Thor handed it to him. "This means we split up. You go your way, to the settlements. I go a different route."
"Man, you don't know the way!"
"I'll find it."
Thor went and lifted a rotted plank. The red gatestone still lay in the crotch of the beams, winking at him. He took and put it in his pocket. "Now, if Aava hunts us, one of us will still get through the barriers."
Thor put an arm around Karola's waist and held her against him. He said, "This is a Viking longboat. It is from a past day in the history of my planet."
Peter Gordon murmured, "What queer things this space of Aava has snatched from the universe. I wouldn't be surprised to learn, when all our chips are in, that a great many disappearances on Earth are due to this place.
"Remember the Cyclops that went off the face of the ocean in 1920? And do you recall the Copenhagen? And, back in 1755, a quay with a lot of people on it just puffed out of existence, disappearing all at once, in Lisbon, Portugal. There have been other disappearances from the Earth. None perhaps as sensational as those I mentioned.
"There's something wrong with this world we're in. It doesn't hew to a lot of natural laws we know."
Thor said, "There are no trees. Just rock and sand."
"Mean anything to you?"