The Incomplete Enchanter

ONE

There were three men and a woman in the room. The men were commonplace as to face, and two of them were commonplace as to clothes. The third wore riding breeches, semi-field boots, and a suede jacket with a tartan lining. The extra-fuzzy polo coat and the sporty tan felt with the green feather which lay on a chair belonged to him also.

The owner of this theatrical outfit was neither a movie actor nor a rich young idler, He was a psychologist, and his name was Harold Shea. Dark; a trifle taller, a little thinner than the average, he would have been handsome if his nose were shorter and his eyes farther apart.

The woman — girl — was a tawny blonde. She was the chief nurse at the Garaden Hospital. She possessed — but did not rejoice in — the name of Gertrude Mugler.

The other two men were psychologists like Shea and members of the same group. The oldest, the director of the others’ activities, was bushy-haired, and named Reed Chalmers. He had just been asking Shea what the devil he meant by coming to work in such conspicuous garb.

Shea said, defensively: «I’m going to ride a horse when I leave this afternoon. Honest.»

«Ever ridden a horse?» asked the remaining member of the group, a large, sleepy-looking young man named Walter Bayard.

«No,» replied Shea, «but it’s about time I learned.»

Walter Bayard snorkled. «What you ought to say is that you’re going to ride a horse so as to have an excuse for looking like something out of Esquire. First there was that phony English accent you put on for a while. Then you took up fencing. Then Last winter you smeared the place with patent Norwegian ski-grease, and went skiing just twice.»

«So what?» demanded Shea.

Gertrude Mugler spoke up: «Don’t let them kid you about your clothes, Harold.»

«Thanks, Gert.»

«Personally I think you look sweet in them.»

«Unh.» Shea’s expression was less grateful.

«But you’re foolish to go horseback riding. It’s a useless accomplishment anyway, with automobiles —»

Shea held up a hand. «I’ve got my own reasons, Gert.» Gertrude looked at her wrist watch. She rose. «I have to go on duty. Don’t do anything foolish, Harold. Remember, you’re taking me to dinner tonight.»

«Uh-huh.»

«Dutch.»

Shea winced. «Gert!»

«So long, everybody,» said Gertrude. She departed in a rustle of starched cotton.

Walter Bayard snickered. «Big he-man. Dutch!»

Shea tried to laugh it off. «I’ve tried to train her not to pull those in public. Anyway she makes more money than I do, and if she’d rather have four dates a week Dutch than two on my budget, why not? She’s a good kid.»

Bayard said: «She thinks you’re the wistful type, Harold. She told the super —»

«She did? Goddamn it.»

Chalmers said: «I cannot see, Harold, why you continue to — uh — keep company with a young woman who irritates you so.»

Shea shrugged. «I suppose it’s because she’s the one not impossible on the staff with whom I’m sure I’ll never do anything irrevocable.»

«While waiting for the dream-girl?» grinned Bayard. Shea simply shrugged again.

«That’s not it,» said Bayard. «The real reason, Doctor, is that she got the psychological jump on him the first time he took her out. Now he’s afraid to quit.»

«It’s not a matter of being afraid,» snapped Shea. He stood up and his voice rose to a roar of surprising volume: «And furthermore, Walter, I don’t see that it’s any damn business of yours.»

«Now, now Harold,» said Chalmers. «There’s nothing to be gained by these outbursts. Aren’t you satisfied with your work here?» he asked worriedly.

Shea relaxed. «Why shouldn’t I be? We do about as we damn please, thanks to old man Garaden’s putting that requirement for a psychology institute into his bequest to the hospital. I could use more money, but so could everybody.»

«That’s not the point,» said Chalmers. «These poses of yours and these outbreaks of temper point to an inner conflict, a maladjustment with your environment.»

Shea grinned. «Call it a little suppressed romanticism. I figured it out myself long ago. Look. Walt here spends his time trying to become midwestern tennis champ. What good’ll it do him? And Gert spends hours at the beauty parlour trying to look like a fallen Russian countess, which she’s not built for. Another fixation on the distant romantic. I like to dress up. So what?»

«That’s all right,» Chalmers admitted, «if you don’t start taking your imaginings seriously.»

Bayard put in: «Like thinking dream-girls exist.» Shea gave him a quick glare.

Chalmers continued: «Oh, well, if you start suffering from — uh — depressions, let me know. Let’s get down to business now.»

Shea asked: «More tests on hopheads?»

«No,» said Chalmers. «We will discuss the latest hypotheses in what we hope will be our new science of paraphysics, and see whether we have not reached the stage where more experimental corroboration is possible.

«I’ve told you how I checked my premise, that the world we live in is composed of impressions received through the senses. But there is an infinity of possible worlds, and if the senses can be attuned to receive a different series of impressions, we should infallibly find ourselves living in a different world. That’s where I got my second check, here at the hospital, in the examination of — uh — dements, mainly paranoiacs. You» — he nodded at Bayard — «set me on the right track with that report on the patient with Korsakov’s psychosis.»

«The next step would be to translate this theoretical data into experiment: that is, to determine how to transfer persons and objects from one world into another. Among the dements, the shift is partial and involuntary, with disastrous results to the psyche. When —»

«Just a minute,» interrupted Shea. «Do you mean that a complete shift would actually transfer a man’s body into one of these other worlds?»

«Very likely,» agreed Chalmers, «since the body records whatever sensations the mind permits. For complete demonstration it would be necessary to try it, and I don’t know that the risk would be worth it. The other world might have such different laws that it would be impossible to return.»

Shea asked: «You mean, if the world were that of classical mythology, for instance, the laws would be those of Greek magic instead of modern physics?»

«Precisely. But —»

«Hey!» said Shea. «Then this new science of paraphysics is going to include the natural laws of all these different worlds, and what we call physics is just a special case of paraphysics —»

«Not so fast, young man,» said Chalmers. «For the present, I think it wise to restrict the meaning of our term ‘Paraphysics’ to the branch of knowledge that concerns the relationship of these multiple universes to each other, assuming that they actually exist. You will recall that careless use of the analogous term ‘metaphysics’ has resulted in its becoming practically synonymous with ‘philosophy’.»

«Which,» said Shea, «is regarded by some as a kind of scientific knowledge; by others as a kind of knowledge outside of science; and by still others as unscientific and therefore not knowledge of any kind.»

«My, my, very neatly put,» said Chalmers, fishing out a little black notebook. «E. T. Bell could not have said it more trenchantly. I shall include that statement of the status of philosophy in my next book.»

«Hey,» said Shea, sitting up sharply, «don’t I even get a commission?»

Chalmers smiled blandly. «My dear Harold, you’re at perfect liberty to write a book of your own; in fact I encourage you.»

Bayard grinned: «Harold would rather play cowboy. When I think of a verbal pearl, I don’t go around casting it promiscuously. I wait till I can use it in print and get paid for it. But to get back to our subject, how would you go about working the shift?»

Chalmers frowned. «I’ll get to that, if you give me time. As I see it, the method consists of filling your mind with the fundamental assumptions of the world in question. Now, what are the fundamental assumptions of our world? Obviously, those of scientific logic.»

«Such as —» said Shea.

«Oh, the principle of dependence, for instance. ‘Any circumstance in which alone a case of the presence of a given phenomenon differs from the case of its absence is casually relevant to that phenomenon.’»

«Ouch!» said Shea. «That’s almost as bad as Frege’s definition of number.»

Bayard droned: «The number of things in a given class —»

«Stop it, Walter! It drives me nuts!»

«— is the class of all classes that are similar to the given class.»

«Hrrm,» remarked Chalmers. «If you gentlemen are through with your joke, I’ll go on. If one of these infinite other worlds — which up to now may be said to exist in a logical but not in an empirical sense — is governed by magic, you might expect to find a principle like that of dependence invalid, but principles of magic, such as the Law of Similarity, valid.»

«What’s the Law of Similarity?» asked Bayard sharply.

«The Law of Similarity may be stated thus: Effects resemble causes. It’s not valid for us, but primitive peoples firmly believe it. For instance, they think you can make it rain by pouring water on the ground with appropriate mumbo jumbo.»

«I didn’t know you could have fixed principles of magic,» commented Shea.

«Certainly,» replied Chalmers solemnly. «Medicine men don’t merely go through hocus-pocus. They believe they are working through natural laws. In a world where everyone firmly believed in these Laws, that is, in one where all minds were attuned to receive the proper impressions, the laws of magic would conceivably work, as one hears of witch-doctors’ spells working in Africa today. Frazer and Seabrook have worked out some of these magical laws. Another is the Law of Contagion: Things once in contact continue to interact from a distance after separation. As you —»

Shea snapped his fingers for attention. «Just a second, Doctor. In a world such as you’re conceiving, would the laws of magic work because people believed in them, or would people believe in them because they worked?»

Chalmers put on the smile that always accompanied his intellectual rabbit-punches. «That question, Harold, is, in Russell’s immortal phrase, a meaningless noise.»

«No, you don’t,» said Shea. «That’s the favourite dodge of modem epistemologists: every time you ask them a question they can’t answer, they smile and say you’re making a meaningless noise. I still think it’s a sensible question, and as such deserves a sensible answer.»

«Oh, but it is meaningless,» said Chalmers. «As I can very easily demonstrate, it arises from your attempt to build your — uh — conceptualistic structure on an absolutistic rather than a relativistic basis. But I’ll come back to that later. Allow me to continue my exposition.»

«As you know, you can build us a self-consistent logic on almost any set of assumptions —»

Bayard opened his half-closed eyes and injected another sharp observation: «Isn’t there a flaw in the structure there, Doctor? Seems to me your hypothesis makes transference to the future possible. We should then become aware of natural laws not yet discovered and inventions not yet made. But the future naturally won’t be ignorant of our method of transference. Therefore we could return to the present with a whole list of new inventions. These inventions, launched into the present, would anticipate the future, and, by anticipating, change it.»

«Very ingenious, Walter,» said Chalmers. «But I’m afraid you overlook something. You might indeed secure transference to a future, but it would not necessarily be the future, the actual future of our own empirico-positivist world. A mental frame of reference is required. That is, we need a complete set of concepts of the physical world, which concepts condition the impressions received by the mind. The concepts of the future will be the product of numerous factors not new known to us. That is —»

«I see,» said Shea. «The frame of reference for the actual future is not yet formed, whereas the frames of reference for all past worlds are fixed.»

«Precisely. I would go beyond that. Transference to any world exhibiting such a fixed pattern is possible, but to such worlds only. That is, one could secure admission to any of H. G. Wells’ numerous futures. We merely choose a series of basic assumptions. In the case of the actual future we are ignorant of the assumptions.»

«But speculative extrapolation from our scanty supply of facts has already carried us — uh — halfway to Cloud-Cuckoo land. So let us return to our own time and place and devote ourselves to the development of an experimental technique wherewith to attack the problems of paraphysics.»

«To contrive a vehicle for transposition from one world to another, we face the arduous task of extracting from the picture of such a world as that of the Iliad its basic assumptions, and expressing these in logical form —»

Shea interrupted: «In other words, building us a syllogismobile?»

Chalmers looked vexed for an instant, then laughed. «A very pithy way of expressing it, Harold. You are wasting your talents, as I have repeatedly pointed out, by not publishing more. I suggest, however, that the term ‘syllogismobile’ be confined for the present to discussions among us members of the Garaden Institute. When the time comes to try to impress our psychological colleagues with the importance of paraphysics, a somewhat more dignified mode of expression will be desirable.»

* * *

Harold Shea lay on his bed, smoked, and thought. He smoked expensive English cigarettes, not because he liked them especially, but because it was part of his pattern of affectation to smoke something unusual. He thought about Chalmers’ lecture.

It would no doubt be dangerous, as Chalmers had warned. But Shea was getting unutterably bored with life. Chalmers was able but stuffy; if brilliance and dullness could be combined in one personality, Reed Chalmers combined them. While in theory all three members of the Institute were researchers, in practice the two subordinates merely collected facts and left to the erudite Doctor the fun of assembling them and generalizing from them.

Of course, thought Shea, he did get some fun out of his little poses, but they were a poor substitute for real excitements. He liked wearing his new breeches and boots, but riding a horse had been an excruciating experience. It also had none of the imaginary thrill of swinging along in a cavalry charge, which he had half-unconsciously promised himself. All he got was the fact that his acquaintances thought him a nut. Let ’em; he didn’t care.

But he was too good a psychologist to deceive himself long or completely. He did care. He wanted to make a big impression, but he was one of those unfortunates who adopt a method that produces the effect opposite to the one they want.

Hell, he thought, no use introspecting myself into the dumps. Chalmers says it’ll work. The old bore misses fire once in a while, like the time he tried to psychoanalyse the cleaning woman and she thought he was proposing marriage. But that was an error of technique, not of general theory. Chalmers was sound enough on theory, and he had already warned of dangers in the practical application in this case.

Yes. If he said that one could transport oneself to a different place and time by formula, it could be done. The complete escape from — well, from insignificance, Shea confessed to himself. He would be the Columbus of a new kind of journey!

Harold Shea got up and began to pace the floor, excited by the trend of his own thoughts. To explore — say the world of the Iliad. Danger: one might not be able to get back. Especially not, Shea told himself grimly, if one turned out to be one of those serf soldiers who died by thousands under the gleaming walls of Troy.

Not the Iliad. The Slavic twilight? No; too full of man-eating witches and werewolves. Ireland! That was it — the Ireland of Cuchulinn and Queen Maev. Blood there, too, but what the hell, you can’t have adventure without some danger. At least, the dangers were reasonable open-eye stuff you could handle. And the girls of that world — they were something pretty slick by all description.

* * *

It is doubtful whether Shea’s colleagues noticed any change in his somewhat irregular methods of working. They would hardly have suspected him of dropping Havelock Ellis for the Ulster and Fenian legendary cycles with which he was conditioning his mind for the attempted «trip.» If any of them, entering his room suddenly, had come on a list with many erasures, which included a flashlight, a gun, and mercurochrome, they would merely have supposed that Shea intended to make a rather queer sort of camping expedition.

And Shea was too secretive about his intentions to let anyone see the equipment he selected: A Colt.38 revolver with plenty of ammunition, a stainless-steel hunting knife — they ought to be able to appreciate metal like that, he told himself — a flashlight, a box of matches to give him a reputation as a wonder worker, a notebook, a Gaelic dictionary, and, finally, the Boy Scout Handbook, edition of 1926, as the easiest source of ready reference for one who expected to live in the open air and in primitive society.

Shea went home after a weary day of asking questions of neurotics, and had a good dinner. He put on the almost-new riding clothes and strapped over his polo coat a shoulder pack to hold his kit. He put on the hat with the green feather, and sat down at his desk. There, on sheets of paper spread before him, were the logical equations, with their little horse-shoes, upside-down T’s, and identity signs.

His scalp prickled a trifle as he gazed at them. But what the hell! Stand by for adventure and romance! He bent over, giving his whole attention to the formulas, trying not to focus on one spot, but to apprehend the whole:

«If P equals not-Q, Q implies not-F, which is equivalent to saying either P or Q or neither, but not both. But if not-P is not implied by not-Q, the counter-implicative form of the proposition —»

There was nothing but six sheets of paper. Just that, lying in two neat rows of three sheets, with perhaps half an inch between them. There should he strips of table showing between them. But there was nothing — nothing.

«The full argument thus consists in an epicheirematic syllogism in Barbara, the major premise of which is not the conclusion of an enthymeme, though the minor premise of which may or may not be the conclusion of a non-Aristotelian sorites —»

The papers were still there, but overlaying the picture of those six white rectangles was a whirl of faint spots of colour. All the colours of the spectrum were represented, he noted with the back of his mind, but there was a strong tendency toward violet. Round and round they went — round — and round — «If either F or Q is true or (Q or R) is true then either Q is true or (P or R) is false —»

Round and round — He could hear nothing at all. He had no sense of heat or cold, or of the pressure of the chair seat against him. There was nothing but millions of whirling spots of colour.

Yes, he could feel temperature now. He was cold. There was sound, too, a distant whistling sound, like that of a wind in a chimney. The spots were fading into a general greyness. There was a sense of pressure, also, on the soles of his feet. He straightened his legs — yes, standing on something. But everything around him was grey — and bitter cold, with a wind whipping the skirts of his coat around him.

He looked down. His feet were there all right — «hello, feet, pleased to meet you.» But they were fixed in greyish-yellow mud which had squilched up in little ridges around them. The mud belonged to a track, only two feet wide, On both sides of it the grey-green of dying grass began. On the grass large flakes of snow were scattered, dandruffwise. More were coming, visible as dots of darker grey against the background of whirling mist, swooping down long parallel inclines, growing and striking the path with the tiniest ts. Now and then one spattered against Shea’s face.

He had done it. The formula worked!

TWO

«Welcome to Ireland!» Harold Shea murmured to himself. He thanked heaven that his syllogismobile had brought his clothes and equipment along with his person. It would never have done to have been dumped naked onto this freezing landscape. The snow was not atone responsible for the greyness. There was also a cold, clinging mist that cut off vision at a hundred yards or so. Ahead of him the track edged leftward around a little mammary of a hill, on whose flank a tree rocked under the melancholy wind. The tree’s arms all reached one direction, as though the wind were habitual; its branches bore a few leaves as grey and discouraged as the landscape itself. The tree was the only object visible in that wilderness of mud, grass and fog. Shea stepped towards it. The serrated leaves bore the indentations of the Northern scrub oak.

But that grows only in the Arctic Circle, he thought. He was bending closer for another look when he heard the clop-squosh of a horses hoofs on the muddy track behind him.

He turned. The horse was very small, hardly more than a pony, and shaggy, with a luxuriant tail blowing round its withers. On its back sat a man who might have been tall had he been upright, for his feet nearly touched the ground. But he was hunched before the icy wind driving in behind. From saddle to eyes he was enveloped in a faded blue cloak. A formless slouch hat was pulled tight over his face, yet not So tight as to conceal the fact that he was full-bearded and grey.

Shea took half a dozen quick steps to the roadside. He addressed the man with the phrase he had composed in advance for his first human contact in the world of Irish myth:

«The top of the morning to you, my good man, and would it be far to the nearest hostel?»

He had meant to say more, but paused uncertainly as the man on the horse lifted his head to reveal a proud, unsmiling face in which the left eye socket was unpleasantly vacant. Shea smiled weakly, then gathered his courage and plunged on: «it’s a rare bitter December you do be having in Ireland.»

The stranger looked at him with much of the same clinical detachment he himself would have given to an interesting case of schizophrenia, and spoke in slow, deep tones: «I have no knowledge of hostels, nor of Ireland; but the month is not December. We are in May, and this is the Fimbulwinter.»

A little prickle of horror filled Harold Shea, though the last word was meaningless to him. Faint and far, his ear caught a sound that might be the howling of a dog — or a wolf. As he sought for words there was a flutter of movement. Two big black birds, like oversize crows, slid down the wind past him and came to rest on the the grass, looked at him for a second or two with bright, intelligent eyes, then took the air again.

«Well, where am I?»

«At the wings of the world, by Midgards border.»

«Where in hell is that?»

The deep voice took on an edge of annoyance. «For all things there is a time, a place, and a person. There is none of the three for ill-judged questions, and empty jokes.» He showed Shea a blue-dad shoulder, clucked to his pony and began to move wearily ahead.

«Hey!» cried Shea. He was feeling good and sore. The wind made his fingers and jaw muscles ache. He was lost in this arctic wasteland, and this old goat was about to trot off and leave him stranded. He leaned forward, planting himself squarely in front of the pony. «What kind of a runaround is this, anyway? When I ask someone a civil question —»

The pony had halted, its muzzle almost touching Shea’s coat. The man on the animal’s back straightened suddenly so that Shea could see he was very tall indeed, a perfect giant. But before he had time to note anything more he felt himself caught and held with an almost physical force by that single eye. A stab of intense, burning cold seemed to run through him, inside his head, as though his brain had been pierced by an icicle. He felt rather than heard a voice which demanded, «Are you trying to stop me, niggeling?»

For his life, Shea could not have moved anything but his lips. «N—no,» he stammered. «That is, I just wondered if you could tell me how I could get somewhere where it’s warm —»

The single eye held him unblinkingly for a few seconds. Shea felt that it was examining his inmost thoughts. Then the man slumped a trifle so that the brim of his hat shut out the glare and the deep voice was muffled. «I shall be tonight at the house of the bonder Sverre, which is the Crossroads of the World. You may follow.» The wind whipped a fold of his blue cloak, and as it did so there came, apparently from within the cloak itself, a little swirl of leaves. One clung for a moment to the front of Shea’s coat. He caught it with numbed fingers, and saw it was an ash leaf, fresh and tender with the bright green of spring — in the midst of this howling wilderness, where only arctic scrub oak grew!

Shea let the pony pass and fell in behind, head down, collar up, hands deep in pockets, squinting against the snowflakes. He was too frozen to think clearly, but he tried. The logical formulas had certainly thrown him into another world. But he hardly needed the word of Old Whiskers that it was not Ireland. Something must have gone haywire in his calculations. Could he go back and recheck them? No — he had not the slightest idea at present what might have been on those six sheets of paper. He would have to make the best of his situation.

But what world had he tumbled into? A cold, bleak one, inhabited by small, shaggy ponies and grim old blue-eyed men with remarkable eyes. It might be the world of Scandinavian mythology. Shea knew very little about such a world, except that its No. 1 guy was someone named Odinn, or Woden, or Wotan, and there was another god named Thor who threw a sledge hammer at people he disliked.

Shea’s scientific training made him doubt whether he would actually find these gods operating as gods, with more-than-human powers; or, for that matter, whether he would see any fabulous monsters. Still, that stab of cold through his head and that handful of ash leaves needed explaining. Of course, the pain in his head might be an indication of incipient pneumonia, and Old Whiskers might make a habit of carrying ash leaves in his pockets. But still — The big black birds were keeping up with them. They didn’t seem afraid, nor did they seem to mind the ghastly weather.

It was getting darker, though in this landscape of damp blotting paper Shea could not tell whether the sun had set. The wind pushed at him violently, forcing him to lean into it; the mud on the path was freezing, but not quite gelid. it had collected in yellow gobs on his boots. He could have sworn the boots weighed thirty pounds apiece, and they had taken in water around the seams, adding clammy socks to his discomfort. A clicking sound, like a long roll of castanets, made him wonder until he realized it was caused by his own teeth.

He seemed to have been walking for days, though he knew it could hardly be a matter of hours. Reluctantly he took one hand from his pocket and gazed at his wrist watch. It read 9.36; certainly wrong. When he held the watch to a numbed ear he discovered it had stopped. Neither shaking nor winding could make it start.

He thought of asking his companion the time, but realized that the rider would have no more accurate idea than himself. He thought of asking how much farther they had to go. But he would have to make himself heard over the wind, and the old boy’s manner did not encourage questions.

They plodded on. The snow was coming thickly through the murky twilight. Shea could barely make out the figure before him. The path had become the same neutral grey as everything else. The weather was turning colder. The snowflakes were dry and hard, stinging and bouncing where they struck. Now and then an extra puff of wind would snatch a cloud of them from the moor, whirling it into Shea’s face. He would shut his eyes to the impact, and when he opened them find he had blundered off the path and have to scurry after his guide.

Light. He pulled the pack around in front of him and fumbled in it till he felt the icy touch of the flashlight’s metal. He pulled it out from under the other articles and pressed the switch button. Nothing happened, nor would shaking, slapping, or repeated snappings of the switch produce any result.

In a few minutes it would be too dark for him to follow the man on the pony by sight alone. Whether the old boy liked it

or not. Shea would have to ask the privilege of holding a corner of his cloak as a guide.

It was just as he reached this determination that something in the gait of the pony conveyed a sense of arrival. A moment more and the little animal was trotting, with Shea stumbling and skidding along the fresh snow behind as he strove to keep pace. The pack weighed tons, and he found himself gasping for breath as though he were running up a forty-five-degree angle instead of on an almost level path.

Then there was a darker patch in the dark-grey universe. Shea’s companion halted the pony and slid off. A rough-hewn timber door loomed through the storm, and the old man banged against it with his fist. it opened, flinging a flood of yellow light out across the snow. The old man stepped into the gap, his cloak vividly blue in the fresh illumination.

Shea, left behind, croaked a feeble «Hey!» just managing to get his foot in the gap of the closing door. It opened full out and a man in a baggy homespun tunic peered out at him, his face rimmed with drooping whiskers. «Well?»

«May I c-c-come in?»

«Umph,» said the man. «Come on, come on. Don’t stand there letting the cold in!»

THREE

Shea stood in a kind of entryhall, soaking in the delicious warmth. The vestibule was perhaps six feet deep. At its far end a curtain of skins had been parted to permit the passage of the old man who preceded him. The bonder Sverre — Shea supposed this would be his host — pulled them still wider. «Lord, use this as your own house, now and forever,» he murmured with the perfunctory hurry of a man repeating a formula like «Pleased to meet you.»

The explorer of universes ducked under the skins and into a long hall panelled in dark wood. At one end a fire blazed, apparently in the centre of the floor, though bricked round to knee height. Around it were a number of benches and tables. Shea caught a glimpse of walls hung with weapons — a huge sword, nearly as tall as he was, half a dozen small spears or javelins, their delicate steel points catching ruddy high lights from the torches in brackets; a kite-shaped shield with metal overlay in an intricate pattern —

No more than a glimpse. Sverre had taken him by the arm and conducted him through another door, shouting; «Aud! Hallgerda! This stranger’s half frozen. Get the steam room ready. Now, stranger, you come with me.»

Down a passage to a smaller room, where the whiskered man ordered him: «Get off those wet clothes. Strange garments you have. I’ve never seen so many buttons and clasps in all my days. If you’re one of the Sons of Muspellheim, I’ll give you guesting for the night. But I warn you for tomorrow there be men not far from here who would liefer meet you with a sword than a handclasp.» He eyed Shea narrowly a moment. «Be you of Muspellheim?»

Shea fenced: «What makes you think that?»

«Travelling in those light clothes this far north. Those that hunt the red bear» — he made a curious motion of his hand as though tracing the outline of an eyebolt in the air — «need warm hides as well as stout hearts.» Again he gave Shea that curiously intent glance, as though trying to ravel some secret out of him.

Shea asked: «This is May, isn’t it? I understood you’re pretty far north, but you ought to get over this cold snap soon.»

The man Sverre moved his shoulders in a gesture of bafflement. «Mought, and then mought not. Men say this would be the Fimbulwinter. If that’s so, there’ll be little enough of warm till the roaring trumpet blows and the Sons of the Wolf ride from the East, at the Time.»

Shea would have put a question of his own, but Sverre had turned away grumpily. He got rid of his clammy shorts instead, turning to note that Sverre had picked up his wrist watch.

«That’s a watch,» he offered in a friendly voice.

«A thing of power?» Sverre looked at him again, and then a smile of comprehension distended the wide beard as he slapped his knee. «Of course. Mought have known. You came in with the Wanderer. You’re all right. One of those southern warlocks.»

From somewhere he produced a blanket and whisked it around Shea’s nude form. «This way now,» he ordered. Shea followed through a couple of doors to another small room, so full of wood smoke that it made him cough. He started to rub his eyes, then just in time caught at the edge of his blanket. There were two girls standing by the door, neither of them in the least like the Irish colleens he had expected to find. Both were blonde, apple-cheeked, and rather beamy. They reminded him disagreeably of Gertrude Mugler.

Sverre introduced them; «This here’s my daughter Aud. She’s a shield girl; can lick her weight in polar bears.» Shea, observing the brawny miss, silently agreed. «And this is Hallgerda. All right, you go on in. The water’s ready to pour.»

In the centre of the small room was a sunken hearth full of fire. On top of the fire had been laid a lot of stones about the size of potatoes. Two wooden buckets full of water sat by the hearth.

The girls went out, closing the door. Shea, with the odd sensation that he had experienced all this at some previous time — «it must be part of the automatic adjustment one’s mind makes to the pattern of this world,» he told himself — picked up one of the buckets. He threw it rapidly on the fire, then followed it with the other. With a hiss, the room filled with water vapour.

Shea stood it as long as he could, which was about a minute, then groped blindly for the door and gasped out. instantly a bucketful of ice water hit him in the face. As he stood pawing the air and making strangled noises a second bucketful caught him in the chest. He yelped, managing to choke out, «Glup. stop. that’s enough!»

Somewhere in the watery world a couple of girls were giggling. it was not till his eyes cleared that he realized it was they who had drenched him, and that he was standing between them without his protecting blanket.

His first impulse was to dash back into the steam room. But one of the pair was holding out a towel which it seemed only courtesy to accept. Sverre was approaching unconcernedly with a mug of something. Well, he thought, if they can take it, I can. He discovered that after the first horrible moment his embarrassment had vanished. He dried himself calmly while Sverre held out the mug. The girls’ clinical indifference to the physical Shea was more than ever like Gertrude.

«Hot mead,» Sverre explained. «Something you don’t get down south. Aud, get the stranger’s blanket. We don’t want him catching cold.»

Shea took a gulp of the mead, to discover that it tasted something like ale and something like honey. The sticky sweetness of the stuff caught him in the throat at first, but he was more afraid of losing face before these people than of being sick. Down it went, and after the first gulp it wasn’t so bad. He began to feel almost human.

«What’s your name, stranger?» inquired Sverre.

Shea thought a minute. These people probably didn’t use family names, So he said simply, «Harold.»

«Hungh?»

Shea repeated, more distinctly. «Oh,» said Sverre. «Harald.» He made it rhyme with «dolled».

Dressed, except for his boots, Shea took the place on the bench that Sverre indicated. As he waited for food he glanced round the hall. Nearest him was a huge middle-aged man with red hair and beard, whose appearance made Shea’s mind leap to Sverre’s phrase about «the red bear». His dark-red cloak felt back to show a belt with carved gold work on it. Next to him sat another redhead, more on the sandy order, small-boned and foxy-faced, with quick, shifty eyes. Beyond Foxy-face was a blond young man of about Shea’s size and build, with a little golden fuzz on his face.

At the middle of the bench two pillars of black wood rose from floor to ceiling, heavily carved, and so near the table that they almost cut off one seat. It was now occupied by the grey-bearded, one-eyed man Shea had followed in from the road. His floppy hat was on the table before him, and he was half leaning around one of the pillars to talk to another big blond man — a stout chap whose face bore an expression of permanent good nature, overlaid with worry. Leaning against the table at his side was an empty scabbard that could have held a sword as large as the one Shea had noticed on the wall.

The explorer’s eye, roving along the table, caught and was held by that of the slim young man. The latter nodded, then rose and came round the table, grinning bashfully.

«WouId ye like a seat companion?» he asked. «You know how it is, as Hбvamбl says:

Care eats the heart If you cannot speak

To another all your thought.»

He half-chanted the lines, accenting the alliteration in a way that made the rhymeless verse curiously attractive. He went on: «It would help me a lot with the Time coming, to talk to a plain human being. I don’t mind saying I’m scared. My name’s Thjalfi.»

«Mine’s Harald,» said Shea, pronouncing it as Sverre had done.

«You came with the Wanderer, didn’t ye? Are ye one of those outland warlocks?»

It was the second time Shea had been accused of that. «I don’t know what a warlock is, honest,» said he, «and I didn’t come with the Wanderer. I just got lost and followed him here, and ever since I’ve been trying to find out where I am.»

Thjalfi laughed, then took a long drink of mead. As Shea wondered what there was to laugh at, the young man said; «No offence, friend Harald. Only it does seem mighty funny for man to say he’s lost at Crossroads of the World. Ha, ha, I never did hear the like.»

«The where did you say?»

«Sure, the Crossroads of the World. You must come from seven miles beyond the moon not to know that. Hai! You picked a queer time to come, with all of Them here» — he jerked his finger towards the four bearded men. «Well, I’d keep quiet about not having the power, if I was you. Ye know what the Hбvamбl says:

To the silent and sage Does care seldom come

When he goes to a house as guest.

Ye’re likely to be in a jam when the trouble starts if ye don’t have protection from one of Them, but as long as They think ye’re a warlock, Uncle Fox will help you out.»

He jabbed a finger to indicate the small, sharp-featured man among the four, then went on quickly: «Or are ye a hero? If ye are, I can get Redbeard to take ye into his service when the Time comes.»

«What time? Tell me what this is all—» began Shea, but at that moment Aud and another girl appeared with wooden platters loaded with food.

«Hai, sis!» called Thjalfi cheerfully, and tried to grab a chop from the platter carried by the second, a girl Shea had not previously seen. The girl kicked him neatly on the shin and set it before the late-comer.

The meal consisted of various meats, with beside them a big slab of bread, looking as though it had been cut from a quilt. There was no sign of knife, fork, or any vegetable element. Of course, they would not have table silver, Shea assured himself. he broke off a piece of the bread and bit into it. It was better than it looked. The meat that he picked up rather gingerly was apparently a boiled pork chop, well-cooked and well-seasoned. But as he was taking the second bite, he noted that the shield girl, Aud, was still standing beside him.

As he looked round Aud made a curtsy and said rapidly: «Lord, with this meal as with all things, your wishes are our law. Is there aught else that you desire?»

Shea hesitated for a moment, realizing it was a formula required by politeness and that he should make some remark praising the food. But he had had a long drink of potent mead on an empty stomach. The normal food habits of an American urged him to action.

«Would it be too much to ask whether you have any vegetables?» he said.

For one brief second both the girl and Thjalfi stared at him. Then both burst into shrieks of laughter, Aud staggering back towards the wall, Thjalfi rolling his head forward on his arms. Shea sat staring, red with embarrassment, the half-eaten chop in his hand. He hardly noticed that the four men at the other side of the table were looking at him till the big red-headed man boomed out:

«Good is the wit when men’s children laugh before the Æsir! Now, Thjalfi, you shall tell us what brings this lightness of heart.»

Thjalfi, making no effort to control himself, managed to gasp out: «The. the warlock Harald wants to eat a turnip!» His renewed burst of laughter was drowned in the roar from Redbeard, who leaned back, bellowing: «Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho! Turnip Harald, ha, ha ha!» His merriment was like a gale with the other three adding their part, even the blue-cloaked Wanderer.

When they had quieted down a little, Shea turned to Thjalfi. «What did I do?» he asked. «After all—»

«Ye named yourself Turnip Harald! I’m afeared ye spoiled your chance of standing under Rcdbeard’s banner at the Time. Who’d want a hero that ate turnips? In Asgard we use them to fatten hogs.»

«But —»

«Ye didn’t know better. Well, now your only chance is Uncle Fox. Ye can thank me for saying ye’re a warlock. Besides, he loves a good joke; the only humorist in the lot of them, I always say. But eating turnips — ha, ha, that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard since the giant tried to marry the Hammer Thrower!»

Shea, a trifle angry and now completely mystified, turned to ask explanations. Before he could frame the words there was a pounding at the door. Sverre admitted a tall man, pale, blond and beardless, with a proud, stately face and a huge golden horn slung over his back. «There’s another of Them,» whispered Thjalfi. «That’s Heimdall. I wonder if all twelve of Them are meeting here.»

«Who the devil are They?»

«Sh!»

* * *

The four bearded men nodded welcome to the newcomer. He took his place beside the Wanderer with lithe grace and immediately began to say something to the older man, who nodded in rapt attention. Shea caught a few of the words: «— fire horses, but no use telling you with the Bearer of Bad Tidings present.» He nodded contemptuously towards Uncle Fox.

«It is often seen,» said the latter, raising his voice a trifle but addressing the red-bearded man as though continuing a conversation begun before, «that liars tell few lies when those are present who can see the truth.»

«Or it may be that I have that to tell which I do not wish to have repeated to our enemies by the Evil Companion,» said Heimdall, looking straight at Uncle Fox.

«There are even those,» continued the latter evenly, still paying Heimdall no attention, «who, having no character of their own, wish to destroy all character by assassinating the reputations of others.»

«Liar and thief!» cried Heimdall angrily, bringing his fist down on the table and almost snarling. Shea saw that his front teeth were, surprisingly, of gold.

«Here,» rumbled the large redhead, judicially. «Let there be an allaying of the anger of the Æsir, in the presence of mortals.»

«Let there also,» snapped the small man, «be an allaying of insults in the mouth of —»

«All insults are untrue,» said Heimdall. «I state facts.»

«Facts! Few are the facts that come from that long wagging chin. Facts like the tale of having nine mothers, or the boast of that horn and the great noise it will make — Beware lest mice nest in it and it fail to give a squeak.»

«You shall hear my trumpet at the Time, Father of Lies. And you will not like the sound.»

«Some would say that called for the sword.»

«Try it. Here is the blade that will carve your stinking carcass.»

«Why you—» Foxy-face and Heimdall were on their feet and bellowing at each other. Their voices had a volume that made Shea wince. The other three bearded men rose and began shouting also. Above their heads the two black birds who had been the Wanderer’s companions fled round and round with excited cries.

Just as it looked as though the two original disputants were certain to fling themselves at each other’s throat, the bigger redhead grabbed the smaller one by the shoulders and forced him down. «Sit down!» he thundered. The Wanderer, his sonorous voice full of outraged dignity, shouted; «This is disgraceful! We shall have no respect left. I command you to be quiet, both of you!»

«But —» yelled Heimdall.

The Wanderer silenced him with a gesture. «Nothing you can say will be heard. If either of you speaks to the other before bedtime, he shall have nothing less than my gravest displeasure.»

Heimdall subsided and went over to a far corner to sit and glare at Fox-face, who returned the glare. Thjalfi whispered to the awed Shea: «It’s like this every time three or four of Them get together. They’re supposed to set us a good example, but the first thing ye know they’re at it like a gang of drunken berserks.»

«I’d still like to know who They are,» said Shea.

«Do you mean ye really don’t know?» Thjalfi stared at him with eyes full of honest rustic perplexity. «Don’t that beat all, now? I wouldn’t have believed it if ye hadn’t asked for those turnips. Well, the one that was scrapping with Heimdall is Loki. The big red-bearded one next to him is Thor. The old man, the Wanderer, is Odinn, and the fat one is Frey. Have ye got them straight now?»

Shea looked hard at Thjalfi, but there was nothing in the latter’s face but the most transparent seriousness. Either he had stepped through the formula into some downright dream, or he was being kidded, or the five were local Scandinavian chieftains who for some reason had named themselves after the gods of the old Norse pantheon. The remaining possibility — that these were actually gods — was too wildly improbable for consideration. Yet, those birds — the glance he had received from Odinn — and he knew that Odinn was always represented as one-eyed — The big redhead called Thor got up and went over to the pair whom Thjalfi had identified as Odinn and Frey. For a few minutes they muttered, heads together. At the conclusion of the conference Odinn got up, clapped his floppy hat on his head, whirled his blue cloak around him, look a last gulp of mead and strode out the door.

As the door banged behind him, Loki and Heimdall half rose to their feet. Immediately Thor and Frey jumped up, with the former rumbling: «No more! Save your blows, Sons of Asgard, for the Time. Or if you must deal buffets, exchange them with me.» He lifted a fist the size of a small ham, and both subsided. «It is time for bed, in any case. Come along, Loki. You, too, Thjalfi.»

Thjalf, rose reluctantly. «I’ll speak a word for ye to Uncle Fox in the morning,» he murmured in farewell. Working for these Æsir is no fun. They’re an ornery lot, but I suppose we’re better off with ’em than without ’em, what with the Time coming. Ye know what Ulf, the poet says:

Bare is the breast Without banner before it

When heroes bear weapons To the wrack of the world.

«Good night.»

Shea was not at all sure he wanted to work for Loki as a warlock, whatever that was. There was something sly about the man, uncomfortable The graceful and forthright Heimdall had impressed him more in spite of the latter’s lack of a sense of humour, he mused.

A small noise at the door was Sverre, putting his head in for a look around and then vanishing again. Of the buxom young women nothing had been seen since they took up the wooden platters. Though the house was obviously going to bed, Shea found himself not in the least sleepy. It could hardly be much after nine o’clock. But in a world without artificial light other than that of torches, people would rise and set with the sun. Shea wondered whether he, too, would come around to that dismal habit. Probably, unless he succeeded in getting back to his own world. That was a rather upsetting thought. But, hell, he had taken the risk with his eyes open. Even if this was not the world he had expected to land in, it was still one in which his twentieth-century appliances should give him certain advantages. It would be time enough to worry when —

«Hai, turnip man,» said Heimdall suddenly from his corner. «Fill a couple of mugs and bring them hither, will you?»

Shea felt his temper rise at this dictatorial manner. But whatever or whoever Heimdall was, he looked fully capable of enforcing authority. And though the words were peremptory, the tone of voice was evidently meant for kindness. He obeyed.

«Sit down,» said Heimdall. «You have been called Harald. Is that correct?»

«Yes, I was told you are Heimdall.»

«Nothing less than the truth. I am also known as the Watcher, the Son of Nine Mothers, the Child of Fury, and the Golden. I prefer the titles.»

«Well, look here, Heimdall, what’s all this —»

«Children of men use the titles or call me sir,» said Heimdall severely and rather pompously.

«Sorry, sir.»

Heimdall Looked down his long nose and condescended a smile that showed the gold teeth. «To me this familiarity is not unpleasant, for I have also been called the Friend of Men. But the Lord of Asgard disapproves.»

«You mean Odinn?»

«None other.»

«The old guy — pardon me, I mean the elderly one-eyed gentleman?»

«You are a well of knowledge.»

«I ran into him out on the moor yesterday and followed him here.»

«That is not hidden. I saw you.»

«You did? Where were you?»

«Many miles eastaway. I also heard your remarks to him. Lucky you were not to have been struck dead.»

Shea almost said, «Aw, don’t try to kid me.» Just in time he remembered the piercing, icy glance Odinn had given him and held his tongue. It wouldn’t do to take chances till he knew more about what chances he was taking, what system of natural laws governed this world into which he had fallen. Heimdall was watching him with a slightly amused smile.

«I also heard you tell Thjalfi that you are no warlock, but you know not what it means. You must be from far. However» — he smiled again at Shea’s expression of consternation — «few are sorry for that. I’ll keep your secret A joke on the Master of Deception — ho, ho ho!»

He drank. «And now, child of an ignorant mother,» he went on, «it is yet to be seen that you have knowledge of strange things. I propose that we amuse ourselves with the game of questions. Each shalt ask of the other seven questions, and he who answers best shall be adjudged the winner. Ask, mortal!»

Seven questions. Shea considered a moment how he could make them yield him the most information. «Where has Odinn gone?» he asked finally.

«One,» said Heimdall. «He has gone to the gates of Hell to summon from her grave a woman centuries dead.»

«Did you say Hell, honest?» asked Shea.

«It is not to be doubted.»

«Well, well, you don’t say so.» Shea was covering his own incredulity and confusion. This man — god — individual was more difficult than any psychopathic he had ever questioned. He gathered his mental forces for the next try.

«What is Odinn doing that for?»

«Two,» replied Heimdall. «The Time is coming. Balder dies, and the Æsir need advice. The Wanderer believes that the spae-wife buried at the gates of Hell can tell us what we need to know.»

The vaguely ominous statements about the Time were beginning to get on Shea’s nerves, He asked, «What is meant by the statement, ‘the Time is coming’?»

«Three. Ragnarök, as all men know. All men but you alone, dewy-eyed innocent.»

«What’s Ragnarök?»

«Four. The end of the world, babe in a man’s body.»

Shea’s temper stirred. He didn’t like this elaborate ridicule, and he didn’t think it fair of Heimdall to count his last question, which had been merely a request to explain an unfamiliar word in the previous answer. But he had met irritatingly irrelevant replies at the Garaden Institute and managed to keep himself under control.

«When will all this happen?»

«Five. Not men, or gods, or Vanir, or even the dwarfs know, but it will be soon. Already the Fimbulwinter, the winter in summer that precedes Ragnarök, is upon us.»

«They will say there’s going to be a battle. Who will win?» Shea was proud of himself for that question. It covered both the participants and the result.

«Six. Gods and men were glad to have the answer to that, youngling, since we shall stand together against the giant folk. But for the present there is this to be said: our chances are far from good. There are four weapons of great power among us: Odinn’s spear, Gungnir; the Hammer of Thor that is called Mjollnir; Frey’s sword, the magic blade Hundingsbana; and my own good sword which bears the name of Head.» He slapped the hilt of the sword that hung by his side. «But some of the giants, we do not know how or who, have stolen both the great Hammer and Frey’s sword. Unless they are recovered it may be that gods and men will drink of death together.»

Shea realized with panic that the world whose destruction Heimdall was so calmly discussing was the one in which he, Harold Shea, was physically living. He was at the mercy of a system of events he could not escape.

«What can I do to keep from getting caught in the gears?» he demanded, and then, seeing Heimdall look puzzled, «I mean, if the world’s going to bust up, how can I keep out of the smash?»

Heimdall’s eyebrows went up. «Ragnarök is upon us, that not gods know how to avoid — and you, son of man, think of safety! The answer is nothing. And now this is your seventh question and is is my turn to ask of you.»

«But —»

«Child of Earth, you weary me.» He stared straight into Shea’s eyes, and once more there was that sensation of an icicle piercing his brain. But Heimdall’s voice was smooth. «From which of the nine worlds do you come, strangest of strangers, with garments like to none I have seen?»

Shea thought. The question was a little like, «Have you quit beating your wife?» He asked cautiously, «Which nine worlds?»

Heimdall laughed lightly. «Ho — I thought I was to be the questioner here. But there is the abode of the gods that is Asgard, and that is one world; and the homes of the giants, that are Jöunheim, Musspellheim, Niflheim, and Hell or five worlds in all. There is Alfheim where Live the dwarfs; and Svartalfheim and Vanaheim which we do not know well, though it is said the Vanir shall stand with us at the Time. Lastly there is Midgard, which is overrun with such worms as you.»

Shea yawned. The mead and warmth were beginning to pull upon him. «To tell the truth, I don’t come from any of them, but from outside your system of worlds entirely.»

«A strange answer is that, yet not so strange, but it could be true,» said Heimdall, thoughtfully. «For I can see the nine worlds from where I sit and nowhere such a person as yourself. Say nothing of this to the other Æsir, and above all to the Wanderer. He would take it ill to hear there was a world in which he held no power. Now I will ask my second question. What men or gods rule this world of yours?»

Shea found himself yawning again. He was too tired for explanations and flipped off his answer. «Well, some say one class and some say another, but the real rulers are called traffic cops. They pinch you —»

«Are they then some form of crab-fish?»

«No. They pinch you for moving too fast, wheres a crab pinches you for moving too slowly.»

«Still they are sea gods, I perceive, like my brother Ægir. What is their power?»

Shea fought a losing battle against another yawn. «I’m sorry I seem to be sleepy,» he said. «Aren’t you going to bed soon, Golden?»

«Me? Ho, ho! Seldom has such ignorance been seen at the Crossroads of the World. I am the Watcher of the Gods, and never sleep. Sleepless One is, indeed, another of my titles. But it is to be seen that it is otherwise with you, youngling, and since I have won the game of questions you may go to bed.»

An angry retort rose to Shea’s lips at this calm assumption of victory, but he remembered that icy glare in time. Helmdall, however, seemed able to read his mind. «What! You would argue with me? Off to bed — and remember our little plot against the Bringer of Discord. Henceforth you are Turnip Harald, the bold and crafty warlock.»

Shea risked just one more question. «What is a warlock, please, sir?»

«Ho, ho! Child from another world, your ignorance is higher than a mountain and deeper than a well. A warlock is a wizard, an enchanter, a weaver of spells, a raiser of spirits. Good-night, Turnip Harald.»

The bedroom proved to have a sliding door. Shea found it no bigger than a Pullman section and utterly without ventilation. The bed was straw-stuffed and jabbed him. He could not find comfort. After an hour or so of tossing, he had the experience, not uncommon on the heels of a day of excitements, of finding himself more wide-awake than in the beginning.

For a time his thoughts floated aimlessly; then he told himself that, since this was an experiment, he might as well spend the sleepless hours trying to assemble results. What were they?

Well, firstly that there had been an error either in the equations or his use of them, and he had been pitched into a world of Scandinavian mythology — or else Scandinavian history. He was almost prepared to accept the former view.

These people talked with great conviction about their Ragnarök. He was enough of a psychologist to recognize their sincerity. And that icy stare he had felt from Odinn and then Heimdall was something, so far as he knew, outside ordinary human experience. It might be a form of hypnosis, but he doubted whether the technique, or even the idea of hypnotism, would be known to ancient viking chiefs. No, there was something definitely more than human about them.

Yet they had human enough attributes as well. It ought not to be beyond the powers of an experimental psychologist to guide his conduct by analysing them a little and making use of the results. Odinn? Well, he was off to the gates of Hell, whither Shea had no desire to follow him. Not much to be made of him, anyway, save a sense of authority.

What about Loki? A devastatingly sharp tongue that indicated a keen mind at work, Also a certain amount of malice. Uncle Fox, Thjatfi had called him, and said he was fond of jokes. Shea told himself he would not be surprised to find the jokes were often of a painful order. Working for him might be difficult, but Shea smiled to himself as he thought how he could surprise the god with so simple an object as a match.

Frey he had hardly noticed. Thor apparently was no more than a big, good-natured bruiser, and Thjalfi, the kind of rustic one would find in any country town, quoting Eddic lays instead of the Bible.

Heimdall, however, was a more complex character, certainly lacking in Loki’s sense of humour. And he quite evidently felt he had a position of dignity to maintain with relation to the common herd — as witness his insistence on titles. But equally evidently, he was prepared to accept the responsibilities of that position, throw himself heart and soul and with quite a good mind into the right side of the scales — as Loki was not. Perhaps that was why he hated Loki. And Heimdall, underneath the shell of dignity, had a streak of genuine kindness. One felt one could count on him — and deciding he liked Heimdall the best of the lot, Shea turned over and went to sleep.

FOUR

Shea awoke with a set of fur-bearing teeth and a headache that resembled the establishment of a drop-forging plant inside his brain — whether from the mead or the effect of those two piercing glances he had received from Heimdall and Odinn he could not tell. It was severe enough to stir him to a morning-after resolution to avoid all three in the future.

When the panel of his bedroom slid back he could hear voices from the hall. Thor, Loki. and Thjalfi were at breakfast as he came in, tearing away with knives and fingers at steaks the size of unabridged dictionaries. The foxy-faced Loki greeted him cheerfully: «Hail, hero of the turnip fields! Will your lordship do us the honour of breakfasting with us?»

He shoved a wooden platter with a hunk of meat on it towards Shea and passed along one of a collection of filled mugs— Shea’s mouth was dry, but he almost gagged when a pull at the mug showed it contained beer and sour beer at that.

Loki laughed. «Ridiculous it is,» he said, «to see the children of men, who have no fixed customs, grow uneasy when customs about them change. Harald of the Turnips, I am told you are a notable warlock.»

Shea looked at his plate. «I know one or two tricks,» he admitted.

«It was only to be expected that a hero of such unusual powers would be modest. Now there is this to be said: a man fares ill at Ragnarök unless he have his place. Would you be one of my band at the Time?»

Shea gulped. He was still unconvinced about this story of a battle and the end of the world, but he might as well ride with the current till he could master it. «Yes, sir, and thank you.»

«The worm consents to ride on the eagle’s wings. Thank you, most gracious worm. Then I will tell you what you must do; you must go with us to Jötunheim, and that will be a hard journey.»

Shea remembered his conversation with Heimdall the night before. «Isn’t that where some of the giants live?»

«The frost giants to be exact. That lying Sleepless One claims to have heard Thor’s hammer humming somewhere in their castle; and for all of us it will be well to find that weapon. But we shall need whatever we possess of strength and magic in the task — unless, Lord Turnip Eater, you think you can recover it without our help.»

Shea gulped again. Should he go with them? He had come looking for adventure, but enough was enough. «What is adventure?» he remembered reading somewhere, with the answer, «Somebody else having a hell of a tough time a thousand miles away.» Only —

Thjalfi had come round the table, and said in a low voice:

«Look. My sister Röskva is staying here at the Crossroads, because the Giant Killer don’t think Jötunhejm would be any place for a woman. That leaves me all alone with these Æsir and an awful lot of giants. I’d be mighty obliged if ye could see your way to keep me company.»

«I’ll do it,» said Shea aloud. Then he realized that his impulsiveness had let him in for something. If Loki and Thor were not sure they could recover the hammer without help, it was likely to be an enterprise of some difficulty. Still, neither Æsir nor giants knew about matches — or the revolver. They would do for magic till something better came along.

«I’ve already spoken to the Lord of the Goat Chariot,» Thjalfi was saying. «He’d be glad to have ye come, but he says ye mustn’t disgrace him by asking to eat turnips. Ye’d best do something about those clothes. They’re more than light for this climate. Sverre-bonder will lend you some others.»

Sverre was glad to take the inadequate polo coat and riding breeches as security for the loan of some baggy Norse garments. Shea, newly dressed in accordance with his surroundings, went outside. A low, cheerless sun shone on the blinding white of new snow. As the biting cold nipped his nose Shea was thankful for the yards of coarse wool in which he was swathed.

The goat chariot was waiting. It was as big as a Conestoga wagon, notwithstanding that there were only two wheels. A line of incised runic letters was etched in black around the gold rim; the body was boldly painted red and gold. But the goats constituted the most remarkable feature. One was black, the other white, and they were as big as horses.

«This here’s Tooth Gnasher,» said Thjalfi, indicating the nigh goat, «and that there’s Tooth Gritter,» waving at the off goat, the black one. «Say, friend Harald, I’d be mighty obliged if ye’d help me tote the stuff out.»

Shea, ignorant of what the «stuff» was, followed Thjalfi into the bonder’s house, where the latter pointed to a big oak chest. This, he explained, held the Æsir’s belongings. Thjalfi hoisted one end by its bronze handle. Shea took hold of the other, expecting it to come up easily. The chest did not move. He looked at Thjalfi, but the latter merely stood, holding his end off the floor without apparent effort. So Shea took his handle in both hands and gave a mighty heave. He got his end up, but the thing seemed packed with ingots of lead. The pair went through the door, Thjalfi leading, Shea staggering and straining along in the rear. He almost yelled to Thjalfi to hurry and ease the horrible strain on his arms, but this would involve so much loss of face that he stuck it out. When they reached the chariot Shea dropped his end into the snow and almost collapsed across the chest. The icy air hurt his lungs as he drew great gasps of breath.

«All right,» said Thialfi calmly, «you catch hold here, and we’ll shove her aboard.» Shea forced his unwilling body to obey. They manhandled one end of the chest onto the tail of the chariot and somehow got the whole thing aboard. Shea was uncomfortably aware that Thjalfi had done three-quarters of the work, but the rustic seemed not to notice.

With the load in, Shea leaned against one of the shafts, waiting for his heart to slow down and for the aches in his arms and chest to subside. «Now it is to be seen,» said a voice, «that Thjalfi has persuaded another mortal to share his labours. Convenient is this for Thjalfi.»

It was the foxy-faced Loki, with the usual note of mockery in his voice. Once more Shea’s temper began to rise. Thjalfi was all right — but it did look as though he had talked Shea into coming along for the dirty work. If — Whoa! Shea suddenly remembered Loki’s title — «Bringer of Discord,» and Thjajfi’s warning about his jokes. Uncle Fox would doubtless think it very funny to get the two mortals into a quarrel, and for the sake of his own credit he didn’t dare let the god succeed.

Just then came a tug at his cloak. He whirled round; Tooth Gritter had seized the lower edge of the garment in his teeth and was trying to drag it off him. «Hey!» cried Shea, and dragged back. The giant goat shook its head and held on while Loki stood with hands on hips, laughing a deep, rich belly-laugh. He made not the slightest move to help Shea. Thjalfi came running round and added his strength to Shea’s. The cloak came loose with a rip; the two mortals tumbled backward. Tooth Gritter calmly munched the fragment he had torn from the cloak and swallowed it.

Shea got up scowling and faced a Loki purple with amusement. «Say, you,» he began belligerently, «what the hell’s so damn funny —» At that instant Thjalfi seized him from behind and whirled him away as though he were a child. «Shut up, ye nitwit!» he flung into Shea’s ear. «Don’t ye know he could burn ye to a cinder just by looking at ye?»

«But —»

«But nothing! Them’s gods! No matter what they do ye dassn’t say boo, or they’ll do something worse. That’s how things be!»

«Okay,» grumbled Shea, reflecting that rustics the world over were a little too ready to accept «that’s how things be,» and that when the opportunity came he would get back some of his own from Loki.

«Ye want to be careful around them goats,» continued Thjalfi. «They’re mean, and they eat most anything. I remember a funny thing as happened a fortnight hack. We found five men that had frozen to death on the moor. I says we ought to take them in so their folks could give ’ em burial. Thor says all right, take ’ em in. When we got to the house we was going to stay at, the bonder didn’t see as how there was any point in bringing ’em inside, ’cause when they got thawed out, they’d get kind of strong. So we stacked ’em in the yard, like firewood. Next morning, would ye believe it, those goats had gotten at ’em and et ’ em up. Everything but their buckles!» Thjalfi chuckled to himself.

As Shea was digesting this example of Norse humour, there came a shout of «Come on, mortals!» from Thor, who had climbed into the chariot. He clucked to the goats, who leaned forward. The chariot wheels screeched and turned.

«Hurry!» cried Thjalfi and ran for the chariot. He had reached it and jumped aboard with a single huge bound before Shea even started. The latter ran behind the now rapidly moving vehicle and tried to hoist himself up, His fingers, again numbed with cold, slipped, and he went sprawling on his face in the snow. He heard Loki’s infuriating laugh. As he pulled himself to his feet he remembered bitterly that he had made this «journey» to escape the feeling of insignificance and maladjustment that his former life had given him.

There was nothing to do but run after the chariot again. Thjalfi pulled him over the tail and slapped the snow from his clothes. «Next time,» he advised, «ye better get a good grip before ye try to jump. Ye know what it says in Hбvamбl:

It is better to live Than to Lie a corpse;

The quick man catches the cart.»

Thor, at the front of the chariot, said something to the goats. They broke from a trot to a gallop. Shea, clutching the side of the vehicle, became aware that it had no springs. He found he could take the jolting best by flexing his legs and yielding to the jerks.

Loki leaned towards him, grinning. «Hai, Turnip Harald! Let us be merry!» Shea smiled uncertainly. Manner and voice were friendly, but might conceal some new malicious trick. Uncle Fox contained airily: «Be merry while you can. These hill giants are uncertain of humour where we go. He, he, I remember a warlock named Birger. He put a spell on one of the hill giants so he married a goat instead of a girl. The giant cut Birger open, tied one end of his entrails to a tree, and chased him around it. He, he!»

The anecdote was not appetizing and the chariot was bounding on at the same furious pace, throwing its passengers into the air every time it hit a bump. Up — down — bang — up — down — bang. Shea began to regret his breakfast.

Thjalfi said; «Ye look poorly, friend Harald; sort of goose-green. Shall I get something to eat?»

Shea had been fighting his stomach in desperate dread of losing further prestige. But the word «eat» ended the battle. He leaned far over the side of the chariot.

Loki laughed. Thor turned at the sound, and drowned Loki’s laughter in a roar of his own. «Haw, haw, haw! If you foul up my chariot, Turnip Harald, I’ll make you clean it.» There was a kind of good-natured contempt in the tone, more galling than Uncle Fox’s amusement.

Shea’s stomach finally ceased its convulsions and he sat down on the chest wishing he were dead, Perhaps it was the discomfort of the seat, but he soon stood up again, forcing himself to grin. «I’ll be all right now. I’m just not used to such a pace.»

Thor turned his bead again and rumbled. «You think this fast, springling? You have in no wise any experience of speed. Watch.» He whistled to the goats, who stretched their heads forward and really opened out. The chariot seemed to spend most of the time in the air; at intervals, it would hit a ridge in the road with a thunderous bang and then take off again. Shea clung for dear life to the side, estimating their speed at something between sixty and seventy miles an hour. This is not much in a modern automobile on a concrete road, but something quite different in a two-wheeled springless cart on a rutted track.

«Wow! Wow! Wow!» yelled Thor, carried away by his awn enjoyment. «Hang on; here’s a curve!» Instead of slackening speed the goats fairly leaped, banking inward on the turn. The chariot lurched in the opposite direction. Shea clung with eyes closed and one arm over the side. «Yoooeee!» bellowed Thor.

It went on for ten minutes more before Thjalfi suggested lunch. Shea found himself actually hungry again. But his appetite quailed at the sight of some slabs that looked Like scorched leather.

«Ulp — what’s that?»

«Smoked salmon,» said Thjalfi. «Ye put one end in your mouth, like this. Then ye bite. Then ye swallow. Ye have sense enough to swallow, I suppose?»

Shea tried it. He was amazed that any fish could be so tough. But as he gnawed he became aware of a delicious flavour. When I get back, he thought, I must look up sonic of this stuff. Rather, if I get back.

The temperature rose during the afternoon, and toward evening the wheels were throwing out fans of slush. Thor roared «Whoa!» and the goats stopped. They were in a hollow between low hills, grey save where the snow had melted to show dark patches of grass. In the hollow itself a few discouraged-looking spruces showed black in the twilight.

«Here we camp,» said Thor. «Goat steak would be our feasting had we but fire.»

«What does he mean?» Shea whispered to Thjalfi.

«It’s one of the Thunderer’s magic tricks. He slaughters Tooth Gnasher or Tooth Gritter and we can eat all but the hide and bones. He magics them back to life.»

Loki was saying to Thor «Uncertain is it, Enemy of the Worm, whether my fire spell will be effective here. In this hill-giant land there are spells against spells. Your lightning flash?»

«It can shiver and slay but not kindle in this damp,» growled Thor. «You have a new warlock there. Why not make him work?»

Shea had been feeling for his matches. They were there and dry. This was his chance. «That’ll be easy,» he said lightly. «I can make your fire as easy as snapping my fingers. Honest.»

Thor glared at him with suspicion «Few are the weaklings equal to any works,» he said heavily. «For my part I always hold that strength and courage are the first requirements of a man. But I will not gainsay that occasionally my brothers feel otherwise, and it may be that you can do as you say.»

«There is also cleverness, Wielder of Mjollnir,» said Loki. «Even your hammer blows would be worthless if you did not know where to strike; and it may be that this outlander can show us some new thing. Now I propose a contest, we two and the warlock. The first of us to make the fire light shall have a blow at either of the others.»

«Hey!» said Shea. «If Thor takes a swat at me, you’ll have to get a new warlock.»

«That will not be difficult.» Loki grinned and rubbed his hands together. Though Shea decided the sly god would find something funny about his mother’s funeral, for once he was not caught. He grinned back, and thought he detected a flicker of approval in Uncle Fox’s eyes.

Shea and Thjalfi tramped through the slush to the clump of spruces. As he pulled our his supposedly rust-proof knife, Shea was dismayed to observe that the blade had developed a number of dull-red freckles. He worked manfully hacking down a number of trees and branches. They were piled on a spot from which the snow had disappeared, although the ground was still sopping.

«Who’s going to try first?» asked Shea.

«Don’t be more foolish than ye have to,» murmured Thjalfi. «Redbeard, of course.»

Thor walked up to the pile of brush and extended his hands. There was a blue glow of corona discharge around them, and a piercing crack as bright electric sparks leaped from his fingertips to the wood. The brush stirred a little and a few puffs of water vapour rose from it. Thor frowned in concentration. Again the sparks crackled, but no fire resulted.

«Too damp is the wood,» growled Thor. «Now you shall make the attempt, Sly One.»

Loki extended his hands and muttered something too low for Shea to hear. A rosy-violet glow shone from his hands and danced among the brush. In the twilight the strange illumination lit up Loki’s sandy red goatee, high cheekbones, and slanting brows with startling effect. His lips moved almost silently. The spruce steamed gently, but did not tight.

Loki stepped back. The magenta glow died out. «A night’s work,» said he. «Let us see what our warlock can do.»

* * *

Shea had been assembling a few small twigs, rubbing them to dryness on his clothes and arranging them like an Indian tepee. They were still dampish, but he supposed spruce would contain enough resin to light.

«Now,» he said with a trace of swagger. «Let everybody watch. This is strong magic.»

He felt around in the little container that held his matches until he found some of the nonsafety kitchen type. His three companions held their breaths as he took out a match and struck it against the box.

Nothing happened.

He tried again. Still no result. He threw the match away and essayed another, again without success. He tried another, and another, and another. He tried two at once. He put away the kitchen matches and got out a box of safety matches. The result was no better. There was no visible reason. The matches simply would not light.

He stood up. «I’m sorry,» he said, «but something has gone wrong. If you’ll just wait a minute, I’ll look it up in my book of magic formulas.»

There was just enough light left to read by. Shea got out his Boy Scout Manual. Surely it would tell him what to do — if not with failing matches, at least it would instruct him in the art of rubbing sticks.

He opened it at random and peered, blinked his eyes, shook his head, and peered again. The light was good enough. But the black marks on the page, which presumably were printed sentences, were utterly meaningless. A few letters looked vaguely familiar, but he could make nothing of the words. He leafed rapidly through the book; it was the same senseless jumble of hen tracks everywhere. Even the few diagrams meant nothing without the text.

Harold Shea stood with his mouth open and not the faintest idea of what to do next. «Well,» rumbled Thor, «where is our warlock fire?»

In the background Loki tittered. «He perhaps prefers to eat his turnips uncooked.»

«I. I’m sorry, sir,» babbled Shea. «I’m afraid it won’t work.»

Thor lifted his massive fist. «It is time,» he said, «to put an end to this lying and feeble child of man who raises our hopes and then condemns us to a dinner of cold salmon.»

«No, Slayer of Giants,» said Loki. «Hold your hand. He furnishes us something to laugh at, which is always good in this melancholy country. I may be able to use him where we are going.»

Thor slowly lowered his arm. «Yours be the responsibility. I am not unfriendly to the children of men; but for liars I have no sympathy. What I say I can do, and that will I do.»

Thjalfi spoke. «If ye please, sir, there’s a dark something up yonder.» He pointed toward the head of the valley. «Maybe we can find shelter.»

Thor growled an assent; they got back into the chariot and drove up towards the dark mass. Shea was silent, with the blackest of thoughts. He would leave his position as researcher at the Garaden Institute to go after adventure with a capital A, would he? And as an escape from a position where he felt himself inferior and inclosed. Well, he told himself bitterly, he had landed in another still more inclosed and inferior. Yet why was it his preparations had so utterly failed? There was no reason for the matches’ not lighting or the book’s turning into gibberish — or for that matter the failure of the flashlight on the night before.

Thjalfi was whispering to him. «By the beard of Odinn, I’m ashamed of you, friend Harald. Why did ye promise a fire if you couldn’t make it?»

«I thought I could, honest,» said Shea morosely.

«Well, maybe so. Ye certainly rubbed the Thunderer the wrong way. Ye’d best be grateful to Uncle Fox. He saved your life for you. He ain’t as bad as some people think, I always say. Usually helps you out in a real pinch.»

The dark something grew into the form of an oddly shaped house. The top was rounded, the near end completely open. When they went in Shea found to his surprise that the floor was of some linoleumlike material, as were the curving walls and low-arched roof. There seemed only a single, broad low room, without furniture or lights. At the far end they could dimly make out fire hallways, circular in cross section, leading they knew not where. Nobody cared to explore.

Thjaifi and Shea dragged down the heavy chest and fished out blankets. For supper the four glumly chewed pieces of smoked salmon. Thor’s eyebrows worked in a manner that showed he was trying to control justifiable anger.

Finally Loki said: «It is in my mind that our fireless warlock has not heard the story of your fishing, son of Jörd.»

«Oh,» said Thor, «that story is not unknown. But it is good that men should hear it and learn from it. Let me think—»

«Odinn preserve us!» murmured Thjalfi in Shea’s ear, «I’ve only heard this a million times.»

Thor rumbled: «I was guesting with the giant Hymir. We rowed far out in the blue sea. I baited my hook with a whole ox-head, for the fish I fish are worthy a man’s strength. At the first strike I knew I had the greatest fish of all: to wit, the Midgard Serpent, for his strength was so great. Three whales could not have pulled so hard. For nine hours I played the serpent, thrashing to and fro, before I pulled him in. When his head came over the gunwale, he sprayed venom in futile wrath; it ate holes in my clothes. His eyes were as great as shields, and his teeth that long.» Thor held up his hands in the gloom to show the length of the teeth. «I pulled and the serpent pulled again. I was braced with my belt of strength; my feet nearly went through the bottom of the boat.»

«I had all but landed the monster, when — I speak no untruth — that fool Hymir got scared and cut the line. The biggest thing any fisherman ever caught, and it escaped!» He finished on a mournful note; «I gave Hymir a thumping he will not soon forget. But it did not give me the trophy I wanted to hang on the walls of Thrudvang!»

Thjalfi leaned toward Shea, singing in his ear:

«A man shall not boast Of the fish that fled

Or the bear he failed to flay;

Bigger they be Than those borne back

To hang their heads in the hall.

At least that’s what Atli’s Drapar says.»

Loki chuckled; he had caught the words. «True, youngling. Had any but our friend and great protector told such a tale, I would doubt it.»

«Doubt me?» rumbled Thor. «How would you like one of my buffets?» He drew hack his arm. Loki ducked. Thor uttered a huge good-natured laugh. «Two things gods and mortals alike doubt — tales of fishing and the virtue of women.»

He lay back among the blankets, took two deep breaths and seemed to be snoring instantly. Loki and Thjalfi also lapsed into silence.

Shea, unable to sleep, let his mind go over the day’s doings. He had shown up pretty badly. It annoyed him, for he was beginning to like these people, even the unapproachable and tempestuous Thor. The big fellow was all right: someone you could depend on right up to the hilt, especially in any crisis that required straight-forward courage. He would see right and wrong divided by a line of absolute sharpness, chalk on one side, coal dust on the other. He became annoyed when others proved to lack his own simple strength.

* * *

About Loki, Shea was not quite so sure. Uncle Fox had saved his life all right, but Shea suspected that there had been a touch of self-interest about the act. Loki expected to make some use of him, and not entirely as a butt of jokes, either. That keen mind had doubtless noted the unfamiliar gear Shea had brought from the twentieth century and was speculating on its use.

But why had those gadgets failed to work? Why had he been unable to read simple English print?

Was it English? Shea tried to visualize his name in written form. It was easy enough, and showed him that the transference had not made him illiterate. But wait a minute, what was he visualizing? He concentrated on the row of letters in his mind’s eye. What he saw was:

These letters spelled Harold Bryan Shea to him. At the same time he realized they weren’t the letters of the Latin alphabet. He tried some more visualizations. «Man» came out as:

Something was wrong. «Man,» he vaguely remembered, ought not to have four letters.

Then, gradually, he realized what had happened. Chalmers had been right and more than right. His mind had been filled with the fundamental assumptions of this new world. When he transferred from his safe, Midwestern institute to this howling wilderness, he bad automatically changed languages. If it were otherwise, if the shift were partial, he would be a dement — insane. But the shift was complete. He was speaking and understanding old Norse, touching old Norse gods and eating old Norse food. No wonder he had had no difficulty making himself understood.

But as an inevitable corollary, his knowledge of English had vanished When he thought of the written form of «man» he could form no concept but that of the four runic characters:

He couldn’t even imagine what the word would look like with the runes put into other characters. And he had failed to read his Boy Scout Handbook.

Naturally his gadgets had failed to work. He was in a world not governed by the laws of twentieth-century physics or chemistry. It had a mental pattern which left no room for matches or flashlights, or non-rusting steel. These things were simply inconceivable to anyone around him. Therefore they did not exist save as curiously shaped objects of no value.

Well, anyway, he thought to himself drowsily, at least I won’t have to worry about the figure I cut in front of these guys again. I’ve fallen so low that nothing I could do would make me a bigger fool. Oh, what the hell —

FIVE

Shea awoke before dawn, shivering. The temperature was still above freezing, but a wind had come up, and the grey landscape was curtained with driving rain. He yawned and sat up with his blanket round him like an Indian. The others were still asleep and he stared out for a moment, trying to recover the thread of last night’s thoughts.

This world he was in — perhaps permanently — was governed by laws of its own. What were those laws? There was one piece of equipment of which the transference had not robbed him; his modem mind, habituated to studying and analysing the general rules guiding individual events. He ought to be able to reason out the rules governing this existence and to use them — something which the rustic Thjalfi would never think of doing. So far the only rules he had noticed were that the gods had unusual powers. But there must be general laws underlying even these —

Thor’s snores died away into a gasping rattle. The red-bearded god rubbed his eyes, sat up, and spat.

«Up, all Æsir’s men!» he said. «Ah, Harald of the Turnips, you are already awake. Cold salmon will be our breakfast again since your fire magic failed.» Then, as he saw Shea stiffen: «Nay, take it not unkindly. We Æsir are not unkind to mortals, and I’ve seen more unpromising objects than you turn out all right. Make a man of you yet, youngling. Just watch me and imitate what I do.» He yawned and the yawn spread into a bristling grin.

The others bestirred themselves. Thjalfi got out some smoked salmon. However good the stuff was, Shea found the third successive meal of it a little too much.

They were just beginning to gnaw when there was a heavy tramp outside. Through the rain loomed a grey shape whose outline made Shea’s scalp tingle. It was mannish, but at least ten feet tall, with massive columnar legs. It was a giant.

The giant stooped and looked into the travellers’ refuge.

Shea, his heart beating madly, backed up against the curving wall, his hand feeling for his hunting knife. The face that looked in was huge, with bloodshot grey eyes and a scraggly iron-grey beard, and its expression was not encouraging.

«Ungh,» snarled the giant, showing yellow snags of teeth. His voice was a couple of octaves beneath the lowest human bass. «’Scuse me, gents, but I been looking for my glove. How ’bout having a little breakfast together, huh?»

Shea, Thjalfi and Loki all looked at Thor. The Red God stood with feet wide apart, surveying the giant for some minutes. Then he said, «Good is guesting on a journey. We offer some smoked salmon. But what have you?»

«The name’s Skrymir, buddy. I got some bread and dried dragon meat. Say, ain’t you Thor Odinnsson, the hammer thrower?»

«That is not incorrect.»

«Boy, oh, boy, ain’t that something?» The giant made a horrible face that was probably intended for a friendly grin. He reached around for a bag that hung at his back and sitting down in front of the shelter, opened it. Shea got a better view of him, though not one that inspired a more favourable impression. The monster’s long grey hair was done up in a topknot with bone skewers stuck through it. He was dressed entirely in furs, of which the cloak must have come from the grandfather of all the bears, though it was none too large for him.

Skrymir rook from his bag a slab of Norse bread the size of a mattress, and several hunks of leathery grey meat. These he slapped down in front of the travellers. «All right, youse guys help yourselves,» he rumbled. «Let’s see some of that salmon, huh?»

Thjalfi mutely handed over a piece of the salmon on which the giant set noisily to work. He drooled, now and then wiping his face with the back of his huge paw, and getting himself well smeared with salmon grease.

Shea found he had to break up his portion of the bread with his knife-handle before he could manage it, so hard was the material. The dragon meat was a little easier, but still required some hard chewing, and his jaw muscles were sore from the bearing they had taken in the last twenty-four hours. The dragon meat had a pungent, garlicky flavour that he didn’t care for.

As Shea gnawed he saw a louse the size of a cockroach crawl out from the upper edge of one of Skrymir’s black fur leggings, amble around a bit in the jungle of hair below the giant’s knee, and stroll back into its sanctuary. Shea almost gagged. His appetite tapered off, though presently it returned. After what he had been through lately, it would take more than a single louse to spoil his interest in food for any length of time. What the hell?

Loki, grinning slyly, asked: «Are there turnips in your bag, Hairy One?»

Skrymir frowned. «Turnips? Naw. Whatcha want with ’em?»

«Our warlock» — Loki jerked his thumb at Shea — «eats them.»

«What-a-at? No kiddin’!» roared the giant. «I heard of guys that eat bugs and drink cow’s milk, but I ain’t never heard of nobody what eats turnips.»

Shea said: «That’s how I get some of my magic powers,» with a somewhat sickly smile, and felt he had come out of it fairly well.

Skrymir belched. It was not an ordinary run-of-the-mine belch, but something akin to a natural cataclysm. Shea tried to hold his breath until the air cleared. The giant settled himself and inquired: «Say, how come youse is travelling in Jöunheim?»

«The Wing Thor travels where he will,» observed Loki loftily, but with a side glance.

«Aw right, aw right, butcha don’t have to get snotty about it. I just was thinking there’s some relations of Hrungnir and Geirröd that was laying for Thor. They’d just love to have a chance to get even witcha for bumping off those giants.»

Thor rumbled: «Few will be more pleased than I to meet —»

But Loki interrupted: «Thank you for the warning, friend Skrymir. Good is the guesting when men are friendly. We will do as much for you one of these days. Will you have more salmon?»

«Naw, I had all I want.»

Loki continued silkily, «Would it be impertinence to ask whither your giantship is bound?»

«Aw, I’m going up to Utgard. Utgardaloki’s throwing a big feed for all the gaints.»

«Great and glorious will be that feasting.»

«You’re damn right it’ll be great. All the hill giants and frost giants and fire giants together at once say, that’s something!»

«It would give us pleasure to see it. If we went as guests of so formidable a giant as yourself, none of Hrungnir’s or Geirröd’s friends would dare make trouble, would they?»

Skrymir showed his snags in a pleased grin. «Them punks? Haw, they wouldn’t do nothing.» He picked his teeth thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. «Yeah, I guess you can come. The big boss, Utgardaloki, is a good guy and a friend of mine. So you won’t have no trouble. If youse’ll clear outta my glove, we can start right now.»

«What?» All four spoke at once.

«Yeah. My glove, that’s what you slept in.»

The implications of this statement were so alarming that the four travellers picked up their belongings and scrambled out of the shelter with ludicrous haste — the mighty Thor included.

* * *

The rain had ceased. Ragged serpents of mist, pearly against the darker grey of the clouds, crawled over the hills. Outside, the travellers looked back at their shelter. There was no question that it was an enormous glove.

Skrymir grasped the upper edge of the opening with his left hand and thrust the right into the erstwhile dwelling. From where he stood, Shea couldn’t see whether the big glove had shrink to fit or whether it had faded out of sight and been replaced by a smaller one. At the same time he became suddenly conscious of the fact that he was wet to the skin.

Before he had a chance to think over the meaning of these facts, Thor was bellowing at him to help get the chariot loaded.

When he was sitting hunched upon the chest and swaying to the movement of the cart, Thjalfi murmured to him: «I knew Loki would get around the Hairy One. When it’s something that calls for smartness, ye can depend on Uncle Fox, I always say.»

Shea nodded silently and sneezed. He’d be lucky if he didn’t come down with a first-class cold, riding in these wet garments. The landscape was wilder and bleaker around them than even on the previous day’s journey. Ahead Skrymir tramped along, the bag on his back swaying with his strides, his sour sweat smell wafting back over the chariot.

Wet garments. Why? The rain had stopped when they emerged from that monstrous glove. There was something peculiar about the whole business of that glove. The others, including the two gods, had unhesitatingly accepted its huge size as an indication that Skrymir was even larger and more powerful than he seemed. He was undoubtedly a giant — but hardly that much of a giant. Shea supposed that although the world he was in did not respond to the natural laws of that from which he had come, there was no reason to conceive that the laws of illusion had changed. He had studied psychology enough to know something of the standard methods used by stage magicians. But others, unfamiliar both with such methods and the technique of modem thought, would not think of criticizing observation with pure logic. For that matter, they would not think of questioning the evidence of observation — «You know,» he whispered suddenly to Thjalfi, «I just wonder whether Loki is as clever as he thinks, and whether Skrymir isn’t smarter than he pretends.»

The servant of gods gave him a startled glance. «A mighty strange word is that. Why?»

«Well, didn’t you say the giants would be fighting against the gods when this big smash comes?»

«Truly I did:

High blows Heimdall. The horn is aloft;

The ash shall shake And the rime-giants ride

On the roads of Hell —

Leastways that’s what Völuspa says, the words of the prophetess.»

«Then isn’t Skrymir a shade too friendly with someone he’s going to fight?»

Thialfi gave a barking laugh. «Ye don’t know much about öku-Thor to say that. This Skrymir may be big, but Red-beard has his strength belt on. He could twist that there giant right up, snip-snap.»

Shea sighed, But he tried once more. «Well, look here, did you notice that when Skrymir put his glove on, your clothes got wet all of a sudden?»

«Why, yes now that I think of it.»

«My idea is that there wasn’t any giant glove there at all. It was an illusion, a magic, to scare us. We really slept in the open without knowing it, and got soaked. But whoever magicked us did a good job, so we didn’t feel the wet till the spell was off and the big glove disappeared.»

«Maybe so. But how does it signify?»

«It signified that Skrymir didn’t blunder into us by accident. It was a put-up job.»

The rustic scratched his head in puzzlement. «Seems to me ye’re being a little mite fancy, friend Harald.» He looked around. «I wish we had Heimdall along. He can see a hundred leagues in the dark and hear the wool growing on a sheep’s back. But ’twouldn’t do to have him and Uncle Fox together. Thor’s the only one of the Æsir that can stand Uncle Fox.»

Shea shivered. «Say, friend Harald,» offered Thjalfi, «how would ye like to run a few steps to warm up?»

Shea soon learned that Thjalfi’s idea of warming up did not consist merely of dogtrotting behind the chariot, «We’ll race to yonder boulder and back to the chariot,» he said. «Be ye ready? Get set; go! Before Shea fairly got into his stride, his woollen flapping around him, Thjalfi was halfway to the boulder, gravel flying under his shoes, and clothes fluttering stiffly behind him like a flag in a gale. Shea had not covered half the distance when Thjalfi passed him, grinning, on the way back. He had always considered himself a good runner, but against this human antelope it was no contest. Wasn’t there anything in which he could hold his own against these people?»

* * *

ThjaIfi helped pull him over the tail of the chariot. «Ye do a little better than most runners, friend Harald,» he said with the cheerfulness of superiority. «But I thought I’d give ye a little surprise, seeing as how maybe ye hadn’t heard about my running. But» — he lowered his voice — «don’t let Uncle Fox get ye into any contests. He’ll make a wager and collect it out of your hide. Ye got to watch him that way.»

«What’s Loki’s game, anyway?» asked Shea. «I heard Heimdall suggesting he might be on the other side at the big fight.»

Thjalfi shrugged. «That there Child of Fury gets a little mite hasty about Loki. Guess he’d turn upon the right side all right, but he’s a queer one. Always up to something, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and he won’t let anyone boss him. There’s a lay about him, the Lokasenna, ye know:

I say to the gods And the Sons of gods

The things that whet my thoughts;

By the wells of the world There is none with the might

To make me do his will.»

That agreed fairly well with the opinion Shea had formed of the enigmatic Uncle Fox. He would have liked to discuss the matter with Thjalfi. But he found that while he could form such concepts as delayed adolescence, superego, and sadism readily enough, he could think of no words to express them. If he wanted to be a practising psychologist in this world, he would have to invent a whole terminology for the science.

He sneezed some more. He was catching cold. His nose clogged, and his eyes ran. The temperature was going down, and an icy breeze had risen that did nothing to add to his happiness.

They lunched without stopping, as they had on the previous day. As the puddles of the thaw began to develop crystals and the chariot wheels began to crunch, Shea blew on his mittens and slapped himself. Thjalfi looked sympathetic. «Be ye really cold, friend Harald?» he said. «This is barely freezing. A few years back we had a winter so cold that when we made a fire in the open, flames froze solid. I broke off some pieces and for the rest of the winter, whenever we wanted a

fire, I used one of them pieces to light it with. Would ’a’ come in might handy this morning. My uncle Einarr traded off some as amber.»

It was told with so straight a countenance, that Shea was not quite certain he was being kidded. In this world it might happen.

The terrible afternoon finally waned. Skrymir was walking with head up now, looking around him. The giant waved towards a black spot on the side of a hill. «Hey, youse, there’s a cave,» he said. «Whatcha say we camp in there, huh?»

Thor looked around. «It is not too dark for more of progress.»

Loki spoke up. «Not untrue, Powerful One, Yet I fear our warlock must soon freeze to an ice bone. We should have to pack him in boughs lest pieces chip off, ha-ha!»

«Oh, dote bide be,» said Shea. «I can stad it.» Perhaps he could; at least if they went on he wouldn’t have to manhandle that chest halfway up the hill.

He was overruled, but, after all, did nor have to carry the chest. When the chariot had been parked at the edge of a snowdrift, Skrymir took that bulky object under one arm and led the way up the stony slope to the cave mouth.

«Could you get us fire?» Thor asked Skrymir.

«Sure thing, buddy.» Skrymir strode down to a clump of small trees, pulled up a couple by the roots, and breaking them across his knee laid them for burning.

* * *

Shea put his head into the cave. At first he was conscious of nothing but the rocky gloom. Then he sniffed. He hadn’t been able to smell anything — not even Skrymir — for some hours, but now an odour pricked through the veil of his cold. A familiar odour — chlorine gas! What — «Hey, you,» roared Skrymir behind him. Shea jumped a foot. «Get the hell outta my way.»

Shea got. Skrvmir put his head down and whistled. At least he did what would have been called a whistle in a human being. From his lips it sounded more like an air-raid warning.

A little man about three feet tall, with a beard that made him look like a miniature Santa Claus, appeared at the mouth of the cave. He had a pointed hood, and the tail of his beard was tucked into his belt.

«Hey, you,» said Skrymir. «Let’s have some fire. Make it snappy.» He pointed to the pile of logs and brush in front of the cave mouth.

«Yes, sir,» said the dwarf. He toddled over to the pile and produced a coppery-looking bar out of his jacket. Shea watched the process with interest, but just then Loki tucked an icicle down his back, and when Shea had extracted it the fire was already burning with a hiss of damp wood.

The dwarf spoke up in a little chirping voice. «You are not planning to camp here, are you?»

«Yeah,» replied Skrymir. «Now beat it.»

«Oh, but you must not —»

«Shut up!» bellowed the giant. «We camp where we damn please.»

«Yessir. Thank you, sir. Anything else, sir?»

«Naw. Go on, beat it, before I step on you.»

The dwarf vanished into the cave. They got their belongings out and disposed themselves around the fire, which took a long time to grow. The setting sun broke through the clouds for a minute and smeared them with streaks of lurid vermilion. To Shea’s imagination, the clouds took on the form of apocalyptic monsters. Far in the distance he heard the cry of a wolf.

Thjalfi looked up suddenly, frowning. «What’s that noise?»

«What noise?» said Thor. Then he jumped up — he had been sitting with his back to the cave mouth — and spun around. «Hai, Clever One, our cave is already not untenanted!» He backed away slowly. From the depths of the cave there came a hiss like that of a steam-pipe leak, followed by a harsh, metallic cry.

«A dragon!» cried Thjalfi. A puff of yellow gas from the cave set them all coughing. A scrape of scales, a rattle of loose stones, and in the dark a pair of yellow eyes the size of dinner plates caught the reflection of the fire.

Æsir, giant, and Thjalfi shouted incoherently, grabbing for whatever might serve as a weapon.

«Here, I cad take care of hib!» cried Shea, forgetting his previous reasoning. He pulled out the revolver. As the great snakelike head came into view in the firelight, he aimed at one of the eyes and pulled the trigger.

The hammer clicked harmlessly. He tried again and again, click, click. The jaws came open with a reek of chlorine.

Harold Shea stumbled back. There was a flash of movement past his head. The butt end of a young tree, wielded by Skrymir, swished down on the beast’s head.

The eyes rolled. The head half turned towards the giant. Thor leaped in with a roaring yell, and let fly a right hook that would have demolished Joe Louis. There was a crunch of snapping bones; the fist sank right into the reptile’s face. With a scream like that of a disembowelled horse the head vanished into the cave.

Thjalfi helped Shea up. «Now maybe ye can see,» remarked the servant of gods, «why Skrymir would as lief not take chances with the Lord of the Goats.» He chuckled. «That there dragon’s going to have him a toothache next spring — if there is any spring before the Time.»

The dwarf popped out again. «Hai, Skrymir!»

«Huh?»

«I tried to warn you that a fire would bring the dragon out of hibernation. But you wouldn’t listen. Think you’re smart, don’t you? Yah! Yah! Yah!» The vest-pocket Santa Claus capered in the cave mouth for an instant, thumbing his nose with both hands. He vanished as Skrymir picked up a stone to throw.

The giant lumbered over to the cave and felt around inside.

«Never catch the little totrug now. They have burrows all through these hills,» he observed gloomily.

* * *

The evening meal was eaten in a silence made more pointed for Shea by the fact that he felt it was mostly directed at himself. He ought to have known better, he told himself bitterly.

In fact, he ought to have known better than to embark on such an expedition at all. Adventure! Romance! Bosh! As for the dream-girl whose fancied image he had once in a rash moment described to Walter Bayard, those he had seen in this miserable dump were like lady wrestlers. If he could have used the formulas to return instantly, he would.

But he could not. That was the point. The formulas didn’t exist any more, as far as he was concerned. Nothing existed but the bleak, snowbound hillside, the nauseating giant, the two Æsir and their servant regarding him with aversion. There was nothing he could do —

Whoa, Shea, steady, he remarked to himself. You’re talking yourself into a state of melancholy, which is, as Chalmers once remarked, of no philosophical or practical value. Too bad old Doc wasn’t along, to furnish a mature intellect and civilized company. The intelligent thing to do, was not to bemoan the past but to live in the present. He lacked the physical equipment to imitate Thor’s forthright approach to problems. But he could at least come somewhere near Loki’s sardonic and intelligent humour.

And speaking of intelligence, had he not already decided to make use of it in discovering the laws of this world? Laws which these people were not fitted, by their mental habit, to deduce?

He turned suddenly and asked: «Didn’t that dwarf say the fire fetched the dragon our of hibernation?»

Skrymir yawned, and spoke. «Yeah. What about it, snotty?»

«The fire’s still here. What if he, or another one comes back during the night?»

«Prob’ly eat you, and serve you right.» He cackled a laugh.

«The niggeling speaks sooth,» said Loki. «It were best to move our camp.»

The accent of contempt in the voice made Shea wince. But he went on: «We don’t have to do that, do we, sir? It’s freezing now and getting colder. If we take some of that Snow and stuff it into the cave, it seems to me the dragon would hardly come out across it.»

Loki slapped a knee. «Soundly and well said, turnip-man! Now you and Thjalfi shall do it. I perceive you are not altogether without your uses, since there has been a certain gain in wit since you joined our party. Who would have thought of stopping a dragon with snow?»

Thor grunted.

SIX

When Shea awoke he was still sniffling, but at least his head was of normal weight. He wondered whether the chlorine he had inhaled the previous evening might not have helped the cold. Or whether the improvement were a general one, based on his determination to accept his surroundings and make the most of them.

After breakfast they set out as before, Skrymir tramping on ahead. The sky was the colour of old lead. The wind was keen, rattling the branches of the scrubby trees and whirling an occasional snowflake before it. The goats slipped on patches of frozen slush, plodding uphill most of the time. The hills were all about them now, rising steadily and with more vegetation, mostly pine and spruce.

It must have been around noon—Shea could only guess at the time — when Skrymir turned and waved at the biggest mountain they had yet seen. The wind carried away the giant’s words, but Thor seemed to have understood. The goats quickened their pace towards the mountain, whose top hung in cloud.

After a good hour of climbing, Shea began to get glimpses of a shape looming from the bare crest, intermittently blotted out by the eddies of mist. When they were close enough to see it plainly, it became clearly a house, not unlike that of the bonder Sverre. But it was cruder, made of logs with the bark on, and vastly bigger — as big as a metropolitan railroad terminal.

Thjalfi said into his ear: «That will be Utgard Castle. Ye’ll need whatever mite of courage ye have here, friend Harald.» The young man’s teeth were chattering from something other than cold.

Skrymir lurched up to the door and pounded on it with his fist. He stood there for a long minute, the wind flapping his furs. A rectangular hole opened in the door. The door swung open. The chariot riders climbed down, stretching their stiff muscles as they followed their guide. The door banged shut behind them. They were in a dark vestibule like that in Sverre’s house but larger and foul with the odour of unwashed giant. A huge arm pushed the leather curtain aside, revealing through the triangular opening a view of roaring yellow flame and thronging, shouting giants.

Thjalfi murmured: «Keep your eyes open, Harald. As Thjodolf of Hvin says:

All the gateways Ere one goes out

Thoughtfully should a man scan;

Uncertain it is Where sits the unfriendly

Upon the bench before thee.»

Within, the place was a disorderly parody of Sverre’s. Of the same general form, with the same benches, its tables were all uneven, filthy, and littered with fragments of food. The fire in the centre hung a pall of smoke under the rafters. The dirty straw on the floor was thick about the ankles.

The benches and the passageway behind them were filled with giants, drinking, eating, shouting at the tops of their voices. Before him a group of six, with iron-grey topknots and patchy beards like Skrymir’s, were wrangling. One drew back his arm in anger. His elbow struck a mug of mead borne by a harassed-looking man who was evidently a thrall. The mead splashed onto another giant, who instantly snatched up a bowl of stew from the table and slammed it on the man’s head.

Down went the man with a squeal. Skrymir calmly kicked him from the path of his guests. The six giants burst into bubbling laughter, rolling in their seats and clapping each other on the back, their argument forgotten.

«Hai, Skridbaldnir!» Skrymir was gripping another giant on the bench by the arm. «How’s every little thing wit’ you? Commere, I wantcha to meet a friend of mine. This here guy’s Asa-Thor!»

Skridbaldnir turned. Shea noticed that he was slenderer than Skrymir, with ash-blond hair, the pink eyes of an albino, and a long, red ulcerated nose.

«He’s a frost giant,» whispered Thjalfi, «and that gang over there are fire giants.» He waved a trembling hand towards the other side of the table, where a group of individuals like taller and straighter gorillas were howling at each other. They were shorter than the other giants, not much more than eight feet tall. They had prognathous jaws and coarse black hair where their bodies were exposed. They scratched ceaselessly.

Halfway down the hall, at one side, sat the biggest hill giant of all, in a huge chair with interwoven serpents carved on the legs and arms. His costume was distinguished from those of the other giants in that the bone skewers through his topknot had rough gold knobs on their ends. One of his lower snag teeth projected for several inches beyond his upper lip. He looked at Skrymir and said: «Hai, bud. I see you got some kids witcha. It ain’t a good idea to bring kids to these feeds; they learns bad language.»

«They ain’t kids,» said Skrvmir. They’re a couple of men and a couple of Æsir. I told ’em they could come wit’ me. That okay, boss?»

Utgardaloki picked his nose and wiped his fingers on his greasy leather jacket before replying; «I guess so. But ain’t that one with the red whiskers Asa-Thor?»

«You are not mistaken,» said Thor.

«Well, well, you don’t say so. I always thought Thor was a big husky guy.»

Thor stuck out his chest, scowling. «It is ill to jest with the Æsir, giant.»

«Ho, ho, ain’t he the cutest little fella?» Utgardaloki paused to capture a small creeping thing that had crawled out of his left eyebrow and crack it between his teeth.

«A fair arrangement,» murmured Loki in Shea’s ear. «They live on him; he lives on them.»

Utgardaloki continued ominously: «But whatcha doing here, you? This is a respectable party, see, and I don’t want no trouble.»

Thor said; «I have come for my hammer, Mjöllnir.»

«Huh? What makes ya think we got it?»

«Ask not of the tree where it got its growth or of the gods their wisdom. Will you give it up, or do I have to fight you for it?»

«Aw, don’t be like that, öku-Thor. Sure, I’d give you your piddling nutcracker if I knew where it was.»

«Nutcracker! Why you —»

«Easy!» Shea could hear Loki’s whisper. «Son of Odinn, with the strong use strength; with the liar, lies.» He turned to Utgardaloki and bowed mockingly: «Chief of giants, we thank you for your courtesy and will not trouble you long. Trusting your word, lord, are we to understand that Mjöllnir is not here?»

«’Taint here as far as I know,» replied Utgardaloki, spitting on the floor and rubbing his bare foot over the spot, with just a hint of uneasiness.

«Might it not have been brought hither without your knowledge?»

Utgardaloki shrugged. «How in hell should I know? I said as far as I knew. This is a hell of a way to come at your host.»

«Evidently there is no objection should the desire come upon us to search the place.»

«Huh? You’re damn right there’s objections! This is my joint and I don’t let no foreigners go sniffing around.»

Loki smiled ingratiatingly. «Greatest of the Jötun, your objection is but natural with one who knows his own value. But the gods do not idly speak; we believe Mjöllnir is here, and have come in peace to ask it, rather than in arms with Odinn and his spear at our head, Heimdall and his great sword and Ulir’s deadly bow. Now you shall let us search for the hammer, or we will go away and return with them to make you such a feasting as you will not soon forget. But if we fail to find it we will depart in all peace. This is my word.»

«And mine!» cried Thor, his brows knitting. Beside him Shea noticed Thjalfi’s face go the colour of skimmed milk and was slightly surprised to find himself unafraid. But that may be because I don’t understand the situation, he told himself.

Utgardaloki scratched thoughtfully, his lips working. «Tell you what,» he said at last. «You Æsir are sporting gents, ain’t you?»

«It is not to be denied,» said Loki guardedly «that we enjoy sports.»

«I’ll make you a sporting proposition. You think you are great athaletes. Well, we got some pretty tough babies here, too. We’ll have some games, and if you beat us at even one of ’em; see, I’ll let you go ahead and search. If you lose, out you get.»

«What manner of games?»

«Hell, sonny, anything youse want.»

Thor’s face had gone thoughtful. «I am not unknown as a wrestler,» he remarked.

«Awright,» said Utgardaloki. «We’ll find someone to rassle you down. Can you do anything else?»

Loki spoke up. «I will meet your best champion at eating and our man Thjalfi here will run a race with you. Asa-Thor also will undertake any trial of strength you care to hold.»

«Swell. Me, I think these games are kid stuff, see? But it ought to be fun for some of the gang to see you take your licking. HAI! Bring Elli up here; here’s a punk that wants to rassle!»

With a good deal of shouting and confusion a space was cleared near the Fire in the centre of the hall. Thor stood with fists on hips, waiting the giant’s champion There came forward, not a giant, but a tall old woman. She was at least a hundred, a hunched bag of bones covered by thin, almost transparent skin, as wrinkled as the surface of a file.

Thor shouted: «What manner of jest is this, Utgardaloki? It is not to be said that Asa-Thor wrestles with women.»

«Oh, don’t worry none, kid. She likes it don’tcha, Elli?»

The crone bared toothless gums. «Yep,» she quavered. «And many’s the good man I put down, heh, heh.»

«But—» began Thor.

«Y’aint scared to work up a reputation, are you?»

«Ha! Thor afraid? Not of aught the giant kindred can do.» Thor puffed out his chest.

«I gotta explain the rules.» Utgardaloki put a hand on the shoulder of each contestant and muttered at them.

Shea felt his arm pinched and looked into the bright eyes of Loki. «Great and evil is the magic in this place,» whispered Uncle Fox, «and I misdoubt me we are to be tricked, for never have I heard of such a wrestling. But it may be that the spells they use are spells against gods alone and not for the eyes of men. Now I have here a spell against spells, and while these contests go forward you shall take it.» He handed Shea a piece of very thin parchment, covered with spidery runic writing.

«Repeat it forward, then backward, then forward again, looking as you do at the object you suspect of being an illusion. It may be you will see on the wall the hammer we seek.

«Wouldn’t the giants hide it away, sir?»

«Not with their boasting and vainglorious habit. It —»

«Awright,» said Urgardaloki in a huge voice, «go!»

Thor, roaring like a lion, seized Elli as though he intended to dash her brains out on the floor. But Elli might have been nailed where she was. Her rickety frame did not budge. Thor fell silent, wrenching at the crone’s arms and body. He turned purple in the face from the effort; the giants around murmured appreciatively.

Shea glanced at the slip Loki had given him. The words were readable, though they seemed to consist of meaningless strings of syllables — «Nyi — Nidi — Nordri — Sudri, Austri — Vestri — Altjof — Dvalinn.» He obediently repeated it according to the directions, looking at a giant’s club that hung on the wall. It remained a giant’s club. He turned back to the wrestling where Thor was puffing with effort, his forehead beaded with sweat.

«Witch!» Thor shouted at last, and seized her arm to twist it. Elli caught his neck with her free hand. There was a second’s scuffle and Thor skidded away, falling to one knee.

«That’s enough!» said Utgardaloki, stepping between them. «That counts as a fall; Elli wins. I guess it’s a good job you didn’t try to rassle with any of the big guys here, Thor, old kid?» The other giants roared an approval that drowned Thor’s growl.

Utgardaloki continued: «Awright, you, stand back! Get back, I say, or I’ll cut the blood-eagle on a couple of you! Next event’s an eating contest. Bring Loki up here. We got some eating for him to do.»

A fire giant shuffled through the press. His black hair had a reddish tinge, and his movements were quick and animal-like. «Is it lunch time yet?» he rasped. «Them three elk let for breakfast just kinda got my appetite going.»

Utgardaloki explained and introduced him to his opponent. «Please to meetcha,» said Logi. «I always like to see a guy what appreciates good food. Say, you ought come down to Muspellheim sometime. We got a cook there what knows how to roast a whale right. He uses charcoal fire and bastes it with bear grease —»

«That’ll do, Logi,» said Utgardaloki. «You get that guy talking about the meals he’s et and he’ll talk till the Time comes.»

Shea was pushed back by giants as they crowded in. An eddy of the crowd carried him still farther away from the scene of action as the giants made way for a little procession of harried-looking slaves. These bore two huge wooden platters, on each of which rested an entire roasted elk haunch. Shea stood on tiptoe and stretched Between a pair of massive shoulders he glimpsed Utgardaloki taking his place at the middle of a long table, at each end of which sat one of the contestants.

A shoulder moved across Shea’s field of vision, and he glanced up at the owner. It was a comparatively short giant, who bulged out in the middle to make up for his lack of stature. A disorderly mop of black-and-white hair covered his head. But the thing that struck Shea was that, as the giant turned profile to watch the eaters, the eye that looked from under the piebald thatch was bright blue.

That was wrong. Fire giants, as he had noted, had black eyes, hill giants grey or black eyes, frost giants pink. Of course, this giant might have a trace of some other blood — but there was a familiar angle to that long, high-bridged nose and something phony-looking about the mop of hair. Heimdall!

Shea whispered behind his hand: «How many mothers did you have, giant with the uncombed thatch?»

He heard a low chuckle and the answer came back: Thrice three, man from an unknown world! But there is no need to shout; I can hear your lightest whisper, even your thoughts half formed.»

«I think we’re being tricked,» continued Shea. He didn’t say it even in a whisper this time, merely thought it, moving his lips.

The answer was pat: «That is what was to be expected, and for no other reason did I come hither. Yet I have not solved the nature of the spells.»

Shea said; «I have been taught a spell» — and remembered Heimdall’s enmity to Loki and all his works, just in time to keep from mentioning Uncle Fox — «which may be of use in such a case.»

«Then use it,» Heimdall answered, «while you watch the contest.»

«Awright, ready, you two?» Utgardaloki shouted. «Go!»

The giants gave a shout. Shea, his eyes fixed on Loki, was repeating: «Nyi — Nidri — Nordri — Sudri.» The sly god bounced in his oversize chair as he applied his teeth to the elk haunch. The meat was disappearing a hunks the size of a mans fist at the rate of two hunks per second. Shea had never seen anything like it, and wondered where Loki was putting it all. He heard Thjalfi’s voice, thin in the basso-profundo clamour of the giants: «Besit yourself, Son of Laufey!!»

Then the bone, the size of a baseball bat, was clean. Loki dropped it clattering to the platter and sat back with a sigh. A whoop went up from the assembled giants. Shea saw Loki start forward again, the eyes popping from his head. Utgardaloki walked to the opposite end of the table. He bellowed «Logi wins!»

Shea turned to look at the other contestant. But his head bumped a giant’s elbow so violently that he saw stars. His eyes beaded with tears. For one fleeting second he saw no Logi there at all, only a great leaping flame at the opposite end of the table. A flicker — the teardrop was gone, and with it the picture.

Logi sat contentedly at the other end of the table, and Loki was crying: «He finished no sooner than myself!»

«Yeah, sonny boy, but he et the bone and the platter too. I said Logi wins!» boomed Utgardaloki.

«Heimdall!» Shea said it so loud that the god thrust a hand towards him. Fortunately the uproar around drowned his voice. «It is a trick an illusion. Logi is a flame.»

«Now, good luck go with your eyes, no-warlock and warlock. Warn Asa-Thor, and use your spell on whatever you can see, for it is more than ever important that the hammer be found. Surely, these tricks and sleights must mean the Time is even nearer than we think, and the giants are desirous not to see that weapon in the hands of Redbeard. Go!»

Utgardaloki, posted on the table where the eating contest had been held was directing the clearing of a section of the hall. «The next event is a footrace,» he was shouting. «You, shrimp!» — Utgardaloki pointed at Thjalfi. You’re going to run against my son Hugi. Where is that young half-wit? «Hugi!»

«Here I am, pop.» A gangling, adolescent giant wormed his way to the front. He had little forehead and less chin, and a crop of pimples the size of poker chips. «You want me to run against him? He, he, he!» Hugi drooled down his chin as he laughed.

Shea ducked and dodged, squeezing through towards Thor, who was frowning with concentration as he watched the preparations for the race. Thjalfi and the drooling Hugi placed themselves at one end of the hall. «Go!» cried Utgardaloki, and they raced for the far end of the hall, a good three hundred yards away. Thjaifi went like the wind, but Hugi went like a bullet. By the time Thjafi had reached the far end his opponent was halfway back.

«Hugi wins first heat!» roared Utgardaloki above a tornado of sound. «It’s two outta three.»

The crowd loosened a little as the contestants caught their breath. Shea found himself beside Thor and Loki.

«Hai, Turnip Harald,» rumbled the Redbeard, «where have you been?»

«It is more like anything else that he has been concealed under a table like a mouse,» remarked Loki, but Shea was too full of his news to resent anything.

«They’re trying to put over tricks on you on — us,» he burst out. «All these contests are illusions.»

He could see Thor’s lips curl. «Your warlock can see deeper into a millstone than most,» growled he angrily to Loki.

«No, but I mean it, really.» Hugi had just passed them to take his place for the second heat, the hall’s huge central fire on the other side. «Look,» said Shea. «That runner of theirs. He casts no shadow!»

Thor glanced and as comprehension spread across his features, turned purple. But just then Utgardaloki cried «Go!» again, and the second race was on. It was a repetition of the first. Utgardaloki announced over a delighted uproar that Hugi was the winner.

«I am to pick up their damned cat next,» growled Thor. «If that be another trick of theirs, I’ll —»

«Not so loudly,» whispered Loki. «Soft and slow is the sly fox taken. Now, Thor, you shall try this cat-lifting as though nothing were amiss. But Harald here, who is only half subject to their spells because he is a mortal and without fear, shall search for Mjöllnir. Youngling, you are our hope and stay. Use the spell I gave you.»

A chorus of yells announced that Utgardaloki’s cat had arrived. It was a huge beast, grey, and the size of a puma. But it did not look too big for the burly Thor to lift. It glared suspiciously at Thor and spat a little.

Utgardaloki rumbled: «Quiet, you. Ain’tcha got no manners?» The cat subsided and allowed Thor to scratch it behind the ears, though with no appearance of pleasure.

How had he seen through the illusion of the eating contest? Shea asked himself. A teardrop in the eye. Would he have to bang his head again to get another one? He closed his eyes and then opened them again, looking at Thor as he put an arm around the big cat’s belly and heaved. No teardrop. The cats belly came up, but its four big paws remained firmly planted.

How to induce a teardrop? A mug of mead stood on the table. Shea dipped a finger into the liquid and shook a drop into his eye. The alcohol burned and stung, and he could hear Thor’s grunt and the whooping of the giants. He shook his head and opened the eye again. Through a film of tears, as he repeated «Sudri — Nordri — Nidi — Nyi —» It was not a cat Thor was lifting, but the middle part of a snake as big around as a barrel. There was no sign of head or tail; the visible section was of uniform thickness, going in one door of the hall and out the other.

«Loki!» he said. «That’s not a cat. It’s a giant snake that Thor’s trying to lift!»

«With a strange shimmering blackish cast over its scales?»

«Yes; and no head or tail in sight.»

«Now, right good are your eyes, eater of turnips! That will be nothing less than the Midgard Serpent that curls round the earth! Surely we are surrounded by evil things. Hurry with the finding of the hammer, for this is now our only hope.»

* * *

Shea turned from the contest, making a desperate effort to concentrate. He looked at the nearest object, an aurochs skull on a pillar, tried another drop of mead in his eye and repeated the spell, forward, backward, and forward. No result. The skull was a skull. Thor was still grunting and heaving. Shea tried once more on a knife hanging at a giant’s belt. No result.

He looked at a quiver of arrows on the opposite wall and tried again. «The sweet mead was sticking his eyelashes together and he felt sure he would have a headache after this. The quiver blurred as he pronounced the words. He found himself looking at a short-handled sledge hammer hanging by a rawhide loop.

Thor had given up the effort to lift the cat and came over to them, panting. Utgardaloki grinned down at him with the indulgence one might show a child. All around the giants were breaking up into little groups and calling for more drink.

«Want any more, sonny boy?» the giant chieftain sneered. «Guess you ain’t so damn good as you thought you was, huh?»

Shea plucked at Thor’s sleeve as the latter flushed and started to retort. «Can you call your hammer to you?» he whispered.

The giant’s ear caught the words. «Beat it, thrall,» he said belligerently. «We got business to settle and I won’t have no snotty little mortals butting in. Now, Asa-Thor, do you want any more contests?»

«I —» began Thor again.

Shea clung to his arm. «Can you?» he demanded.

«Aye, if it be in view.»

«I said get outta here, punk!» bellowed Utgardaloki, the rough good nature vanishing from his face. He raised an arm like a tree trunk.

«Point at that quiver of arrows and call!» shouted Shea. He dodged behind Thor as the giant’s arm descended. The blow missed. He scuttled among the crowding monsters, hitting his head against the pommel of a giant’s sword. Utgardaloki was roaring behind him. He ducked under a table and past some foul-smelling fire giants. He heard a clang of metal as Thor pulled on the iron gloves he carried at his belt. Then over all other sounds rose the voice of the red-bearded god, making even Utgardaloki’s voice sound like a whisper:

«Mjöllnir the mighty, slayer of miscreants, come to your master, Thor Odinnsson!»

For a few breathless seconds the hall hung in suspended animation. Shea could see a giant just in front of him with mouth wide open, Adam’s apple rising and falling. Then there was a rending snap. With a deep humming, the hammer that had seemed a quiver of arrows flew straight through the air into Thor’s hands.

There was a deafening yell from the swarms of giants They swayed back, then forward, squeezing Shea so tightly he could hardly breathe. High over the tumult rose the voice of Thor:

«I am Thor! I am the Thunderer! Ho, ho, hohoho, yoyoho!» The hammer was whirling round his head in a blur, sparks dancing round it. Level flashes of lightning cracked across the hall followed by deafening peals of thunder. There was a shriek from the giants and a rush towards the doors.

Shea shot one glimpse as the hammer flew at Utgardaloki and spattered his brains into pink oatmeal, rebounding back into Thor’s gloves. Then he was caught completely in the panic rush and almost squeezed to death. Fortunately for him, the giants on either side wedged him so tightly he couldn’t fall to be trampled.

The pressure suddenly gave way in front. Shea caught the giant ahead of him around the waist and hung on. Behind came Thor’s battle howl, mingled with constant thunder and the sound of the hammer shattering giant skulls — a noise that in a calmer moment Shea might have compared to that made by dropping a watermelon ten storeys. The Wielder of Mjöllnir was thoroughly enjoying himself; his shouts were like the noise of a happy express train.

Shea found himself outside and running across damp moss in the middle of hundreds of galloping giants and thralls. He dared not stop lest he be stepped on. An outcrop of rock made him swerve. As he did so he caught sight of Utgard. There was already a yawning gap at one end of the roof. The central beam split; a spear of blue-green lightning shot skyward, and the place began to burn brightly around the edges of the rent.

A clump of trees cut off the view. Shea ran downhill with giants still all around him. One of the group just ahead missed his footing and went rolling. Before Shea could stop, he had tripped across the fellow’s legs, his face ploughing up cold dirt and pine needles. A giant’s voice shouted: Hey, gang! Look at this!»

«Now they’ve got me,» he thought. He rolled over, his head swimming from the jar. But it was not he they were interested in. The giant over whose legs he had fallen was Heimdall, his wig knocked askew to reveal a patch of golden hair. The straw with which he had stuffed his jacket was dribbling out. He was struggling to get up; around him a group of fire giants were gripping his arms and legs, kicking and cuffing at him. There was a babble of rough voices:

«He’s one of the Æsir, all right!» «Sock him!» «Let’s get out of here!» «Which one is he?» «Get the horses!»

If he could get away, Shea thought, he could at least take news of Heimdall’s plight to Thor. He started to crawl behind the projecting root of a tree, but the movement was fatal. One of the fire giants hallooed: «There’s another one!»

Shea was caught, jerked upright, and inspected by half a dozen of the filthy gorilla-like beings. They took particular delight in palling his hair and ears.

«Aw,» said one of them, «he’s no As. Bump him off and let’s get t’ hell out of here.»

One of them loosened a knife at his belt. Shea felt a deadly constriction of fear around the heart. But the largest of the lot — leadership seemed to go with size in giantland — roared:

«Lay off! He was with that yellow-headed stumper. Maybe he’s one of the Vanir and we can get something for him. Anyway, it’s up to Lord Sun. Where the hell are those horses?»

At that moment more fire giants appeared, leading a group of horses. They were glossy black and bigger than the largest Percherons Shea had ever seen. Three hoofs were on each foot, as with the ancestral Miocene horse; their eyes glowed red like live coals and their breath made Shea cough. He remembered the phrase he had heard Heimdall whispering to Odinn in Sverre’s house — «fire horses.»

One of the giants produced leather cords from a pouch. Shea and Heimdall were bound with brutal efficiency and tossed on the back of one of the horses, one hanging down on either side. The giants clucked to their mounts, which started off at a trot through the gathering dusk among the trees.

Far behind them the thunders of Thor still rolled. From time to rime his distant lightnings cast sudden shadows along their path. The redbeard was certainly having fun.

SEVEN

The agonizing hours that followed left little detailed impression on Harold Sheas mind — They would not, he told himself even while experiencing them. The impression was certainly painful while being undergone. There was nothing to see but misty darkness; nothing to feel but breakneck speed and the torment of his bonds. He could twist his head a little, but of their path could obtain no impression but now and then the ghost of a boulder or a clump of trees momentarily lit by the fiery eyes of the horses. Every time he thought of the speed they were making along the rough and winding route his stomach crawled and the muscles of his right leg tensed as he tried to apply an imaginary automobile brake.

When the sky finally turned to its wearisome blotting-paper grey the air was a little wanner, though still raw. A light drizzle was sifting down. They were in a countryside of a type totally unfamiliar to Shea. A boundless plain of tumbled black rock rose here and there to cones of varying size. Some of the cones smoked, and little pennons of steam wafted from cracks in the basalt. The vegetation consisted mostly of clumps of small palmlike tree ferns in the depressions.

They had slowed down to a fast trot, the horses picking their way over the ropy bands of old lava flows. Now and again one or more fire giants would detach themselves from the party and set off on a tangent to the main course.

Finally, a score of the giants clustered around the horse that bore the prisoners, making towards a particularly large cone from whose flanks a number of smoke plumes rose through the drizzle. To Shea the fire giants still looked pretty much alike, but he had no difficulty in picking out the big authoritative one who had directed his capture.

They halted in front of a gash in the rock. The giants dismounted, and one by one led their steeds through the opening. The animals’ hoofs rang echoing on the rock floor of the passage, which sprang above their heads in a lofty vault till it suddenly ended with a right-angled turn. The cavalcade halted; Shea heard a banging of metal on metal, the creak of a rusty hinge, and a giant voice chat cried: «Whatcha want?»

«It’s the gang, back from Jötunheim. We got one of the Æsir and a Van. Tell Lord Surt.»

«Howdja make out at Utgard?»

«Lousy. Thor showed up. He spotted the hammer somehow, the scum, and called it to him and busted things wide open. It was that smart-aleck Loki, I think.»

«What was the matter with the Sons of the Wolf? They know what to do about old Red Whiskers.»

«Didn’t show. I suppose we gotta wait for the Time for them to come around.»

The horses tramped on. As they passed the gatekeeper, Shea noticed that he held a sword along which flickered a yellow flame with thick, curling smoke rising from it, as though burning oil were running down the blade. Ahead and slanting downward, the place they had entered seemed an underground hall of vaguely huge proportions, full of great pillars. Flares of yellow light threw changing shadows as they moved. There was a stench of sulphur and a dull, machinelike banging. As the horses halted behind some pillars that grew together to make another passage, a thin shriek ulutated in the distance: «Eee-e-e.»

«Bring the prisoners along,» said a voice. «Lord Surt wants to judge ’em.»

Shea felt himself removed and tucked under a giant’s arm like a bundle. It was a method of progress that woke all the agonies in his body. The giant was carrying him face down, so that he could see nothing but the stone floor with its flickering shadows. The place stank.

The door opened and there was a babble of giant voices. Shea was flung upright. He would have fallen if the giant who had been carrying him had not propped him up. He was in a torchlit hall, very hot, with fire giants standing all around grinning, pointing, and talking, some of them drinking.

But he had no more than a glance for them. Right in front, facing him, flanked by two guards who carried the curious burning swords, sat the biggest giant of all — a giant dwarf. That is, he was a full giant in size, at least eleven feet tall, but with the squat bandy legs, the short arms and huge neckless head of a dwarf. His hair hung lank around the nastiest grin Shea had ever seen. When he spoke, the voice had not the rumble of the other giants, but a reedy, mocking falsetto:

«Welcome, Lord Heimdall, to Muspellheim! We are delighted to have you here.» He snickered. «I fear gods and men will be somewhat late in assembling for the battle without their horn blower. Hee, hee, hee. But, at least, we can give you the comforts of one of our best dungeons. If you must have music, we will provide a willow whistle. Hee, hee, hee. Surely so skilled a musician as yourself could make it heard throughout the nine worlds.» He ended with another titter at his own humour.

Heimdall kept his air of dignity. «Bold are your words, Surt,» he replied, «but it is yet to be seen whether your deeds match them when you stand on Vigrid Plain. It may be that I have small power against you of the Muspellheim blood. Yet I have a brother named Frey, and it is said that if you two come face to face, he will be your master.»

Surt sucked two fingers to indicate his contempt. «Hee, hee, hee. It is also said, most stupid of godlings, that Frey is powerless without his sword. Would you like to know where the enchanted blade. Hundingshana, is? Look behind you, Lord Heimdall!»

Shea followed the direction of Heimdall’s eyes. Sure enough, on the wall there hung a great two-handed sword, its blade gleaming brightly in that place of glooms, its hilt all worked with gold up to the jewelled pommel.

«While it hangs up there, most stupid of Æsir, I am safe. Hee, hee, hee. Have you been wondering why that famous eyesight of yours did not light on it before? Now you know, most easily deceived. In Muspellheim, we have found the spells that make Heimdall powerless.»

Heimdall was unimpressed. «Thor has his hammer back,» he remarked easily. «Not a few of your fire giants’ heads will bear witness if you can find them.»

Surt scowled and thrust his jaw forward hut his piping voice was as serene and mocking as before. «Now, that,» he said really gives mean idea. «I thank you, Lord Heimdall. Who would have thought it possible to learn anything from one of the Æsir? Hee, hee, hee. Skoa!»

A lop-eared fire giant shuffled forward «Whatcha want, boss?»

«Ride to the gates of Asgard. Tell them I have their horn tooter here. I will gladly send the nuisance back to his relatives; but in exchange I want that sword of his, the one they call Head. Hee, hee, hee. I am collecting gods’ swords, and we shall see, Lord Heimdall, how you fare against the frost giants without yours.»

He grinned all around his face and the fire giants in the background slapped their knees and whooped. «Pretty hot stuff, boss!» «Ain’t he smart,» «Two of the four great weapons!» «Boy, will we show ’em!»

Surt gazed at Shea and Heimdall for a moment, enjoying to the utmost the roar of appreciation and Heimdall’s sudden pallor. Then he made a gesture of dismissal. «Take the animals away and put ’em in a dungeon before I die laughing.»

Shea felt himself seized once more and carried off, face downward in the same ignominious position as before.

* * *

Down — down — down they went, stumbling through the lurid semidark. At last they came to a passage lined with cells between whose bars the hollow eyes of previous arrivals stared at them. The stench had become overpowering.

The commanding giant thundered: «Stegg!»

There was a stir in an alcove at the far end of the passage, and out came a scaly being about five feet tall, with an oversize head decorated by a snub nose and a pair of long pointed ears. Instead of hair and beard it had wormlike excrescences on its head. They moved. The being squeaked:

«Yes, Lord.»

The giant said: «Got a couple more prisoners for you. Say, what stinks?»

«Please, lord, mortal him die. Five days gone.»

«You lug! And you left him in there?»

«No lord here. Snögg say ‘no’, must have lord’s orders to do —»

«You damn nitwit! Take him out and give him to the furnace detail! Hai, wait, take care of these prisoners first. Hai, bolt the door, somebody. We don’t take no chances with the Æsir.»

Stegg set about efficiently stripping Shea and Heimdall. Shea wasn’t especially afraid. So many extraordinary things had happened to him lately that the whole proceeding possessed an air of unreality. Besides, even the difficulties of such a place might not be beyond the resources of a well-applied brain.

Stegg said: «Lord, must put in dead mortal’s cell. No more. All full.»

«Awright, get in there, youse.» The giant gave Shea a cuff that almost knocked him flat and set him staggering towards the cell which Stegg had opened. Shea avoided the mass of corruption at one side and looked for a place to sit down. there was none. The only furnishings of any kind consisted of a bucket whose purpose was obvious.

Heimdall followed him in, still wearing his high, imperturbable air. Stegg gathered up the corpse, went out, and slammed the door. The giant took hold of the bars and heaved on them. There was no visible lock or bolt, but the door stayed tight.

«Oh, ho!» roared the giant. «Don’t the Sleepless One look cute? When we get through with the other Æsir we’ll come back and show you some fun. Have yourselves a time.» With this farewell, the giants all tramped out.

Fortunately the air was warm enough so Shea didn’t mind the loss of his garments from a thermal point of view. Around them the dungeon was silent, save for a drip of water somewhere and the occasional rustle of a prisoner in his cell.

Across from Shea there was a clank of chains. An emaciated figure with a wildly disordered beard shuffled up to the bars and screamed. «Yngvi is a louse!» and shuffled back again.

«What means he?» Heimdall called out.

From the right came a muffled answer: «None knows. He says it every hour. He is mad, as you will be.»

«Cheerful place,» remarked Shea.

«Is it not?» agreed Heimdall readily. «Worse have I seen, but happily without being confined therein. I will say that for a mortal, your are not without spirit, Turnip Harald. Your demeanor likes me well.»

«Thanks.» Shea had not entirely forgotten his irritation over Heimdall’s patronizing manner, but the Sleepless One held his interest more than the choleric and rather slow-witted Thor or the snearing Loki. «If you don’t mind my asking, Golden One, why can’t you just use your powers to get out?»

«To all things there is a limit,» replied Heimdall, «of size, of power, and of duration. Wide is the lifetime of a god; wider than of a thousand of your feeble species one after the other. Yet even gods grow old and die. Likewise, as to these fire giants and their chief, Surt, that worst of beings. I have not much strength. If my brother Frey were here now, or if we were among the frost giants, I could overcome the magic of that door.»

«How do you mean?»

«It has no lock. Yet it will not open save when an authorized person pulls it and with intent to open. Look, now» — Heimdall pushed against the bars without effect — «if you will be quiet for awhile, I will try to see my way out of this place.»

The Sleepless One leaned back against the wall, his eyes moving restlessly about. His body quivered with energy in spite of his relaxed position.

«Not too well can I see,» he announced after a few minutes. «There is so much magic here — fire magic of a kind both evil and difficult — that it hurts my head. Yet this much I see clearly: around us all is rock, with no entrance but the way by which we came. Beyond that there lies a passage with trolls to watch it. Ugh, disgusting creatures.» The golden-haired god gave a shudder of repugnance.

«Can you see beyond?» asked Shea.

«A little. Beyond the trolls, a ledge sits over a pile of molten slag at the entrance of the hall where the flaming swords are forged, and then — and then» — his forehead contracted, his lips moved a trifle — «a giant sits by the pool of slag. No more can I see.»

Heimdall relapsed into gloomy silence. Shea felt considerable respect and some liking for him, but it is hard to be friendly with a god, even in a prison cell. Thjalfi’s cheerful human warmth was missing.

Stegg re-entered the cell hall. One of the prisoners called out: «Good Stegg, a little water, please; I die of thirst.»

Stegg turned his head a rifle. «Dinner time soon, slave.» The prisoner gave a yell of anger and shouted abuse at the troll, who continued down to his alcove in the most perfect indifference. Here he hoisted himself into a broken-down stool, dropped his chin on his chest, and apparently went to sleep.

«Nice guy,» said Shea.

The prisoner across the way came to the front of his cell and shrieked, «Yngvi is a louse!» again.

«The troll is not asleep,» said Heimdall. «I can hear his thoughts, for he is of a race that can hardly think at all without moving the lips. But I cannot make them out. Harald, you see a thing that is uncommon; namely, one of the Æsir confessing he is beaten. But there is this to be said: if we are held here it will be the worst of days for gods and men.»

«Why would that be?»

«So near is the balance of strength, gods against giants, that the issue of what will happen at the Time hangs by a thread. If we come late to the field we shall surely lose; the giants will hold the issues against our mustering. And I am here— here in this cell — with my gift of eyesight that can see them in time to warn. I am here, and the Gjallarhorn, the roaring trumpet that would call gods and heroes to the field, is at Sverre’s house.»

Shea asked: «Why don’t the Æsir attack the giants before the giants are ready, if they know there’s going to be a war anyway?»

Heimdalj stared at him. «You know not the Law of the Nine Worlds, Harald. We Æsir cannot attack the giants all together before the Time. Men and gods live by law; else they would be but giants.»

He began to pace back and forth with rapid steps, his forehead set in a frown. Shea noted that even at this moment the Sleepless One was careful to place one foot before the other to best display the litheness of his walk.

«Surely they’ll miss you,» said Shea. «Can’t they set other guards to watch the giants get together, or» — he finished lamely at the glint in Heimdall’s eye — «something?»

«A mortal’s thoughts! Aye!» Heimdall gave a short bark of bitter laughter. «Set other guards, here and there! Listen, Turnip Harald; Harald the fool. Of all us Æsir, Frey is the best, the only one who can stand before Surt with weapons in hand. Yet the worlds are so made, and we cannot change it, that one race Frey fears. Against the frost giants he has no power. Only I, I and my sword Head, can deal with them; and if I am not there to lead my band against the frost giants, we shall live to something less than a ripe old age thereafter.»

«I’m sorry — sir,» said Shea.

«Aye. No matter. Come, let us play the game of questions. Few and ill are the thoughts that rise from brooding.»

* * *

For hours they plied each other with queries about their respective worlds. In that ominous place, time could be measured only by meals and the periodic shrieks of «Yngvi is a louse!» About the eighth of these cries, Stegg came out of his somnolent state, went out, and returned with a pile of bowls. These he set in front of the cells. Each bowl had a spoon; one was evidently expected to do one’s eating through the bars. As the troll put the bowls in front of Shea’s cell, he remarked loftily: «King see subjects eat.»

The mess he put in them consisted of some kind of porridge with small lumps of fish in it, sour to the taste. Shea did not blame his fellow prisoners when they broke into loud complaints about the quality and quantity of the food. Stegg paid not the slightest attention, relapsing into his chair till they had finished, when he gathered up the bowls and carried them out.

The next time the door opened, it was not Stegg but another troll. In the flickering torchlight this one was, if possible, less handsome than his predecessor. His face was built around a nose of such astonishing proportions that it projected a good eighteen inches, and he moved with a quick, catlike stride. The prisoners, who had been fairly noisy while Stegg was in charge, now fell silent.

The new jailer stepped quickly to Shea’s cell. «You new arrivals?» he snapped. «I am Snögg. You be good, nothing hurt you. You be bad, zzzp.» He made a motion with his finger to indicate the cutting of a throat, and turning his back on them, paced down the row of cells, peering suspiciously into each.

Shea had never in his life slept on a stone floor. So he was surprised, an indefinite time later, to awaken and discover that he had done it for the first time, with the result of being stiff.

He got up, stretching. «How long have I been asleep?» he asked Heimdall.

«I do not know that. Our fellow prisoner, who dislikes someone called Yngvi, ceased his shouting some time since.»

The long-nosed jailer was still pacing. Still muzzy with sleep, Shea could not remember his name, and called out:

«Hey, you with the nose! How long before break —»

The troll had turned on him, shrieking: «What you call me? You stinking worm! I — zzzp!» He ran down to the alcove, face distorted with fury, and returned with a bucket of water which he sloshed into Shea’s surprised face. «You son of unwed parents!» raged he. «I roast you with slow fire! I am Snögg. I am master! You use right name.»

Heimdall was laughing silently at the back of the cell.

Shea murmured: «That’s one way of getting a bath at all events. I guess our friend Snögg is sensitive about his nose.

«That is not un-evident,» said Heimdall. «Hai! How many troubles the children of men would save themselves, could they but have the skill of the gods for reading the thought that lies behind the lips. Half of all they suffer, I would wager.»

«Speaking of wagers, Sleepless One,» said Shea, «I see how we can run a race to pass the time.»

«This cage is somewhat less than spacious,» objected Heimdall. «What are you doing? It is to be trusted that you do not mean an eating race with those cockroaches.»

«No. I’m going to race them. Here’s yours. You can tell him by his broken feeler.»

«The steed is not of the breed,» observed Heimdall, taking the insect. «Still, I will name him Gold Top, after my horse. What will you call yours, and how shall we race them?»

Shea said: «I shall call mine Man o’ War after a famous horse in our world.» He smoothed down the dust on the floor, and drew a circle in it with his finger. «Now,» he explained, let us release our racers in The centre of the circle, and the one whose roach crossed the rim first shall win.»

«A good sport. What shall the wager be? A crown?»

«Seeing that neither of us has any money at all,» said Shea, «why don’t we shoot the works and make it fifty crowns?»

«Five hundred if you wish.»

Man o’ War won the first race. Snögg, hearing the activity in the cell, hustled over. «What you do?» he demanded. Shea explained. «Oh,» sniffed the troll. «All right, you do. Not too noisy, though. I stop if you do.» He stalked away, but was soon back again to watch the sport. Gold Top won the second race — Man o’ War the third and fourth. Shea, glancing up, suppressed an impulse to tweak the sesquipedalian nose that the troll had thrust through the bars.

By and by Snögg went out and was replaced by Stegg, who did not even notice the cockroach racing. As he hoisted himself into his chair, Shea asked whether he could get them some sort of small box or basket.

«Why you want?» asked Stegg.

Shea explained he wanted it to keep the cockroaches in.

Stegg raised his eyebrows. «I too big for this things,» he said loftily and refused to answer another word.

So they had to let the racers go, rather than hold them in their hands all day. But Shea saved a little of his breakfast and later, by using it as bait, they captured two more cockroaches.

This time, after a few victories for Shea, Heimdall’s roach began to win consistently. By the time the man across the passage had yelled «Yngvi is a louse!» four times Shea found himself Heimdall’s debtor to the extent of something like thirty million crowns. It made him suspicious. He watched the golden god narrowly during the next race, then burst out:

«Say, that’s not fair! You’re fixing my cockroach with your glittering eye and slowing him up!»

«What, mortal! Dare you accuse one of the Æsir?»

«You’re damn right, I dare! If you’re going to use your special powers, I won’t play.»

A smile slowly spread across Heimdall’s face. «Young Harald, you do not lack for boldness, and I have said before that you show glimmerings of wit. In truth, I have slowed up your steed; it is not meet that one of the Æsir should be beaten at aught by a mortal. But come, let that one go, and we will begin again with new mounts, for I fear that animal of yours will never again be the same.»

It was not difficult to catch more roaches. «Once more I shall name mine Gold Top, after my horse,» said Heimdall.

«It is a name of good luck. Did you have no favourite horse?»

«No, but I had a car, a four-wheeled chariot, it was called —» began Shea, and then stopped. What was the name of that car? He tried to reproduce the syllables — nyrose, no — neeloase, no, not that either — neroses, nerosis — something clicked into place in his brain, a series of somethings, like the fragments of a jigsaw puzzle.

«Heimdall!» he cried suddenly, «I believe I know how we can get out of here!»

«That will be the best of news,» said the Sleepless One, doubtfully, «if the deed be equal to the thought. But I have looked, now, deeply into this place, and I do not see how it may be done without outside aid. Nor shall we have help from any giant with the Time so near.»

«Whose side will the trolls be on?»

«It is thought that the trolls will be neuter. Yet strange it would be if we could beguile one of these surly ones to help us.»

«Nevertheless, something you said a little while back gives me an idea. You remember? Something about the skill of the gods at reading the thought that lies behind the lips?»

«Aye.»

«I am — I was — of a profession whose business it is to learn people’s thoughts by questioning them, and by studying what they think today, predict what they will think tomorrow in other circumstances. Even to provoke them to thinking certain things.»

«It could be. It is an unusual art, mortal, and a great skill, but it could be. What then?»

«Well, then, this Stegg, I don’t think we can get far with him, I’ve seen his type before. He’s a — a — a something I can’t remember, but he lives in a world of his own imaginings, where he’s a king and we’re all his slaves. I remember, now— a paranoiac. You can’t establish contact with a mind like that.»

«Most justly and truly reasoned, Harald. From what I am able to catch of his thought this is no more than the truth.»

«But Snögg is something else. We can do something with him.»

«Much though I regret to say it, you do not drown me in an ocean of hope. Snögg is even more hostile than his unattractive brother.»

Shea grinned. At last he was in a position to make use of his specialized knowledge. «That’s what one would think. But I have studied many like him. The only thing that’s wrong with Snögg is that he has a. a feeling of inferiority — a complex we call it — about that nose of his. If somebody could convince him he’s handsome —»

«Snögg handsome! Ho, ho! That is a jest for Loki’s tongue.»

«Sssh! Please, Lord Heimdall. As I say, the thing he wants most is probably good looks. If we could. if we could pretend to work some sort of spell on his nose, tell him it has shrunk and get the other prisoners to corroborate —»

«A plan of wit! It is now to be seen that you have been associating with Uncle Fox. Yet do not sell your bearskin till you have caught the animal. If you can get Snögg sufficiently friendly to propose your plan, then will it be seen whether confinement has really sharpened your wits or only addled them. But, youngling, what is to prevent Snögg feeling his nose and discovering the beguilement for himself?»

«Oh, we don’t have to guarantee to take it all off. He’d be grateful enough for a couple of inches.»

EIGHT

When Snögg came on duty at nightfall, he found the dungeon as usual, except that Shea’s and Heimdall’s cell was noisy with shouts of encouragement to their entries in the great cockroach derby. He went over to the cell to make sure that nothing outside the rules of the prison was going on.

Shea met his suspicious glower with a grin. «Hi, there, friend Snögg! Yesterday I owed Heindall thirty million crowns, but today my luck has turned and it’s down to twenty-three million.»

«What do you mean?» snapped the troll.

Shea explained, and went on: «Why don’t you get in the game? We’ll catch a roach for you. It must be pretty dull, with nothing w do all night but listen to the prisoners snore.»

«Hm-m-m,» said Snögg, then turned abruptly suspicious again. «You make trick to let other prisoner escape, I — zzzzp!» He motioned across his throat again. «Lord Surt, he say.»

«No, nothing like that. You can make your inspection any time. Sssh! There’s one now.»

«One what?» asked Snögg, a little of the hostility leaving his voice. Shea was creeping towards the wall of his cell. He pounced like a cat and came up with another cockroach in his hand. «What’ll his name be?» he asked Snögg.

Snögg thought, his little troll brain trying to grasp the paradox of a friendly prisoner, his eyes moving suspiciously. «I call him Fiörm, after river. That run fast,» he said at last.

«That where you are from?»

«Aye.»

Heimdall spoke up. «It is said, friend Snögg, that Fiörm has the finest fish in all the nine worlds, and I believe it, for I have seen them.»

The troll looked almost pleased. «True word. Me fish there, early morning. Ho, ho! Me wade — snap! Up come trout. Bite him, flop, flop in face. Me remember big one, chase into shallow.»

Shea said: «You and öku-Thor ought to get together. Fjörm may have the best fish, but he has the biggest fish story in the nine worlds.»

Snögg actually emitted a snicker. «Me know that story. Thor no fisher. He use hook and line. Only trolls know how to fish fair. We use hands, like this.» He bent over the floor, his face fixed in intense concentration then made a sudden sweeping motion, quick as a rattlesnake’s lunge. «Ah!» He cried. «Fish! love him! Come, we race.»

The three cockroaches were tossed into the centre of the circle and scuttled away. Snögg’s Fjörm was the first to cross the line to the troll’s unconcealed delight.

They ran race after race, with halts when one of the roaches escaped and another had to be caught. Snögg’s entry showed a tendency to win altogether at variance with the law of probability. The troll did not notice and would hardly have grasped the fact that Heimdall was using his piercing glance on his own and Shea’s roaches and slowing them up, though Snögg was not allowed to win often enough to rouse his sleeping suspicions. By the time Stegg relieved him in the morning he was over twenty million crowns ahead. Shea stretched out on the floor to sleep with the consciousness of a job well done.

When he awoke, just before Snögg came on duty the next night, he found Heimdall impatient and uneasy, complaining of the delay while Surt’s messenger was riding to demand the sword Head as ransom. Yet it speedily became obvious that the Snögg campaign could not be hurried.

«Don’t you ever get homesick for your river Fjörm?» asked Shea, when the troll had joined them.

«Aye,» replied Snögg. «Often. Like ’um fish.»

«Think you’ll be going back?»

«Will not be soon.»

«Why not?»

Snögg squirmed a little. «Lord Surt him hard master.»

«Oh, he’d let you go. Is that the only reason?»

«N-no. Me like troll girl Elvagevu. Haro! Here, what I do, talk privacy life with prisoner? Stop it. We race.»

Shea recognized this as a good place to stop his questioning, but when Snögg was relieved, he remarked to Heimdall: «That’s a rich bit of luck. I can’t imagine being in love with a female troll, but he evidently is —»

«Man from another world, you observe well. His thoughts were near enough his lips for me to read. This troll-wife, Elvagevu, has refused him because of the size of his nose.»

«Ah! Then we really have something. Now, tonight —»

* * *

When the cockroach races began that night, Heimdall reversed the usual process sufficiently to allow Snögg to lose several races in succession. The long winning streak he later developed was accordingly appreciated, and it was while Snögg was chucking over his victories, snapping his finger joints and bouncing in delight that Shea insinuated softly: «Friend Snögg, you have been good to us. Now, if there’s something we could do for you, we’d be glad to do it. For instance, we might be able to remove the obstacle that prevents your return to Elvagevu.»

Snögg jumped and glared suspiciously. «Not possible,» he said thickly.

Heimdall looked at the ceiling. «Great wonders have been accomplished by prisoners,» he said, «when there is held out to them the hope of release.»

«Lord Surt him very bad man when angry,» Snögg countered, his eyes moving restlessly.

«Aye,» nodded Heimdall, «Yet not Lord Surt’s arm is long enough to reach into the troll country — after one who has gone there to stay with his own troll-wife.»

Snögg cocked his head on one side, so that he looked like some large-beaked bird. «Hard part is,» he countered, «to get beyond Lord Surt’s arm. Too much danger.»

«But,» said Shea, falling into the spirit of the discussion, «if one’s face were altogether changed by the removal of a feature, it might be much easier and simpler. One would not be recognized.»

Snögg caressed his enormous nose. «Too big — You make fun of me!» he snapped with sudden suspicion.

«Not at all,» said Shea. «Back in my own country a girl once turned me down because my eyes were too close together. Women always have peculiar taste.»

«That’s true,» Snögg lowered his voice till it was barely audible. «You fix nose, I be your man: I do all for you.»

«I don’t want to guarantee too much in advance,» said Shea. «But I think I can do something for you. I landed here without all my magic apparatus, though.»

«All you need I get,» said Snögg, eager to go the whole way now that he had committed himself.

«I’ll have to think about what I need,» said Shea.

The next day when Stegg had collected the breakfast bowls, Shea and Heimdall lifted their voices and asked the other prisoners whether they would cooperate in the proposed method of escape. They answered readily enough. «Sure, if «twon’t get us into no trouble.» «Aye, but will ye try to do something for me, too?» «Mought, if ye can manage it quiet.» «Yngvi is a louse!»

Shea turned his thoughts to the concoction of a spell that would sound sufficiently convincing, doing his best to recall Chalmers’ description of the laws of magic to which he had given so little attention when the psychologist stated them. There was the law of contagion — no, there seemed no application for that. But the law of similarity? That would be it. The troll, himself familiar with spells and wizardry, would recognize an effort to apply that principle as in accordance with the general laws of magic. It remained, then, to surround some application of the law of similarity with sufficient hocus-pocus to make Snögg believe something extra-special in the way of spells was going on. By their exclamation over the diminishing size of Snögg’s nose the other prisoners would do the rest.

«Whom should one invoke in working a spell of this kind?» Shea asked Heimdall.

«Small is my knowledge of this petty mortal magic,» replied Heimdall. «The Evil Companion would be able to give you all manner of spells and gewgaws. But I would say that the names of the ancestors of wizardry would be not without power in such cases.»

«And who are they?»

«There is the ancestor of all witches, by name Witolf; the ancestor of all warlocks, who was called Willharm. Svarthead was the first of the spell singers and of the giant kindred Ymir. For good luck and the beguiling of Snögg you might add two who yet live — Andvari, king of the dwarfs, and the ruler of all trolls, who is the Old Woman of Ironwood. She is a fearsome creature, but I think not unpleasant to one of her subjects.»

When Snögg showed up again Shea had worked out his method for the phony spell. «I shall need a piece of beeswax,» he said, «and a charcoal brazier already lit and burning; a piece of driftwood sawn into pieces no bigger than your thumb; a pound of green grass, and a stand on which you can balance a board just over the brazier.»

Snögg said: «Time comes very near. Giants muster — when you want things?»

Shea heard in the background Heimdall’s gasp of dismay at the first sentence. But he said: «As soon as you can possibly get them.»

«Maybe tomorrow night. We race?»

«No — yes,» said Heimdall. His lean, sharp face looked strained in the dim light. Shea could guess the impatience that was gnawing him, with his exalted sense of personal duty and responsibility. And perhaps with reason, Shea assured himself. The late of the world, of gods and men, in Heimdall’s own words, hung on that trumpet blast. Shea’s own fate, too, hung on it — an idea he could never contemplate without a sense of shock and unreality, no matter how frequently he repeated the process of reasoning it all out.

Yet not even the shock of this repeated thought could stir him from the fatalism into which he had fallen. The world he had come from, uninteresting though it was, had at least been something one could grasp, think over as a whole. Here he felt himself a chip on a tossing ocean of strange and terrible events. His early failures on the trip to Jötunheim had left him with a sense of helplessness which had not entirely disappeared even with his success in detecting the illusions in the giants’ games and the discovery of Thor’s hammer. Loki then, and Heimdall later had praised his fearlessness — ha, he said to himself, if they only knew! It was not true courage that animated him, but a feeling that he was involved in a kind of strange and desperate game, in which the only thing that mattered was to play it as skillfully as possible. He supposed soldiers had something of that feeling in battle. Otherwise, they would all run away and there wouldn’t be any battle —

His thoughts strayed again to the episode in the hall of Utgard. Was it Loki’s spell or the teardrop in his eye that accounted for his success there? Or merely the trained observation of a modern mind? Some of the last, certainly; the others had been too excited to note such discordant details as the fact that Hugi cast no shadow. At the same time, his modern mind balked over the idea that the spell had been effective. Yet there was something, a residue of phenomenon, not accounted for by physical fact.

That meant that, given the proper spell to work, he could perform as good a bit of magic as the next man. Heimdall, Snögg, and Surt all had special powers built in during construction as it were — but their methods would do him, Shea, no good at all. He was neither god, troll — thank Heaven! — nor giant.

Well, if he couldn’t be a genuine warlock, he could at least put on a good show. He thought of the little poses and affectations he had put on during his former life. Now life itself depended on how well he could assume a pose. How would a wizard act? His normal behaviour should seem odd enough to Snögg for all practical purposes.

The inevitable night dragged out, and Stegg arrived to take over his ditties. Snögg hurried out. Shea managed to choke down what was sardonically described as his breakfast and tried to sleep. The first yell of «Yngvi is a louse!» brought him up all standing. And his fleabites seemed to itch more than usual. He had just gotten himself composed when it was time for dinner again and Snögg.

The troll listened, twitching with impatience, till Stegg’s footfall died away. Then he scurried out like a magnified rat and returned with his arms full of the articles Shea had ordered. He dumped them in the middle of the passage and with a few words opened the door of Shea’s and Heindall’s cell.

«Put our all but one of the torches,» said Shea. While Snögg was doing this the amateur magician went to work. Holding the beeswax over the brazier, he softened it enough to work and pressed it into conical shape, making two deep indentations on one side till it was a crude imitation of Snögg’s proboscis.

«Now,» he whispered to the popeyed troll, «get the water bucket. When I tell you, pour it into the brazier.»

Shea knelt before the brazier and blew into it. The coals brightened. He picked up a fistful of the driftwood chips and began feeding them onto the glowing charcoal, They caught, little varicoloured flames dancing across them. Shea, on his haunches and swaying to and fro, began his spell:

«Witolf and Willharm,

Stand, my friends!

Andvari, Ymir,

Help me to my ends!

The Hag of the Ironwood

Shall be my aid;

By the spirit of Svarthead,

Let this spell be made!»

The beeswax, on the board above the brazier, was softening. Slowly the cone lost its shape and slumped. Transparent drops trickled over the edge of the board, hung redly in the grow, and dropped with a hiss and spurt of yellow flame into the brazier.

Shea chanted:

«Let wizards and warlocks

Combine and conspire

To make Snögg’s nose melt

Like the wax on this fire!»

The beeswax had become a mere fist-shaped lump. The trickle into the brazier was continuous: little flames rose yellowly and were reflected from the eyes of the breathlessly watching prisoners.

Shea stuffed handfuls of grass into the brazier. Thick rolls of smoke filled the dungeon. He moved his arms through the murk, wriggling the fingers and shouting:

«Hag of the Ironwood, I invoke you in the name of your subject!»

The waxen lump was tiny now. Shea leaned forward into the smoky half-light, his eyes smarting, and rapidly moulded it into something resembling the shape of an ordinary nose. «Pour, now!» he cried. Swoosh! went the water into the brazier, and everything was blotted from vision by a cloud of vapour.

He struggled away and to an erect position. Sweat was making little furrows in the dirt along his skin, with the sensation of insects crawling. «All right,» he said. «You can put the light back on now.» The next few seconds would tell whether his deception was going to work. if the other prisoners did not fail him — Snögg was going along the passage, lighting the extinguished torches from the one that remained. As the light increased and he turned to place one in its bracket on the opposite side of the wall, Shea joined involuntarily in the cry of astonishment that rose from every prisoner in the cells.

Snögg’s nose was no bigger than that of a normal human being.

Harold Shea was a warlock.

«Head feel funny,» remarked Snögg in a matter-of-fact tone.

NINE

The troll put the last torch in place and turned to Shea, caressing the new nose with a scaly hand. «Very good magic, Harald Warlock!» he said, chuckling and dancing a couple of steps. «Hail Elvagevu, you like me now!»

Shea stood rooted, trying to absorb events that seemed to have rushed past him. The only sound he could utter was «Guk!»

He felt Heimdall’s hand on his shoulder. «Well and truly was that spell cast,» said the Sleepless One. «Much profit may we have from it. Yet I should warn you, warlock, that it is ill to lie to the gods. Why did you tell me, at the Crossroads of the World, that you had no skill in magic?»

«Oh,» said Shea, unable to think of anything else, «I guess I’m just naturally modest. I didn’t wish to presume before you, sir.»

Snögg had gone off into a ludicrous hopping dance around the hall. «Beautiful me!» he squealed. «Beautiful me!»

Shea thought that Snögg, with or without nose, was about the ugliest thing he had ever seen. But there seemed little point in mentioning the fact. Instead, he asked, «How about getting us out of here now, friend Snögg?»

Snögg moderated his delight enough to say: «Will be do. Go your cage now. I come with clothes and weapon.»

Shea and Heimdall exchanged glances. It seemed hard to go back into that tiny cell, but they had to trust the troll now, so they went.

«Now it remains to be seen,» said Heimdall, «whether that scaly fish-eater has betrayed us. If he has —» He let his voice trail off.

«We might consider what we could do to him if he has,» grinned Shea. His astonishing achievement had boosted his morale to the skies.

«Little enough could I accomplish in this place of fire magic,» said Heimdail, gloomily, «but such a warlock as yourself could make his legs sprout into serpents.»

«Maybe,» said Shea. He couldn’t get used to the idea that he, of all people, could work magic. It was contrary to the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. But then, where he was the laws of physics, chemistry and, biology had been repealed. He was under the laws of magic. His spell had conformed exactly to those laws, as explained by Dr. Chalmers. This was a world in which those laws were basic. The trick was that he happened to know one of those laws, while the general run of mortals — and trolls and gods, too — didn’t know them. Naturally, the spells would seem mysterious to them, just as the changing colour of two combined chemicals was mysterious to anyone who didn’t know chemistry. If he had only provided himself with a more elaborate knowledge of those laws instead of the useless flashlights, matches, and guns —

A tuneless whistle cut across his thoughts, It was Snögg, still beaming, carrying a great bundle of clothes and something long.

«Here clothes, Lords,» he grinned, the tendrils on his head writhing in a manner that no doubt indicated well-being, but which made Shea’s skin crawl, «Here swords, too. I carry till we outside, yes?» He held up a length of light chain. «You put round wrists, I lead you. Anybody stop, I say going to Lord Surt.»

«Hurry, Harald,» said Heimdall as Shea struggled into the unfamiliar garments. «There is yet hope, though it grows dim, that we may reach the other Æsir before they give my sword away.»

Shea was dressed. He and Heimdall took the middle and end of the chain, while Snögg tucked the other end in his belt and strode importantly before them, a huge sword in either hand. They were as big as Hundingsbana, but with plain hilts and rust-spotted blades. The troll carried them without visible effort.

Snögg opened the door at the end of the dungeon. «Now you keep quiet,» he said. «I say I take you to Surt. Look down, you much abused.»

One of the prisoners called softly. «Good luck go with you, friends, and do not forget us.» Then they were outside, shambling along the gloom of the tunnel. Shea hunched his shoulders forward and assumed as discouraged an expression as he could manage.

* * *

They passed a recess in the tunnel wall, where sat four trolls. Their tridents leaned beside them, and they were playing the game of odds-and-evens with their fingers. One of the four got up and called out something in troll language. Snögg responded in the same tongue, adding: «Lord Surt want.»

The troll looked dubious. «One guard not enough. Maybe they get away.»

Snögg rattled the chain. «Not this. Spell on this chain. Goinn almsorg thjalma.»

The troll seemed satisfied with the explanation and returned to his sport. The three stumbled on through the dimness past a big room hewn out of the rock, full of murky light and motion. Shea jumped as someone — a man from the voice — screamed, a long, high scream that ended with gasps of «Don’t. don’t. don’t.» There was only a glimpse of what was going on, but enough to turn the stomach.

The passage ended in a ledge below which boiled a lake of molten lava. Beside the ledge sat a giant with one of the flaming swords. As he looked up, his eyes were pits beneath the eyebrow ridges.

Snögg said; «Prisoners go to Lord Surt. Orders.»

The giant peered at them. «Say,» he said, «ain’t you the troll Snögg? What happened to your nose?»

«I pray Old Woman of Ironwood. She shrink him!» Snögg grinned.

«Okay, I guess it’s all right.» As they passed, the giant thrust a foot in front of Shea, who promptly stumbled over it, in sickening fear of going down into the lava. The giant thundered, «Haw, haw, haw!»

«You be careful,» snapped Snögg. «You push prisoners in. Surt push you in, by Ymir.»

«Haw, haw, haw! Gawan Scalyface, before I push you in.»

Shea picked himself up, giving the giant a look that should have melted lead at twenty paces. If he could remember that face and sometime — but, no, he was romancing. Careful, Shea, don’t let things go to your head.

They turned from the ledge into another tunnel. This sloped up then levelled again where side tunnels branched in from several directions. Snögg picked his way unerringly through the maze. A tremendous banging grew on them, and they were passing the entrance of some kind of armoury. The limits of the place were invisible in the flickering red glare, through which scuttled naked black things, like liquorice dolls. Heimdall whispered: «These would be dark dwarfs from Svartalfheim, where no man nor As has ever been.»

They went on, up, right, left, A sultry glow came down the tunnel ahead, as though a locomotive were approaching around the curve. There was a tramp of giant feet. Around the corner came a file of the monsters, each with a flaming sword, marching and looking straight ahead, like somnambulists. The three flattened themselves against the wall as the file tramped past, their stench filling the passage. The rear-most giant fell out and turned back.

«Prisoners to Lord Surt,» said Snögg. The giant nodded, cleared his throat, and spat. Shea got it in the neck. He retched slightly and swabbed with the tail of his cloak as the giant grinned and hurried after the rest.

They were in the upper part of the stronghold now, moving through forests of pillars. Snögg abandoned his bold stride, put a finger to his lips and began to slide softly from pillar to pillar. The tread of a giant resounded somewhere near. All three squeezed themselves into a triangle of shadow behind a pillar. The footsteps waxed, stopping just on the opposite side, and all three held breath. They heard the giant hawk, then spit, and the little splat! on the floor. The footsteps moved off.

«Give me chain,» whispered Snögg. He rolled it into a tight ball, and led the way, tiptoeing into another maze of passages. «This is way,» he whispered, after a few minutes. «We wait till passage clear. Then I go make giant chase. Then you go, run fast. Then — ssst! Lie down on floor, quick!»

They fell flat at the word, next to the wall. Shea felt the floor vibrate beneath him to the tread of invisible giants. They were coming nearer, towards them, right over them, and the sound of their feet was almost drowned for Shea in the beating of his own heart. He shut his eyes. One of the giants rumbled heavily: «So I says to him, ‘Whassa matter, ain’tcha got no guts?’ And he says —» The rest of the remark was carried away.

The three rose and tiptoed. Snögg motioned them to stop, peering around a corner. Shea recognized the passage by which they had entered the place — how long before? Snögg took one more peek, turned and handed Shea one sword, giving the other to Heimdall. «When giant chase me,» he whispered, «run; run fast. Dark outside. You hide.»

«How will you find us?» asked Shea.

Snögg’s grin was visible in the gloom. «Never mind. I find you all right. You bet,» He was gone.

* * *

Shea and Heimdall waited. They heard a rumbling challenge from the sentry and Snögg’s piping reply. A chain clanked, the sound suddenly drowned in a frightful roar. «Why, you snotty little —» Feet pounded into the night, and shoutings.

Shea and Heimdall raced for the entrance and out past the door, which swung ajar. It was blacker than the inside of a cow, except where dull-red glows lit the undersides of smoke plumes from vents in the cones.

They headed straight out and away, Shea, at least, with no knowledge of where they were going. It would be time enough to think of direction later, anyway. They had to walk rather than run, even when their eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and even so, narrowly missed a couple of bad falls on the fantastically contorted rock.

The huge cone of Surt’s stronghold faded into the general blackness behind. Then there was a hiss in the dark and they were aware of Snögg’s fishy body smell. The troll moved light and sure, like a cat. He was chuckling. «Hit giant in nose with chain. Should see face. He, he, he!»

«Whither do you lead us, troll?» asked Heimdall.

«Where you want to go?»

Heimdall thought. «The best would be Sverre’s house, the Crossroads of the World. Or failing that, the gates of Hell, where one may hope to find even yet the Wanderer at his task. He must know, soon as ever, what we have seen. That were a fortnight’s journey afoot. But if I could get to some high cold place, where this fire magic is not, I could call my horse, Gold Top.»

«Look out!» said Snögg suddenly. «Giants come!»

A flickering yellow light was showing across the lava beds. Snögg vanished into a patch of shadow, while Shea and Heimdall crouched under the edge of a dyke in the lava flow. They heard the crunch of giant feet on the basalt. The shadows swayed this way and that with the swinging of the fiery swords. A giant voice rumbled. «Hey, you, this is a rough section. There’s enough pockets to hide fifty prisoners.»

Another voice: «Okay, okay. I suppose we gotta poke around here all night. Me, I don’t think they came this way, anyhow.»

«You ain’t supposed to think,» retorted the first voice, nearer. «Hey. Raki!»

«Here,» growled a third, more distant, giant.

«Don’t get too far away,» shouted the first.

«But the other guys are clear outta sight!» complained the distant Raki.

«That don’t matter none. We gotta keep close together. Ouch!» The last was a yell, mixed with a thump and a scramble. «If I catch those scum, they’ll pay for this.»

The light from the nearest giant’s sword grew stronger, creeping towards Shea and Heimdall inch by inch. The fugitives pressed themselves right through it. Inch by inch —

The giant was clearly visible around the end of the lava dyke, holding his sword high and moving slowly, peering into every hollow. Nearer came the light. Nearer. It washed over the toes of Shea’s boots, then lit up Heimdall’s yellow mane.

«Hey!» roared the giant in his foghorn bass. «Raki! Randver! I got ’em! Come, quick!» He rushed at a run. At the same time there was a thumping behind them and the nearest of the other two leaped up out of nowhere, swinging his sword in circles.

«Take that one, warlock!» barked Heimdail, pointing with his sword at the first of the two. He vaulted lightly to the top of the dyke and made for the second giant.

Shea hefted his huge blade with both hands. You simply couldn’t fence with a crowbar like this. It was hopeless. But he wasn’t afraid — hot dog, he wasn’t afraid! What the hell, anyway? The giant gave a roar and a leap, whirling the fiery sword over his head in a figure eight to cut the little man down in one stroke.

Shea swung the ponderous weapon up in an effort to parry that downstroke. He never knew how, but in that instant the sword went as light as an amusement park cane. The blades met. With a tearing scream of metal Shea’s sword sheared right through the flaming blade, The tip sailed over his head, landing with a crackle of flame in some brush behind. Almost without Shea’s trying, his big blade swept around in a perfect stop-thrust in carte, and through the monster’s throat. With a bubbling shriek the giant crashed to earth.

Shea spun around. Beyond the lip of the dyke Heimdall was hotly engaged with his big adversary, their blades flickering, but the third giant was coming up to take a part. Shea scrambled upon the dyke and ran towards him, surprised to discover he was shouting at the top of his voice.

The giant changed course and in no time he was towering right over him. Shea easily caught the first slash with a simple party carte. The giant hesitated, irresolute; Shea saw his chance, whipped both blades around in a bind in octave, and lunged. The giant’s flaming sword was pushed back against its owner, and Shea’s point took him in the stomach with such a rush that Shea almost fell onto the collapsing monster’s body.

«Ho, ho!» cried Heimdall. He was standing over his fallen opponent, terrible bloody slashes in the giant’s body showing dim red in the light of the burning swords on the ground. «Through the guts! Never have I seen a man who used a sword as he would a spear, thrust and not strike. By Thor’s hammer, Warlock Harald, I had not expected to find you so good a man of your hands! I have seen those do worse who were called berserks and champions.» He laughed, and tossed his own sword up to catch it by the hilt. «Surely you shall be of my band at the Time. Though in the end it is nothing remarkable, seeing what blade you have there.»

The big sword had become heavy again and weighted Shea’s arm down. There was a trickle of blood up over the hilt onto his hand. «Looks like a plain sword to me,» he said.

«By no means. That is the enchanted sword, Frey’s invincible Hundingsbana, that shall one day be Surt’s death. Hai! Gods and men will shout for this day; for the last of the war weapons of the Æsir is recovered! But we must hurry. Snögg!»

«Here,» said the troll, emerging from a clump of treeferns. «Forgot to say. I put troll spell on sword so light from blade don’t show giants where we go. It wear off in a day or two.»

«Can you tell us where there is a mountain tall and cold near here?» asked Heimdall.

«Is one — oh, many miles north. Called Steinnbjörg. Walk three days.»

«That is something less than good news,» said Heimdall. «Already we have reached the seventh night since Thor’s play with the giants of Jötunheim. By the length of his journey the Wanderer should tomorrow be at the gates of Hell. We must seek him there; much depends on it.»

Shea had been thinking furiously. If he knew enough to be a warlock, why not use the knowledge?

«Can I get hold of a few brooms?» he demanded.

«Brooms? Strange are your desires, warlock of another world,» said Heimdall.

«What you want him for?» asked Snögg.

«I may be able to work a magic trick.»

Snögg thought. «In thrall’s house, two mile east, maybe brooms. Thrall he get sick, die.»

«Lead on,» said Shea.

They were off again through the darkness. Now and then they glimpsed a pinpoint of light in the distance, as some one of the other giant search parties moved about, but none approached them.

TEN

The thrall’s hut proved a crazy pile of basalt blocks chinked with moss. The door sagged ajar. Inside it was too black to see anything.

«Snögg,» asked Shea, «can you take a little of the spell off this sword so we can have some light?»

He held it out. Snögg ran his hands up and down the blade, muttering. A faint golden gleam came from it, revealing a pair of brooms in one corner of the single-room hut. One was fairly new, the other an ancient wreck with most of the willow twigs that had composed it broken or missing.

«Now,» he said, «I need the feathers of a bird. Preferably a swift, as that’s about the fastest filer. There ought to be some around.»

«On roof, I think,» said Snögg. «You wait; I get.» He slid out, and they heard him grunting and scrambling up the hut. Presently he was back with a puff of feathers in his scaly hand.

Shea had been working out the proper spell in his head, applying both the Law of Contagion and the Law of Similarity. Now he laid the brooms on the floor and brushed them gently with the feathers, chanting:

«Bird of the south, swift bird of the south,

Lend us your wings for a night.

Stir these brooms to movement, O bird of the south

As swift as your own and as light.»

He tossed one of the feathers into the air and blew at it, so that it bobbed about without falling.

«Verdfölnir, greatest of hawks, I invoke you!» he cried. Catching the feather, he stooped, picking at the strings that held the broom till they were loosened, inserted the feathers in the broom, and made all tight again. Kneeling, he made what he hoped were mystic passes over the brooms, declaiming:

«Up, up, arise!

Bear us away;

We must be in the mountains

Before the new day.»

«Now,» he said, «I think we can get to your Steinnbjörg soon enough.»

Snögg pointed to the brooms, which in that pale light seemed to be stirring with a motion of their own. «You fly through air?» he inquired.

«With the greatest of ease. If you want to come, I guess that new broom will carry two of us.»

«Oh, no!» said Snögg, backing away. «No thank, by Ymir! I stay on ground, you bet. I go to Elvagevu on foot. Not break beautiful me. You not worry. I know way.»

Snögg made a vague gesture of farewell and slipped out the door. Heimdall and Shea followed him, the latter with the brooms. The sky was beginning to show its first touch of dawn. «Now, let’s see how these broomsticks of ours work,» said Shea.

«What is the art of their use?» asked Heimdall.

Shea hadn’t the least idea. But he answered boldly. «Just watch me and imitate me,» he said, and squatting over his broom, with the stick between his legs and Hundingsbana stuck through his belt, said:

«By oak, ash, and broom

Before the night’s gloom,

We soar to Steinobjörgen

To stay the world’s doom.»

The broom leaped up under him with a jerk that almost left its rider behind.

Shea gripped the stick till his knuckles were white. Up — up — up he went, till everything was blotted out in the damp opaqueness of cloud. The broom rushed on at a steeper and steeper angle, till Shea found to his horror that it was rearing over backward. He wound his legs around the stick and clung, while the broom hung for a second suspended at the top of its loop with Shea dangling beneath. It dived, then fell over sidewise, spun this way and that, with its passenger flopping like a bell clapper.

The dark earth popped out from beneath the clouds and rushed up at him. Just as he was sure he was about to crash, he managed to swing himself around the stick. The broom darted straight ahead at frightening speed, then started to nose up again. Shea inched forward to shift his weight. The broom slowed up, teetered to a forty-five degree angle and fell off into a spin. The black rock of Muspellheim whirled madly beneath. Shea leaned back, tugging upon the stick. The broom came out of it and promptly fell into another spin on the opposite side. Shea pulled it out of that, too, being careful not to give so much pressure this time. By now he was so dizzy he couldn’t tell whether he was spinning or not.

For a few seconds the broom scudded along with a pitching motion like a porpoise with the itch. This was worse than Thor’s chariot. Shea’s stomach, always sensitive to such movements, failed him abruptly and he strewed Muspellheim with the remains of his last meal. Having accomplished this, he set himself grimly to the task of mastering his steed. He discovered that it had the characteristics of an airplane both longitudinally and laterally unstable. The moment it began to nose up, down, or sidewise the movement had to be corrected instantly and to just the right degree. But it could be managed.

A thin, drawn-out cry of «Haaar-aaald!» came to him. He had been so busy that he had had no time to look for Helmdall. A quarter mile to his right, the Sleepless One clung desperately to his broom, which was doing an endless series of loops, like an amusement park proprietor’s dream of heaven.

Shea inched his own broom around a wide circuit. A hundred yards from Heimdall, the latter’s mount suddenly stopped looping and veered straight at him. Heimdall seemed helpless to avoid the collision, but Shea managed to pull up at the last minute, and Heimdall, yellow hair streaming, shot past underneath. Shea brought his own broom around, to discover that Heimdall was in a flat spin.

As his face came towards Shea, the latter noted it looked paler than he had ever seen it. Then As called: «How to control this thing, oh very fiend among warlocks?»

«Lean to your left!» shouted Shea. «When she dives, lean back far enough to level her out!» Heimdall obeyed, but overdid the lean-back and went into another series of loops. Shea yelled to shift his weight forward when the broom reached the bottom of the loop.

Heimdall overdid it again and took a wild downward plunge, but was grasping the principle of the thing and pulled out again. «Never shall we reach Odinn in time!» he shouted, pointing down. «Look, how already the hosts of Surt move towards Ragnarök!»

Shea glanced down at the tumbled plain. Sure enough, down there long files of giants were crawling over it, the flaming swords standing out like fiery particles against the black earth.

«Which way is this mountain?» he called back.

Heimdall pointed towards the left. «There is a high berg in that direction, I think; though still too strong is the fire magic for me to see clearly.»

«Let’s get above the clouds then. Ready?» Shea shifted back a little and they soared. Dark greyness gripped them, and he hoped he was keeping the correct angle. Then the grey paled to pearl, and they were out above an infinite sea of cloud, touched yellow by a rising sun.

Heimdall pointed. «Unquestionably the Steinnbjörg lies yonder. Let us speed!»

Shea looked. He could make out nothing but one more roll of cloud, perhaps a little more solid than the others. They streaked towards it.

* * *

«There must be an arresting!» cried Heimdall. «How do you stop this thing?» They had tried three times to land on the peak; each time the brooms had skimmed over the rocks at breathless speed.

«I’ll have to use a spell,» replied Shea. He swung back, chanting:

By oak, ash, and yew

And heavenly dew,

We’ve come to Steinnbjörgen;

Land softly and true!

The broomstick slowed down, and Shea fishtailed it into an easy landing. Heimdall followed, but ploughed deep into a snowdrift. He struggled out with hair and eyebrows all white, but with a literally flashing smile on his face. «Warlocks there have been, Harald, but never like you. I find your methods somewhat drastic.»

«If you don’t want that broom any more,» Shea retorted, «I’ll take it and leave this old one. I can use it.»

«Take it, if it pleases your fancy. But now you, too, shall see a thing.» He put both hands to his mouth and shouted, «Yo hoooo! Gulltop! Yo hooooo, Gulltop! Your master, Heimdall Odinnsson, calls!»

For a while nothing happened. Then Shea became aware of a shimmering, polychromatic radiance in the air about him. A rainbow was forming and he in the centre of it. But unlike most rainbows, this one was end-on. It extended slowly down to the very snow at their feet; the colours thickened and grew solid till they blotted out the snow and clouds and crags behind them. Down the rainbow came trotting a gigantic white horse with a mane of bright metallic yellow. The animal stepped off the rainbow and nuzzled Heimdall’s chest.

«Come,» said Heimdall. «I grant you permission to ride with me, though you will have to sit behind. Mind you do not prick him with Hundingsbana.»

Shea climbed aboard with his baggage of sword and broom. The horse whirled around and bounded onto the rainbow. It galloped fast, with a long reaching stride, but almost no sound, as though it were running across an endless feather bed. The wind whistled past Shea’s ears with a speed he could only guess.

After an hour or two Heimdall turned his head, «Sverres house lies below the clouds; I can see it.»

The rainbow inclined downward, disappearing through the grey. For a moment they were wrapped in mist again, then out, and the rainbow, less vivid but still substantial enough to bear them, curved direct to the bonder’s gate.

Gold Top stamped to a halt in the yard, slushy with melting snow. Heimdall leaped off and towards the door, where a couple of stalwart blonds stood on guard.

«Hey,» called Shea afrer him. «Can’t I get something to eat?»

«Time is wanting,» shouted the Sleepless One over his shoulder, disappearing through the door, to return in a moment with horn and sword. He spoke a word or two to the men at the door, who ran around the house, and presently were visible leading out horses of their own.

«Heroes from Valhall,» explained Heimdall, buckling on his baidric, «set to guard the Gjallarhorn while the negotiations for my release were going on.» He snatched up the horn and vaulted to the saddle. The rainbow had changed direction, but lay straight away before them as Gold Top sprang into his stride again.

Shea asked: «Couldn’t you just blow your horn now without waiting to see Odinn?»

«Not so, Warlock Harald. The Wanderer is lord of gods and men. None act without his permission. But I fear me it will come late — late.» He turned his head. «Hark! Do you hear — Nay, you cannot. But my ears catch a sound which tells me the dog Garm is loose, that great monster.»

«Why does it take Odinn so long to get to Hell?» said Shea, puzzled.

«He goes in disguise, as you saw him on the moor, riding a common pony. The spae-wife Grua is of the giant brood. Be sure she would refuse to advise him, or give him ill advice, did she recognize him as one of the Æsir.»

Gold Top was up out of the clouds, riding the rainbow that seemed to stretch endlessly before. Shea could think only how many steaks one could get from the huge animal. He had never eaten horseflesh, but in his present mood was willing to try.

The sun was already low when they pierced the cloud-banks again. This time they dropped straight into swirls of snow. Beneath and then around them Shea could make out a ragged, gloomy landscape of sharp black pinnacles, too steep to gather drifts.

* * *

The rainbow ended abruptly, and they were on a rough road that wound among the rock towers. Gold Top’s hoofs clop-clopped sharply on frozen mud. The road wound tortuously, always downward into a great gorge, which reared up pillars and buttresses on either side. Snowflakes sank vertically through the still air around them, feathering the forlorn little patches of moss that constituted the only vegetation. Cold tore at them like a knife. Enormous icicles, like the trunks of elephants, were suspended all around. There was no sound but the tread of the horse and his quick breathing, which condensed in little vapour plumes around his nostrils.

Darker and darker it grew, colder and colder. Shea whispered — he did not know why, except that it seemed appropriate — «Is this Hell of yours a cold place?»

«The coldest in the nine worlds,» said Heimdall. «Now you shall pass me up the great sword, that I may light our way with it.»

Shea did so. Ahead, all he could see over Heimdall’s shoulder now was blackness, as though the walls of the gorge had shut them in above. Shea put out one hand as they scraped one wall of the chasm, then jerked it back. The cold of the rock bit through his mitten into his fingers like fire.

Gold Top’s ears pricked forward in the light from the sword. They rounded a corner, and came suddenly on a spark of life in that gloomy place, lit by an eerie blue-green phosphorescence. Shea could make out in that half-light the tall, slouch-hatted figure of the Wanderer, and his pony beside him. There was a third figure, cloaked and hooded in black, its face invisible.

Odinn looked towards them as they approached. «Hai, Muginn brought me tidings of your captivity and your escape. The second was the better news,» said the sonorous voice.

Heimdall and Shea dismounted. The Wanderer looked sharply at Shea. «Are you not that lost one I met near the crossroads?» he asked.

«It is none other,» put in Heimdall, «and a warlock of power he is, as well as the briskest man with sword that ever I saw. He is to be of my band. We have Hundingsbana and Head. Have you won that for which you came?»

«Enough, or near enough. Myself and Vidarr are to stand before the Sons of the Wolf, those dreadful monsters. Thor shall fight the Worm; Frey, Surt. Ullr and his men are to match the hill giants and you the frost giants, as already I knew.»

«Allfather, you are needed. The dog Garm is loose and Surt is bearing the flaming sword from the south with the frost giants at his back. The Time is here.»

«Aieeee!» screeched the black-shrouded figure. «I know ye now, Odinn! Woe the day that my tongue —»

«Silence, hag!» The deep voice seemed to fill that desolate place with thunder. «Blow, son of mine, then. Rouse our bands, for it is Time.»

«Aieeee!» screeched the figure again. «Begone, accursed ones, to whatever place from whence ye came!» A hand shot out, and Shea noticed with a prickling of the scalp that it was fleshless. The hand seized a sprinkle of snow and threw it at Odinn. He laughed.

«Begone!» shrieked the spae-wife, throwing another handful of snow, this time at Heimdall. His only reply was to set the great horn to his lips and take a deep breath.

«Begone, I say!» she screamed again. Shea had a bloodcurdling glimpse of a skull under the hood as she scooped up the third handful of snow. «To whatever misbegotten place ye came from!» The first notes of the roaring trumpet sang and swelled and filled all space in a tremendous peal of martial, triumphant music. The rocks shook, and the icicles cracked, and Harold Shea saw the third handful of snow, a harmless little damp clot, flying at him from Grua’s bony fingers.

* * *

«Well,» said the detective, «I’m sorry you can’t help me out no more than that, Dr. Chalmers. We gotta notify his folks in St. Louis. We get these missing-person cases now and then, but we usually find ’em. You’ll get his things together, will you?»

«Certainly, certainly,» said Reed Chalmers. «I thought I’d go over the papers now.»

«Okay. Thanks. Miss Mugler, I’ll send you a report with my bill.»

«But,» said Gertrude Mugler, «I don’t want a report! I want Mr. Shea!»

The detective grinned. «You paid for a report, whether you want it or not. You can throw it away. So long. ’By, Dr. Chalmers. ’By, Mr. Bayard. Be seein’ you.» The door of the room closed.

Walter Bayard, lounging in Harold Shea’s one good armchair asked: «Why didn’t you tell him what you think really happened?»

Chalmers replied: «Because it would be — shall I say — somewhat difficult to prove. I do not propose to make myself a subject of public ridicule.»

Gertrude said: «That wasn’t honest of you, Doctor. Even if you won’t tell me, you might at least —»

Bayard wiggled an eyebrow at the worried girl. «Heh, heh. Who was indignantly denying that Harold might have run away from her maternal envelopment, when the detective asked her just now?»

Gertrude snapped: «In the first place it wasn’t so, and in the second it was none of his damn business, and in the third I think you two might at least cooperate instead of obstructing, especially since I’m paying for Mr. Johnson’s services!»

«My dear Gertrude,» said Chalmers, if I thought it had the slightest chance of doing any good, I should certainly acquaint your Mr. Johnson with my hypothesis. But I assure you that he would decline to credit it, and even if he did, the theory would present no — uh — point of application for his investigatory methods.»

«Something in that, Gert,» said Bayard. «You can prove the thing in one direction, but not the reverse. If Shea can’t get back from where we think he’s gone, it’s a cinch that Johnson couldn’t. So why send Johnson after him?» He sighed. «It’ll be a little queer without Harold, for all his —»

Wham! The outward rush of displaced air bowled Chalmers over, whipped a picture from the wall with a crash of glass, and sent the pile of Shea’s papers flying. There may have been minor damage as well.

If there was, neither Gertrude nor Chalmers nor Bayard noticed it. In the middle of the room stood the subject of their talk, swathed in countless yards of blanket-like woollen garments. His face was tanned and slightly chapped. In his left hand he held a clumsy broom of willow twigs.

«Hiya,» said Shea, grinning at their expressions. «You three had dinner yet? Yeah? Well, you can come along and watch me eat.» He tossed the broom in a corner. «Souvenir to go with my story. Useful while it lasted, but I’m afraid it won’t work here.»

«B — but,» stammered Chalmers, «you aren’t going out to a restaurant in those garments?»

«Hell, yes? I’m hungry.»

«What will people think?»

«What do I care?»

«God bless my soul,» exclaimed Chalmers, and followed Shea out.