tongue flickered.
'This is what the Jotuns feared!' Frey cried wildly.
'The fates save us!' Freya prayed. 'It is Iormungandr.'
I also recognized that giant, scaly body of long, rippling blackness, that huge head and those alien, glittering eyes. It was Iormungandr who towered before us in the misty dusk of the chill tunnel. The ageless and undying, the great Midgard serpent itself, was glaring down with blood-lusting eyes!
Chapter XIII
Flight and Death
We stood petrified by horror in that foggy, stone-walled corridor, gazing cataleptically at the hideous creature whose reptilian head was rearing up from the curling white mists. Freya's slim figure had shrunk against me with a choking cry. Frey stood in front of us, his sword raised, his face wild as he looked up at the looming head.
The hideous, abnormally huge coils could only be glimpsed in the mists beyond. But the giant spade-shaped head that hung above us was clear to our appalled vision. The enormous, opaline eyes were coldly brilliant as they stared down at us.
In that moment of stupefying horror, I recognized the intelligence in those unwinking reptilian eyes. This ser- pent of a bygone age had lived on for centuries in this land of eternal youth, with its master Loki and wolf Fenris. It had acquired an intelligence comparable with the human. A strange mind shone from those coldly malignant eyes.
'The Midgard snake!' Frey whispered.
'Jarl Keith!' Freya screamed to me.
The great head of the snake Iormungandr abruptly darted toward us. Frey struck out madly with his sword. I saw the blade slash into the scaly neck. But it caused only a shallow wound from which merely a little black blood oozed.
The Midgard serpent recoiled, however. Its opaline eyes flamed with rage. From the jaws of the monster, with a terrific hiss, came a cloud of fine green spray that flew toward Frey. He reeled back, covered by that weird vapor. But I leaped forward, dragging him and Freya ahead. I saw our single chance. The momentary recoil of the serpent had left open the mouth of a corridor on the right!
'Quick!' I cried, pulling them toward the black passage.
Frey seemed blinded by the green spray of the serpent. The monster's vast coils were twitching with rage, its head swaying angrily forward again. But we plunged safely into that branching corridor. It was utterly dark. As we stumbled forward in it, I heard a distant babble of alarm from the upper levels of the Jotun palace.
'The Jotuns will be after us,' I cautioned. 'Loki will be warned of our escape.'
'Jarl Keith, Iormungandr follows us!' Freya cried wildly.
The angry hiss of the giant serpent was echoing from the stone walls. And I could hear the loud rustle and scrape of its scaled body as it glided into the dark passage after us.
No more than a few moments could have passed before we reached the end of the passage. But it seemed ages that we ran in blind, unreasoning terror. Slipping on the mossy, wet stone floor, we could hear the clamor of the far-off alarm grow louder and the hissing rustle of the Midgard snake overtaking us.
Then I collided with a metal door that closed the end of the passage. My heart throbbed as if it would burst as I clawed frantically for the knob. If it were locked, if we were trapped here by the serpent–
My hand found the catch, and I tore the door open. Outside was the open air. We stared at the night that was filled with curling white fog-mists through which shone the ghostly Moon. I pulled Freya and the stunned Frey through and slammed the door shut behind us. The catch fell. Next moment, there was a loud thump against the other side of the door as the Midgard snake's huge head struck it.
We had emerged into one of the courtyards of the great palace. In the vague mists, the squat, brutal bulbs of Jotunheim's structures rose darkly all around us. But now torchlight was flashing from the upper windows of the palace as the alarm spread.
'Which way?' Frey mumbled thickly, gaping about in the shrouding mists, his sword in his unnerved hand.
'This way,' I said decisively, leading them toward the left. 'It's the next court.'
Then I heard the stamp of restless horses on the stone paving of an adjoining court. We ran forward. Frey was staggering like a drunken man as we burst into that adjoining court. Out of the mists loomed a Jotun guard, black-bearded, huge, his face a white blur in the fog.
'Who are you?' he challenged. When he saw the fair hair of my two companions, he uttered a loud cry. 'Aesir!'
He struck at me with his sword, but I had the advantage of surprise. I ran in with an upward thrust of my blade, slid past his defense, ripped between the laces of his
I began running toward the vague shape of my rocket plane, which loomed out of the mist. But suddenly I remembered that the port window had been smashed when I had first landed on the sandy beach below Midgard's frowning cliffs. Flying in the cold, thin air of the Arctic, I might lose consciousness and crash into the sea. In any case, my hands would be too numb to handle the firing wheel.
'Hold the ship against attack!' I shouted to Frey, handing him the guard's sword.
As I rushed into the cabin, I glimpsed him standing with the sword in hand, but he was swaying drunkenly. I knew he could not hold off an attack for long, and I dragged on the flying togs I had discarded before climbing to Midgard plateau. The instant I strapped the oxygen tank to my shoulders, I heard Freya's terrified scream.
'Jarl Keith, Frey is swooning, and Jotuns are coming!' I snatched a super-automatic from the supply compartment and dashed outside. The Moon slipped from behind the clouds, shining full on the Jotuns who were rushing up to attack. Horned helmet on his head, sword in hand and the golden mustache writhing above his savage lips, Loki was leading two fierce Jotun soldiers. But Freya was struggling with Frey's almost inert weight. The blade had slipped from his nerveless grasp.
'Get him into the rear of the ship and close the door!' I shouted to the woman.
The Jotun archer drew back the string of his bow to strike me down with a heavy arrow. I picked him off with a single snipe-shot. The pikeman raised his javelin, dropped it as a slug blasted away his skull. Before I could wheel on Loki and end the menace to the Aesir, Freya called to me in despair.
'Jarl Keith, I cannot get him into the ship! He has swooned.'
I triggered a shot at Loki, saw him duck swiftly out of the bullet's path. Then I had no more time to fight. I hurled the gun and caught him on the right shoulder. The sword spun from his grip as he staggered back.
Frantically I ran to the cabin door and dragged Frey inside. When I pointed quickly, Freya opened the door of the freight hold while I carried him in and laid him down on the floor. I wrapped him in blankets and told Freya to do the same. It would be warmer and more easy to breathe than in the cabin, for the ship was electrically warmed and synthetically oxygenated. But the smashed window of the cabin would leak its own air and warmth, and chill and thin the air of the hold, despite the tightness of the door I closed on them as I sprang back into the pilot room.
Jotun reinforcements were charging up as I opened the jets wide and blasted off. The plane soared into the freezing air, and I was glad I had taken time to don my flying clothes and oxygen tank. Even through my wired suit, I could feel the numbing chill, and my lungs were laboring under the lessened pressure.
Far below, I saw the glimmering river through the closing mist. The tall masts of Jotun ships looked like dowels. I twisted the firing wheel to top speed, and we rose so steeply that I thought the ship would slip into a tailspin. But it righted and zoomed higher, rocketing above the misty river and the dark, fog-shrouded forests beyond. When I looked back, the ominous citadel of Jotunheim was alive with moving torches. I could well imagine the blazing anger that Loki would vent upon the Jotuns because of our escape.
'We're clear!' I thought exultantly. 'Maybe by now Loki has more respect for outland science.'
I set the robot controls and searched through the spare-parts compartment for a new window. Fixing the smashed port was only a few moments' work. Then I opened the oxygen nozzles wide and let the cabin fill with fresh, invigorating air and warmth. I removed my flying togs and opened the freight hold door. Freya and I helped
