"Communicate at first, then travel. That would explain your Discoverer."
"If he could teach me to travel that way," Thor mused, "we might really get somewhere against Aava."
Suddenly he bent and kissed Karola, and pushed her toward Gordon. "Take care of her, Peter. You too, Slag. I'll find you, somehow, sometime soon."
He dropped over the side of the longboat and waved an arm at the three black silhouettes that stared down at him. Then he turned and, as nearly as he could judge, went loping across the grasses in the direction in which he had last beheld the Discoverer.
Thor did not find the Discoverer for three days. And then it was the Discoverer who found him.
He came out of sleep one morning, with the mists all around him and the warm rock under him to stare at the great bulk of the sprawling being that lay and watched him. Thor sat and rubbed his eyes. He got to his feet.
"I have been hunting you, Thor Masterson. Astrally, that is. I found you two days ago, but we were far apart."
"And I—I hunted you. I want to learn about Aava. I—"
"I can help you. Some time after you left me, I began experimenting with my astral projection technique. I learned that, chronologically, I was not hampered in the least by normal bonds. Back on my home planet of Flormaseron, I was not hampered by the bonds of space, but the barriers of Time limited me. I could not go far into the past, nor far into the future. Here, I can do either."