"There won't be any storms for days," I replied confidently. "I know Arctic weather."
"You'd better leave that rune key with me," Dubman shrilled. "I'd hate to lose it if you cracked up."
During the past few days, the golden cylinder hadn't been out of my thoughts. Whatever menacing force radiated from the key, it was still far beyond my science. I had tested it with electroscopes, but they registered nothing. Yet it did radiate some disturbing force. It was the same with the mental command that fought the one which tried to make me throw away the key. Apparently supernatural or not, it had to have some rational, mundane explanation.
My obsession with the mystery had made me read Dubman's books on old Norse myths. The Aesir, said the legends, inhabited the fabled city of Asgard, which was separated from the land of Midgard by a deep gulf that was spanned by a wonderful rainbow bridge. All around Midgard lay the frozen, lifeless wastes of Niffleheim.
In the great hall Valhalla reigned Odin, king of the Aesir, and his wife Frigga. And in other castles dwelt the other gods and goddesses. Once Loki had been of the Aesir, till he turned traitor and was prisoned with his two monstrous pets, the wolf Fenris and the Midgard serpent Iormungandr.
I read about the Jotuns — the giants who lived in dark Jotunheim and incessantly battled the Aesir. Then there were the dwarfs of Earth, the Alfings who dwelt in subterranean Alfheim. Hel, the wicked death-goddess whose dreaded hall was near the dark city of the Jotuns. Muspelheim, the fiery realm beneath Midgard.
One thing in these legends impressed me. They depicted the Aesir as mortal beings who possessed the secret of eternal youth in common with the giants and dwarfs. None of them grew old, but any of them could be slain. If Loki were released, bringing about Ragnarok — the twilight of the gods — the Aesir would perish.
As I delved deeper into the books of Rydberg, Anderson and Du Chaillu, I learned that ethnologists thought there was some real basis to these legends. They believed the Aesir had been real people with remarkable powers. All my reading had only intensified my interest in the enigmatic rune key from the sea. I knew it bordered on superstition, but I felt that if I were away from the influence of others, the damned thing might actually get coherent.
"I'll be back by four o'clock," I said. "It won't take me long to map a sled route."
"Be sure you take no chances," Dr. Carrul called anxiously.