“Not violent enough,” Odin exclaimed. “How violent can an explosion be?”
Her eyes were still wide and creamy with wonder when she replied. “I don’t know. Something went wrong. Relatively speaking, it may have been a mild explosion. At any rate, that new galaxy was unstable. I wish we had time to go back and make some tests—”
Gunnar shivered. “Not back there. I have seen enough. Now, Ato, what lies ahead?”
Ato shrugged his lean shoulders. “I still have a fix on Grim Hagen. And there seems to be but one place for him to go.”
He turned a dial and the screens picked up one lone red sun far away. One tiny black dot slowly circled it.
That was all. Space itself was wrapped in primeval darkness. And the sable wings of nothingness spanned the void. Odin’s eyes ached at sight of the awful emptiness. His heart felt heavy as the weight of dread distances pressed upon him. Could space itself reach some limit and curve wearily back upon itself? Like folds of black silk, the emptiness out there shimmered and flowed away—
One other speck now appeared upon the screen. A pinpoint of light that crawled toward the lone sun and its single huge planet.
Grim Hagen and the Old Ship!
Time, if time existed at all, went slowly by. They ate and slept. Nea and her workers were busy with the Kalis, as she called them. Four were now finished. A fifth had been fashioned, but Nea had sent it through the locks into space and it had been lost. It had simply sailed out there and disappeared.