k 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.

"Sunk from sight," were Gunnar's words, and this explained the
disappearance as well as anything. It was as though they had been on
a boat and the thing had dived overboard.

Nea, who had been trained to scientific thinking since she was knee-high,
had to think up an answer. Her explanation was that it had slid down a
plane into three-dimensional space. Even now, it might be on some planet,
puzzling and worrying the natives. For the Kalis were almost like living
things--and almost like gods.

That was like Nea, Odin thought. A scientist, always. Anything
unexplainable must be immediately attached to a theory--whether the
theory were right or wrong. Just as long as there was an explanation
to hang upon a phenomenon she was happy enough. She might blithely think
up a new theory tomorrow and throw the old one away, but that was of no
consequence. Odin had grown skeptical of such thinking when he was a
medical student. Each doctor had his own pet diagnosis--and too many
tried to fit the patient to the cure instead of working out a cure for
the patient. Oh, well, that was far away and long ago.

How far away and how long ago!

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the red sun and its p