A Yank at Valhalla

Chapter XV The Fire World

Odin and Thor were waiting for me in the great hall of Valhalla. The stern, iron-strong face of the Aesir king was heavy. As he spoke, I could hear the bustle of preparation, the clatter of shields and spears and hurrying feet throughout the great castle.

"Jarl Keith, I shall not hide from you that Asgard is in dire peril. The Jotun hosts outnumber us by many to one. Though we might repulse them, if that were all, they will be led by cunning Loki and aided by the storm-weapons of which you spoke."

I nodded wordlessly, for all this knowledge had weighed on my own mind through these last hours.

"It is necessary, unless Asgard is to perish," Odin continued, "that I devise some defense against those storm-cones. Otherwise they would blast our forces and make us easy prey."

"Can you prepare a defense against them, lord Odin?" I asked hopefully.

"I think I can," said Odin, gravely thoughtful. "I possess as much of the ancient science of our race as Loki, remember, though I have not probed into unholy researches as he did. Tell me, what did you learn of the nature of his storm-cones?"

Rapidly I told Odin and Thor what Loki himself had related to me of those amazing devices. They could project a controlled electric field to any desired spot and cause an abnormal difference of electric potential between that place and the sky. The result would be a blasting discharge of lightning.

"Ah, I understand now," Odin muttered. "Loki has found a way to draw power from the static electric charge of Earth, transform and project it in a controlled field. Truly he is a daring scientist, as always."

"Curse him and his devil's tricks!" growled Thor. "I always mistrusted him, even in the ancient days in Muspelheim."

"Couldn't there be some way of creating an electric energy field that would screen out Loki's projected field?" I asked Odin eagerly, with great anxiety.

"You have divined the only possible defense, Jarl Keith." Odin nodded. "And I could soon build a mechanism to create such a screen of energy. But it would take tremendous power to operate it. Only controlled disintegration of a large mass of intensively radioactive matter could yield such power as that."

"You said once, lord Odin, that there are tremendous masses of radioactive matter in the deep world from which the Aesir originally came."

Odin's stare narrowed.

"Are you suggesting that we could get the radioactive substances from Muspelheim?"

"That's my idea," I stated. "You told me that there was a way down into Muspelheim. It was a way by which the Aesir originally came up, and which Loki later used for his researches in the atomic fires below."

"It is true," Odin said slowly. "There is such a path down to Muspelheim, though it is a perilous and fearful one to follow. The opening to that path is in the deepest chamber of this castle. When we emerged here long ago, we built Valhalla over it. And it is the same way that Loki used to descend and tamper with the atomic fires below, until we discovered what he was doing and banished him."

"But it would be deadly dangerous for anyone to go down that way to Muspelheim and seek to bring back radioactive matter. For that deep-buried world is a place of awful, raging atomic fires. The terrific radiation is such that it streams even up through Earth's crust into this land."

"I know, but a lead garment of sufficient thickness would protect me from the radiation," I said earnestly. "I know that from my own science. Let me go on this mission, lord Odin!"

He hesitated. "The lead suits which Loki used for his secret descents into Muspelheim are still here," he muttered. "It might be done, Jarl Keith. I will go with you on this perilous trip."

But Thor shook his great, shaggy head.

"No, Father, you must not go," the Hammerer declared. "You must be here to take command if Loki's forces attack before tomorrow. And you will also need all the available time to build the mechanism of which you and Jarl Keith speak." He turned to me. "I will go with Jarl Keith down into Muspelheim."

Odin reluctantly assented.

"So be it, then, though I dislike to send you, Jarl Keith, upon this fearful mission. The fight is for the sake of our people, not yours."

"The Aesir are my people, now and always, if you will let me claim that privilege!"

Odin's iron face softened, and he laid his great hand on my shoulder.

"Jarl Keith, I welcome you as one of us. Weal or woe, life or death, you are outlander no longer, but jarl and captain of the Aesir."

Hard-headed American scientist or not, I felt pride such as I had never felt before, to be accepted into the company of these mighty men.

"Now go we down to the chamber that holds the mouth of the terrible road to Muspelheim," Odin said. "Come!"

Thor and I followed out of the great hall and through corridors. We descended dark stone stairs until we reached the deepest level of Valhalla castle. We came to a door carved with runes, and with a great lock upon it. Odin touched the runes in a certain combination, and the door swung slowly inward.

By the light of the torch Thor carried, I saw that we had entered a round stone chamber of considerable size. It was dank and dusty, as though unused for ages. Standing about were dust-covered instruments and mechanisms of copper, quartz and iron, which I guessed were long unused devices of the ancient Aesir science.

In the very center of the big chamber's stone floor yawned a pit fifty feet in diameter, sinking to unguessable depths. Up from that opening beat a fierce green glow of throbbing force, from somewhere far beneath. I heard a dim, remote, roaring sound.

Most strange of all, in the opening of that pit floated a twenty-foot disk of white metal, with a squat, thick standard of metal rising from its center. It poised in the radiation, apparently without support, rocking gently as the fierce green rays from below streamed up through it.

"What in the world is that?" I asked startledly.

"That is the chariot on which you and Thor will ride down the road to deep Muspelheim," Odin explained. "And yon pit in which the disk floats is the road itself."

Odin looked somberly about the dusty room and its looming, enigmatic mechanisms.

"This is the very heart of Asgard, Jarl Keith. Up that pit-road the Aesir came long ago, fleeing from disaster-stricken Muspelheim. Over the opening of this road I caused Valhalla castle to be built. And secretly, from this chamber, Loki came and went to Muspelheim in the perilous researches that caused his exile, using the floating disk which he had devised to come and go easily."

Thor was looking in obvious dislike at the metal disk that was rocking eerily in empty air at the edge of the pit.

"I've not ridden that disk since we caught Loki in his secret researches," rumbled the bearded giant. "I've not much desire to repeat the trip, but I suppose it has to be done."

"Here are the lead suits, Jarl Keith," called Odin.

I went to the side of the chamber to which the Aesir king had gone. He had reached down, from hooks on which they hung, two of the four strange garments which had hung there, gathering dust for long. The garments were stiff robes of heavy but oddly flexible lead, falling to the ankles, with leaden boots for the feet and leaden gloves for the hands. A hood-like cowl of the same material went over the head, and had two eye-holes of heavily leaded glass for vision.

"These are the suits which Loki and the thralls he forced to help him used in the fiendish researches below," Odin said. "When Loki was forced to flee Asgard, he had to leave these behind him."

I examined the heavy garments.

"They ought to be proof against any ordinary radiation," I muttered. "But we've got to have something in which to bring back the mass of radioactive matter."

Odin nodded understandingly. "Yon crucible should serve the purpose. Put it on the disk, Thor."

The crucible was a big one of lead, and so heavy that even huge Thor grunted as he lifted it. He staggered with it to the floating disk. It rocked a little as he put the crucible on it, then quieted. Thor and I each donned one of the protective suits. The lead garments were so heavy that I felt crushed, and I could see only dimly through the dark glass of the eye-holes. Odin handed each of us a stout iron staff.

"Thor, you know from long ago how to operate the disk," he told his huge son. "While you are gone, I shall begin converting one of these mechanisms into a generator whose energy may screen us from Loki's storm-cones in the coming battle."

"We'll get the stuff to operate that generator, or not come back," I promised.

The Aesir king's iron-strong face was anxious.

"I pray the Norns that you return with it, Jarl Keith."

Thor had stepped out onto the floating disk. I followed, moving stiffly in my hampering garments, and feeling more than a little uneasy as I boarded the disk which floated in empty air.

"Crouch by the standard with me, Jarl Keith," came Thor's muffled voice. "Cling to the hand-grips."

I followed his example and crouched down beside the squat pillar which rose from the center of the disk. Upon that pillar was a single lever, movable in a graduated slot, which seemed to be the only control of the strange vehicle. There were protecting hand-grips on the pillar and across the whole disk, for passengers to cling to. Thor's lead-gloved hand clutched the lever and moved it slightly. It operated a simple mechanical device which slid open scores of tiny doors in the disk, which until now had been half — open.

At once the disk began to fall into the pit. Faster and faster we fell, the air whistling around us, and the blazing green radiation streaming violently up through the many tiny openings in the disk.

"How in the world does this thing operate?" I shouted to Thor over the roar of air. "Is it by radiation-pressure?"

I heard his muffled answer.

"You have guessed it, Jarl Keith. The metal of this disk is one that is extremely light and opaque to radiation. The pressure of the radiation from below is so terrifically powerful as to drive the disk upward. By opening the little doors and controlling the radiation through the disk, the vehicle can be poised motionless against the pressure, or caused to fall."

"Certainly Loki is a clever scientist, to have devised such a thing," I declared.

Thor growled an answer, but I could not hear, the whistling wind and din, thunderous roaring from far below were growing louder. We were falling at an appalling speed, straight down the pit. It was a ride wild beyond imagination, with the air shrieking like fiends, and the fierce green rays streaming up around us. Through every fiber of my body, even though I wore the protective lead suit, tingled stronger vibrations of the stimulating force I had felt since entering this land. It was wildly exhilarating and intoxicating.

Thor's big, lead-clothed figure crouched, his gloved hand on the control lever. His cowled head was bent as he peered tautly down through a square quartz plate in the bottom of the disk. A giddy sensation akin to nausea shook me, so swift now was our fall.

"We approach Muspelheim!" came Thor's bellow over I the roar and shriek. "Hold tightly, Jarl Keith!"

His hand moved the lever in its slot. The tiny doors in the bottom of the disk closed a little. Our fall began to slow. Pressed hard against the disk, crushed by the deceleration, I peered down through the quartz view-plate with Thor. The end of the vertical pit was close below. I saw, beneath it, a vast, fiery space.

The disk slowed further, as Thor moved the lever. Finally it hung motionless again, its weight just balanced by the pressure of radiation from below. It had halted just where the vertical pit debouched into the roof of an inconceivably vast, blazing space. An underworld of terrible atomic radiance stretched away for miles from the rock wall beside which the pit entered.

"You look upon deep Muspelheim." Thor's voice reached me muffledly. "Once the home of the Aesir, it is the home now of the atomic fires and the creatures of the fires."

The scene before me was indescribably awe-inspiring. The vast dimensions of this mighty space beneath Earth's crust were enough to stagger the mind. This was no mere cavern, but an enormous hollow such as many have believed was left under the planet's surface by the hurling forth of the Moon.

The rocky roof was a mile above the floor. Our disk had halted just where the vertical pit entered the roof, close beside one rock wall of the great space. From the spot where Thor and I gazed, the subterranean world stretched off out of sight, to right and left and ahead.

Many miles away from us there shone a dazzling thing that dominated the whole vast, blazing fane with its brilliance. It was a colossal fountain of cold, white fire that gushed from a chasm in the floor. Hundreds of feet into the air it rose, falling back on itself in continual blinding spray. From it shot beams and banners of blinding light and force, a shaking, shuddering radiance.

All across the underworld rose similar but smaller geysers of white fire, gushing jets of radiance like that mighty distant one. Wherever the eye turned, it encountered such fiery fountains. They filled the underworld with a roaring that was deafening, and a terrific green-white radiance.

"Can your people ever have lived here?" I cried shakenly to Thor, as I gazed stupedfiedly from the floating disk.

"Aye, Jarl Keith. Centuries ago we dwelt here, where we had evolved and lived for ages. But then this was a fair world. There was no fire except that one great atomic fountain which you see far away. It was smaller then than now, yet its radiations were sufficient to keep this whole underworld warm and habitable.

"Then accursed Loki tampered with our fire fountain. He sought to stimulate it to greater activity, so that its increased radiations would make us almost immortal. He so disturbed and aroused the fountain that its fires shot up and fell here and there, all across the underworld. Eventually it set masses of radioactive matter everywhere to blazing up in atomic flame themselves.

"Thus we had to flee from disaster-smitten Muspelheim. We managed to pierce the pit up to the upper world, and clambered up it by a toilsome stair carved in its side. And since then Muspelheim has been a world of fire, forsaken by men."

I was so stunned by the awesome spectacle that I had almost forgotten our mission here. But Thor recalled it to me.

"We must not stay here long, Jarl Keith!" he warned. "The awful radiation here would slay us if it penetrated our leaden suits."

I glanced down.

"There must be plenty of radioactive matter here, all right," I said. "But how do we get down to the floor?"

"By this stair. It's part of the ancient way by which my people escaped to the upper world."

I saw now that the disk had halted beside the landing of a stair which was chiseled from the rock wall of the underworld. The stair climbed up from the floor and disappeared into the pit-shaft by which we had descended.

Hastily, fully awakening to the peril of remaining long in this hell of fierce radiation, I helped Thor pick up the leaden crucible we had brought. We stepped from the disk to the landing, and started down the stair. It was hard walking in our stiff lead garments, and with the weight of the crucible to carry. Moreover, the stair was without any protective rail, and perilously narrow.