by Earl
The Twilight of the Gods.
“Is it possible,” Eve said slowly, wonderingly, “that we can somehow save this place, knowing what we do?”
I shook my head. “We can’t change the immutable future. Not of our world. Let’s not think of those things, Eve. There are mightier forces and destinies than you and I can tamper with. Let’s just remember one thing—that we’re looking for Thor. Or a possible intelligent robot like ourselves who lived and moved among these ancient Asgardians.”
CHAPTER IV
Asgard at Last!
I LOWERED the ship into a courtyard boldly. The maneuver must have taken their sentinels by surprise. There were dozens of them, spaced watchfully along the battlements. The whole castle had an air of siege, as though for centuries they had held out against enemies.
Suddenly archers let fly with arrows at us. A spear or two hurtled against the ship. From the highest tower, I saw a more formidable weapon aimed down at us—a cannon-like object with a long ugly barrel. Evidently they would finish us off, now that we had landed within the ring of their defenses.
The arrows and spears meant nothing, but that cannon might. I leaped out, before a shot came from it.
“Stop!” I yelled. “I am not your enemy!”
Then, realizing the futility of using the English language, thousands of years before the language was known, I simply spread my arms in a gesture of peace. They must see I had no weapons.
They stopped firing arrows, but I doubt it was because of my gesture of peace. It was simply out of paralyzed astonishment. I could see them all frozen in attitudes of wonder, looking over the form of a shiny metal robot who talked. My stentorian voice had reverberated like thunder through the courtyard, rattling all the windows.
I waited for them to make the next move.
If they still insisted on using that cannon, I would have to move fast.
“Stay at the controls, Eve,” I said to her. “If I jump back in, be ready to whisk us away instantly!”
But no shot came from the cannon. We sensed that somewhere in the main tower, the authorities were discussing the matter. A few minutes later a group of figures emerged from the base of the tower, into the courtyard. They had an escort of armed men, with bows and swords ready.
I looked them over as they slowly, cautiously drew near. Blonde they were, blue-eyed, yellow-haired, patently Nordic of race. Descendants of the pre-Ice-Age Norse civilization, who had all been decidedly blonde. They were tall, magnificently built, long-haired in Viking style. In this one thing, at least, legend had not erred—that the Norse “gods” were all heroes and godly in stature.
But they weren’t “gods,” in any sense of the word. They were as human and mortal as any of today. I suppose if by some chance I vanished from Earth, and a catastrophe destroyed 20th-century civilization, the following age would remember Adam Link as a “god” too. Time throws a cloak of mystery around things ancient.
No, they were men. Men of men, however—tall, straight, athletic. Except for one. One out of the group of six. He was strangely dark, hulkingshouldered, and walked with a rolling, stooped gait. He had something of the sub-man in him. His features were cunning, impish.
I heard Eve’s whisper behind me, from the ship.
“Loki!” she said. “Adam, that’s Loki of the legend!”
I DECIDED to surprise them. I pointed to the darker man, as they stood warily before me.
“You are Loki—Loki!” I said, pronouncing meticulously. I wondered if the name had survived at all intact.
It had. They all started. The one named Loki grunted in vast surprise.
“How do you know me?” he queried. “We’ve never seen you before. How can you know me?”
I understood his speech almost instantly. You wonder how. Remember that I have studied every language recorded, including Greek, Hebrew, Phoenician. And the more esoteric ones of Sanskrit, early Sumerian, and Druidic. All new languages spring from a more ancient root. I was able to recognize in Loki’s words the root-forms that were later to branch out into all the various languages of the modern era.
I had some difficulty answering, though. It was not so easy to guess which root-words, of the thousands I knew, went back to the Asgardian tongue.
“I am Adam Link,” I said haltingly. “I am an intelligent man of metal. I am from the future. I have come back in time to visit you.”
They listened with puzzled attention. How much they caught I didn’t know. But their tenseness eased. They were not so fearful of me now. They were intelligent enough to accept me for what I was—a being of metal intellect—whereas the unenlightened submen of the forests might have shrieked in fear and cast stones at me from a cave all day.
The tallest of them suddenly stepped forward, half smiling in welcome. He had a certain regal air that instantly told me who he must be. And he had only one eye. He opened his mouth to introduce himself, but I spoke first.
“You are Odin!” I said. “Odin, the All-Father, or king of Asgard!”
Their faces were thunderstruck. The smile vanished from Odin’s face.
“You know me?” he barked. “Then you must be from some near land. Perhaps you are a spy from the Frost Giants of Jutenheim! Or from the Dwarfs of Elfheim! The Giants and Dwarfs have long sought to conquer us, by any and all means. Speak! Explain why you are here!”
I was under suspicion again, for knowing too much.
“I am looking for Thor,” I said. “Which among you is Thor? Is he a man of metal, like myself?”
“Thor? Thor?” They looked blankly at one another. The king went on. “There is none named Thor. These with me are Baldur, Tyr, Bragi, and Frey. And of course, Loki. But there is no Thor.”
Baldur—Tyr—Bragi—Frey! How those names stabbed through the mists of fabled time! All the Norse “gods” had then existed, as men, back here in 20,000 B.C. They were to live for all time, in the hearts of men.
But what about Thor? Why was there no Thor, the “thunder-god” ? Surely, with the many tales about this mighty warrior, protector of Asgard, slayer of the Frost Giants, he could not be merely a myth added to in stories about ancient Asgard? Thor was one of the most important of the gods.
“No Thor?” I gasped. “Are you sure?”
There was some mystery here.
EVE’S voice sounded in my ear. She had stepped from the ship, seeing I was in no immediate danger.
“Thor might have been among them centuries or even thousands of years ago, Adam. Don’t forget this remnant group has been here five thousand years, through many generations. That’s a long time. They may have forgotten him. Perhaps later we’ll find records of him in their archives. These may not even be the Odin, Loki, Frey, etc., of legend, but merely descendants of them bearing those names. Or perhaps the ancestors of the fabled ‘gods’. We have no way of knowing yet if we’ve landed in quite the right period of Asgardian history, to account for the deeds and stories handed down into our era.”
I nodded. Eve’s logic was sound. We would have to stay a while and investigate. Thor might have to be tracked down in other ways.
The Asgardians had momentarily stepped back, with a chorused gasp, at Eve’s appearance. But a second being of metal is easily accepted, after the shock of the first. They recovered quickly.
“This is my mate, Eve,” I said.
Clouds of suspicion still rested on their faces.
“You are spies!” Odin said flatly. “You are our enemies, hidden in metal suits, telling a fantastic story of being metal humans. How can a metal man have a metal wife?”
He barked to his guards suddenly. “Seize them! Rip away their metal armor. We will see who sneaks fox-like among us!”
I was amused as a dozen brawny guards leaped forward and began pulling at me. They tried prying with their fingers under smoothly welded joints. One of them let out a yelp of pain and fright as he made a short-circuit with his finger. A long spark of electricity leaped out, dancing over his arm.
&nbs
p; They all scrabbled back, looking at me pantingly.
Exasperated and determined, Odin leaped at me as though to tear my metal “suit” away himself. Loki held him back.
“Fool,” he grunted. “You must use proper instruments.”
Odin gave the order and the guards now came at me with their steel swords. And they unhooked metal axes from their belts. With these as prisers and levers, they might eventually damage me. I had to call a halt to the foolish proceedings.
“Stop!” I said.
I grasped a sword from a man and snapped it in half in my hands. I flung the two pieces into the air. They sailed completely over the tallest tower, and over the Bifrost Bridge, splashing into the sea beyond. No man could have thrown them one-tenth as far.
“I am strong,” I warned.
They gasped at the feat, but still leaped forward, weapons upraised. Certainly they made up in courage what they lacked in intelligence.
I looked at Eve helplessly. In a moment they would begin banging at us with their weapons. If I stayed, it would end in a fight. If I left, I’d have no chance to find a clue to Thor’s existence. It was an impasse.
But something intervened.
CHAPTER V
Adam Rescues Iduna
A SHRILL scream sounded from the high tower. Several of the Asgardian women had craned their necks from windows, with our arrival, to see the strange visitors. Some had daringly emerged on a crow’s nest balcony, looking down into the courtyard. One of these women had screamed.
All eyes turned upward. We saw a strange sight. A giant pterodactyl had swooped down from the clouds and grasped a girl in its claws. The great flying reptile, with hardly a break in its speed, carried the girl off to its eyrie, to devour the delicate morsel.
“Pterodactyls still exist in 20,000 B.C.!” I marveled. “Probably the last few of their doomed kind,” I added thoughtfully. “No fossils of them have been found of this recent time, but then fossils are rare occurrences. This will amaze paleontologists when I tell them back in our century!”
But Eve was not concerned with such scientific speculation. She grasped my hand, pulling me to the time-ship.
“Don’t stand here like a dummy!” she cried. “We’ll rescue her. The poor thing must be half frightened to death already. Hurry, Adam!”
The Asgardians stood stricken, watching one of their women carried off by the fearsome monster. Obviously, they could do nothing. They could not shoot their cannon, whatever it was, without killing the girl. Spears and arrows could not harm it, though a few of the guards half-heartedly shot. Soon the reptile’s great flapping wings would carry it off to the mountains.
“Iduna!” Odin moaned. “The fair Iduna, my favorite singer, whom we all love!”
I leaped into the time-ship, with Eve. In lightning calculation, I figured the distance and speed of the monster, and set my controls carefully. When I pulled the lever, our ship shot to its position in the usual blink of time— about fifty feet before the flying reptile.
It very nearly dropped its burden, startled at the apparition of the globular ship before it. It swerved away— seaward. I had planned that. Again I jerked my lever. Again the lumbering giant shied away at the annoying globe that got in its way.
It was almost fun. Time and again I popped my ship before it, closer each time, driving the poor creature crazy. It began to tire of the strain of braking and turning. And it hated and feared the sea, toward which it was being herded.
Finally it happened.
A SCREECH of rage it dropped the girl and flung itself at my ship, to give battle to this audacious little challenger. I timed it just right. The flying behemoth hit my ship with its head, as I materialized closer. Knocked out cold, it fell like a stone into the sea, drowning.
I darted the ship down to the surface, where a little white figure swam. I knew that the girl, Iduna, would be safe. The Asgardians must all be good swimmers, because of their island life. And their women, to judge by the men, would not be dainty, weak bits of femininity.
Opening the hatch, Eve drew the dripping wet girl in. She had already seen us, in the courtyard, so she was not startled. She stood tall, straight, perfectly proportioned, with beauty that I had seldom seen.
And she smiled, as though having already forgotten that a moment before she had been in the clutches of a terrible “dragon.”
“Thank you for what you have done,” she said in a rich, sweet voice. “I am sure you are kind and good at heart—whoever or whatever you are!”
She said the same to her companions, when we arrived back in the courtyard. The atmosphere had changed. They looked at us now with respectful wonder and friendliness.
“You have rescued Iduna, the Fair,” Odin said gratefully. “You are now our eternal friends. And guests. I welcome you to Asgard, Adam and Eve Link!”
His pronunciation of our names was a little odd—something like Autumn and Eef. The next moment his face went to sheer wonder.
“You must be great magicians!” he said, awed. “Your iron chariot moved with speed we could not follow, with our eyes. You have incredible strength. You are really made of metal, not flesh! Yet it is not so strange. In the ancient days, before the Great Cold, our people had metal beings like you.”
I jerked eagerly.
“They did? Then Thor must have been one of them who survived!”
Odin shook his head.
“But none of those metal-beings talked, or moved independently, as you do. They were mere clever machines, obeying the human voice. We have no recorded of a robot that was a free and intelligent being. ‘Thor’ is simply our word for metal.”
“I will search your records,” I said. “Somewhere I will find a clue.” Perhaps in some odd corner of the castle lay a half-rusted metal form. Once I dated its time of activity, I would know how long before forgotten Thor had lived in Asgard. Then I could go there, and meet the Thor-robot in life.
EVE and I stayed among the Asgardians.
With Odin’s permission, I searched their archives. There were not many. Time had rotted most of the library. Fire had once gutted the room. A half dozen ancient, crumbly tomes were all that were legible.
The records told of their once remarkable civilization. Of humming industries, trade, and exploration over the seven seas, wide-spread progress and invention. They had had aircraft, swift ships, subways, skyscrapers, just as we had glimpsed it in our travels from 50,000 to 20,000 B.C.
All this had vanished more than 5,000 years before. The glaciers had plowed every city into the ground.
There were no records beyond the Ice Age.
Loki, who seemed to like our company, gave us a verbal continuation.
“Asgard castle was originally built as a royal resort, where the kings of our land spent leisure hours. The ice-masses somehow failed to touch it, though it gouged out all the fjords of this coast. The Bifrost Bridge withstood, too. Our people had fled to the south. Here, with civilization destroyed, savagery reigned. All the peoples of Earth sank to bestial level, fighting over scraps of scarce food.
“Only Asgard castle remained what it was. In it, a thousand of royal and noble blood lived on. Their children lived on, through centuries of bitter cold. They did not degenerate to beasts, but they lost all previous knowledge. There were wonderful machines, once, in Asgard castle.”
Loki conducted us to forgotten corners of the huge building. Rust-eaten pipes, crumbling wheels, heaps of glass and broken debris told of one-time machines. Perhaps the castle had once been heated, air-conditioned, and run effortlessly by machinery. There had been elevators, aircraft hangars, machine-shops. All that was gone. Only the bare walls of the castle remained, in which the present Asgardians lived a next-to-nature life.
“Only one thing remains of original Asgard,” Loki informed us, taking us to the highest tower, before its mounted cannon. “It is a marvelous weapon. We don’t understand it. It shoots out a firebeam. It burns anything within a mile.”
A heat-ray! Ev
en the 20th century did not know such an advanced thing. Was it atomic-powered? I stretched my hand to the control button, to see what mechanism was involved.
I was startled at the shout from Loki.
His face was almost insanely twisted.
“Don’t shoot the gun, Adam Link! Don’t waste a shot. Its days are numbered. With it we have managed to hold off the attacks of our enemies. When it is finally burned out, there will be Ragnarok—the day of doom!”
RAGNAROK! The Twilight of the Gods! An air of sadness and resignation lay over the entire castle. They were the last remnant of a past splendor. They awaited the final extinction.
I questioned Loki, intrigued. “Who are your main enemies?”
“The Frost Giants, who live to the north in Jutenheim. They are a race of giant men, averaging seven feet. They have always warred on Asgard, hating the Asgardians for being finer and more intelligent.”
Frost Giants, in name and legend. Heidelberg Man,[2] in actuality.
“It is too bad that Jutenheim and Asgard must always war,” Loki added half to himself.
I looked at him, remembering the legend. “You are Odin’s half-brother? You both had the same father, but your mother was a woman of the Frost Giants?”
“Yes,” he nodded, assuming someone had told me. “At times there is peace with the Giants. And sometimes intermarriage, though the Asgardians generally shun such tainting. I am of both races, and at times I know not where my allegiance—”
He broke off, shrugging. “Naturally I am loyal to Asgard. We have another enemy—the Dwarfs. The short, gnarly men who live in caves and underground caverns, mostly south of us. Their land is Elfheim. They seldom attack, but we know they hate us with a bestial, unreasoning hatred.”
The Dwarfs of Elfheim—Neanderthal Man. They had probably come up to Scandinavia from northern Europe, driven away by the Cro-Magnon race. Loki could not see the whole, true picture as I could, with my 20th-century knowledge.
BY 20,000 B.C.—this Neolithic Era—homo sapiens had sprung from the original Cro-Magnon stock. Now the great prehistoric war of the species was going on. Spreading and conquering, Homo Sapiens was killing off all the races of sub-men. Very likely, the Scandinavian Peninsula was the last stronghold of the sub-men, with its Heidelberg and Neanderthal population.