Hunters Out of Space Part 9

"He jokes. Besides, you are ruining the girl's show. This means much to her."

Nea gave him a grateful glance. The council voted their thanks to Nea and a tribute to her father. She was a.s.signed a half-dozen helpers to fas.h.i.+on as many of the globes as she could. They adjourned.

As The Nebula drove on, it became harder and harder for Odin to judge time. He could only gauge it by some event such as the council meeting and say "before this" or "after that."

He and Gunnar were with Ato in the control room when suddenly warning bells began to jangle and red lights flashed on and off.

Ato adjusted the largest screen. And there, slowly revolving like an hour-gla.s.s of gold amid uprus.h.i.+ng sparks of sun and flame, was The Old s.h.i.+p.

Ato pointed to a bright star. "Aldebaran. They are headed there."

His voice was shaking just a bit when he called into the speaker: "Battle stations, everyone!"

Gunnar took off for the needle-nosed instrument which he had grown to hate.

Odin stood by to help with the screens.

"Watch forward now!" Ato warned. "Sight at thirty degrees above the equator of The Nebula. Adjust for Doppler--X over Y. We have him on the screens now. This means that he can get a fix on us. Careful now--"

As he watched the screen, Jack Odin saw three tiny sparks leap from Grim Hagen's s.h.i.+p. They danced toward them, growing as they came. At first they were blue, but as they filled the screen, almost hiding the Old s.h.i.+p from his vision, they changed to amber and topaz.

Bells and klaxons shrieked their warnings.

Ato watched and waited. Just as the three growing lights filled the screen he touched a lever. The Nebula danced away. Breathless, Jack Odin altered the screens and watched the three globes of flame hurtle past them.

Far away now, they slowed like living things, puzzled at having lost their prey.

Slowed they merged together--

And turned back upon their quarry!

CHAPTER 9

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

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

A shadow--no, two shadows--were growing within it, Odin tried to make them out. But they were dark and wavering. Still, they looked something like a high priest standing above a p.r.o.ne victim stretched out upon some sacrificial altar.

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

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

Odin turned another k.n.o.b and the bubble loomed larger.

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

And the figure lying p.r.o.ne upon a couch beside him was swathed by a sheet which 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 a tomb--but it was Maya.

Then he cried out in alarm. For upon another screen he saw Gunnar and his crew swing their weapon into action. Sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l of greenish fire burst about the globe. Green flame thrust out tiny rootlets that crawled over it, outlining it in garish light. Another sh.e.l.l seemed to burst upon Grim 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 was the globe again--with Grim Hagen and Maya as whole as ever. And a green streak of fire--one of Gunnar's misses--went careening off into s.p.a.ce until it 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 this that is with me. I have Maya." He bowed mockingly. "See, Odin. Come and get her, Odin, so I can kill you. I had thought I was done with you but it is just 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 a bronze statue. Lying upon her back with her arms folded across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and with half of her face covered by the flowing folds of a coverlet, she was like a bride of death, waiting the end of eternity.

Hagen laughed again. "Here in Trans-Einsteinian s.p.a.ce there is neither size nor time as we once knew it. I could leave her on a giant planet, a statue ten miles long for the ages to marvel at. Or I could cast her adrift to make the trillion-mile-long trip with the suns until the last explosion when s.p.a.ce will dissolve and be born again. So give up now. Bother me no more. s.p.a.ce and its treasures are mine for the taking, and I have waited too long."

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

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

Gunnar had long since gone to bed, grumbling that the way order and military discipline were maintained aboard s.h.i.+p they probably couldn't whip their way out of a child's wading pool. Odin was thinking of all the things that had happened to him since that night when Maya and the dwarfs had brought the helpless Grim Hagen to the old Odin homestead. Lord, how long had it been? Out here, where time could not be measured, and perhaps did not 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--and her 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 and drew a ha.s.sock up beside it. As she looked at him, Jack Odin saw that her eyes 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 drooped upon the ha.s.sock. Resting her chin upon her hands she looked up at the screen.

"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, d.a.m.n!" she said angrily. "There is more to the work than you and the others guessed. Now, we are going to rescue a cousin of mine and to punish another cousin. The old rat-race. Tell me why don't people just go sit in a corner and enjoy themselves. So far, we have done nothing but increase our scurrying a thousand-fold."