em. I have the ship and Maya. And space is mine to ravage as I
please."

Then, at last, while Maya watched with fear-struck eyes, the tube flashed
once more. Gunnar and Odin stood there for a second. They fell like
unbalanced things of stone.

A Bron stepped forward and drew his sword. But Grim Hagen waved him aside
as he bent over the two silent forms. "Put up your sword," he said quietly.
"They are dead."

CHAPTER 12

He had been drowned. He was floating in a sea of light, and now and
then shining little fishes swam inquisitively up to him and stared. They
would look at him with wide, cold eyes and then dart off into space,
leaving a flashing wake behind them. They hurtled through the murky
light like shooting stars. And once two of them dashed together and
burst like a rocket. The sparks came falling down through a billion
miles of space, and as they fell they built up planets and systems of
their own. Until a dark coil that had the shape of a dragon slithered
across the milky way and began to devour them one by one. The sparks
disappeared into its dark maw. Then it turned about and came snuffling
the air as it looked for him. It found him and buried its long fangs
in the back of his skull.

Jack Odin groaned in pain and awoke. The pain hit him again and he thrust
out with his arms. But strong hands were holding him down.

He became conscious of a buzzing, murmuring sound. It was neither sad nor
glad. Something like the sound that the last bee of autumn makes as it
hovers above the last ball of clover.

Something was falling across the back of his neck and spreading out across
his shoulders. Like a woman's hair, he thought. Perhaps it was a bit
coarser. But not much. But then, just as the strange soothing feeling was
putting him back to sleep, the hairs changed their soft caress and a dozen
of them plunged into his spinal cord and upward into that small old-brain
where all the bogies of the stone age still cowered.

Odin yelled in pain and fought. But the hands held him tight. In his ears
he could hear someone else screaming and cursing--threatening all sorts of
vengeance. The voice was Gunnar's.

Three times more the soft mane of hair caressed him and three times more
just as he was getting ready to go back to sleep the torture began. And
all the while he was lying upon his belly, his face thrust into a pillow.
He could see little as he writhed from one side to the other. The hands
held him secure