"I don't know why they didn't," Kari frowned. "Instead, they hammered at your weaknesses—old fears that hung on to you for years. Experiences that frightened you in the past. They sent your mind back into that past—but you were too strong for them."
"Too strong—?"
"Then. They have other powers, Stuart—incredible powers. You can't fight them alone. And you must fight them. In a thousand years no one has dared—"
Stuart remembered something. "Two dared—once."
Kari nodded. "I know. I know the legends, anyway. About John Starr and Lorna. The great rebels who first defied the Aesir when the tyranny began. But they may have been only legendary figures. Even if they were real—they failed."
"Yes, they failed. And they're a thousand years dead. But it shows something—to me at least. Man wasn't meant to be a slave to these monsters. Rebellion—"
Kari watched him. Stuart's eyes were shadowed.
"John Starr and Lorna," he whispered. "I wonder what their world was like, a thousand years ago? We've got all the worlds now, all the planets of the System from Jupiter to the smallest asteroid. But we don't rule them, as men owned their own Earth in those days. We're slaves to the Aesir."
"The Aesir are—are gods."