Shrouded there within a bubble of changing light, Maya looked like a bronze statue. Lying upon her back with her arms folded across her breasts, and with half of her face covered by the flowing folds of a coverlet, she was like a bride of death, waiting the end of eternity.
Hagen laughed again. “Here in Trans-Einsteinian space there is neither size nor time as we once knew it. I could leave her on a giant planet, a statue ten miles long for the ages to marvel at. Or I could cast her adrift to make the trillion-mile-long trip with the suns until the last explosion when space will dissolve and be born again. So give up now. Bother me no more. Space and its treasures are mine for the taking, and I have waited too long.”
Then the topaz globe twitched as a bubble vanishes. And it was gone. Out there was nothing but the night.
Ato set a course for Aldebaran. His watch finished, Jack Odin sat alone in the lounge and watched the star upon the screen. It did not seem to be much larger. A single brilliant jewel of flame that beckoned them on.
Gunnar had long since gone to bed, grumbling that the way order and military discipline were maintained aboard ship they probably couldn’t whip their way out of a child’s wading pool. Odin was thinking of all the things that had happened to him since that night when Maya and the dwarfs had brought the helpless Grim Hagen to the old Odin homestead. Lord, how long had it been? Out here, where time could not be measured, and perhaps did not exist at all, it seemed futile to count the weeks and the months.
He stared at the single star upon the screen until he was half asleep. Behind it Maya’s face, outlined in black curls, seemed to peer at him—and her pouting lips parted as she smiled.
He stared and shook his head. The dream-vision vanished from the screen. Someone had entered the room.
It was Nea. Dressed in slacks once more, she slouched over to his chair and drew a hassock up beside it. As she looked at him, Jack Odin saw that her eyes were tired—tired—tired. As though they had not rested for months.
“You ought to be asleep,” he warned. “Now that your work is finished—”