by Per Holbo
***
Skrymers Glove looked dangerous, as it lay there in the middle of nowhere with his long invisible fingers extended towards Alfheim and its crew, hoping to seize them and crush them to dust. Thor, Sif and Freya stood in front of the airlock putting on their spacesuits, while Baldur was At the bridge. He had been furious when it dawned on him that he alone was to be left behind aboard Alfheim, while the others went on an adventure.
“I´m sorry, Baldur,” Thor had tried to explain the angry Aseir, “but we need you At the bridge. Someone has to control Alfheim preventing it from coming too close to Skrymer´s Glove and simultaneously launch the time distortion bubbles and secure our penetration into the non-gravity space. You are that person, Baldur!”
But Baldur wasn´t ready to accept this at first.
“Why me?” he had protested, “Why not Freya? Or Sif? I mean, any of them can do this - especially Sif, who probably knows more about the mini generator than anyone else on this ship?”
“No, Baldur,” Thor had rejected the idea, “None of them can fly Alfheim like you can. You are by any standard the best pilot we have. It´s going to be either you At the bridge or we cancel the whole mission.”
Finally Baldur had reluctantly accepted his lot. Deep down he knew it was true. He was the only one who could do the job. Maybe if Loki had been here, he would have been an option, but it seemed that Loki had chosen to disappear at the most annoying time Baldur could think of.
“Well, alright! But I really hate the idea of sitting around doing nothing, while you guys put your lives on the line out there!”
“Oh, don´t you worry,” Thor had ensured him, “there will be more than enough to do here. You won´t be bored much. The instance we pass the point-of-no-return you will have plenty on your hands trying to steer the ship and at the same time keeping us alive with the time distortion bubbles. The slightest slip of concentration on your part would kill us all.”
“Yeah, I know,” Baldur had said nodding his head, “I will keep my eyes peeled at all times. Just remember to keep me informed of what´s going on out there, okay?”
Again Thor had to disappoint his younger brother. “Well... that would be rather difficult, Baldur. As soon as we get out of reach of the internal communication system, we have to keep our radio silence. We can´t risk being discovered by the Yetten forces too soon.”
“Just do what do can?” Baldur had asked.
“Of course, Baldur,” Thor had responded, “if nothing else, you should be able to follow us using the short ranged scanner, okay?”
Baldur was still annoyed, but there was nothing he could do about it and finally he had accepted that he was needed At the bridge.
“Airlock safety measures are switched off, guys,” his voice sounded through the loud speaker, “air won´t be pumped out before I open the external doors and when that happens you will experience something similar to being blown away by an explosion, alright?”
It was the best way to get propulsion. Alfheim´s systems had for the most part been shut down to make it possible to hide their presence to the Yetten. With everything turned off, the Yetten would hopefully interpret Alfheim on their scanners as a meteor or one of many other objects that were about to be eaten by one of the five black holes. If they used the engines on their space suits, it could bring too much attention and it could worsen their already poor chances of success.
“Okay, now. Everything is ready here At the bridge and all I´m waiting for is your final ‘go’ to open the bay doors.”
Thor open the inner door and was just about to step inside the air lock, when Freya grabbed his arm.
“Wait...”
Freya´s two companions looked apprehensively at her.
She was concerned and wondered how to present this in the best possible way. She didn´t want to be misunderstood and she knew Sif well enough to know that her most probable reaction would be quite fierce. Still, Freya needed to bring it out in the open, no matter how angry it would make Sif. Not only because she insisted on doing her job well, but also because she loved Sif too much to not give it a try.
Freya looked at her friend and fellow Vane with sadness and apology in her eyes, as she spilled it out, knowing how much Sif would resent this:
“Maybe we should consider letting Sif stay here aboard the Alfheim,” she finally said.
Sif froze. The feeling of being betrayed built up anger and resentment inside her and the color of her cheeks went dark red as her face shook with rage.
“What!” she cried out loudly, although she was less than a few inches from the face of Freya.
“Look, it's not that I think you cannot handle it. Of course you can. I just think that since this mission could be done without you... I mean... Why expose yourself to this kind of danger, when it really is not necessary?”
Freya knew right away that she probably could have given no worse kind of explanation than the one she had just used. Added to this, Sif already had problems with feeling inferior to the more agile and strong Freya, who in spite of her beauty was among the most feared fighters in the ranks of the Vanes. Even suggesting to let Sif stay behind, was bad enough in itself, but to bring up the notion, that she might not even be needed to complete the mission was like pouring gasoline on a fire.
“I don´t care one bit what you think!” Sif yelled in such a staccato kind of way that Freya unknowingly stepped back, “I am NOT going to just sit around onboard the Alfheim eating bon-bons and knitting sweaters, while you are all out there trying to save those children! They are just as much my responsibility as yours - more even - and I will NOT stay here doing nothing, while you and Thor rescue Tjalfe and Roeskva!”
Thor had first looked as if he was inclined to back up Freya. After all, Freya did have a point. He and Freya could complete the mission without her. But when he saw Sif's reaction, he didn´t say anything and instead decided to let the two feisty Vane Women fight it out.
Sif trembled in anger. She was determined to be a part of the mission and was in no way ready to let the others go without her. She was well aware that Thor and Freya had only the best intentions in mind. They wanted to keep her safe. Still, for some reason, she had a feeling that her participation was crucial for the success of the mission and she would not back down. Not under any circumstances. In addition, she had promised Thor to continue and that was a promise she intended to keep at all costs. Even if it meant giving her life.
Freya observed Sif carefully and concluded that there probably wasn´t any way she could make her change her mind and a brief look at Thor made it clear that she should not expect support there either.
“Alright, Sif,” she said quietly and Sif felt she could almost sense a little admiration in Freya´s voice. Then they entered the air lock and the inner doors shut behind them.
The silence felt like a monster from a dream creeping in on them on a quest to kill them, as they stood there checking their equipment one last time before they lay down on the floor. They needed a solid body position when they were blown out in empty space in order to be able to control their exit. Freya was as usual the fastest.
“Freya ready.”
“Sif ready.”
“Thor ready. Counting down from 5?”
“Received. Counting down from 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1.. Opening outer hatch..”
The outer door tilted outwards and the three companions blew out with the air quickly escaping Alfheim like when you open a shaken beer. Although they had placed themselves ready on the floor heads forward, their bodies were spinning around themselves the first several meters before they managed regaining control by letting air out through the nozzles on their suits. It was pretty unusual to use such low-tech propulsion, but it was exactly the kind they needed to keep the Yetten from discovering them.
Thor looked around trying to find the others. Freya was, not surprisingly, in the lead and had completely mastered the nozzle control, but Sif seemed to be in trouble, so Thor let a little air out thr
ough the suit´s rear nozzle and soon floated away reaching her. It was not easy to catch the spinning body, but he managed to grab hold of her legs with one hand while he controlled the nozzles with his other hand. When their rotation was brought to a hold, he examined her suit and quickly found the problem.
“Some of your nozzles are frozen,” he explained, “try to keep still. I´ll fix it.”
T he small hammer came out of the side pocket and it was perfect for chopping the ice without damaging the nozzle itself. Then he passed a message to Freya that everything was ok and reported back to Baldur.
“Ok, Baldur. I think we´re almost ready for the next phase. Have you got us on the screen?”
“Yep. Three dots on a line. That´s got to be you guys.”
“Excellent. We´re in good hands, then. Better keep radio silence till we reach the first membrane of the time distortion bubble. Just in case the Yetten are routinely listening in on short distance communications. If they have patrol in the near vicinity, we are busted before we can even get close enough to find the kids.”
The first way ahead, they had to communicate with hand signals, as they had agreed in advance. It took quite a long time, about 3 hours during which they could do nothing but wait. Wait and float. And marvel at the sight of Skrymer´s Glove, which was every bit as fascinating now as it had been looking through the bridge window on board the Alfheim.
As Thor hung there in the vast space of nothing, his thoughts brought him back to the time on Earth, where he had met Tjalfe for the first time. They had just finished building the protective dyke around Fyrkat when this young lad no more 13-14 years old had come by to see what was going on. Thor had immediately noticed that Tjalfe was different than the others in the crowd of people who piled up at the beginning to get their curiosity satisfied. From a distance, mind you. None of them dared come too close and even the most courageous of them never came closer than the edge of the forest more than 200 meters away from the dyke. They just stood there talking and spreading rumors of magical forces being at work here. When Thor and Sif worked late night shifts they always had the lights turned on so they could see what they were doing. These lights were like nothing the locals had ever seen before and they had begun to talk about mist men waiting in the in the bog just itching to leave their hiding place and move out to take over the village. But still none of the grown men had the courage to investigate further. Instead, it took the curiosity of a boy, Tjalfe, to figure out what was going on. He came one morning while the dew was still dripping from the tree leaves and initially he had joined the other villagers at the edge of the forest next to one of the village elders. But suddenly he had, to the horror of the Elders, decided to have a closer look at Fyrkat. They began shouting and screaming that he was not supposed to challenge the mist men and he should come back right away, or he would call down the anger of these magical beings and that they would attack the village. But Tjalfe had just ignored them and continued his journey towards the dyke.
Thor and Sif had been engaged in reading the results on the console in the center of the Fyrkat fortress when the closest guard on the palisades turned their attention to something going on outside.
“Thor!” the guard had yelled from his post with his back to Thor and Sif. He hadn´t even taken his eyes from the approaching boy with the uncontrollable curiosity. “You are not going to believe this,” he continued, “but someone has actually built up the courage to come closer.”
Thor had looked up and through the gate he could see the slender boyish figure coming towards Fyrkat in a sauntering kind of walk, as if he was on his pleasure trip rather than trying to investigate something potentially dangerous.
By now the guard had, to his own astonishment, also discovered that it wasn´t one of the warriors who had pulled himself together to do something about the possible danger to the village.
“I don´t believe it,” he cried in surprise, “they have actually decided to send a boy to do a man´s job, the cowards!”
“No,” Sif answered, “they haven´t sent him. They´re trying to discourage him from proceeding. Look! They are almost panicking out there!”
“Yeah! You´re right!” the guard responded, “Well.. I´ll let him come a bit closer. Let´s see, how far his courage will bring him. If he comes too close, I´ll stop him before he gets to the gate!”
“No! Wait!”
To this point, Thor hadn´t said anything, but now he decided to interfere. He put down his gear on the grass in front of him and started walking toward the gate.
“I will meet him out there. I´d like to get to know these people a little better,” he said.
Sif had watched Thor approaching the boy, but when he decided to even bring him inside of the fortress, she just had to object.
“Thor, it´s much too dangerous bringing him inside,” she had tried, but Thor was way too eager about it to listen to her warnings.
He had always had a great interest in meeting new people from alien planets and could not wait to find out how smart they were. In most cases, it was completely pointless to try to teach them anything, but Thor had quickly discovered that with Tjalfe it was different. Although Tjalfe obviously could not catch more than a fraction of the purely scientific things, he had an astonishing ability to capture the basic principles when Thor explained how their equipment worked. For example, he tried to explain Tjalfe that their cars had an engine that could drive them forward. Thor had been struggling in his head trying to figure out a way to explain the principles of fission in a simple manner and Tjalfe had just listened and asked questions. Asked some more questions and listened some more. After a long explanation of atoms being pooled together to release the energy inside of them, and then bring the energy into a generator that got the wheels to rotate, it had been a pure pleasure to Thor to suddenly see Tjalfe lit up in a huge smile.
“Oh, now I get it,” he simply said, “it´s like boiling water, isn´t it? I mean.. when my mum puts a cauldron with water over the fire in her kitchen, she puts a lid on it to make the water boil faster.. and then, sometimes, when the water starts to boil and if the lit is a bit too tight, it kind of just.. jumps off of the cauldron, because there isn´t enough room inside the cauldron?”
From that day on, Thor had looked on Tjalfe from a brand new perspective. He had initiated him in all sorts of experiments and taught him every single day in the scientific disciplines. He had been proud of his new apprentice and happy to see his progress. Sif had been of a very different opinion and repeatedly tried to get Thor to stop his teaching, but it had all been in vain.
“It just won’t do, Thor,” she had tried on more than a few occasions, “It´s too dangerous! What if the Yetten find us here and they discover that humans may not be as dim as they think? What if they somehow get to the boy in the belief that he may know a whole bunch of stuff about us and about what we are doing here?”
“Relax, Sif...” Thor had almost sounded condescending and Sif would probably have felt insulted had it been anyone else, but with Thor, she knew he didn´t mean it that way.
“There is no reason to worry,” Thor went on, “the Yetten are way too busy with the war. They won´t use that kind of resources in a place, where they haven´t even invented the steam engine yet. And they have absolutely no idea about our presence here. Nothing is going to happen to Tjalfe and he is the best student I´ve ever had. Better than Freya, even. And that says a lot, you know!”
But all of this seemed like a long time ago. Now Thor floated weightlessly in the middle of nothing and began wondering if he should have listened to Sif´s warnings. It was his fault that the Yetten had taken Tjalfe prisoner. And additionally, they even had his sister. They just had to complete this mission, find the children and save them from the claws of the Yetten! Those kids were his responsibility and he would do whatever needed to get them to safety.
“Thor?”
The sound of Baldur´s voice over the radio woke up Thor from his thoughts and he found hims
elf a bit confused as he fumbled with the communication buttons on his space suit.
“Thor here,” he responded.
“You´re almost at the first membrane. Please advise me when you have a visual, so I can fire ‘The Hammer’ at the right time.”
“The Hammer?”
“Yes, Thor, ‘The Hammer.’ Your nice device needs a proper name, doesn´t it?”
“It has a name, Baldur...”
“Yeah... well... let´s just say it´s official name isn´t exactly easy to remember, okay?”
“What do you mean? It has a name very fitting to what it does...”
“Ehm.. Honestly, Thor.. your name for the thing is kinda... how should I put it? ... Nerdy?”
“Nerdy???”
“Yep, Thor - it´s as nerdy as it gets. You got to know, Thor! Come on, man! ‘Massively Injected...’ I can´t even remember it. Wait a minute, I´ve got it written down somewhere... Here it is... ‘Massive Injected Opposing Linear Non-whatever thingy...” I don´t even have the patience to spell my way through this gibberish nonsense...”
“Nonsense!”
“You do have more than just monosyllables in your vocabulary, right?”
“???”
“Anyway, bro... it´s just too boring a name for something as potent as ‘The Hammer’ and I´ve decided to pep it up a bit...”
Pep it up? Thor couldn´t believe what he was hearing and was just about to seek out support from Sif and Freya, when he realized through the corner of his eyes how they were both shaking from laughter. He could almost hear them giggling, though of course that was quite impossible through the emptiness of space.
“You can´t just decide a name for that device, Baldur,” he made an obviously futile attempt to regain authority over name giving his own device, “the device is mine and I can call it whatever I please.”
“Sure you can, Thor,” Baldur responded in a cheerful tone, “but we call it ‘The Hammer of Thor’ nevertheless. We´ve already voted on it.”
Thor glanced at the two Vane women on each side of him. They were about to crack with laughing so much and even Freya had trouble keeping in control of the nozzles on her suit making her body rock sideways like a dolphin with a broken fin.
“Alternatively, we could use the abbreviation of your name, if you´d like: ‘M.I.O.L.N.E.R’ - at least it has a better ring than ‘Massive Injected Opposing Whatnot...’
This was clearly a lost battle and Thor knew when to fight and when not to...
“Alright, alright, then,” he said while trying to hide a smile from Sif and Freya, who´s eyes were fixed at him as they were aiming to get every possible bit of fun out of the whole situation.
“But right now we need to focus on the mission,” Thor said, “and we do have a visual on the first membrane. Ready the canon, Baldur!”
“Ready.”
“Good. Reestablish radio silence - just as a precaution - we will reach the membrane in just about 30 seconds, Baldur...”
Thor stared ahead with an empty look in his eyes. He had been a little curious as to how the gravity pocket at the point-of-no-return would look like, but he could never have prepared himself for what he saw. Although the background was blacker than black, the swirling waves in the curvature of space were quite clear. Here and there they could see small to huge sparklings like lightning between invisible poles and the entire surface of the giant pocket looked like a swimming pool in weightlessness.
Then came the first membrane ...
All three were strained to the breaking point and just hoped that they would be able to get fairly unscathed through. Shwoosch. They went through the first membrane. There was a strange sensation going through the body as arms, legs and torso experienced the passing of time differently and had it not been for Baldur´s firing of Miolner at the right time, they wouldn´t even have survived the trip to the other side of that membrane.
Between the first and second membrane, there was plenty of room and it took a while before they got through to the third membrane, which was so close to the fourth that their bodies got to experience no less than three time differences at once. Again, Baldur super accurately managed to hit all three of them with every shot at exactly the right time as they broke through yet another membrane. The fifth membrane was obviously the last, because they could observe how everything behind it was calm. Thor signaled the others. They had to be very careful when coming close to the surface of the final membrane. Miolner´s range was unfortunately too short for Baldur to shoot them through the fifth membrane, so here they had to fend for themselves. The most important thing was to make sure they had enough speed to get through fast enough for the time differences between the membranes to have the least possible effect on them for as short time as possible.
It required both precision and mindfulness. Especially since the fifth membrane seemed to have particularly violent fluctuations on its surface. If they did not have enough speed going through, they could risk the surface drawing back before they got through completely and if that happened, the wave of the membrane could very well draw a part of the body with it leaving the rest of the body outside. On the other hand, they had to simultaneously keep track of the contents of their oxygen tanks and they had to economize with the use of their nozzles when maneuvering. It would do them no good, if they could get through the membrane safe and sound, if they had no more oxygen to move on to the next phase of their mission and they would instead float aimlessly and helplessly around till they froze to death in the cold of space. They needed speed enough to just brake the surface of the membrane, but no more.
Thor got ready. He signaled Freya, who was a little ahead and out to the right and then to Sif, who floated closely in front of him and a little to the left. Now it was all about keeping the balance. From this point on and until they had all entered the non-gravity pocket, it was every warrior for themselves. The wave of the membrane approached with brute force and they would not be able to help each other through.
Thor struggled mentally to shut out everything else and now focused only on the pocket, on himself and the nozzles on his suit. Nothing else existed right now. The large and scary wave moved from left to right, but it was almost impossible to predict whether he would hit the high or the low of the wave at his current pace. He just had to make a decision and stick with it, so he breathed deeply into his lungs and decided to aim a little to the left of the high of the wave. That way he should hit the onrushing wave from the side and sail smoothly through. If he didn´t manage to hit it at that point, it was impossible to know where he would end before his air ran out. Hand on the nozzle controls. Wait for the right moment. Not yet. The wave needs to come a little further along. Three more seconds ... 2.. 1.. NOW!
The oxygen streamed out through the nozzle and the quick acceleration made gave him the feeling that his body was about to leave the suit through the boots as he stared rigidly at this one place on the wave, where he had decided to go through. Closer and closer came the pocket. This is it! Nothing more I can do... He just managed to discover that he had aimed a little wrong when the wave peak swept across his torso and continued its course to the left. This was exactly what he had feared and he prepared himself for the pain of his body being torn apart. He saw his life pass by in his mind's eye and just managed to send a thought to Sif as the pocket suddenly embraced his body and he was sucked inside, like a spider through a suction pipe. Swoosh!
He found himself on the other side of the membrane and everything seemed quiet. He looked around but could not see the girls. Then he turned his head as much as he could in his suit, but still could not see anything behind him, so he took a chance and used his nozzles.
He was much deeper inside the pocket than he had expected and the inner surface of the membrane was so far away that he could not spot the others without moving closer. Again, he decided to take the risk hoping there would still be enough oxygen to complete the mission. He listened to the sound of his nozzles opening and immediately cl
osed them again so that only exactly the right amount of air to put him in motion toward the pocket lining would be released, while he scanned the area with his eyes to look for the others. As he came closer to the pocket membrane, a small dot appeared and he felt his hope return. Maybe they had all made it through? There! Oh, no! The hope vanished as quickly as it had come. Sif hung half way in through the wave and would very soon be torn apart, as it had almost happened to him. Freya was nowhere to be seen at all and he had to face the truth: Only he had made it safely through ...
Thor could not bear the thought of losing his beloved Sif and he could not bear to see her being torn apart by time, but building up courage he forced himself to look in her direction. He just had to see her one last time before it was over, even though it was heartbreaking. He felt the time standing still as he prepared himself for the grisly sight that would soon tear his world apart. The wave had almost passed Sif and it was time to say goodbye ...
But nothing happened!
Then he noticed. He didn´t feel time standing still - time actually was standing still, or at least it almost stood still! He had just travelled from a place so far away that he had barely been able to recognize Sif and now he was less than 10 feet from her. And during that trip the wave had moved less than one foot! Maybe there was still enough time to save her? He didn´t dare letting more air out of the nozzles, but luckily it proved to be unnecessary, since he was almost close enough to reach out and touch her arms, which hung outstretched in front of her. He turned around, grabbed her arms by wrapping his legs around them and opened up the nozzles for a short burst.
With a force that surprised him, Sif rushed past him and before he had even had the time to think this thought to the end, she was out of sight. Thor´s empty gaze reached out to her, but she was long gone. Once again Thor was all alone and there was less than 10 minutes of oxygen left in the tank ...
