"Thus, during the centuries that I lay prisoned and helpless, I sent the web of my thoughts far afield, seeking a means of escape. At long last, I located the rune key where the Aesir had thrown it in the outer ocean. I could not send any of the Jotuns to secure it, for they could not cross the vast ice without perishing. But at last your ship came north and was near the sunken rune key.
"I seized the opportunity to influence you to have the rune key dredged up. And once you had it, and were in the air in your flying ship, I sent a mental message to the princess Hel, my pupil, I commanded her to operate the storm-cones in my laboratory, which would cause a tempest to blow you hither."
"Storm-cones?" I repeated. "What device could be used to cause such a tempest?"
Loki smiled and rose to his feet.
"Come, Jarl Keith, I'll show you. I think you, a scientist like myself, will be interested in my laboratory."
Chapter XII
The Laboratory
He led the way across the vast, many-pillared hall. The giant wolf, Fenris, rose and followed us on padding feet, its feral green eyes never leaving me. Loki brought me into a smaller stone chamber. It was indeed a laboratory — the strangest I had ever seen.
Two small, blazing suns of radioactive matter, suspended in lead bowls, illuminated the dusky room. The intense white radiance glittered off an array of unfamiliar mechanisms and instruments.
I saw another of the complex instruments of remote vision, with a square quartz view-screen, such as Loki, Utgar and Hel had been using in the great hall. And I noticed devices which appeared to be similar to the transmutation apparatus used by the Alfings. But these were greatly refined in design. Using concentrated beams of radioactive energy shot from leaden funnels, they could effect even more rapid transmutation of small metal objects.