“It will be like plunging back from immortality to mortality,” Ato told Odin. “Over four years have passed, as light is measured. We have not eaten more than twenty meals.”
He pulled the lever that slowed them out of the Fourth Drive into three-dimensional space. There was the same sickening sensation when they dropped lower than the speed of light. And, braking all the while, they zoomed swiftly down upon the binary suns and their seven worlds.
Odin had been watching the screens for three hours. He felt sick and old over the things that he had seen. Seven worlds—all blackened and burned out. Life had been there, but what form of life only Grim Hagen might have told them. They were cindered—their atmosphere, which had not been oxygen, had burned away. Ato’s probing instruments found neither liquid nor gas. His screens found an occasional shattered city, where broken spires reached twisted fingers into the vacant sky.
Ato was watching the needles upon another machine. “The Old Ship has been here. What happened I do not know. They may have defied Grim Hagen. Maybe they refused to join him. Certainly, in all the worlds, billions of them, there must be many where conflict and submission are unknown. These people might not have been able to understand Grim Hagen’s ultimatum. They may have died trying to figure out what the strange voice from the sky was talking about. On the other hand, he may not have given them an ultimatum at all. This may have been a practice assault—like Hitler’s attack upon Poland, just to see how much death could be inflicted. We shall never know.”
They flashed away into space. Ato threw them into the Fourth Drive again. And once more the lights from the far-off stars circled like fireflies. And eternity curved in a rainbow of light about them.
Hours no longer existed, but it seemed to Jack Odin that many hours passed while he tried to get that sick, cold feeling out of his chest. Time crawled by while he tried to resolve his thoughts. Perhaps Wolden had been right. Men did not belong here. Man and Brons were orphans of the stars. Was there some element upon the earth that made them vicious? Was there any way that they could come out here into space on equal terms with living things? Or must they always come as conquerors, eager to fight, or refugees who soon became resentful of the natives. Would the worlds out there become mere plundered planets with a portion of the aborigines’ land grudgingly set apart for reservations?
Of course, Grim Hagen was a Bron—one of the worst of them. But Brons and men had lived so close together for so long that there was little difference between them. Odin knew some men who, given the ship and the weapons, would have done as Grim Hagen had done. And would have arrogantly demanded a medal, besides.