IN THE days that followed there was no time for rest. Thanks to the smaller prototype which had already gone into space, no elaborate tests were required of the new ship. Moreover, the scientists had taken centuries to go over the Old Ship, bolt by bolt, part by part, wire by wire. Improvements had been made, but these had been incorporated into the little prototype which was now successfully berthed within a cavern somewhere on the moon. Over thirty men and women had gone with it. Wolden was constantly in touch with them and daily growing more envious of their position.
Odin knew little of such matters, but he sat daily at the council table where progress reports and squawk-sheets were examined and discussed. The speed with which they were developing the new ship was amazing. There was one innovation to be noted.
Wolden referred to it as the Fourth Drive. Odin gathered that the Old Ship had been equipped with such a drive, but new principles and new mechanics had been added. Odin showed him a little book, which had been privately printed in the world above some fifteen years before. It was entitled: “Einstein and Einsteinian Space, with Conjectures upon a Trans-Einsteinian concept.” Wolden said it had been written by a young refugee from the Nazis, and he doubted if over two or three copies of the manuscript were now in existence. Memories of concentration camps, poverty, and the internecine battles of the professors in a small college where the refugee was an assistant in the Physics Department, had finally driven the poor fellow to suicide.
“He was grasping at something new,” Wolden explained. “His concept was only nascent. But such a mind! The book has been invaluable. Still, it is nothing but a starting point—but such a starting point!”
Time passed. It was like working in a dream, where no sooner was one task done than another was ready. Odin ached. His head spun with all the information that Wolden had given him—the basic principles behind those machines that had gone into the ship.
Then, at last, it was finished. A young girl who reminded him of Maya was hoisted up on a scaffold to the highest bulge of the hour-glass shaped craft. Workers and visitors stood below by the thousands while she spoke into a tiny microphone and swung a ruby-colored bottle against the ship.
“You are christened The Nebula,” she cried. “Go out into space—”
They had used a bottle of red wine for the christening. A shower of ruby-glass and winedrops came sprinkling down. They fell slowly—like drops of blood, and the onlookers, who were by nature opposed to crowds, began to disperse.
“That girl,” Odin grasped Gunnar’s arm “Who is she?”
Gunnar looked at him curiously. “Her name is Nea. A distant cousin of Maya’s. Also, a distant cousin to Grim Hagen.”