She paused to caress the two things she held in her arms. “My pets know more about time and space and energy than all of you, don’t you, dears?” She kissed one of them and gave Odin a mysterious smile.
The Kalis began purring contentedly, as though space were no more than a huge living room, and they were beside a comfortable fireplace, looking up at their all-powerful mistress.
CHAPTER 13
THE dust-cloud was farther away than Ato had guessed. Long before they reached it, his instruments began to waver.
He looked at a star-map. Meanwhile, Nea fed rows of figures into a humming calculator.
“We’ll never make it this way,” Ato said. “Not even the emergency storage would help us. Here,” he pointed to a pinpoint of light upon the map. “A white star. We can reach it, I think.”
Nea sighed. “That dust-cloud is beyond our calculations. We should be nearly there, but it’s still far-off. I think it is shrinking and expanding. At the same time it’s dashing off into space at a terrific rate of speed. You’ll have to swing toward that star, Ato. I’ll try to probe the cloud some more. My father would have liked this problem—”