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But when Candar stepped out into the spaceport, instead of meeting his adulating subjects, a very determined group of his own soldiers stopped him. Thane finally turned to Astrid. "But how did we get away? The last I remember...." "You got them all, Roger. One of them hit your leg with a blaster as he went down. All I had to do was to get you to the anti-grav, and out of there."
I just regarded this as a curiosity. But Astrid took it and built the Tracer." Pyuf interrupted. He was not the man, Thane saw, who could abide technical explanations when they had a clear political implication. "The Tracer," he said, "is the cork for your bottleneck. With the tracer, we know when any ship is operating on second-stage drive.
He thought so, but there was another hour of argument before he had overcome Candar's suspicions and convinced him of the absolute necessity of having Astrid to supervise the building of the Tracer and the Drive. At last it was settled. Then Thane committed his treason. He told all he knew, about the second-stage drive and the tracer, and when Astrid came in, she finished the job.
She looked half-convinced, and he pressed his point at once. "The power of the whole planetary communications system is now being used by Astrid Reine for the tracer system now being built. With a word from you the whole radio system will be at your disposal for as long as we can keep it open. You can at last tell the people of Onzar the truth, which they have not heard for so long."
He told how Queen Astrid, leaving her two daughters at Ofrestead, had fared east away into Sweden, and of what privations she had borne for her son's sake, and of how, still pursued by her enemies, she had at length taken safe refuge with Hakon Gamle, a friend of her father's. "But even here," continued Sigurd, "Queen Gunnhild's enmity followed her.
His last shots must have had effect, though, or they would never have made it back into the warp. Thane turned away wearily from the fire-control panel. The whole encounter had lasted less than twenty seconds, but the strain of fighting against the Stoltz effect and of manually computing twelve variables had been wearing. He saw that the Third Officer was now standing close to Astrid.
"Ingeborg and Astrid told me that. They learned it from their camp-fire rules. I'm sure you don't leave them stringing out like that, Kit." All at once Doris came speeding around the rock path, her eyes wide with excitement, her whole manner full of mystery. "There's an automobile just stopped in the road," she exclaimed, "and the man in it asked me who lived in the tent over here."
"We have come at the call of Astrid Reine," Thane said. "She wishes our assistance." "All who come for the thirteenth level must have the code word. Give it and you will pass." Thane's right arm went up and the side of his stiff hand flashed down, hitting the sentry between his neck and shoulder. The man's pistol was almost aimed at Thane when Thane hit.
And she wept over her and made her weep over herself. The old woman was merciless about her son. She, Astrid, did right; she could not stay with such a man. It was true that he was in the habit of lying, it was really true. She told her how it had been with her son. He had been so fair in face and limbs, even when he was small, that she had always marvelled that he was a poor man's child.
On their account Knut wanted to dispense with the fiddlers it was too old-fashioned and peasant-like. But Astrid insisted that they must be played to church and home again with the Bridal March of her race. It had made her and her husband so happy; they could not but wish to hear it again on their dear children's great festival day.
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