Peter Gordon swung a leg over the shield-wall and came toward him. "We watched from the grass. You can play that axe like a Norse raider. Got his gatestone, eh?" Thor handed it to him. "This means we split up. You go your way, to the settlements. I go a different route." "Man, you don't know the way!" "I'll find it." Thor went and lifted a rotted plank. The red gatestone still lay in the crotch of the beams, winking at him. He took and put it in his pocket. "Now, if Aava hunts us, one of us will still get through the barriers." Thor put an arm around Karola's waist and held her against him. He said, "This is a Viking longboat. It is from a past day in the history of my planet." Peter Gordon murmured, "What queer things this space of Aava has snatched from the universe. I wouldn't be surprised to learn, when all our chips are in, that a great many disappearances on Earth are due to this place. "Remember the _Cyclops_ that went off the face of the ocean in 1920? And do you recall the _Copenhagen_? And, back in 1755, a quay with a lot of people on it just puffed out of existence, disappearing all at once, in Lisbon, Portugal. There have been other disappearances from the Earth. None perhaps as sensational as those I mentioned. "There's something wrong with this world we're in. It doesn't hew to a lot of natural laws we know." Thor said, "There are no trees. Just rock and sand." "Mean anything to you?" "I'm not sure. There's something tugging and pulling in my mind, but it hasn't caught hold yet. And the weapons we use. Bows and swords and axes. There isn't a modern weapon in the lot." Gordon grimaced. "Aava and his androids get the loot of the worlds, you know. They grab whatever drops on the planet. If he found guns or worse, he might horde them somewhere. The androids do not have the intelligence to use them. Besides, Aava doesn't trust his androids." "Yes. Well, we do all right with what we have. But that thought in my mind--I want to follow it up. Karola!" "Yes, Thor?" Her violet eyes smiled into his. He kissed the tip of her nose. "You go with Peter and Slag." "Oh, no, darling. I don't want to leave you. I--" Thor squeezed her hand. "This is serious business, sweet stuff. I want to find the Discoverer. He has a method of transportation, Peter, that's a dilly. He calls it astral projection." Gordon looked interested, icy blue eyes lighting. "I've read up on that, you know. It's some sort of yogi business. Certain Eastern fakirs claim to be able to do it. You know, he sits down and pays his brother a visit one hundred and some odd miles away. That sort of stuff. "I've often thought that mental telepathy was a form of fumbling astral projection. The Duke University experiments proved amazingly accurate. And then there were the Sherman and Wilkins tests." "I remember those. They worked quite well. I see what you're driving at. You think that the human mind is a sort of sending and receiving set, that it can communicate--"