e required of the new ship. Moreover, the scientists had taken
centuries to go over the Old Ship, bolt by bolt, part by part, wire by
wire. Improvements had been made, but these had been incorporated into
the little prototype which was now successfully berthed within a cavern
somewhere on the moon. Over thirty men and women had gone with it.
Wolden was constantly in touch with them and daily growing more envious
of their position.

Odin knew little of such matters, but he sat daily at the council table
where progress reports and squawk-sheets were examined and discussed. The
speed with which they were developing the new ship was amazing. There was
one innovation to be noted.

Wolden referred to it as the Fourth Drive. Odin gathered that the Old Ship
had been equipped with such a drive, but new principles and new mechanics
had been added. Odin showed him a little book, which had been privately
printed in the world above some fifteen years before. It was entitled:
"Einstein and Einsteinian Space, with Conjectures upon a Trans-Einsteinian
concept." Wolden said it had been written by a young refugee from the
Nazis, and he doubted if over two or three copies of the manuscript were
now in existence. Memories of concentration camps, poverty, and the
internecine battles of the professors in a small college where the refugee
was an assistant in the Physics Department, had finally driven the poor
fellow to suicide.

"He was grasping at something new," Wolden explained. "His concept was only
nascent. But such a mind! The book has been invaluable. Still, it is
nothing but a starting point--but such a starting point!"

Time passed. It was like working in a dream, where no sooner was one task
done than another was ready. Odin ached. His head spun with all the
information that Wolden had given him--the basic principles behind those
machines that had gone into the ship.

Then, at last, it was finished. A young girl who reminded him of Maya was
hoisted up on a scaffold to the highest bulge of the hour-glass shaped
craft. Workers and visitors stood below by the thousands while she spoke
into a tiny microphone and swung a ruby-colored bottle against the ship.

"You are christened The Nebula," she cried. "Go out into space--"

They had used a bottle of red wine for the christening. A shower of
ruby-glass and winedrops came sprinkling down. They fell slowly--like drops
of blood, and the onlookers, who were by nature opposed to crowds,