackboardlarger than the screen. Don't you see! While we search through Trans-Space,it is highly possible that Grim Hagen, Maya, and all their crew are growingold on some planet that you might never find."

  Odin drew his hand across his face in dismay. "You make all this soundlike a mad voyage. Why, this is insane!"

  "Check with Ato if you wish." Her sad smile was almost a sneer. "And mentalk of going to the stars. Where is the clock they will use? Where istheir yardstick? Where is the concept? Why, out there, for all you know,Huckleberry Finn is still floating down the river, and Macbeth walksthrough the halls of Dunsinane. And the last man, in the year one-millionAD, may be squatting over a fire, watching his last stick of wood turn toashes."

  Lithely she got to her feet and reached a dial upon the screen. The lonestar vanished. A thousand pinpoints leaped out.

  "There is but a segment," she said, sitting back upon the hassock again. "Ihave known Maya all my life. I was the poor relation. I envied her, but Idid not hate her. And so with Grim Hagen. I should hate him, but I rememberhim as a frustrated cousin who always ran second in the races. And allthat--even my father--seems far away and long ago. Why do you bring loveand hate with you out here to the stars, Jack Odin?"

  "Because I am a man, I suppose."

  She sighed again. "There is much more to this invention of mine that Ishowed you. Upon that screen there must be ten thousand worlds. Let us pickone, you and I. We can glide out of here at any time. And we can make thatworld over as we please. We might even eat of the fruit of life and becomeas gods--"

  As though it came from the dark corridor of the years, Jack Odin seemedto hear the resounding echo of slow footsteps, and a deep voice thatthundered: "For I, thy God, am a jealous God--"

  She had almost hypnotized him with her weary, earnest voice. For a moment,it had seemed that all this frantic quest was nothing. That it would befar, far better to find a home with Nea and build a world of his own thanto go on searching the stars.

  Then he answered slowly, trying to measure his words, for he did not wantto hurt her feelings. "No, Nea. If I go wandering forever, it will be noworse than my fathers did before me. For a man is vagrant and restl
ess.What he gets, he loses. And if he is lucky, he can hold fast to hisdreams."

  For a moment dark anger blazed in her eyes. Then they were calm and sadagain. She got to her feet, as though she were very tired.

  She smiled. "If I followed all the books, I would make a scene now. I haveoffered myself and a world to you and have been refused. But I wish you andyour dreams well, Jack Odin."

  She bent over him, and her lips brushed his. Faintly, like the touch of arose petal, and the perfume of her hair seemed to fill the room.

  Then she was gone.

  Jack Odin sat there, looking long and long at the swarm of stars upon thescreen, thinking of the unseen worlds about them--the worlds that he hadjust renounced.

  Until finally he got up and went to bed.