A Yank At Valhalla by Edmond Hamilton

Author:Edmond Hamilton [Hamilton, Edmond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ace Books

CHAPTER XII

The Master Scientist's 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 trans-mutatoin 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.

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