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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-class fighting man. Wolden could never have been a fighter. There was something both terrifying and sad in the comparison.
"No, you would be like Lucifer, wreaking his vengeance upon the planets," the voice of what had been Wolden interrupted in a whisper. "No, Grim Hagen, even if I gave you what you asked, all space would seem as hell to you." Grim Hagen smiled an evil smile. "So. But it is I who make the bargain. Even yet. Maya goes with me. Remember!"
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 space, mass and speed.
So I listened. "Wolden's work has succeeded," the whispering continued. "We have reduced time and space to nothing. You see us as lights, or as we once put it, 'as flame-winged butterflies, but we are neither. We are Ato and Wolden. By adding ourselves to another dimension we are hardly recognizable to you. Actually, we are at our starting point billions of miles away!
Odin knew little of such matters, but he sat daily at the council table where progress reports and squawk-sheets were examined and discussed. The speed with which they were developing the new ship was amazing. There was one innovation to be noted. Wolden referred to it as the Fourth Drive.
Then Friday showed up and became Crusoe's servant, and Crusoe's freedom flew away." Forty-eight hours had passed since they came to the cavern. Odin and Gunnar had gone with Wolden to visit the Scientist who had led the first expedition to the moon. The Scientist, whose name was Gor, was explaining: " They were hardly out of the Iron Age. That was how we found this place.
His head spun with all the information that Wolden had given him the basic principles behind those machines that had gone into the ship. Then, at last, it was finished. A young girl who reminded him of Maya was hoisted up on a scaffold to the highest bulge of the hour-glass shaped craft.
Useful discourse to be kept up with him on these journeys; pointing out how and why this is and that, and whether it could not be better:" O King of a thousand! Wolden, or one of the Kammerjunkers, to accompany always, and be responsible. "No MADCHEN or FRAUENSMENSCH," no shadow of womankind; "keep an eye on him, you three!"
Then she laughed again. "But it is not perfected. It may not ever be perfected now. I thought that perhaps Wolden and Gor might help me with it." Gunnar muttered some words that might be roughly interpreted as "Fat Chance" and he and Odin left the girl on the steps. As they walked around the little lake which was as smooth as a mirror, Gunnar explained. "Her mother was a cousin to Maya's mother.
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 space 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."
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