Part 10 (1/2)

He tried to make a joke of the matter. ”You sound like a beatnik.”

”Perhaps,” she answered slowly, still looking up at the screen. ”They considered my father beat--dead-beat. But I know more of this science than you do, Jack Odin. What if I told you there was little chance of finding Maya. Or, if you found her, she might be an old, old lady.”

”Well, I'd say 'Nuts.' We would keep on looking. But why such gloomy thoughts?”

”You do not understand. Here, flas.h.i.+ng through Trans-s.p.a.ce, we are in another time. Oh, it goes by. But not as the clocks of Opal. Once a s.h.i.+p slides out of here to a planet it is caught in a web of time and s.p.a.ce. The clocks resume their old work of grinding the minutes and the hours to bits.

The black oxen of the sun take up their measured march. Oh, I could show you the mathematical formula to prove this, but it would take a blackboard larger than the screen. Don't you see! While we search through Trans-s.p.a.ce, it is highly possible that Grim Hagen, Maya, and all their crew are growing old on some planet that you might never find.”

Odin drew his hand across his face in dismay. ”You make all this sound like a mad voyage. Why, this is insane!”

”Check with Ato if you wish.” Her sad smile was almost a sneer. ”And men talk of going to the stars. Where is the clock they will use? Where is their yardstick? Where is the concept? Why, out there, for all you know, Huckleberry Finn is still floating down the river, and Macbeth walks through the halls of Dunsinane. And the last man, in the year one-million AD, may be squatting over a fire, watching his last stick of wood turn to ashes.”

Lithely she got to her feet and reached a dial upon the screen. The lone star vanished. A thousand pinpoints leaped out.

”There is but a segment,” she said, sitting back upon the ha.s.sock again. ”I have known Maya all my life. I was the poor relation. I envied her, but I did not hate her. And so with Grim Hagen. I should hate him, but I remember him as a frustrated cousin who always ran second in the races. And all that--even my father--seems far away and long ago. Why do you bring love and hate with you out here to the stars, Jack Odin?”

”Because I am a man, I suppose.”

She sighed again. ”There is much more to this invention of mine that I showed you. Upon that screen there must be ten thousand worlds. Let us pick one, you and I. We can glide out of here at any time. And we can make that world over as we please. We might even eat of the fruit of life and become as G.o.ds--”

As though it came from the dark corridor of the years, Jack Odin seemed to hear the resounding echo of slow footsteps, and a deep voice that thundered: ”For I, thy G.o.d, am a jealous G.o.d--”

She had almost hypnotized him with her weary, earnest voice. For a moment, it had seemed that all this frantic quest was nothing. That it would be far, far better to find a home with Nea and build a world of his own than to go on searching the stars.

Then he answered slowly, trying to measure his words, for he did not want to hurt her feelings. ”No, Nea. If I go wandering forever, it will be no worse than my fathers did before me. For a man is vagrant and restless.

What he gets, he loses. And if he is lucky, he can hold fast to his dreams.”

For a moment dark anger blazed in her eyes. Then they were calm and sad again. She got to her feet, as though she were very tired.

She smiled. ”If I followed all the books, I would make a scene now. I have offered myself and a world to you and have been refused. But I wish you and your dreams well, Jack Odin.”

She bent over him, and her lips brushed his. Faintly, like the touch of a rose petal, and the perfume of her hair seemed to fill the room.

Then she was gone.

Jack Odin sat there, looking long and long at the swarm of stars upon the screen, thinking of the unseen worlds about them--the worlds that he had just renounced.

Until finally he got up and went to bed.

CHAPTER 10

Ato's probing instruments still pointed the way to Aldebaran. In a surprisingly short time, the warning signals were flas.h.i.+ng and jingling throughout The Nebula. There was that same sick feeling as it moved slower than the speed of light.

And there was a glowing sun with nine planets circling stately about it.

Slower The Nebula moved, and slower, until the outermost planet sparkled in the light of its sun below them. They swooped down.

Not a single blast was fired at them. Every man was at his post, while Ato guided them in, and Odin worked the screens.