A Yank at Valhalla Page 8

  Tense preparations for the attack on Asgard were unceasingly going on through the whole palace and city. The Jotun captain led us through another corridor, to the edge of a large, poorly lit hall.

  "Wait," he barked, stopping. "Our lord is not finished with Princess Hel."

  "What are they doing?" I asked, awed. "What kind of machinery is that?"

  "Silence, outlander!" snapped the captain.

  I stood among my guards, staring at the amazing scene that was taking place. The hall into which I looked was of great dimensions, its roof supported by a forest of massive stone pillars. The only illumination came from pale shafts of daylight that trembled down from small, high, slit-windows, as though afraid to enter this dark place. White wisps of fog still swirled amid the pillars, like homeless ghosts idly drifting.

  On a raised stone platform at one end of the hall, in a massive throne carved of black rock, sat Loki. His bright golden hair glittering in the gloom, and the flashing mail he wore made him seem a figure of living light. Beside his throne, mighty head between its paws, lay the monster wolf Fenris. The Midgard snake I did not see.

  Loki's beautiful face was intent, his graceful form leaning forward. Beside his throne stood the big, black-haired Jotun king Utgar, and the darkly beautiful Hel, princess of Jotunheim. They were staring into an unfamiliar-looking mechanism whose complexities of glowing wires and glass rods were partly hidden by a metal cover. On the cover, though, was a square quartz screen that reproduced a living scene.

  "See, lord Loki, the picture clears!" cried Hel.

  "I see, too," Utgar roared. "It is Asgard!"

  "Aye, it is Asgard," said Loki in his wonderfully sweet voice, his eyes brooding as he peered into the screen. "Behold, the nobles of the Aesir are gathered in Valhalla for council. We shall hear them."

  Loki touched another control. From the great hall's edge, I could barely detect a low buzz of speech from the mechanism.

  "I cannot hear clearly," Utgar complained. "What are they saying?"

  "The king Odin is speaking," said Hel, with a contemptuous smile on her beautiful face. "He tells the Aesir nobles that he fears Loki is loosed, with Fenris and Iormungandr, and that Frey and Freya and the outland Jarl are captives in Jotunheim. The Aesir look wildly at one another, at that news. There is a shout from Thor."

  "That stupid, brainless bear!" said Loki scornfully. "A lout who knows nothing but wrestling, eating and cracking skulls."

  "What says the Hammerer?" Utgard asked.

  Hel laughed. "The lord Thor is angry. His head is bound from a wound, as you can see. He roars that the Aesir vanquished Loki and the Jotuns once before, and that they will do so again. And this time, he says, they will slay Loki instead of prisoning him."

  Loki leaped to his feet. A flash of rage as blinding and terrible as lightning twisted his face.

  "Slay me?" he hissed. "Sons of the Aesir, my ancient people, you will rue that thought when Asgard goes down in flame and death."

  "The king Odin is speaking again," Hel told Utgar. "He says they must prepare for the coming struggle. They must devise, if possible, some way to rescue Frey and Freya and the Jarl Keith from Jotunheim. And Odin says he fears Loki may be using his scientific powers to spy on them. He will make sure, he says—"

  Hastily Loki reached out and touched a screw on that strange mechanism. The picture in its quartz screen and the buzz of voices ceased. I knew it must be some super-development of television, able to operate without a transmitter.

  "We have seen and heard enough," Loki said moodily. "The Aesir know we will attack them, but they'll have small time to prepare. Two days hence, we march on Asgard to crush them."

  "Aye, but be careful, lord," warned Utgar anxiously. "Odin, too, has great powers of ancient science. Once before, he snatched victory from us because of your too great confidence."

  "Croak not your warnings to me!" Loki stormed. "I have had centuries in which to think. Nothing can save the Aesir this time. Get you both gone now, till I call you."

  At the tone of his master's voice, Fenris raised his enormous head and snarled horribly. Utgar hastily retreated from Loki's blazing wrath, backing toward a door. Less urgently the princess Hel followed him. Without looking in the direction where I stood with my guards, watching this scene in fascinated horror, Loki spoke.

  "Bring the outlander before me."

  As the Jotuns marched me forward I saw that they were all trembling. They halted me in front of the black throne. I looked up defiantly into the brooding blue eyes of Loki. He spoke finally to the captain of the Jotun guards.

  "Take your men and wait outside the hall."

  "But, lord, we can't leave you here alone with this outland dog!" protested the captain.

  Loki turned a withering glance on him.

  "Think you I need such as you to protect me?" he asked bitingly. "Get you gone!"

  The captain and his men almost tumbled over themselves in their haste to leave the hall. I stood there alone, facing Loki, the wolf, the snake that had slid to the throne, in that vast and gloomy hall of drifting fog and chill. Uncontrollably my heart pounded in sudden excitement and hope.

  For my eyes had fastened on the sword that hung at Loki's side. If I could end the arch-traitor's life with that thirsty blade, I would die gladly, knowing that I had atoned for bringing the rune key into peaceful Asgard.

  I sprang forward with wild determination. But instantly, like a thunderbolt of hurtling flesh, the huge wolf Fenris leaped upon me. The monster's weight knocked me to the floor. His huge, hairy body crushing me, his hot breath scorching me and terrible fangs gleaming, I saw Fenris' mighty jaws yawning above my face.

  The glaring, feral green eyes of the gigantic wolf blazed down into mine with almost human hatred. Those jaws gaped to crush my skull like an eggshell.

  "Fenris, loose him!" snapped Loki's voice, coming as though from a great distance.

  Fenris turned his massive head a little, and a protesting, savage snarl rumbled from him. He was resisting his master's order. He wished to kill me.

  "Do you grow disobedient?" flared Loki's voice.

  I heard his quick step coming from the throne toward me. Still pinned down by Fenris' huge weight, I saw Loki reach down and smack the wolf stingingly on its great muzzle.

  Fenris whimpered apologetically to his master. The wolf backed off hastily. As Loki went back and seated himself again on the black throne, the huge animal again crouched down beside it. But his feral, blazing eyes never left my face. Shaking, I stumbled to my feet. I saw amusement in the brilliant blue eyes and angelic face of Loki as he sat regarding me.

  "Do you still wish to kill me, outlander?" he asked with a shockingly sweet laugh. "I might not be able to hold Fenris from your throat, next time."

  Hearing his name, the monstrous wolf growled deep in his throat, snarling and baring his great fangs as he watched me. Hot resentment at the mocking devil who was regarding me with such amusement made me stiffen and clench my fists.

  "If you are going to have me killed, why not get it over with?" I demanded.

  "I am not sure that I shall take your life, outlander," said Loki, searching my face. "After all, I owe you much. It was you who brought back into this land the rune key that finally gave me and my pets our freedom."

  "I wish I had died before your hideous mental commands seduced my brain!"

  "Now why should you wish that?" Loki asked with deep interest. "Why should you hate me so?"

  "Because I know that you are evil and that your plans are vicious," I said harshly. "For twenty centuries in the outside world, the name of Loki has been synonymous with treachery, even though no one in that outer world dreams that a real Loki ever existed."

  Loki nodded his golden head thoughtfully.

  "That is true. Yet what evil have I done to you, Jarl Keith? Have I not brought you into a land that no other of your race has ever seen? Have I not given you new and undreamed-of adventure? What more could I do for you? You see,
I know that in your soul you are an adventurer, a seeker of the new and the strange."

  "It's what you plan to do to the Aesir that makes me hate you," I retorted. "I admire them — and you plot to use the Jotuns to destroy them."

  Loki's beautiful face darkened, like the Sun when a storm cloud veils it. His wondrous eyes throbbed with an age-old hate.

  "I loved the Aesir, too, Jarl Keith," he said broodingly. "Yes, long ago when we dwelt in deep Muspelheim and I was second to Odin himself, I did much for my race. I delved into scientific secrets that had been hidden from them, and I found new truths. I would have done much more for them, had they made me their ruler in Odin's place. For I was never satisfied, as Odin was, with a static, stagnant well being.

  "I burned with the desire to acquire all knowledge that man could acquire, to know the reason for every phenomenon in the world and in the sky. I longed to acquire every power that man ever could acquire, so that we should be unchallenged masters of all nature. It was I who freed the Aesir from sickness and age. I made them almost immortal, by kindling the atomic fires whose radiation prevents disease and age. Was that not a great gift I made to my people?"

  As a scientist, I could not help feeling a certain sympathy with Loki. Yet I realized that he was presenting merely his own side of the case.

  "Yes," I admitted. "But in making the Aesir that gift of near-immortality, you almost destroyed them. You brought catastrophe on the subterranean world of Muspelheim, and forced them to flee up here. No wonder Odin forbade you to carry on such dangerous researches!"

  Loki shrugged. "There can be no great victory without great danger, outlander. I had a vision of leading the Aesir to undreamed-of heights of power and wisdom, though by a road beset with vast perils. I was willing to risk those perils, to be great or to die. But dull Odin blocked my path. He said: 'It is not good to endanger all the world to gain power and learning for ourselves.'

  "The Aesir agreed with him, and turned from me and my vaulting dreams. I would have made them like eagles soaring into the sky. But they preferred to follow Odin and live out their lives in dull, accustomed routine."

  Loki's eyes blazed, and his graceful form stiffened on the black throne as he spoke. And I could not help feeling sympathy with him. No real scientist could willingly submit to suppression of his desire to know, his yearning to master the laws of nature. Loki's blue eyes fastened on me, and he smiled thoughtfully, his passion fading.

  "I read your mind, Jarl Keith," he said quickly, "and I see that you think the same as I."

  "Not your lust for power," I snapped.

  "Do not deny it," he said. "You are of my own breed, Jarl Keith. We are more alike than any others in this land. For just as I risked my own fate and that of my people to win new knowledge and power, so you, who are also a scientist and searcher after truth, came northward into danger and hardship to search for new, strange truth. Yes, we two are of the same minds."

  Though his voice rang with sincerity, I fought mentally against his seductive thoughts.

  "It is because we are so much alike," he continued, "that I was able to fling the web of my suggestion into your brain. Though you were far away on your ship beyond the ice, yet I could direct you to recover the sunken rune key."

  "How could you do that, Loki?" I asked with intense interest. "How could your will range far when your body was held in suspended animation in that prison-cave?"

  "You outlanders have concentrated more on mechanical devices than on the subtler forces of science. Otherwise, you would understand better the nature of the mind. The brain is really an electro-chemical generator, and thought is the electric current it generates. A brain which has developed the power can fling its web of electric thought-impulses abroad and into another brain. It can see with the senses of that other brain and even somewhat direct its physical body.

  "Thus, during the centuries that I lay prisoned and helpless, I sent the web of my thoughts far afield, seeking a means of escape. At long last, I located the rune key where the Aesir had thrown it in the outer ocean. I could not send any of the Jotuns to secure it, for they could not cross the vast ice without perishing. But at last your ship came north and was near the sunken rune key.

  "I seized the opportunity to influence you to have the rune key dredged up. And once you had it, and were in the air in your flying ship, I sent a mental message to the princess Hel, my pupil, I commanded her to operate the storm-cones in my laboratory, which would cause a tempest to blow you hither."

  "Storm-cones?" I repeated. "What device could be used to cause such a tempest?"

  Loki smiled and rose to his feet.

  "Come, Jarl Keith, I'll show you. I think you, a scientist like myself, will be interested in my laboratory."

  Chapter XII

  The Laboratory

  He led the way across the vast, many-pillared hall. The giant wolf, Fenris, rose and followed us on padding feet, its feral green eyes never leaving me. Loki brought me into a smaller stone chamber. It was indeed a laboratory — the strangest I had ever seen.

  Two small, blazing suns of radioactive matter, suspended in lead bowls, illuminated the dusky room. The intense white radiance glittered off an array of unfamiliar mechanisms and instruments.

  I saw another of the complex instruments of remote vision, with a square quartz view-screen, such as Loki, Utgar and Hel had been using in the great hall. And I noticed devices which appeared to be similar to the transmutation apparatus used by the Alfings. But these were greatly refined in design. Using concentrated beams of radioactive energy shot from leaden funnels, they could effect even more rapid transmutation of small metal objects.

  Loki led the way to the most striking feature of this array of alien scientific instruments. Proudly he gestured at a row of big objects which looked like heavy nozzles of fused quartz mounted on swivels above square, copper-shielded mechanisms. The interior complexities I could not see. Loki laid his hand on one of the nozzles of quartz.

  "These are the storm-cones I long ago devised, Jarl Keith. They can cause the most terrific tempest at a distance of hundreds of miles."

  "How can they do that?" I asked incredulously.

  "It is quite simple." He smiled. "A lightning storm is caused by a sudden sharp difference in electric potential between cloud and Earth, or cloud and cloud. These storm-cones spray a carefully aimed and canalized electric field that causes such an abnormal difference of potential in any desired location. When I lead the Jotun horde to attack Asgard, I'll first bring destructive lightning down upon the Aesir forces. Then they'll fall easy prey to my savage warriors."

  I was too appalled by that threat to comment. Loki led me toward a door on the opposite side of the laboratory.

  "Now perhaps you can instruct me a little, Jarl Keith," he said. "Come with me."

  The door opened into a big, stone-paved court outside the ancient citadel. It was walled, but a great gate in one wall was open, leading out onto the slope that ran steeply toward the river. Dusk had fallen, and the white mists that shrouded Jotunheim were thicker.

  My eyes flew to a familiar object in this court. It was my rocket ship. It had not been destroyed, after all.

  "Yes, it is your flying ship," Loki said. "After you landed in Midgard, I knew it was only a matter of days until I was released. I sent a thought order to the princess Hel to have Jotun ships brings the craft here, for I wish much to examine this product of the outland world's science. But don't cherish any hopes of making a sudden escape in it, Jarl Keith. I've only to say a word to send Fenris ravening at your throat."

  The monster wolf behind us snarled again, as he heard his name. I shrugged.

  "I wouldn't leave without Freya and Frey, anyway."

  Loki inspected the whole interior of the plane, asking me quick, intelligent questions about every feature of it. He seemed to grasp the design of the ship and its highly improved rocket motor almost instantly.

  "You are clever, you outlanders, to devise such things," he sa
id with sincere respect.

  "Don't you want to look at the controls?" I asked.

  My heart was thudding, for I had seen a wild, insane opportunity. Loki entered the cabin, and I explained the controls. Then I opened the sack of white chemicals which we always carried on these Arctic flights. I took out a handful and showed them to him.

  "These are chemicals that generate heat. We use them to free the plane's wheels if they become frozen into the ice."

  "That, too, is clever," he mused as he emerged from the plane. "You outlanders are indeed mechanically ingenious, though you have not probed the ancient science of the deepest forces of nature as we Aesir did."

  He said nothing more as he brought me back through the laboratory to the dusky great hall. Fenris stalked at our heels. Then Loki turned.

  "I could teach you our ancient science, Jarl Keith," he said, to my surprise. "You could learn much that your science puzzles over. And you would be second only to me, once the Aesir are conquered."

  I began to understand what he was suggesting.

  "You want me to turn against the Aesir — against my friends?"

  "That woman Freya — and even Frey, if you wish — can be spared."

  "Why do you wish me to become your follower?" I asked suspiciously.

  Loki's beautiful face was undeniably sincere as he answered me.

  "Because it is as I said. We two are more akin than any others in this land. We seek scientific truth and love the new and strange. Besides, I have no human friend, for Utgar is but a brute-brained tool, and Hel is but a wicked wildcat who never can learn my science. It is true that I have Fenris and Iormungandr. My wolf and serpent have wisdom and cunning which are almost human, but they are not human friends. Speak, Jarl Keith. Will you join me as friend and follower?"

  Stunned by the offer, I tried desperately to think. If I could make Loki believe I was willing to join him, and then work against him–