"Now why should you wish that?" Loki asked with deep interest. "Why should you hate me so?"
"Because I know that you are evil and that your plans are vicious," I said harshly. "For twenty centuries in the outside world, the name of Loki has been synonymous with treachery, even though no one in that outer world dreams that a real Loki ever existed."
Loki nodded his golden head thoughtfully.
"That is true. Yet what evil have I done to you, Jarl Keith? Have I not brought you into a land that no other of your race has ever seen? Have I not given you new and undreamed-of adventure? What more could I do for you? You see, I know that in your soul you are an adventurer, a seeker of the new and the strange."
"It's what you plan to do to the Aesir that makes me hate you," I retorted. "I admire them — and you plot to use the Jotuns to destroy them."
Loki's beautiful face darkened, like the Sun when a storm cloud veils it. His wondrous eyes throbbed with an age-old hate.
"I loved the Aesir, too, Jarl Keith," he said broodingly. "Yes, long ago when we dwelt in deep Muspelheim and I was second to Odin himself, I did much for my race. I delved into scientific secrets that had been hidden from them, and I found new truths. I would have done much more for them, had they made me their ruler in Odin's place. For I was never satisfied, as Odin was, with a static, stagnant well being.
"I burned with the desire to acquire all knowledge that man could acquire, to know the reason for every phenomenon in the world and in the sky. I longed to acquire every power that man ever could acquire, so that we should be unchallenged masters of all nature. It was I who freed the Aesir from sickness and age. I made them almost immortal, by kindling the atomic fires whose radiation prevents disease and age. Was that not a great gift I made to my people?"
As a scientist, I could not help feeling a certain sympathy with Loki. Yet I realized that he was presenting merely his own side of the case.
"Yes," I admitted. "But in making the Aesir that gift of near-immortality, you almost destroyed them. You brought catastrophe on the subterranean world of Muspelheim, and forced them to flee up here. No wonder Odin forbade you to carry on such dangerous researches!"