He was in the midst of a roaring red inferno, feeling nothing of its annihilating heat. An instant later it was gone, raging gustily down the tracks of Time.
Thor stared. There were fewer stars now, only a couple of hundred of parsecs away. This universe was retreating away from him.
"We must follow!"
"No need. They will return."
"But an expanding universe means that it will be retreating now, going back to ultimate beginnings—"
"Our universe—the universe of Earth and Flormaseron—is an expanding universe. But here, in Aava's worlds, there is no room for expansion. This is a finite universe, gigantic, but rimmed with some strange force that keeps it separate from our universe.
"Here the suns and planets rotate around each other, but at the same time they revolve inside this space. They traverse this great bubble thousands of times through the ages. Watch. You will see them return."
Thor hung there, in utter blackness. And then, far and faint, in the opposite direction from which the suns had gone, they came. At first they were pinpoints, then dots. They came nearer, great fiery orbs.
"Two hundred million years have passed, Thor Masterson. Let us drop down, toward the planet of Aava."
There was only one vast desert of sand facing them, as they hovered above the surface of the slowly revolving planet. Dunes a hundred miles high, whipped with savage and incessant winds. They saw sandstorms that were titanic in their fury.