Loki's beautiful face darkened, like the Sun when a storm cloud veils it. His wondrous eyes throbbed with an age-old hate.
'I loved the Aesir, too, Jarl Keith,' he said broodingly. 'Yes, long ago when we dwelt in deep Muspelheim and I was second to Odin himself, I did much for my race. I delved into scientific secrets that had been hidden from them, and I found new truths. I would have done much more for them, had they made me their ruler in Odin's place. For I was never satisfied, as Odin was, with a static, stagnant well being.
'I burned with the desire to acquire all knowledge that man could acquire, to know the reason for every phenomenon in the world and in the sky. I longed to acquire every power that man ever could acquire, so that we should be unchallenged masters of all nature. It was I who freed the Aesir from sickness and age. I made them almost immortal, by kindling the atomic fires whose radiation prevents disease and age. Was that not a great gift I made to my people?'
As a scientist, I could not help feeling a certain sympathy with Loki. Yet I realized that he was presenting merely his own side of the case.
'Yes,' I admitted. 'But in making the Aesir that gift of near-immortality, you almost destroyed them. You brought catastrophe on the subterranean world of Muspelheim, and forced them to flee up here. No wonder Odin forbade you to carry on such dangerous researches!'
Loki shrugged. 'There can be no great victory without great danger, outlander. I had a vision of leading the Aesir to undreamed-of heights of power and wisdom, though by a road beset with vast perils. I was willing to risk those perils, to be great or to die. But dull Odin blocked my path. He said: 'It is not good to endanger all the world to gain power and learning for ourselves.'
'The Aesir agreed with him, and turned from me and my vaulting dreams. I would have made them like eagles soaring into the sky. But they preferred to follow Odin and live out their lives in dull, accustomed routine.'
Loki's eyes blazed, and his graceful form stiffened on the black throne as he spoke. And I could not help feeling sympathy with him. No real scientist could willingly submit to suppression of his desire to know, his yearning to master the laws of nature. Loki's blue eyes fastened on me, and he smiled thoughtfully, his passion fading.
'I read your mind, Jarl Keith,' he said quickly, 'and I see that you think the same as I.'
'Not your lust for power,' I snapped.
'Do not deny it,' he said. 'You are of my own breed, Jarl Keith. We are more alike than any others in this land. For just as I risked my own fate and that of my people to win new knowledge and power, so you, who are also a scientist and searcher after truth, came northward into danger and hardship to search for new, strange truth. Yes, we two are of the same minds.'
Though his voice rang with sincerity, I fought mentally against his seductive thoughts.
'It is because we are so much alike,' he continued, 'that I was able to fling the web of my suggestion into your brain. Though you were far away on your ship beyond the ice, yet I could direct you to recover the sunken rune key.'
'How could you do that, Loki?' I asked with intense interest. 'How could your will range far when your body was held in suspended animation in that prison-cave?'
'You outlanders have concentrated more on mechanical devices than on the subtler forces of science. Otherwise, you would understand better the nature of the mind. The brain is really an electro-chemical generator, and thought is the electric current it generates. A brain which has developed the power can fling its web of electric thought-impulses abroad and into
'Thus, during the centuries that I lay prisoned and helpless, I sent the web of my thoughts far afield, seeking a means of escape. At long last, I located the rune key where the Aesir had thrown it in the outer ocean. I could not send any of the Jotuns to secure it, for they could not cross the vast ice without perishing. But at last your ship came north and was near the sunken rune key.
'I seized the opportunity to influence you to have the rune key dredged up. And once you had it, and were in the air in your flying ship, I sent a mental message to the princess Hel, my pupil, I commanded her to operate the storm-cones in my laboratory, which would cause a tempest to blow you hither.'
'Storm-cones?' I repeated. 'What device could be used to cause such a tempest?'
Loki smiled and rose to his feet.
'Come, Jarl Keith, I'll show you. I think you, a scientist like myself, will be interested in my laboratory.'
Chapter XII
The Laboratory
He led the way across the vast, many-pillared hall. The giant wolf, Fenris, rose and followed us on padding feet, its feral green eyes never leaving me. Loki brought me into a smaller stone chamber. It was indeed a laboratory — the strangest I had ever seen.
Two small, blazing suns of radioactive matter, suspended in lead bowls, illuminated the dusky room. The intense white radiance glittered off an array of unfamiliar mechanisms and instruments.
I saw another of the complex instruments of remote vision, with a square quartz view-screen, such as Loki, Utgar and Hel had been using in the great hall. And I noticed devices which appeared to be similar to the transmutation apparatus used by the Alfings. But these were greatly refined in design. Using concentrated beams of radioactive energy shot from leaden funnels, they could effect even more rapid transmutation of small metal objects.
Loki led the way to the most striking feature of this array of alien scientific instruments. Proudly he gestured at a row of big objects which looked like heavy nozzles of fused quartz mounted on swivels above square, copper- shielded mechanisms. The interior complexities I could not see. Loki laid his hand on one of the nozzles of quartz.
'These are the storm-cones I long ago devised, Jarl Keith. They can cause the most terrific tempest at a distance of hundreds of miles.'
'How can they do that?' I asked incredulously.
'It is quite simple.' He smiled. 'A lightning storm is caused by a sudden sharp difference in electric potential between cloud and Earth, or cloud and cloud. These storm-cones spray a carefully aimed and canalized electric field that causes such an abnormal difference of potential in any desired location. When I lead the Jotun horde to attack Asgard, I'll first bring destructive lightning down upon the Aesir forces. Then they'll fall easy prey to my savage warriors.'
I was too appalled by that threat to comment. Loki led me toward a door on the opposite side of the laboratory.
'Now perhaps you can instruct me a little, Jarl Keith,' he said. 'Come with me.'
The door opened into a big, stone-paved court outside the ancient citadel. It was walled, but a great gate in one wall was open, leading out onto the slope that ran steeply toward the river. Dusk had fallen, and the white mists that shrouded Jotunheim were thicker.
My eyes flew to a familiar object in this court. It was my rocket ship. It had not been destroyed, after all.
'Yes, it is your flying ship,' Loki said. 'After you landed in Midgard, I knew it was only a matter of days until I was released. I sent a thought order to the princess Hel to have Jotun ships brings the craft here, for I wish much to examine this product of the outland world's science. But don't cherish any hopes of making a sudden escape in it, Jarl Keith. I've only to say a word to send Fenris ravening at your throat.'
The monster wolf behind us snarled again, as he heard his name. I shrugged.
'I wouldn't leave without Freya and Frey, anyway.'
Loki inspected the whole interior of the plane, asking me quick, intelligent questions about every feature of it. He seemed to grasp the design of the ship and its highly improved rocket motor almost instantly.
'You are clever, you outlanders, to devise such things,' he said with sincere respect.
'Don't you want to look at the controls?' I asked.
