We could hear the tramping of feet, the clanging of hammers beating out spear and arrowheads, the bustle of activity as the warships below were prepared. All the stir of preparation was for the coming battle. Freya raised her bright golden head with proud gladness.
'Come Loki and all his evil hosts, come the end of Asgard itself, and I shall not weep now,' she whispered tensely. 'Beloved who came to me from beyond the ice, we are one till time ends.' She stepped back. 'You must answer the summons of lord Odin. We meet again at the feast tonight.'
My heart was throbbing with pride and gladness as I turned from her and hurried across Asgard to Valhalla castle.
Chapter XV
The Fire World
Odin and Thor were waiting for me in the great hall of Valhalla. The stern, iron-strong face of the Aesir king was heavy. As he spoke, I could hear the bustle of preparation, the clatter of shields and spears and hurrying feet throughout the great castle.
'Jarl Keith, I shall not hide from you that Asgard is in dire peril. The Jotun hosts outnumber us by many to one. Though we might repulse them, if that were all, they will be led by cunning Loki and aided by the storm- weapons of which you spoke.'
I nodded wordlessly, for all this knowledge had weighed on my own mind through these last hours.
'It is necessary, unless Asgard is to perish,' Odin continued, 'that I devise some defense against those storm-cones. Otherwise they would blast our forces and make us easy prey.'
'Can you prepare a defense against them, lord Odin?' I asked hopefully.
'I think I can,' said Odin, gravely thoughtful. 'I possess as much of the ancient science of our race as Loki, remember, though I have not probed into unholy researches as he did. Tell me, what did you learn of the nature of his storm-cones?'
Rapidly I told Odin and Thor what Loki himself had related to me of those amazing devices. They could project a controlled electric field to any desired spot and cause an abnormal difference of electric potential between that place and the sky. The result would be a blasting discharge of lightning.
'Ah, I understand now,' Odin muttered. 'Loki has found a way to draw power from the static electric charge of Earth, transform and project it in a controlled field. Truly he is a daring scientist, as always.'
'Curse him and his devil's tricks!' growled Thor. 'I always mistrusted him, even in the ancient days in Muspelheim.'
'Couldn't there be some way of creating an electric energy field that would screen out Loki's projected field?' I asked Odin eagerly, with great anxiety.
'You have divined the only possible defense, Jarl Keith.' Odin nodded. 'And I could soon build a mechanism to create such a screen of energy. But it would take tremendous power to operate it. Only controlled disintegration of a large mass of intensively radioactive matter could yield such power as that.'
'You said once, lord Odin, that there are tremendous masses of radioactive matter in the deep world from which the Aesir originally came.'
Odin's stare narrowed.
'Are you suggesting that we could get the radioactive substances from Muspelheim?'
'That's my idea,' I stated. 'You told me that there was a way down into Muspelheim. It was a way by which the Aesir originally came up, and which Loki later used for his researches in the atomic fires below.'
'It is true,' Odin said slowly. 'There is such a path down to Muspelheim, though it is a perilous and fearful one to follow. The opening to that path is in the deepest chamber of this castle. When we emerged here long ago, we built Valhalla over it. And it is the same way that Loki used to descend and tamper with the atomic fires below, until we discovered what he was doing and banished him.'
'But it would be deadly dangerous for anyone to go down that way to Muspelheim and seek to bring back radioactive matter. For that deep-buried world is a place of awful, raging atomic fires. The terrific radiation is such that it streams even up through Earth's crust into this land.'
'I know, but a lead garment of sufficient thickness would protect me from the radiation,' I said earnestly. 'I know that from my own science. Let me go on this mission, lord Odin!'
He hesitated. 'The lead suits which Loki used for his secret descents into Muspelheim are still here,' he muttered. 'It might be done, Jarl Keith. I will go with you on this perilous trip.'
But Thor shook his great, shaggy head.
'No, Father, you must not go,' the Hammerer declared. 'You must be here to take command if Loki's forces attack before tomorrow. And you will also need all the available time to build the mechanism of which you and Jarl Keith speak.' He turned to me. 'I will go with Jarl Keith down into Muspelheim.'
Odin reluctantly assented.
'So be it, then, though I dislike to send you, Jarl Keith, upon this fearful mission. The fight is for the sake of our people, not yours.'
'The Aesir are my people, now and always, if you will let me claim that privilege!'
Odin's iron face softened, and he laid his great hand on my shoulder.
'Jarl Keith, I welcome you as one of us. Weal or woe, life or death, you are outlander no longer, but jarl and captain of the Aesir.'
Hard-headed American scientist or not, I felt pride such as I had never felt before, to be accepted into the company of these mighty men.
'Now go we down to the chamber that holds the mouth of the terrible road to Muspelheim,' Odin said. 'Come!'
Thor and I followed out of the great hall and through corridors. We descended dark stone stairs until we reached the deepest level of Valhalla castle. We came to a door carved with runes, and with a great lock upon it. Odin touched the runes in a certain combination, and the door swung slowly inward.
By the light of the torch Thor carried, I saw that we had entered a round stone chamber of considerable size. It was dank and dusty, as though unused for ages. Standing about were dust-covered instruments and mechanisms of copper, quartz and iron, which I guessed were long unused devices of the ancient Aesir science.
In the very center of the big chamber's stone floor yawned a pit fifty feet in diameter, sinking to unguessable depths. Up from that opening beat a fierce green glow of throbbing force, from somewhere far beneath. I heard a dim, remote, roaring sound.
Most strange of all, in the opening of that pit floated a twenty-foot disk of white metal, with a squat, thick standard of metal rising from its center. It poised in the radiation, apparently without support, rocking gently as the fierce green rays from below streamed up through it.
'What in the world is that?' I asked startledly.
'That is the chariot on which you and Thor will ride down the road to deep Muspelheim,' Odin explained. 'And yon pit in which the disk floats is the road itself.'
Odin looked somberly about the dusty room and its looming, enigmatic mechanisms.
'This is the very heart of Asgard, Jarl Keith. Up that pit-road the Aesir came long ago, fleeing from disaster- stricken Muspelheim. Over the opening of this road I caused Valhalla castle to be built. And secretly, from this chamber, Loki came and went to Muspelheim in the perilous researches that caused his exile, using the floating disk which he had devised to come and go easily.'
Thor was looking in obvious dislike at the metal disk that was rocking eerily in empty air at the edge of the pit.
'I've not ridden that disk since we caught Loki in his secret researches,' rumbled the bearded giant. 'I've not much desire to repeat the trip, but I suppose it has to be done.'
'Here are the lead suits, Jarl Keith,' called Odin.
I went to the side of the chamber to which the Aesir king had gone. He had reached down, from hooks on which they hung, two of the four strange garments which had hung there, gathering dust for long. The garments were stiff robes of heavy but oddly flexible lead, falling to the ankles, with leaden boots for the feet and leaden
