Meanwhile, a steady stream of tractors and men was going back and forth from the Old Ship to the city. Odin watched them on the screen. They were mostly the white-skinned people of Aldebaran. The Brons who had gone out into space with Grim Hagen had dwindled away. Odin saw a few white-headed ones. And once he saw a captain stop to lash a worn, gray-haired Bron who must have been one of the original prisoners. The poor fellow looked so old and frazzled that Odin could not recognize him. His heart grew heavy as he thought of those prisoners. They had done no harm. Their lives had been wasted away because of their loyalty to Maya. And the words of an old poet came to his mind: “Think of man’s inhumanity to man and write your poem if you can.”
The day passed wearily by.
Odin felt that it was one of the worst days of his life. They had spanned thousands of light-years and time had slid by like a stream of quicksilver while they hunted through space. And now, at the last, they were pinned down on a gaunt planet while a triumphant Grim Hagen went back and forth from the Old Ship to the violet dome. Welcomed like a conqueror, and holding every card, Grim Hagen was the man of the hour.
Yes, it was certainly Grim Hagen’s day.
Night fell quite suddenly. But the sky above them turned to the faintest mauve, and there was still a pale ghost of a light hovering over the plain. There were no stars. No moon. Jack Odin learned later that the people of this planet had fed their moon to the dying sun long before.
They ate supper—as Gunnar called it—and then Ato and Odin studied some photo-maps which they had taken just before they landed. Meanwhile, Gunnar busied himself with the sword. And Nea, who stayed in her lab most of the day, brought in a few calculations on the barrier that prisoned them.
“It’s an old idea,” she told them quietly. “It can be broken by a steadily increasing force. Twenty days, perhaps, after I rig up the machine—”
Odin groaned. “In twenty days Grim Hagen will be back among the stars—”
She smiled quietly. And now he saw how tired her face and eyes were. Like the face of a child that has worked too hard. “I think not,” she answered him simply. “Gunnar is always talking about fate. I do not believe in such. But all day I have felt that the end is drawing near. Remember, I still have my Kalis. With them I could have been a huntress on some greener planet—another Diana, perhaps. Oh!” She stamped her foot in worriment. “We held creation in our grasp out here. We could have forced the last secrets from her. Yes, I will say it! We could have been as gods. And where is it ending? A mad chase after a madman. And for all the years and all the lives that have been spent on these two ships, time and space are the only winners.”