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Title: The Mouthpiece of Zitu

Author: J.U. Giesy

Release Date: March 2, 2022 [eBook #67542]

Language: English

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
             Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUTHPIECE OF ZITU ***





                        The Mouthpiece of Zitu

                            By J. U. Giesy


                           A Complete Novel

                Sequel to "Palos of the Dog Star Pack"


            Copyright 1919 by The Frank A. Munsey Company.

           This story was published in The All-Story Weekly,
                   serially, beginning July 5, 1919.




                               CHAPTER I

                            THE NEW PATIENT


I took my stethoscope and went over the patient's chest. I wanted to
determine his general condition, since he was now committed to my care
as medical director of the State Hospital for the Insane. He had
struck me as being in a rather bad way when he was brought in from the
capital city farther north. It was part of my professional duty to
look out for his physical welfare as well as endeavor to set right his
distorted brain.

I had one of the nurses remove the hospital garment into which he had
been put, and then I set the disk of my instrument over the region
of his heart. It was bad, very bad indeed. The burr and whisper of
its labored action came through his emaciated flesh with surprising
loudness. I frowned and went on to the lungs, and found them suffering
from the effects of that faulty circulation.

A dissociation of personality had been alleged by the physicians who
had sent him into my hands. In other words, the man was supposed not
to know who he was--to have lost his true identity, or be confused
about it in his own mind. But the case was not violent, had given no
indications of any wish to work harm to any one about him. Indeed, the
entire course until now had been of a melancholic turn.

I finished my examination and straightened, and met the regard of his
eyes. They were a very dark brown, and they were fixed intently on my
face. What was more, they gave me one of the oddest sensations I had
ever had in my life.

I had never seen the man before. Of that I was positive. And yet as
I met the steady glance he held upon me, I felt that I knew those
eyes--the eyes, mind you--or what was behind them--looking out as
through a window in a darkened house. I'm not sure, but I think I
caught my breath.

"Send the nurse away, will you, Dr. Murray?"

For the first time during my examination the patient spoke, and the
sound of it was almost like a half-checked laugh. It was as though the
man felt a perfectly sane and understanding amusement in the situation
in which he found himself.

Then as I hesitated, more in surprise than from any other reason, he
went on: "Oh, I'll not be violent or try to escape, or anything like
that. I merely want to talk to you--yourself."

I nodded to the attendant, who left the room, and turned back once more
to encounter those strangely familiar eyes.

"Don't you know me, Dr. Murray?" their owner inquired.

"I never saw you before," I said, determined to meet this phase of the
man's condition, whatever it was, in as natural a way as I might. "And
yet--" Right there I paused.

"And yet--you aren't sure about the denial even while you make it."
He laughed without any sound. Insane in a mild way he might be, but
he certainly seemed to know what he was saying and to be enjoying the
somewhat puzzled expression which I fancy must have shown upon my face.
"Murray, you're both right and wrong. You've never seen this body, so
far as I know, but I hardly think you've forgotten Jason Croft."

"Croft! Good Heavens!"

The words dribbled off my lips. I gasped. Now I knew what it was about
those eyes that held me. Croft I had not forgotten, but--so far as
earth was concerned--he had died; I had pronounced him dead myself;
had seen his body consigned to the grave. And it had been the body of
a splendidly proportioned man--no such pitiful physical wreck as this
figure in the bed.

But it had been Jason Croft who had given to me what as nearly amounted
to a proof of spiritual life apart from the mortal body as any man
might have--who had told me, shortly before his death occurred, the
most remarkable tale my ears had ever heard, a tale incredible in
itself, and yet one which, despite all arguments against it, I had
always felt myself inclined to believe. In addition to that, when his
story was ended he had announced that he was forsaking his earthly
body for life on another planet; had told me that some day I would
receive a call and find his earthly body dead, but that on that other
star, Palos--a world in the system of Sirius the Dog Star--he would be
possessed of another body and Naia, Princess of Aphur, as wife.

       *       *       *       *       *

Unbelievable? Of course it was unbelievable. And yet Croft's earth body
died, just as he said it would. And if any one could have heard his
story as I did when he told it, I think the auditor would have been
moved to credence just as I was myself.

Croft was a physician even as I am. He was a scientific man. In
addition, he was a student of what most of us call the occult--the
science of the mind, the spirit, the soul. So much I know, not only
from his words but material evidence. His former home had contained
the greatest private collection of works on the subject I have ever
seen. According to his own statements, he had advanced so far in his
investigations of the subject that he could project his own astral
body anywhere at will. And by anywhere, I mean to be understood in the
literal sense.

Many men have acquired the ability of which he was master, as applying
to the earthly sphere; Croft, however, had carried it to its ultimate
degree and had shaken off or entered the atmospheric envelope of our
planet at will. In our conversation, which ended with his announcement
that he was going back to Palos to wed Naia and live out his life in
that other world, he had explained the whole thing to me--largely as I
felt at the time and after, because I had dabbled in the occult to some
extent, and he knew I would understand, in part at least.

In making clear his motives he had even broached the subject of
twin souls--the doctrine that each spirit is originally dual, but
incarnates as two individuals--a male and a female in the flesh. He
alleged that since a child he had felt a vague prompting toward the Dog
Star, which he could not understand until he went there in the astral
form, once he had gained the power, and found on Palos a woman--his
true counterpart, his twin soul, as he declared his belief.

But, to accomplish his mating with her, Croft declared further that he
had done a most remarkable thing. Discovering a man dying from a mental
rather than a bodily condition on the other star, he had waited until
his death occurred and then appropriated the still physically viable
body to himself; and he explained the thing in a very comprehensible
manner at the time, describing the whole procedure in a scientific way,
until unbelief faltered and one felt that the thing had been done.

Over that body he had acquired as full control as he had of his own.
He might at will throw it into a cataleptic sleep. After that he led a
sort of double existence--sometimes on Palos, sometimes on earth--until
his plans were finally shaped. Then, and then only, did he finally
forsake the mundane life for that other and fuller existence which he
felt the Palosian girl would make complete.

At the time I had questioned him as fully as time and my own knowledge
would permit, and he had answered in a way which not only convinced me,
but amazed me.

I had asked him concerning the time of his passing from earth to that
other distant star billions of miles across space, in a universe
outside our own. And he had replied that outside the mental atmosphere
of man time did not exist; that between the planets was only eternity;
that one could not use what was non-existent; that he could reach Palos
in the condition toward which he journeyed to it as quickly as I could
project myself there in thought. In similar fashion he had been able
to meet each of my several interrogative points. In the end I had been
content to merely listen to the astounding narrative he told.

That story I had not forgotten any more than I had the man himself.
But that he should have reversed the experiment which had given him a
physical life on Palos in order to return to earth was more astounding
still. And yet--if I were to believe the evidences of my well-nigh
reeling senses--that was exactly what had occurred; because, no matter
how beyond all accepted tenets of life the thing was, I couldn't help
feeling that it was Croft's spirit looking out at me from the new
patient's eyes.

Then as I stood there, tongue-tied, considering those things, he spoke
again.

"Rather fusses you a bit, doesn't it, Murray? Well, never mind. I
didn't expect to come back here when I left, but needs must, you know,
as they say on earth. I don't wonder that it surprises you to find me
speaking to you with the lips of this poor hulk of flesh--not very
much like the one in which you knew me, is it?--but it will suffice,
even if it has a pair of lungs badly engorged because of a very shaky
heart. Your laboratory will show the kidneys affected, too. Oh, it's an
incipient wreck that I'm holding together simply for my use--because I
need it, and because I wanted to get down here with you."

"With--me?" I faltered. Almost as surprising as all else was his calm
announcement that he was here because he wanted to see me.

He smiled slightly. "Yes--you, of course. Murray, come down to facts
and quit speculation. There is nothing surprising in that. You were
the only man on earth who knew my story--who had the truth--who
could understand--and I knew you understood a good bit of the forces
involved--the spiritual forces, that is. So, when I needed certain
information which I couldn't gain save in the flesh, I knew you were
the man to help me gain it--the one man to whom I could appeal with a
chance of success. But in order to reach you I had to limit my choice
of earthly bodies. That's how I came to choose this thing at which
you're looking--"

"But--but--" I interrupted. "Good Heavens, Croft! I never dreamed of
your reversing the process. I--"

He shook his head. "It's a poor rule that won't work both ways, isn't
it, Murray?" he said.

I nodded. "Yes--of course. And you've really done it--come back--like
this?"

I asked the question as I would have asked a similar one of Croft,
because now I was convinced that I was speaking to the man himself--his
intelligence, that is.

And he answered me without the least hesitation: "Yes. And it's your
job to keep me alive until I can gain what I came for--to help me, if
you will. Earth possesses knowledge I need on Palos for my work--you
can help me gain it just as well here as anywhere else. 'Stone walls
do not a prison make,' Murray or 'iron bars a cage.' Man, it's your
cooperation for the advancement of a wonderful people I've come
a-seeking. I want you to prescribe a certain course of study as a part
of my treatment and discuss the things I'm after with me. Do you catch
my plan?"

Oh, yes, I caught it. I began to understand. Bizarre, wonderful, beyond
anything imaginable as it seemed, I felt that I appreciated the whole
concept of his scheme. And I was flattered--I confess that I thrilled
at his words--that he should have come to me for such aid as he felt I
would give. All at once I had the feeling that a wonderful privilege
was placed in my hands---that I was to have a part in this remarkable
adventure between two worlds which Croft had made his. I made an effort
to rally my staggering senses, and, as one will at such a time, I made
a casual rather than a pertinent remark:

"Just how is the Princess Naia?" I asked.

Croft nodded. He seemed to find acceptance of my part in my question.
"The Princess Naia is very much all right."

And then I remembered what he had told me before he went to Palos for
what I had thought a definite stay. And it struck me that it was rather
odd to be speaking of the Palosian girl as one would of a neighbor next
door, but I amended my reference to her none the less: "Or perhaps I
should have asked for Mrs. Croft--you said that you expected to be
married immediately upon your return to Palos."




                              CHAPTER II

                             EXPLANATIONS


Croft frowned. "What one expects and what one meets are not always
one and the same, friend Murray," he rejoined. "As a matter of fact,
I returned to Palos after my conversation with you, to encounter a
situation of which I had never thought."

"You mean that it interfered with your marriage to the princess?" I
exclaimed.

He made a grimace. "I mean exactly that, both on the part of Naia
herself and because of something else. You remember Zud, the high
priest of Zitra, the imperial city of which I told you--who sponsored
me with Tamhys before the Zollarian war. And you recall no doubt that
I mentioned the fact that I left the body of Jasor of Nodhur, which I
had made my own, in Zud's apartments in the pyramid of Zitra when I
came back here for the last time, and that Naia was quartered during
my absence in the rooms set apart for the Gayana--the Vestals of Ga
the Virgin in the pyramid, too. Murray, when I got back there, fully
expecting to take things up where I had left them, I found that Zud had
proclaimed me the Mouthpiece of Zitu himself."

"The Mouthpiece of Zitu!" I drew a chair close to the bed and sat down.
The thing affected me oddly.

I cast back in my mind for what Croft had told me concerning the
religion of Tamarizia, which was the nation in whose affairs he had
taken an active part on the distant star. Zitu was God in their belief.
Ga was the woman--a virgin. Azil was her son--known as the Giver of
Life. And if Croft had been proclaimed by the high priest of the
central state of the empire, the head of the clerical college, as the
Mouthpiece of Zitu I began to sense dimly the position in which he must
have found himself on his return--just what it might have meant.

If Zud had proclaimed Croft anything of the sort, it was just about the
same as naming him the representative of the Divinity in the flesh--and
from what Croft had told me of his claiming while in Tamarizia to do
all that he did by the grace of Zitu---which was, of course, no more
than the truth in a sense--I could see how his very words might have
laid the foundation for the high priest's act.

Yet, Croft at our former conversation had said that he had induced the
Tamarizians to adopt a republican way of government rather than their
system of allied principalities, and had declared that when he went
back he expected to be elected president. All that flashed through my
mind, and then, "Rather changed your plans, I suppose," I said.

"Changed them?" he returned, with an almost whimsical expression.
"Murray, it almost wrecked them at the start--the most important part
of them, that is. Remember why I did what I did do really--that all I
had done up until that time was in order to win the woman who meant
more to me than anything else in life--and then picture if you can my
mental condition when I found myself trapped, as it were, by my own
acts."

"Your own?" I queried.

He nodded. "Oh, certainly yes--my own, of course--my acts and
my overthought--my failing to take into account what a terrible
impression I had managed to make on the high priest. I--hang it all,
Murray--I knew so entirely what I was up to that I didn't give proper
consideration to the effect of my words and acts must have on less
well-informed minds. I failed to put myself in the place of Zud, and
Magur, the head of the church in Aphur, whom I first enlisted in my aid
at Himyra, as I told you before.

"You remember the old saying, 'Whom the gods wish to destroy they first
make mad,' and one equally as true, that 'Pride goeth before a fall'?
Well, my friend, I was a bit like that, I think, toward the last of
the Zollarian war. Things came my way too fast. The completeness of
the Tamarizian victory, and her father's pledge of the girl to me,
backed up by the sanction of Jadgor, the Aphurian king, made me feel
altogether secure.

"It seemed to me that there could be no question but I carried the
destiny of myself and Naia and all Tamarizia in my hands. I had only to
speak to see my commands fulfilled.

"Honestly, Murray, in those days I couldn't have been more absolute
if I had been the Mouthpiece of Zitu indeed. Perhaps if I'd stayed
there and rushed things through, everything would have been all right.
But, as you know, I returned for a final visit to close up all matters
pertaining to my earthly life before I snapped the astral chord which
until then had kept my original body alive. And there was where I made
my mistake.

"As I've told you, I left my Palosian body in Zud's quarters, rather
magnificently placed. Zud saw to that. I suppose now he was turning the
elements of what he fancied the truth in his old brain. My form was
stretched out on a golden couch, covered with a sheet of orange-colored
silk, in the apartment set apart for my use. And I'd been planning,
as you know, many things I wanted to do. I'd drawn plans--designs for
things common enough on earth, but never before dreamed of on Palos.
And I left the drawing I had made in that room in a golden chest. You
remember I told you gold was as plentiful on Palos as iron on earth and
used as freely in the metal working arts.

"Night and day a guard was kept in the chamber where I lay in what they
believed was my knowledge-gaining sleep. But--the guard was a priest.
He would do anything Zud said, of course. I never thought of that. I
was anxious only to get back here and close things up and return and
claim Naia as my wife.

"So you see I fell into the error of not considering old Zud's thoughts
or his interpretation of my claim that everything I did was by Zitu's
grace. Of course that was plain enough, however, after I got back and
found that he had all along placed a literal interpretation on my
remarks and considered my sleeps as no more than a period of spiritual
communion with Zitu himself. Then it became very forcibly clear to me
that I should have taken Zud more fully into the truth of the facts.
And because I hadn't I found myself in a most embarrassing case.

"The high priest had got into that golden box. He had examined my
working charts. He had dimly sensed them as designs for things I meant
to make--and his wonder knew no bounds. And after that he played the
deuce, though I am convinced the old man only thought he was doing what
was absolutely right, according to his rights."

"And Naia?" I asked. "How did she view your elevation to such a lofty
state?"

Croft gave me a glance. "I told you Zud messed everything up," he
replied. "But--it's a long story. Murray, this ramshackle carcass I've
seized won't last out a great many days. The weakling soul who once
possessed it broke it down by every sort of abuse, including drugs.
But, I've got to learn certain things before I abandon its use.

"Suppose you send me up the latest works you have on internal medicine
and surgery and therapeutics, and drop in tonight. If you're willing to
sacrifice a few hours' sleep, I'll spin you the whole yarn."

"All right," I agreed as I rose. "I don't think I was ever more
startled in my life, but I'll send up the books, and I'll be right here
after nine myself."

"Right," he accepted. "My physicians wouldn't let me have tobacco,
though this body craves it. Bring some cigars when you come, and we'll
have a good long talk."

       *       *       *       *       *

Before, however, I enter upon Croft's actual story, I think it better
perhaps to briefly describe, in some part at least, those details of
the Palosian world with which he had put me in touch on the occasion of
our former meeting to which I have already referred.

And toward a fuller understanding of that world itself, I think it best
to take up the geography of that part of Palos Croft visited first.
Mainly that which has to do with the Tamarizian nation--a series of
allied principalities surrounding the shores of a vast inland sea, with
the exception of a central state--the seat of the imperial capital,
embracing the island of Hiranur, located in the sea itself, and the
kingdom of Nodhur to the west and south.

From the central sea a narrow strait led west toward an outer ocean
beyond the continent on which the several principalities found place.
To the north of this strait, known as the Gateway, was Cathur, a
mountainous country and the seat of the national university at its
capital city Scira. East of Cathur was Mazhur, known at the time of
Croft's arrival as the Lost State, since in a former war it had been
wrested from the original Tamarizian group by the Zollarians, a hostile
nation lying still farther north.[1]

[Footnote 1: East of Mazhur, and circling the central sea to the east,
was Bithur, and Milidhur joined Bithur on the south. West of Milidhur
was Aphur, completing the circle about the sea and terminating at the
Gateway on the south. Nodhur lay south of Aphur, gaining an outlet
to the central sea by means of the River Na. This river had carried
commercial craft driven by sail and oar until Croft revolutionized
transportation with alcohol-driven motors.

North of Tamarizia lay Zollaria, inhabited by a far more warlike race
of whites. Its government was a despotism organized on militaristic
lines. Controlling the gateway to the west, Tamarizia had remained
the master, even after the fall of Mazhur, still collecting toll from
the Zollarian craft on her rivers, despite the foothold gained by her
foeman on the northern coast.

East of Zollaria and Tamarizia in the hinterland of the continent lay
Mazzer, populated by an aboriginal people of a complexion distinctly
blue. Due to an ancient conquest many of these people were now
constituted as a working caste in Tamarizia.

Each of these states was governed by an hereditary king.]

Croft, by defeating Zollaria, after his entertainment of physical life
on Palos, had brought Mazhur back. In fact, he had just completed that
bit of work at the time of our former conversation, thereby raising
himself to a very high position of influence and power, as I have
sought to indicate, and winning from Naia's father, Prince Lakkon of
Aphur, the promise of his daughter's hand, as well as the consent of
Jadgor, King of Aphur, and Naia's uncle, that the union should take
place.

On Croft's advent Scythys--a man old to dotage--had been king of
Cathur, with Kyphallos the crown prince, a profligate of the worst
type, for a son. Yet Jadgor of Aphur, scenting a danger unless it was
checked in advance in Kyphallos's ascent of the Cathurian throne, had
sought to bind the northern prince to the Tamarizian fealty more surely
by offering him Naia, his sister's child, to wife.

Kyphallos had, however, sunk under the enchantments of Kalamita, a
Zollarian adventuress of great beauty, until he had reached the stage
of plotted treason, planning to surrender Cathur to Zollaria in return
for being given the throne of Tamarizia with Kalamita at his side.

To win Naia for himself, and overthrow Zollaria's designs against
the southern nation had been Croft's main work, toward which he
strained every nerve. Besides his development of the motor on Palos he
introduced firearms as well, placed them in the hands of the Tamarizian
soldiery until then armed with spears, swords, bows and arrows and
shields, and defeated the flower of the Zollarian hosts on a couple of
bloody fields. The victory complete and Zollaria not only defeated but
forced to cede Mazhur after a tenure of fifty years, and it being the
end of the Emperor Tamhys's reign, he had prevailed upon the nation to
adopt a democratic form.

And now a word as to the Tamarizians themselves. They were a white and
well-formed race. In their social structure women held an equal place
with men. I have hinted at their religion. They believed in the spirit
and a future life and the resurrection of the dead. In the sciences and
arts they had made considerable progress.

The clothing of the women consisted of a single garment, falling to the
knees or just below them, cinctured about the body, caught over one
shoulder by a metal or jeweled boss, and leaving the other shoulder
and arm exposed. To this was added sandals of leather, metal, or wood,
held to the foot by a toe-and-instep band and lacings running well up
the calves. Men of wealth and caste and soldiers and nobles, instead of
these sandals, generally wore metal casings, which amounted to a sandal
and leg piece jointed to allow the ankle full play and reaching nearly
to the knees.

The men of caste also wore a soft shirt or chemise beneath a metal
cuirass or an embroidered tunic, as the case might be. Save on formal
occasions, the serving classes, men and women, wore either a narrow
cincture about the loins, supporting a small phallary or apron, or went
nude about their tasks.

Agriculture was highly developed, and as a people they had advanced far
in architecture, painting, sculpture, and similar arts. They lavished
much time and expense in beautifying their houses--making of each a
small palace, if the owner were rich. The highways along which the
sarpelca caravans and the gnuppa-drawn carriages and chariots passed
were models of engineering.

[The gnuppa is a creature seemingly half deer and half horse. The
sarpelca is not unlike some weird Silurian lizard, twice the size of
an elephant, with a pointed tail, a scale-armored back, a long neck
somewhat resembling that of a camel, and the head of a marine serpent
having a series of fleshy tentacles about the mouth. They are driven
by reins affixed to these latter appendages, and stream across the
Palosian deserts bearing merchandise upon their enormous backs.]

All these things I knew from Croft's previous talks. He had told me he
could go to Palos as quickly as I could think of it myself, and here I
was anticipating a resumption that night of his story concerning beings
I had never seen, with an eagerness amounting to impatience of the
dragging hours.

Here was I thinking of Naia--the golden-haired, purple-eyed beauty
of Aphur; of Lakkon, her father; of Jadgor, her uncle; of Robur, her
cousin, the Aphurian crown prince and Croft's loyal co-worker and
friend; of the sweet and matronly Gaya, his wife; of Magur, Zud's
deputy in Himyra; of Zud himself and others, as one thinks of people
well known--actually visualizing them before my mental eye according to
Croft's description--portraying their thoughts and acts and feelings to
myself, as I might with any man or woman on earth.

And to me in that moment Naia--glorious in her purity and youth,
waiting for her mate in the quarters of Ga--the virgin--where burned
the never-dying fires of life, on the altar before Ga's feet--was far
more clear in her seeming than a million mundane women, despite the
billions of miles between her and my present physical estate.

Billions of miles. My mind bridged it in thought.

And Croft had bridged it in spirit at first, until at last he had
learned how to cross the bridge and gain a life in the flesh--because
the lure of the woman had nerved him to that test. The thing thrilled
me, fired every element within me capable of responding to the stimulus
of romance. Sane or insane, true or untrue, I wanted to hear the rest
of the story.

Only remember--that if it wasn't Croft, his spirit--indwelling in
the new patient's miserable wreck of a body--how would he have known
the elements of the former story he had already mentioned--been able
to pick it up where he left it off, and preface what he had promised
to tell me, with his account of the actions of the Tamarizian high
priest? That argument alone seemed enough to remove the last shreds of
unbelief. Consequently I felt that when I entered my patient's room
that evening, it would be to hear not so much a story as a narrative of
life.

And at that I was to be amazed by what had happened to Jason Croft.




                              CHAPTER III

                          HARNESSED TO HEAVEN


Meanwhile I sent him the books he had said he wanted, together with
a box of good cigars. And along about eight forty-five, when I had
finished my evening round of patients, I went up myself.

I lighted up a cigar and took a chair, tacitly preparing for a stay
of some considerable time, and then as Croft continued to smoke in an
almost meditative silence, I opened the matter myself:

"Even supposing that Zud did get at your plans, I hardly see why he
should have taken the step he did before your return."

Croft nodded. "It wasn't only the plans," he said. "You must recall
Abbu, the priest of the pyramid at Scira--the one who was present when
I entered Jasor's body and made it my own--who administered the last
rites of his church to the dying Jasor, and with whom I talked after I
had succeeded in compelling the Nodhurian's form to obey my will.

"I told you that to Abbu I had acknowledged that my spirit was not
Jasor's, but that what I was about to do was for Tamarizia's good,
thereby enlisting his aid in my undertakings--also how he acted as an
instrument in saving Naia from becoming a victim of the plan Cathur's
crown prince and his Zollarian coplotters had so cunningly laid.

"At the time I swore him to secrecy, of course, and I honestly believe
that up until the time I left Jasor's body for the purpose of making
a final trip to earth, he was the only man who knew that the spirit
within it was not the same as the one it had held at birth. But"--a
smile flicked across his lips--"just as on my first excursion to Palos
I made an error and nearly precipitated myself into the fiery heart of
Sirius, so I seem to have overlooked the human equation which holds on
Palos no less than earth--and I overlooked also the fact that Zud was
the high priest.

"Abbu, after the war with Zollaria, had been brought to Zitra and
raised to a higher rank, because of his part in first assisting
me. Naturally Zud was acquainted with all such facts, and one can
hardly blame him for wanting to know more in view of what I can
well understand were the tremendous changes I had brought about in
Tamarizia's affairs.

"To me motors and firearms were nothing save things of every-day
experience, and what I had made on Palos seemed but as crude devices at
the best. But to Zud and all others they appeared little short of the
miraculous, upsetting all former conceptions of their lives. Take that
into consideration and then picture the impression on his mind likely
to be made by the fact that by my own admission I was not the same
Jasor of Nodhur who, according to the physician attending him in Scira,
had there died."

I began to understand what must have happened.

"He pumped Abbu?" I exclaimed.

"Exactly." Croft smiled dryly again. "He absolved him from his oath and
learned all the facts with which Abbu was acquainted. You can easily
understand the rest. Jasor of Nodhur dies. His body comes back to life.
Its lips speak to Abbu, the priest. He hears that a new spirit inhabits
Jasor's body. Immediately after strange things--but things aimed wholly
for Tamarizia's good--begin to happen.

"Shall the dead live again, save by divine intervention? Shall
undreamed of things appear save by Zitu's grace? And if in addition the
revivified body shall fall into strange sleeps at times and upon waking
seem possessed of a supernatural knowledge, what more natural to the
priest--unendowed with a full understanding of what was taking place,
unaware that the things that excited his unlimited amazement were but
copies of things existing on another planet--than to consider that
those things he witnessed were the result of divine ordination and to
regard the individual who brought them about as the mouthpiece of his
god in the flesh? Oh, frankly, Murray, I don't blame that puzzled old
man in the least. As a matter of fact, I blame myself for not having
foreseen the effect of all that had happened on his brain."

Croft put out a hand and selected a fresh cigar. He set it alight and
got it to going nicely while, as it seemed to me, he marshaled his
thoughts. And then--all at once he began speaking again, and this is
the story he told.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Palosian day--or "sun"--is twenty-seven hours long. Dawn was on the
verge of breaking when Croft, having severed the astral link with his
earthly body, opened Jasor of Nodhur's physical eyes in the room of
the Zitran pyramid. And because now he had taken the last step which so
nearly as possible must make him a Palosian indeed, and nothing held
him longer on any other sphere, he opened his eyes in a flash.

One moment the body he had taken when Jasor laid it down was stretched
an inanimate object on the golden couch beneath its smooth coverlet of
orange silk. The next moment it was the living, breathing figure of a
perfectly proportioned man, blinking its newly opened eyes.

A slightly unsteady radiance of a yellow color filled the room. It came
from the blazing wicks in oil-filled sconces fixed about the walls, as
Croft knew. He lay and sensed it briefly, while the tide of awakening
life flowed in a tingling stream through his powerful body and limbs.
And then he turned his head.

His glance fell upon one of the lay brothers of the priesthood, clad
in a brown robe, from which peeped his toe-splayed, naked feet. He sat
on a stool of molded copper, with down-bent head. He appeared to be
asleep. But suddenly as though aroused by Croft's slight movement, he
jerked to attention and encountered the sleeper's eyes. Instantly he
sprang erect, approaching with a soft, quick shuffle and pausing by the
golden bed.

"My lord--my lord!" he stammered in little more than a husky whisper,
and sank upon his knees. His back bent, his head inclined until its
face was hidden. His arms rose, and as Croft watched he made the sign
of the Tamarizian priesthood--a horizontal cross.

Croft lifted himself to a sitting posture on the couch, shoving the
coverings back until his shoulders and torso gleamed white with a
ripple of muscles beneath the yellow light. Frankly he was perplexed.
Knighthood he had gained. He was a _Hupor_ or Prince of Aphur by
Jadgor's accolade. It was well enough for the brother to call him
"lord." He was a powerful man in all the nation, but--never had he
before encountered the bent knee of a priest--and since the guardian of
his chamber must have known what to expect, he hardly thought the man's
act attributable to fright.

"Come! What's the meaning of this?" he demanded. "Since you were placed
to attend my awaking, why do you kneel?"

The man lifted his face--it was white--even beyond the priestly
pallor--and his eyes were wide.

"Because," he said slowly, in almost timorous fashion, "all men bend
the knee to the Mouthpiece of Zitu--even Zud himself."

The whole thing burst on Croft just like that, without warning,
without any premonitory sign to prepare him for his changed estate.
And then, with a wildly whirling brain as he realized the far-reaching
consequences hinted at by the priest's announcement, he found himself
forced to accept the conclusion that the Mouthpiece of Zitu could be
none other than himself. At first the thought startled him, disturbed
him, appalled, and in swift succession it excited an almost resentful
rage.

Those things were instinctive wholly, then as the brain, once more in
the grasp of his will, began to functionate more fully, he decided that
something unforeseen must have transpired while he lay here entranced,
and resolved in a flash that the first step essential to a fuller
information lay in an interview with Zud at once.

"Get up," he said to the priest.

"Yes, lord."

The brother rose.

"Give me my garments." Croft kicked the silken sheet completely off and
stood upon his feet.

"At once." The brother shuffled toward a chest in a corner of the
apartment, lifted the lid and produced a robe. Blue it was--the color
of the highest order of the priesthood--embroidered on the breast
in stones like drops of transparent gold. The brother brought it
back, outspread across his forearms, and Croft caught sight of the
design--the wings of Azil, flaring out from the stem of a cross, looped
in its upper segment--the cross ansata--the Palosian symbol of immortal
life. Then as the brother once more sank to his knees, holding the
garment toward him, he controlled his surprise and asked a question:

"What is the meaning of this?"

When he had called for his garments he had expected his leg-casings
of gold, gem studded, his shirt of soft fiber, and his metal
cuirass whereon blazed Aphur's sign of the sun, his sword with its
jewel-incrusted hilt and belt, and his helmet with its orange plumes.

But the kneeling brother answered: "It is as Zud hath decreed."

       *       *       *       *       *

Zud--Zud--Zud. It seemed to Croft that Zud had, all unknown to him,
been taking a very large part in his affairs. For an instant he had
the distinct sensation of having in some way, he hardly knew how, been
trapped. But it only hardened his determination to see the high priest
at once and learn what had been going on in Zitra during the past two
weeks. He took the robe from the brother's extended arms and slipped it
on, fastening the shoulder boss, and seated himself while his companion
laced a pair of blue-and-gold leather sandals on his feet.

"Go now," he directed, once the latter task was completed. "Say to Zud
that with him I would have speech."

"I go. It was ordered that I report thy awakening, O Mouth--" the
priest began as he backed toward the door.

Croft cut him short almost sharply. He lifted an arm in a sudden
pointing gesture: "Go!"

The Mouthpiece of Zitu! He sat almost tensely on the edge of the couch.
What in the name of Zitu did the brother mean, and what had Zud been up
to? Why was he tricked out in this priestly robe with the wings of the
Angel of Life, the loop of the Cross of Life on his breast? And what
would be the effect of the thing on all he had planned himself?

Naia! The thought stabbed him like a knife. He lifted his eyes toward
the ceiling of the room. Up there--high above him--in the quarters
of the Gayana, the vestals--where burned in the shrine of Ga the
never-dying fire of life--up there she was waiting for him to come
back--waiting to become his bride--his mate--his complement and
counterpart--for the fulfilment of their mutual love--that love which,
like a lodestone, had drawn him here in the first place--to win which
he had done all else.

What would be the effect of whatever it was Zud had done in his
absence, on the maid herself?

It behooved him to master his startled nerves and get himself into a
proper mind to dominate the coming interview with Zud. By deliberate
effort, then, he forced himself back to a state of mental control.
He decided to watch the high priest closely and learn, if he might,
whether the man were sincere in the motives for his action or had been
actuated thereto by personal or political desires. He relaxed the
tension of his body and waited for Zud to appear, as he presently did.

He came in, an old man with graying hair, clad in an azure-blue robe
with the cross ansata embroidered in flame-colored jewels upon the
breast. He advanced directly toward Croft as the latter rose, and some
three paces before him sank slowly to his knees.

"Thou hast called, and thy servant appears, O Mouthpiece of Zitu," he
said slowly in a tone of what might be reverence. "Long were we in
recognizing the truth, yet was the fault not entirely our own, since
only to Abbu of Scira had you voiced it, and not since Azil himself
descended to teach the sons of mortals has such a thing occurred, nor
in Zitu's wisdom was thy coming revealed."

In a flash Croft began to understand. The mention of Abbu's name was
enough to give him the clue. He recalled his first conversation on
Palos with the Cathurian priest, and the tangle began to clear.

"Thou thinkest me the Mouthpiece of Zitu, then, indeed?" he questioned
the high priest, and watched him closely.

"Aye, by Zitu! the one source of life and knowledge," Zud replied.
"Did not Abbu state that you told him thy spirit was not that of Jasor
of Nodhur, who was dead, yet whose body having died, became once more
alive, and hast thou not said that all you did was by Zitu's grace?
Didst not tell me that those things you commanded to be made for
Tamarizia's good were shown to you in your sleeps? Canst the spirit of
a mortal enter and leave the body at will--the spirit of one such as
Jasor was--and"--seemingly Zud was forgetful of all discretion in this
meeting--"have I not seen the paintings of the things you plan yet to
bring to Tamarizia in yonder casket?" He turned his eyes toward the
golden box where Croft had left his designs.

Croft considered swiftly. Sincerity rang in the man's tones, and more
and more, as he ran on, Croft understood. He decided quickly on another
test. Zud had raised his eyes as he finished his answer, and Croft
looked steadily into his face.

"You opened the casket?" he demanded in a louder, an accusatory voice.
"You dared much, priest of Zitu. What things are to be will be in the
time of Zitu's choosing. It is a brave man dares to know all things in
advance."

Zud's expression changed. Before it had been one of an almost wide-eyed
respect. Now it became an ashen thing of horror, of unmistakable
dismay. "My lord--my lord," he faltered, "I but sought to learn the
truth. I swear by Zitu that my heart was clean in what I have done
and--said."

There was an odd break in his utterance just before the final word. It
was as though the man were appalled at the palpable displeasure of the
one before whom he knelt, yet, despite of any consequences to himself,
were determined to confess.

And Croft noted his manner of speaking, and caught up that last word:
"Said? You have said what, Zud?"

"That thou wert the Mouthpiece of Zitu--sent into the flesh for
Tamarizia's good."

"To whom have these things been spoken?" Croft queried with a caught-in
breath, sensing the calamity which had overtaken his own plans as great
as it possibly could be, if things were as they now appeared.

"To all Tamarizia have I, as high priest, proclaimed it," said Zud.
"Zitra but waits your awakening, that it may behold and proclaim you in
the body you have chosen as your servant, and give ear to your words."




                              CHAPTER IV

                             MAN OR MOUTH?


The thing was cut and dried. Even a public appearance was, it would
seem, arranged. The church of the nation had given him forth as a
spirit divinely sent as a teacher, gaining physical expression through
the body of Jasor of Nodhur. And--what was Croft to do? To disclaim--to
compel Zud to retract--would strike, as he knew, not only at his own
powers of future accomplishment, discredit him as it were, but would
aim a blow at the very foundation of the social structure, if Zud
were shown to have made so terrible an error as he had. And yet--and
yet--to accept--to go on--to pose as what he was not. The thought was
distasteful, and worse, since to go on might mean the loss of Naia, as
well as that position he had expected to hold in the newly organized
republic of Tamarizian states.

For the political end of the matter he cared very little to tell the
truth, but even the thought of Naia sent a quiver throughout his
body--caused a sudden dizzy whirling of his brain. Once more he felt
baffled, trapped, enraged. And so far as any escape from the situation
he confronted was concerned, he could see no possible way out. For a
moment a wild impulse to seize the kneeling man at his feet, lift him
up and shake him, hurl against him a scorching torrent of passion-urged
words for his curious meddling, assailed him. But he choked it and
stood as one who considers, and when he spoke his words were once more
calm:

"Enough. What things Zitu wills, those things shall be done. Yet have I
a body, as thou seest, that has lain unnourished full long. Rise, Zud
of Zitra. Command me food. I would eat while we talk."

"Even now it waits." Zud rose and went backward toward the door. He set
it open. As Croft seated himself once more on his couch there filed
in a group of brothers, the foremost bearing a short-legged table of
molded copper, the others dishes and flagons in their hands.

The dishes were of gold and silver. There were goblets of glass which
the Tamarizians made of magnificent quality and design. One of the
latter was placed before Croft and filled with a mild and blood-red
wine. Their service ended the lay brothers bent in genuflexion and
retired. Zud remained standing in watchful silence until Croft bade him
be seated, when he drew up a stool and sat down.

While he ate Croft plunged into a series of questions concerning
affairs in the Tamarizian states.

"The reign of Tamhys will terminate in fourteen suns (days)?"

"Aye."

"Thereafter we shall adopt the new government as it was decided, the
elections being held as in the choice of the former assemblies in each
kingdom--each decktaron to elect a representative, by whose vote shall
be the choice of president?"

"Aye." Zud inclined his head. "So has it been proclaimed."

"What candidates have been selected?"

"Jadgor of Aphur, and Tammon, Tamhys's son."

Croft considered the names as he sipped his wine. Jadgor, he knew, had,
before the Zollarian war, had an eye on the Zitran throne--had hoped to
mount it, and strengthen the entire nation by a change of that policy
of pacifism which, by its continuation for something like fifty years,
made Tamarizia weak, despite the wonderful resources in wealth and
men which were hers--which would seemingly have led to her overthrow
through Zollaria's arms and Cathur's defection, had not Croft appeared.

So it was not at all surprising, in view of his popularity not only in
Aphur, but in Nodhur and Milidhur as well, and because of his prominent
part in the war, that he should have been chosen as a candidate for the
nation's first president. Nor for that matter was it to be questioned
that the retiring occupant of the throne should have put up his eldest
son. Of course, Croft had expected to enter the field himself, but now
he brushed the point aside.

"It is well," he gave his decision and set down his glass. "And the
governors of the states?"

Zud mentioned a list of names covering each former kingdom. "In Aphur
Robur, Jadgor's son alone. There is no other, because of his part
with you in all that has been done. In Cathur, Mutlos, a man of the
people, and Koryphon, Scythys's second son, who ascended the throne, as
you know, after Kyphallos fled and destroyed himself in Berla before
Kalamita's eyes. As your directions were understood before the time of
your recent sleeping, in Hiranur the president controls also the state
affairs."

"Aye," Croft agreed. His heart had warmed at the announcement that
Robur stood for election in Aphur alone. Of all its people he had
known, save Naia only, he had come to love Robur best, had found him
a true friend, a man of broad and intelligent mind, under each and
every test. By Jadgor's own edict Robur had been his main assistant and
lieutenant in all that he had done. He felt very much toward him as he
might toward a younger brother. He had even discussed those periods
when his body lay unconscious with the Aphurian crown prince in so far
as he could, and there had been a time when the only confidante of
his love for Naia had been Gaya, Robur's wife. Suddenly he felt that
in these two he might find once more true friends and allies in the
situation in which he found himself.

"And where is Robur?" he asked.

"In Zitra, lord. He and Lakkon and Jadgor desire speech with thee so
soon as thou shalt have waked."

       *       *       *       *       *

A quiver of comprehension stirred in Croft's breast. The desire of
Lakkon and Jadgor for an interview with himself he could understand.
The former it was who had pledged his daughter to the Hupor Jasor, as
he was then known, as wife. And Jadgor had approved of the pact. It
was but natural that now they should wish some explanation at least,
some understanding as to the girl's position, in view of Zud's most
extraordinary proclamation. He threw up his head and stared the high
priest in the eyes, and found them a trifle uncertain, his whole
expression more or less puzzled, even somewhat abashed.

"What troubles you, Zud?" he inquired with the feeling that the man
knew what it was really that Lakkon and Jadgor desired.

And for a moment Zud made no answer; for a moment he seemed to study
Croft's face before he began in apologetic fashion: "What I have done
I have done for the best, as I now call Zitu to witness; yet are there
some things I do not understand."

"You refer to the maiden Naia, who by your permission was taken into
the quarters of the Gayana?" An opening--an advantage appeared to
Croft's mind in a flash.

And plainly his question disturbed Zud more than a little.

"Aye," he said scarcely above a whisper at length and inclined his head.

"To whom ere I slept, by consent of her father and Jadgor, I was
pledged?"

"Aye, lord. Jadgor and Lakkon also ask themselves--"

"Why the Mouthpiece of Zitu should seek a union in the flesh?"

Zud clasped his hands before him. He sat with eyes downcast. By an
effort, at length he once more lifted his face. "Thou hast spoken,
lord," he said.

Croft held him with a level regard. "And what says Zud, the high
priest?"

"That the ways of Zitu are beyond mortal understanding," Zud responded
slowly.

"Yes," Croft took him up sharply. "Zud, the high priest, endeavored to
understand--toward which end, though Abbu of Scira had sworn by Zitu to
keep silent, he induced him to talk."

"I--I--lord, I absolved him of the oath of silence," Zud faltered, and
began a nervous twisting of his interlacing fingers.

"And since when may even the high priest rescind that which Zitu has
recorded?"

A tremor shook the priest. A twitching seized his face. He shrank back
and sat staring, staring at the strange individual before him, with
whose affairs he had dared to interfere, who now arraigned him with a
face and manner gone well-nigh impersonally cold. One could no longer
doubt that he had been sincere in what he had done, at least--what he
had proclaimed of Croft, he himself believed. Of so much Croft felt
convinced as he once more spoke:

"High priest of Zitu, in what words was your proclamation to Tamarizia
concerning him until now known as the Hupor Jasor made?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Zud wet his lips and made answer. "It was said that Zitu had sent us
a teacher--one who should reveal to all men his will, through whom he
revealed his pleasure--one who was his mouthpiece indeed."

"And this you believed?"

"Aye, lord." Zud moved. He left the stool on which he was sitting. He
would have knelt had not Croft stayed him:

"_Hilka!_ Hold!"

"Aye, lord." Zud stood erect. His knees seemed knocking together, and
he swayed. Something like pity stirred in Croft's breast. The man was
overwrought, keyed to a vast tension, troubled in his mind, well-nigh
dismayed. His confidence, born of years of unquestioned authority,
was shaken; he appeared beaten down and crushed. And Croft was minded
to maintain his advantage toward his individual ends. He spoke again:
"Think you that as Zitu's Mouthpiece I shall find it easy to take
my place as heretofore in the Himyra or Ladhra shops, where the
instruments designed for Tamarizia's use shall be brought forth? Do men
work best with one such as you would name me, or with another man, O
Zud?"

"Lord, lord!" Zud bowed his head.

"Or think you that were I the mouthpiece of Zitu, I would have pledged
myself to this maid save by his will? Yet today even Zud bends the
knee in my presence since his proclamation. Is this thing known to the
Gayana as well as to the priests?"

"Yes, it is known," Zud told him slowly.

"The maid is still there?"

"Yes."

"She has heard the truth?"

"Yes." Zud flung up his head. Croft's last word seemed to give him
courage. "She knows--the truth," he said. "She requested an audience
after she had heard, and I went to her. I told her those things Abbu
said."

"That my spirit was not Jasor's?" The words burst from Croft's lips in
an instinctive exclamation. For an instant he felt his control once
more slipping. Naia knew--that the body of the man to whom she was
promised was the body of one who had died--that its life was due not
to the presence of Jasor's spirit, but another. Zud had told her. He
had told her the truth. Croft had meant to tell her before the marriage
in so different a way from that in which the high priest must have
explained. And--what must have been the effect of such an announcement
upon her--what must she, could she think?

"Yes." Zud's answer but served to accentuate and confirm the dilemma
his meddling had produced.

"And what said she?" Croft forced himself to ask.

"She is a maiden of spirit," said Zud in the tone of one who palliates
an offense. "She is unused to restraint. She refused to give credence
to Abbu's story or accept its truth save from your own lips."

Croft thrilled. Here was fidelity and trust--the absolute confidence
which should exist between true mates. If Naia of Aphur had dared to
refuse acceptance to the words of the high priest, she would dare much.
Things might not turn out so badly as he had feared. There would seem
to be time still for the true explanation he had meant to make to the
girl herself. The purpose fired him to immediate determination.

"She remains with the Gayana?"

"Aye--until such time as you awaken."

"I will see her. Send one to guide me to her at once."

"Lord!" Zud's tone was aghast.

"Stop!" Croft cut short his incipient protest. "Would question my
demands?"

"But the Gayana--" Zud began a faltering explanation.

His companion took a single step toward him. His jaw thrust out in an
almost menacing manner, indicative of a will to brook no opposition:
"May be entered by him who wears the wings of the Angel of Life as well
as the high priest."

For a long, breathless instant the glances of the two men met and
crossed, engaging the one with the other. And then Zud was beaten down.
He yielded.

"Permit that I show you," he said, and led the way.




                               CHAPTER V

                        BEHIND THE SILVER DOOR


They passed from the room and along a corridor in which the oil sconces
had now been extinguished, faintly illuminated by the light of the new
day. Before a massive door Zud paused and set his hand to a slender
cord. His action was followed by the muffled clanging of a brazen
gong. He slid the door open and revealed the shadow-wrapped throat of
a shaft, up which a platform presently trembled into view. It was a
primitive form of elevator operated, as Croft knew, by a Mazzerian crew
in the foundations of the pyramid itself, lifting and lowering it on
signal, by winding its cable on and off a revolving drum.

With Zud, he stepped aboard. The platform mounted slowly up the shaft.
The high priest, with a hand on an inner cord, observed its progress,
and presently once more the gong far below clanged out. The platform
stopped.

They stepped into a very short corridor between masonry walls of a cut
and polished stone not unlike marble, save that it held a strange,
translucent quality in its substance and was wholly white. The main
staircase of the pyramid mounted before them and ran on toward the top,
with its crowning Temple of Zitu, and just beyond it, at the far end of
the corridor, was a door. Silver it was, the most precious of Palosian
metals, tooled and carved into the design of a full-sized woman's
figure, in whose hand was the looped cross of immortal life.

Croft thrilled as they paused before it. This was the entrance to the
quarters of the Gayana. Here it was that Naia had waited for him when
he plunged into the venture of the Zollarian war. Then briefly he had
held her in his arms, and she had told him that none should claim her
ever save himself, or, failing that, she would remain forever virgin
in the sanctuary of Ga beyond this door outside which now he stood so
very, very differently from what he had once thought that he should.

And suddenly the knowledge of what Zud had told her--of the shock
of revelation that must have come upon her, the torment to her
every finer sensibility and feeling--caused an actual sensation of
constriction in Croft's chest. He stood with tight-set lips and flaring
nostrils as Zud put up a hand and pressed against the left breast of
the woman on the door.

There was a tiny click, and the door slid to one side, disappearing
into a socket in the wall and flooding the corridor with light. No
gloomy abode was that in which the vestals dwelt. High up on the
pyramid, but one flight beneath the crowning temple on the truncated
apex, it caught the first of Sirius's rays, and the last, through deep
embrasures set with slanting glass in the structure's walls. As the
door slipped aside a scene was presented to Croft's eyes, brilliant
with light and life.

"Hold!" he said as Zud would have entered and stepped past him on one
side.

"Wait me below in your own apartments, man of Zitu. Consider meanwhile
those words we have spoken before you brought me here. Peace be with
you, priest of Zitu. Go!"

Then, as Zud turned to do his bidding and regained the platform in the
shaft, he stepped through the aperture of the door to the other side
and paused, a trifle abashed.

He had come at a stride to a region of youth and beauty. It surrounded
him on every side. Feminine forms in diaphanous fabrics were grouped
about the room. The chatter of their voices filled the place. Directly
before him a group of maidens already at work about an immense basket
of flowers, forming the garlands and sprays which at the noontide hour
of prayer they would fling at the feet of the statue of Tamarizia's
god, paused and stood staring as Croft appeared.

Their hair, unrestrained save for a metal filet or cincture, fell in
masses down their graceful backs. The flesh of their shoulders and
arms and sandalless feet, glowed warm and pinkly white. Their lips
grew parted, and their eyes, unaccustomed to masculine presence, save
possibly that of old Zud, grew wide. For Croft was no ancient as he
stood there in his azure robe, with the cross and the wings in gold
upon his breast and his yellow hair in a tawny mass upon his head. More
he was like some young and comely god himself, with his bold, strong
features, his hint of latent strength.

So for a moment they stood staring until, as though her attention
was arrested by their postures and the direction of their glances, an
older woman appeared, coming directly toward where Croft stood, to
pause before him and bend in a genuflection, and inquire with a voice
leveled, as it seemed, by repression: "What does my lord of Zitu seek?"

"Speech with the maiden Naia, priestess of Ga." Croft met her glance
directly.

"So be it," said the woman. "Come with me."

He followed--across a hugely pillared room where others of the vestals
sat on cushions or divans, engaged in simple tasks--toward a mighty
figure of a woman, carved from the strangely beautiful translucent
stone the Tamarizians used mainly in their sculpture--the figure of
a woman seated, brooding with a face of divinely maternal affection
above the form of a babe stretched prone across her knees. Mighty,
magnificent in her womanhood, beautiful in her maternity, she sat
there, back of a silver altar on which leaped from an oil-fed sconce
the eternal flame of life which never died.

And this he thought was Ga, to whom Naia of Aphur had prayed that she
might be spared the unclean ordeal of a marriage with Cathur's prince.
This was the eternal woman, the eternal mother, the eternal source--the
Tamarizian virgin who had given birth to Azil, the Angel of Life.
Ga--the virgin, the madonna. This was the woman and--her child--woman
the shrine of the fire eternal, watching it, guarding it, replenishing
it against extinction through the eons of ages within and from herself.

       *       *       *       *       *

A sudden passionate desire to do her and the members of her sex
some form of honor seized him in an impulse which sent him without
premeditation to his knees, bending before her majestic presence,
forming the sign of the cross horizontal, beneath her brooding
features; glancing up then, and then only, to meet the eyes of his
guide--and find them less frigid, in a subtle manner pleased.

But she made no comment as Croft rose slowly and once more followed her
lead toward the door of a room, which she unlatched and pushed aside.

Through the opening Croft's eyes leaped, to fall upon the figure of a
woman, her hair as golden as the sunshine falling in a rippling, silken
mass to the couch of wine-red wood on which she sat, her head bent
above a frame in which her tapering fingers were embroidering a pattern
in small, pierced jewels on a fabric of sheerest gauze.

All that in a flash. Then, as though attracted by the opening of the
door, the woman glanced up, lifting a pair of pansy-purple eyes.

"Naia!" Croft's lips framed the word rather than spoke it. He stepped
swiftly toward her through the door. It clicked shut behind him as the
vestal closed it.

Naia, of Aphur, rose. The last vestige of color seemed drained from her
face, leaving her eyes very dark in its pallor, their pupils stretched
wondrously wide. So for a moment, she stood staring straight before
her at him she had known as Jasor of Nodhur, before her body took on
a sudden panting, so that the tissues or the temple garment she was
wearing became no more than a creamy ripple above her firmly rounded
busts. And then while Croft waited, choked by his own emotions, drunk
in his innermost being with her beauty, she moved and sank down on her
slender, supple knees.

"Beloved!" Croft went one swift pace toward her. He stretched out his
hands. "Naia--mine own--arise."

She glanced up. A quiver shook the perfect curve of her mouth. And then
for the first time her lips writhed open. "How speaks the Mouthpiece of
Zitu in a lover's guise?"

"Arise," repeated Croft, and waiting until she had once more regained
her feet before he went on: "Were I to answer your question, beloved,
would any hear?"

She regarded him strangely. It was almost as though she sensed some
new, some unsuspected meaning in his words, some hint of something of
which she had not dreamed, yet which, now that her intuition gave it
seeming, she desired to have made plain. "No," she made answer slowly.
"This is my own apartment--set aside for my use for such time as I
remain with the Gayana. What things may be said within it shall remain
unknown."

"Then--" In a single stride Croft approached her. He swept her into
his arms. They closed about her with an almost yearning gesture. He
drew her to him, held her against his breast. The warmth of her, the
glorious litheness, the pliant softness of her figure, struck against
his own. He gloried in it, thrilled in every cell to the sudden
contact--to the quick, instinctive tremor which shook her form.
"Hark ye, beloved," he cried softly into the shell-pink ear beneath
his lips. "Hark ye--mark well my answer. The Mouthpiece of Zitu is no
supernatural being, but a man and a lover--thy lover in very truth."

And on the word the supple body of the woman went tense inside his
arms. It struggled, it writhed. It struck its hands against his
breast and pushed back her torso, straining, bending it against his
restraining hold from the hips. Its face became convulsed, a panting,
lip-parted, eye-wide mask of horror. With a final effort Naia tore
herself free. Hot words poured from her mouth as she choked and gasped
for breath.

"Then--in the name of Zitu---what do you here--with that--that"--she
lifted a naked arm and pointed--"with the wings of Azil--the looped
cross of Ga--upon your breast?"

"Is not Zud a man--and wears he not the cross at least--and comes he
not among the Gayana at will?" stammered Croft, more disturbed than he
cared to admit at her manner and words.

And as he paused she blazed out in a fashion of almost scathing
contempt. "A man, yes, is Zud--one in whom the flame of life burns low,
who comes thither only when the work of him he serves demands it; who
speaks, when he comes, naught but what to him seems truth."

Croft instinctively flinched. Her allusion to what he felt she
considered his own deceit in regard to himself flicked him despite
his own knowledge of his own sincerity in all that he had done. The
sensation which gripped him was due to no sense of guilt, but was more
a poignant regret that she should have been led to consider him in any
way false to the holiest emotions of his life.

       *       *       *       *       *

"What _seems_ truth, aye," he rejoined, therefore quickly holding
Naia's eyes, from which flashed what seemed a purple fire, with his
own. "Yet what man shall know the mind of Zitu, save as by his own
interpretation, or be free from error in his words at times, even
though years should have taught him discretion in his tongue?"

Naia's lip curled. As Zud had said, hers was a haughty spirit--one
not prone to break or yield as a weaker might have done. And now she
refused to give ground in her position even with this man to whom she
had given her love in the past--had stood ready to yield herself in
every way the word implied. "At least," said she, "Zud makes no claim
of being any other than he is."

"Nor do I." Croft drew himself up. He seized what appeared to him an
opportunity for arresting her sense of justice, which past experience
had taught him was true and fair if once it were reached. "Have I
claimed ever to be aught save a man who loved thee? Was it I or Zud
who named me Mouthpiece of Zitu while I slept, or by whose orders,
when I asked for clothing, was given me this priestly dress? Has Jasor
of Nodhur ever in the past sought any greater exaltation in rank or
fame or power than that alone which would bring him to your side?
Have his spirit, his lips sought ever to call out to any other save
to thee alone? Have not his arms fought ever those enemies who were
thine because of his love for Naia of Aphur--to keep her country safe,
herself from the pollution of other arms less clean?"

And now for the first time it seemed that the Princess Naia faltered.
Some of the tension went out of her graceful figure. Doubt crept into
her eyes. "You--you," she asked a broken question, "would have me
believe the Mouthpiece of Zitu, a--man?"

"Yes--as he is--a man who loves you as none ever loved you before."
Croft threw out his arms. "Seem I not a man to you, Naia of Aphur--maid
of gold--who have willingly lain in my arms, yielded me your
lips--before this--who stand here now in the quarters of the Gayana,
pledged to me by Lakkon--as well as by yourself. Is a man any less a
man because he wears the garments of a priest?"

"Hold, in Zitu's name!" Abruptly a tremor, a shudder shook the slender,
half-veiled form he watched. "Man, though he be a priest, is sworn to
chastity in Zitu's sight. Yet you, whom Zud names the Mouthpiece of
Zitu--"

"Am sworn to love you, beloved," Croft cut her protest short.

"Love?" Terror woke in Naia's face. She drew back. "Would seek to
compel me with your newly acknowledged power? So long as Zud named
you a spirit, I was ready to bend before you. But now that you name
yourself a man, would seek to lead me into sin, even were I minded to
give heed to your plea?"

"Nay," said Croft in a softer voice. "Nay, Naia, woman of my soul--whom
Zitu himself decreed in the beginning to be my mate. For love such
as mine is no sin, but the law of Zitu himself--the cause of all
living--all life. Yet, save you yield yourself to me of your own will,
those things my spirit cries for shall not be. And--can I not convince
you that, despite the words of Zud, which were ill advised, I am no
more than him to whom you gave your promise--than are you--free?"

He broke off and for the first time bowed his head. Something like
despair seized upon him--a sick wave of discouraged purpose, as he
realized how fully the leaven of the high priest's revelations had been
at work--as he sensed that the very union she had confessed to him in
the past she herself desired, had come to appear now a breaking of the
law--a union unnatural--unsanctioned by the God of her religion--a
sacrilegious thing.

And as he stood there a change came over the girl who watched. For the
first time in her knowledge of him Jasor of Nodhur bent his unflinching
crest; for the first time a hopeless something weakened the lines of
his strongly commanding face. And only one who knows the hearts of
women may tell what things stirred that moment in her breast. She
moved. Step by step she approached him where he stood. In an almost
timid fashion she lifted a bared arm and laid her hand against his
chest.

"But," she faltered, "Abbu said--"

"What?" Croft did not alter his position.

"Those things which sent my spirit down to the dark world of Zitemku,
ruler of the lost souls, in surprised dismay--that made me tremble
as with cold--that sent me to kneel before Ga for hours that, being
a woman and knowing women, she might help me to understand--that the
spirit which dwelt in Jasor of Nodhur's body was not his own, but
another's--sent by Zitu to possess it--when Jasor--died." The last was
a quivering whisper, no more than a sibilant breath.

"And if what Abbu said were truth?" Croft lifted his somber visage and
looked down into her darkly tragic eyes. Twin pools of mental agony,
they seemed, very close beneath his face--and Naia of Aphur's flesh on
cheek and throat and scarce-veiled bosom gleamed bloodless, pallid.
Even her parted lips were white.

"If?" they questioned as he paused. "Think you that, right or wrong in
Zitu's sight, I myself could mate with you were it the truth--couldst
give myself to the embrace of a body filled by another than that spirit
Zitu breathed into it at birth; think you my flesh would not shrink
in very horror from the contact, my spirit rebel, nor force my flesh
to yield? And were Abbu's tale true, then, too, were the high priest
right. For how might such a thing transpire save by the will of Zitu
himself--how else the body of a man who had given up the spirit return
to life?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"I have told you," said Croft, "that those things I did were done by
Zitu's grace. But I have not explained my full meaning. That I had
reserved for another time, and for your ears alone. Yet I swear now by
Zitu and Ga and Azil that I meant in my heart to tell you all things
before I claimed you as my wife--make all things plain."

"Then--" Once more Naia's figure stiffened. One hand crept up and
lay pressed in above her heart. "Abbu said truth--your spirit is not
Jasor's, but another's?"

"Yes," said Croft, dully refusing further evasion, "Abbu said the
truth. Yet not all the truth, and Zud overshot the mark in his
interpretation." He paused.

For the figure before him had risen, stretching upward on the balls of
its rosy feet, lifting its arms in a high-flung gesture with fingers
outstretched, extending, as it seemed, in every line of its slender,
rounded length, with head back-tilted until its golden hair hung
half-way down its tapering thighs in a shimmering cascade, its face
raised, its lips parted, its eyes half closed. So sudden was the
change that the girl's form seemed to have flung itself into that
strange posture of abandonment to woe, as a stricken creature leaps in
its death throes when struck by the hunter's shaft. And as Croft broke
off, arrested by that tragic and yet still beautiful pose, a scream
came out from the round, soft pillar of Naia of Aphur's throat.

"Zitu! Ga! Befriend me!"

All life went out of her glorious body. It sank down, seemed to shrink,
to bend and sway before him like a tempest-riven reed.

Croft caught it as it fell and lifted it in his arms--lifted it and
held it, the dearest burden they had ever known--held it and bent above
it with sick despair in his heart, despair for her whom he held, whose
pliant glory now lay impotently unconscious, upborne, saved from the
injury of its fall by his strong and reverent hands--despair for her
and for himself--for them both--victims of Zud's curious meddling in
their affairs.

Zud! He ground his teeth together. He was not done with Tamarizia's
high priest. Zud--or another--or ten thousand others--must pay for
this. Something like a sob caught in his throat as he gazed at the
down-dropped lids above those pansy-purple eyes in which Zud's
interference had waked the look of horror they had held before they
closed.

The sound of a muffled groan escaped his lips. How different was this
meeting from the one he had planned as taking place. Then, too, he had
thought to hold her in his arms, but that she would lie there willing,
gladly, responsive in her inmost being to his presence, not like
this. And suddenly moved again by a strange impulse, because Zitu or
God--what mattered it as to name, since, by any name whatever, there
was for life but one source?--he lifted that splendid form and held
it stretched prone and motionless before him, extended face uppermost
across his powerful arms. And--

"Ga befriend her. Zitu befriend me. Azil have compassion upon us both!"
he cried before he laid her on the couch of wine-red wood.

For a long moment after he had straightened, he stood gazing down upon
her. The sun streaming into the room through the glass of an embrasure
struck out the golden design of the wings and cross upon his breast.
It sparkled, shimmered, as it rose and fell with his breathing. But
it was no more golden, no more shimmering than the flood of golden
hair about Naia of Aphur's head. Nor was Croft's robe more blue in
its jewel-wrought folds than the limpid eyes beneath her fallen,
long-lashed lids.

Of a sudden Croft's own eyes fired with purpose. He drew a sharp,
deep breath. Naia of Aphur was his no longer. But--as Mouthpiece of
Zitu--all men must obey his mandates; there would be no exception; not
even the high priest himself, and--if he were to be cheated of the
major object for which he had labored, to attain which he had finally
broken the last bond between himself and earth--then let all men
beware. He turned away to go in search of Zud.




                              CHAPTER VI

                             CROFT DECIDES


And, now, despite all these things, despite the scene in the room
of the Gayana, the shock of surprise attendant upon his waking--the
first startled comprehension of what had happened wearing off ever so
slightly, Croft's future course became to him more clear.

Since the commanding part remained to him yet, it was his to command,
not to question or advise. He stalked across the sunlighted vastness
of the region of the Gayanas where the chatter of the maidens sank to
silence as he passed, bade the vestal who had taken him to Naia send
some of the women to attend her and passed through the silver door.

Stern of lip, utterly composed in outward seeming once more, giving no
outward sign of the tempest of black despair, of heart-sick and baffled
yearning which raged within him, he made his way down three of the
angling flights of the pyramid stairs and flung back into its masonry
sockets the high priest's door.

Never perhaps in the history of the nation has so unceremonious an
entrance of those chambers in the sacred structure been made. Yet Croft
had deliberately planned on the effect and a quiver of satisfaction
filled him, as Zud, seated at a table of the wine-red wood so much used
for furnishings in Tamarizia, refreshing himself with some cakes of
beaten grain and wine, and fruit, glanced up sharply with an expression
of surprised resentment and then started to his feet.

"Sit, man of Zitu," he directed bruskly, and watched the high priest
comply as he himself advanced and occupied a richly upholstered couch
close to where Zud sat. Then as the priest dipped his hands into a
crystal bowl of water and dried them on a square of cloth reserved for
the purpose, he went on. "It were well to consider the form of this
proclamation concerning the Mouthpiece of Zitu, I think."

Zud eyed him. Plainly the high priest was ill at ease. Croft's whole
manner had altered strangely since he had left him at the door of the
Gayana, and he must have sensed it. The thing was in his intonation,
the settled lines of his face, his eyes. "I--give ear, lord," he began,
after a momentary pause. "What suggestions are there--"

"Suggestions?" The Mouthpiece of Zitu caught the last word from his
mouth. "Think you that I shall offer suggestions, priest of Zitu? Does
Zitu suggest when he speaks?"

"Nay." Zud's expression grew troubled. "Hold not my words against me,
lord. I seek not thy displeasure. Yours is the speaking, mine it is
to--obey."

"That is well," said Croft in a milder voice. "Listen then, Zud. It is
my will that neither you, nor the brothers of the priesthood, nor any
other man in Tamarizia, bend the knee to me again. Render unto Zitu
that obeisance as heretofore--to Ga and Azil--not to me. Those things
are of the spirit, Zud, not of the flesh. In Tamarizia after fourteen
days men walk equal in Zitu's sight. Let thy word go forth to this
effect."

A tremor shook the high priest's hand as he stretched it forth. "I hear
and obey, O lord; yet was it to thy spirit the knee was bent, not to
Jasor of Nodhur's flesh."

"My spirit is what Zitu by his grace has made it," Croft returned.
"What I am lies between me and Zitu himself."

"Yet how then shall the Mouthpiece of Zitu be proclaimed?" Zud
quavered. Suddenly, despite his priestly trappings, the sumptuous
quarters in which he sat, he seemed no more than a shaken old man.

"It is of that I would give you counsel," Croft replied. "Were I minded
I could forbid this proclamation altogether, Zud, and compel you to
hang your head, admitting that you had meddled to bring about those
things Zitu had not ordained. Think you he needs any man's assistance
in working out his plan? Yet because I have watched closely since I
awakened, and find your act inspired by no evil intent, but by lack
of understanding, because to discredit your words were to strike not
only thee, but at the very foundation itself of each man's belief, I am
minded to let what you have decreed take place.

"You shall proclaim me thus. Not as a spirit, but as a man, a teacher,
one to whom Zitu permits certain things to be known; one by whom the
welfare of the nation is considered, through whom shall be given to
Tamarizia's people much for their own good; through whom those things
Zitu permits for them shall be transmitted to them, and in so much
Zitu's mouthpiece still." Abruptly he broke off as a sudden conception
seized him. For a time he considered a startlingly daring plan before
he spoke again in a tone of musing: "Zud--Zud, if you only knew the
truth."

"The truth, O lord!" said the high priest slowly. "Have I not sought it
all my life?"

Croft nodded. "Aye, priest of Zitu, I think you have. Wouldst hear the
truth of those things Abbu told you from my mouth?"

Zud leaned forward somewhat quickly. For an instant an eager light
gleamed in his eyes before they met Croft's steadily watching, and then
wavered.

"Lord!" he faltered, "lord!"

Croft told him the tale.

For that was the plan which had filled his mind--to tell it; to narrate
to Zud the truth; to explain those things which had been done, and the
how of each act so fully as he could inside the other's comprehension,
to convince him by word of mouth if he might, or, failing that, to win
his consent to a practical test.

       *       *       *       *       *

While he talked time dragged on, and by degrees Zud relaxed his pose,
of something like overborne embarrassment.

His attitude now became that of an amazed and eager attention. His eyes
lighted and his breathing quickened, and now and then he moistened his
lips with his tongue. By degrees his excitement increased, until he was
gripping the arms of his chair and leaning toward Croft, in a posture
which seemed no more than physical reflex of his mental determination
to miss no single word.

"Thou--thou sayest a man may leave his body at will?" he stammered as
Croft paused.

"Yes, if he knows the method of controlling his spirit to affect his
object," Croft replied.

"May go to other places while his body remains where he leaves it--and
see and know, and return again?" Zud said. His eagerness struck Croft
as almost pathetic. It was like that of a child.

"Yes," he repeated again.

"It is hard to believe," said Zud.

"Would you like to have proof?" Croft decided to convince the high
priest now and at once.

"Proof?" Zud queried.

"Yes. Would you like to leave this body of yours, Zud of Zitra, under
my direction, learn I have spoken the truth?"

His words were followed by a widening of the high priest's eyes. In
them waked something like a startled desire, combined with a cautious
hesitation. His whole expression was that of one who falters on the
brink of the unknown, longing to dare it yet deterred by the very fact
that it _is_ the unknown.

"Thou canst bring that about?" he questioned at length.

"Yes, if you obey me wholly." Croft held him with a steady regard. To
him that which he meant to do was no more than play. To cast this old
man into a cataleptic sleep by his own consent and project his astral
consciousness, whither he willed, was naught for one who by his own
volition had spanned the gap of interstellar space. Yet to Zud the
venture seemed to appear very vast, and he hesitated yet a moment
briefly before:

"My obedience is yours, O lord," he gasped.

"Then," said Croft, summoning all the powers of his trained will to his
aid, "fasten thy eyes on me, O man of Zitu, and fix thy mind on sleep,
for this leaving of the body begins indeed with a something approaching
sleep in its nature. Think therefore of sleep, O Zud--of sleep, of only
sleep!"

Fastening his gaze upon him in complete attention, until by degrees his
lids, at first wide, began to droop above his eyes, Zud obeyed.

"So then," Croft droned on as he noted the change, "your eyes are
closing, Zud; the lids grow heavy; sleep creeps now upon thee; sleep,
a deep sleep. Zud, thou art asleep, yet sleeping thou canst hear my
voice. Speak I not the truth?"

"Aye"--a muffled murmur from the high priest's mouth.

"And hearing me, Zud, even in your sleep you will render obedience to
my words. Hence, listen closely and obey. Do you know where Lakkon and
Jadgor and Robur lodge?"

"Aye," quavered the high priest.

"Then shall you go there, Zud, on my command. In the name of Zitu I
command you to leave your body--now."

For a moment he gave over speaking and waited while the form of the
high priest relaxed and sagged down in the chair of ruddy wood. Then
abruptly he resumed:

"Have you obeyed me, Zud?"

"Aye," no more than a whisper from the lips of the body in the chair.

"What do you see?" Croft demanded.

"A strange sight, indeed. My own form, as in a reflecting water-pool,
seated with downcast head, as wrapped in sleep."

"'Tis well," Croft spoke in answer and direction. "Await my company,
Zud." He threw himself prone upon the couch and freed his own astral
shell from Jasor's body by the effort of his will. An instant later
he floated midway between the floor and ceiling at Zud's side. Below
them, sat and reclined each body. There stood the table, still bearing
food for the material body midway between couch and chair. Croft turned
to his companion. And now all communication was on the astral plane,
without sound, yet by a none less evident diffusion of conscious
vibration.

"Thou seest?" he queried with a smile.

"Aye," the answer came to him from Zud's wraith--that strange replica
of his earthly form, implacable, invisible to any save Croft's and his
own eyes, which hung there between the floor of the apartment and the
burnished roof, weaving to and fro, in each intangible current of the
air, swaying and billowing, like a wind-stirred effigy in smoke. "Aye,
lord, I see, and am filled with amazement."

"Thou seest but the first step as yet," Croft told him. "Come!"

       *       *       *       *       *

There was an open embrasure in the pyramid wall. Through it Croft
willed himself, and seizing the thin arm of the weird form beside him,
dragged it along. They shot out and up through a sun-filled air--out
and up and up. The pyramid lay beneath them, the snow-white temple of
Zitu glinting in dazzling fashion on its top. East, west, north and
south Zitra lay spread to their sight, with its houses, its palaces
and hovels, the ringing circumference of its mighty walls. Its harbor
studded with sails was all asparkle in the sunlight, and beyond that
the bosom of the central ocean rose and fell slowly like the breast of
a woman asleep.

"Lord! Lord!" Croft sensed that the high priest gasped again in his
emotions at least.

"Behold!" Croft returned and swept an arm in the gesture of a circle.
"Priest of Zitu, behold! And, now, in which direction do the men I
mentioned lodge?"

"In the palace of Tamhys himself, as his guests," Zud replied, and
pointed with a spectral arm.

"Will thyself to their presence, even as you were in the flesh. Think
only that you desire immediate nearness to them. So shall you come upon
them, Zud."

"Aye, lord," Zud knit his astral brows as though in mental effort.

The sunlight vanished in a flash. With it went out the far-flung view
of the Tamarizian landscape--the city, the waves of the central sea.
Suddenly vast walls appeared on every hand--a tessellated floor inlaid
in white and gold and silver, stretched out beneath a roof of silver
inlaid beams, supporting frames containing varicolored glass.

This was the interior court of the Zitran palace as Croft knew. It
swept past quickly. He had the impression of the balcony surrounding
it on all four sides in Tamarizian style, of the supporting arches, of
the groups of statuary between them, of the ascending stairways, and
then they vanished, too, and he found himself in a smaller apartment,
its sliding doorway covered by a scarlet curtain, its floor in part
concealed by gorgeous rugs, its windows draped with other scarlet
tissues through which the outer light shone redly--a room equipped with
couches and chairs and tables, adorned between the doors and windows
with frescoes and groups of sculpture done in the customary translucent
stone, and supported on pedestals of copper, silver and gold. So much
he saw at a glance before he fastened his attention on the figures of
three men grouped about a table in front of a scarlet-curtained window
in the outer end of the room.

These men he knew, had met and known and conversed with before this in
the flesh. Jadgor, of Aphur, heavy set, dark of eyes and complexion,
grizzled of hair, his nose high and somewhat bent in the middle, his
whole appearance that of a man of driving purpose, sat there now clad
in leg-cases, shirt and metal cuirass, with Aphur's rayed sun on his
breast. And close beside him on the table reposed his helmet with its
nodding scarlet plumes.

Opposite him sat Lakkon, noble of Aphur and adviser to the king,
heavy set like his brother-in-law, strong of feature, with iron-gray
poll, dressed like to Jadgor in every essential detail, though in a
fashion less royal. By the end of the table stood Robur, Jadgor's son,
clean-limbed, strong-featured, with well-formed jaw and mouth, about
which lurked often a hint of humor, as Croft knew. In a fleeting glance
he recognized its absence now. The face of the crown prince was set
into almost stubborn lines, its cheeks a trifle flushed.

And even as Croft perceived the attitude and expression of the several
occupants of the apartment, Jadgor hit the table with one fist a
resounding crash, whose vibration eddied out and set Zud to drunkenly
rocking in their whorl close by Croft's side.

"By Zitu, and by Zitu!" He swore a double oath. "I like not this
delay in an understanding. Thrice in as many days have we visited the
pyramid, and Zud has said he sleeps. Much has he done for Tamarizia,
as I shall last deny; nor did he tell us to remain in Zitra at the
last. Yet if Zud be right, as he should, being high priest, my brother,
Lakkon, finds himself in difficult case."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lakkon's visage darkened. "Yet was the pledge given of his seeking," he
broke out in querulous fashion. "Jadgor knows that Jasor, be he spirit,
as Zud saith, or man, sought it of me ere he entered the armored car
to lead into the conflict wherein Helmor, of Zollaria, was overthrown.
And Jadgor himself did sponsor my words wherein Naia, my daughter,
was promised him to wife. Wherefore, she hath permitted his arms, and
yielded him her mouth, as none save an unclean woman doth to any save
the men of her own family or him to whom she is betrothed."

"Aye," said Jadgor, frowning. "Yet shall a spirit mate with the flesh.
Continence is no less a vow of the priesthood than of the Gayana.
Were a spirit sent by Zitu to do his work, even though to that end he
employs the body of one whom Azil has recalled, is he to be considered
as man or priest?"

"Think you Zitu wouldst choose a rebellious spirit for his
mouthpiece?" Robur broke in with considerable heat. "Jadgor, my father,
who are we to judge?"

"Robur seems minded to attempt it," Jadgor rejoined with a sarcasm he
plainly did not wish to conceal.

"Aye." The color deepened in the crown prince's cheeks. "For by
Jadgor's command I labored beside this Jasor, of Nodhur, as he then
was known, for the better part of a cycle, toward the end of making
Tamarizia safe against what Helmor did intend, and in nothing did I
find him other save steadfast and just. Man he was in every seeming,
save that his knowledge surpassed the knowledge of all other men, and
for these sleeps such as holds him now. We became as brothers in our
common purpose, whereby Jadgor now bids fair to attain his ends."

Croft's heart warmed swiftly to Robur's defense, though it was no
more than from his knowledge of the crown prince he had felt he might
expect. As Robur said the bond between them in their year of mutual
endeavor in the shops of Himyra and Ladhra, where the motors and rifles
used in the war were made, had become exceedingly close. Indeed, so
intimate had they grown that he had addressed Robur as "Rob."

They had been as brothers, indeed, and he felt new confidence now,
knowing Gaya would reflect the attitude of her husband rather than
any one else. And Gaya in the past had been at one time the means
of communication between Naia and himself, when Lakkon had felt
himself bound by a pledge to Cathur, to discourage Croft's suit. Now,
therefore, he waited eagerly to see what response Jadgor might make to
his son's final sentence which was no more than an allusion to those
plans of mounting the Zitran throne that had held Jadgor's mind when
Croft came to Palos first, toward which, by a marriage with Cathur's
profligate prince, Naia was to aid.

And that Jadgor sensed the half-veiled rebuke, he saw at once, since
the Aphurian's frown but deepened before he spoke. "Man in seeming
is he, I admit, yet to Abbu he confessed that he was not Jasor but
another. This thing I do not understand, nor doth Zud. Yet were he an
agent of Zitu, then were the end of which you speak of Zitu's willing
for Tamarizia's good, which, as my son knows, lies nearest Jadgor's
heart. Zud, as you know also, I have questioned, and he holds that
none save a mortal may know a woman, save only by Zitu's will, as Azil
was conceived of Ga."

"Then why question Zitu's will, as expressed by Zitu's Mouthpiece?"
said Robur quickly, and paused with a gasp.

"What mean you?" Jadgor half rose from his seat.

"Nay--" Suddenly Robur faltered, he seemed disturbed, abashed. He
lowered his eyes. "Nay, my father, I spoke in haste. What says the
maiden herself? Did not my uncle speak with her the prior sun?"

"She holds to her promise as she has held since the beginning," Jadgor
replied. "She refuses to leave the Gayana until she has speech with the
sleeper himself."

"Nor will she leave ever, should Abbu's words and Zud's judgment
prove true," Lakkon said with a twitching face. "Virgin is she in all
save the love she has given to him she knew as Jasor. Failing its
consummation, she becomes Gayana herself."

"Nay, by Zitu!" Robur cried a savage protest. "My father and uncle, of
this thing there lies some explanation. He who I, too, knew as Jasor,
won not the full love of my cousin for any such sterile fate. Himself,
he told me that all he did was by Zitu's grace; and of _all_ that he
did was not this too a part?"

A part--rather the all--the motive, the object of what he had done,
thought Croft, as he once more thrilled to the sturdy, unyielding
quality of Robur's partizanship.

Then as Jadgor made no immediate answer, and Lakkon sat with troubled
countenance, lost as it appeared in the prospective fate of the
daughter whom he loved with an almost adoring devotion, and now saw
embrace the life of a vestal as escape from what, by Tamarizian
custom, must otherwise amount to a technical disgrace, Robur went on.
"Wherefore, as said before, who are we to judge the Hupor Jasor or
the Mouthpiece of Zitu, be he what he may, ere he awakes? Like to my
cousin, Naia, I would ask him to speak for himself."

Jadgor gave him a glance. "For that waking we have waited many suns."

"Yet, perhaps he wakes even now," Lakkon suggested quickly, his manner
that of a man who grasps at straws.

"Aye," said Jadgor, "perhaps. And--since we are met for the purpose,
rather than useless discussion, let us seek the pyramid at once. He
rose, a commanding figure in his glistening cuirass and moved toward
the curtained door.

"Back!" Croft commanded Zud. "Desire the return to thy body."

He suited his own act to the word, and an instant later opened his
physical eyes to find Zud sitting tensely erect, regarding him out of
staring, startled eyes.

He sat up. "You saw, O Zud," he questioned. "You heard?"

"Aye," said Zud a trifle hoarsely. "This passes understanding."

"Only until understood," Croft told him. "Art any less yourself for
having left your flesh?"

Zud dropped his eyes. "Nay, not so," he said at last.

"And had you entered this body upon the couch, rather than that in the
chair?" Croft pressed him closely. "Think you, Zud, you would have been
any less yourself, any less Zud, the--priest of Zitu, and--a _man_?"

"Zitu!" Zud breathed sharply. Plainly he caught Croft's drift. "In such
a fashion then you have visited other places, even to the stars, and
seen strange things, and brought back what you deemed good?"

"Aye," said Croft with a smile. "In the spirit, Zud, you have seen your
body lie sleeping, even as in the flesh you have seen my body lie. Yet
are you Zud in the spirit or in the flesh; for with each man it is the
spirit commands the flesh; that acts, and the spirit, Zud of Zitra, is
of Zitu, breathed from his nostrils, into the flesh, to give the body
life."

"Man then is a spirit?" Zud began slowly. He seemed shaken, yet in some
subtle way exalted, despite the fact that he was pallid to the lips.

"Aye, Zud, priest of Zitu. There were no man else."

A rap fell on the door of the apartment. It slid back, revealing a lay
brother in bare feet and cord-belted robe. He advanced, bending before
Zud from the waist, his arms extended in the sign of the horizontal
cross.

"Jadgor of Aphur, and Lakkon, and Robur, son of Jadgor, await audience
with Zud of Zitra," he announced.

"Admit them," Zud glanced at Croft as the brother withdrew. "Thou art
as thou hast said, a teacher not only of all men, but of Zitu's priest.
I would speak with thee more of this."

For the second time the door slid back. Jadgor, Lakkon, and Robur filed
in.




                              CHAPTER VII

                            FATHER AND SON


"Greeting, priest of Zitu," Jadgor began, catching sight of the other
occupant of the room, and paused briefly before he went on:

"_Hai_, Hupor, so you are awake again at last."

"As Jadgor sees," said Croft without rising, while Lakkon stared
and Robur took a quick step forward, flushed deeply and checked his
instinctive motion, as one who hesitates in a decision.

Toward him Croft put out a hand, and as Robur caught it with a sudden
gesture, he smiled. "Zud tells me you stand without opposition in
Aphur, Rob," he resumed as he gripped the Tamarizian's fingers. "Of
such things I am glad."

"It was to inquire of you, we have intruded upon the priest of Zitra,"
Jadgor spoke again before Robur could do more than return Croft's grip.
"Concerning thee a proclamation has gone forth. Mouthpiece of Zitu,
thou art acclaimed. How then shall we salute thee in the future?" His
tone was haughty, harmonizing with the attitude of mind Croft had
sensed in the room in Tamhys's palace. But he paid it the tribute of
small notice.

"Salute me," he said almost coldly, "as Zud has ordained."

"Thou art from Zitu then?" Jadgor lost a modicum of his aplomb. Man
of action, accustomed to command though he was, yet, like most of his
nation, he stood in awe of his nation's god--and Croft's answer gave
him pause.

"All men are of Zitu, Jadgor of Aphur," Croft replied, meaning in his
response to do the presidential candidate small good.

But as he paused: "Truth is being spoken," Robur cut quickly in. "All
men are of Zitu through Azil and Ga, until Zitu himself sends Zilla,
with his sucking lips to take his life away."

Once more Croft smiled into the eyes of his friend. "Then gentle
Gaya--she is happy at your popularity, Rob?" he inquired as Jadgor
stood and stared.

"She waits me at Himyra," Robur returned, inclining his head.
"But--there were reasons why I desired more to remain in Zitra until
such time as should find you awakened from your sleep."

"Oh, aye--such reasons as Jadgor's doubt, and Lakkon's questions
concerning Zud's proclamation." Croft yawned as he spoke. "But Robur
forgets not so quickly his friends."

"By Zitu! How say you?" Jadgor broke out in a roar, flicked as it
seemed to dare the question by Croft's manner and words. "Are you
spirit or man?"

Croft eyed him for what seemed a long time before he answered. "A
man--in the way you mean it, O Jadgor--a man as thou art."

"Hai!" In a fashion Jadgor seemed surprised. "Then how the
Mouthpiece--" he began.

Croft rose. The cross and the wings of Azil glowed yellow in a ray of
sunlight on his breast. His tone was that of a teacher to a child.
"Jadgor of Aphur," he spoke with deliberation, each accent falling
slowly, "the Mouthpiece is that which speaks from knowledge to him
who has less--hence is the teacher a mouthpiece of knowledge to the
student. Those things which are difficult to one of little knowledge
may appear but simple to the mind of one who understands."

Color crept into Jadgor's dark face. One would have said Croft's
speech had lashed his haughty spirit like a whip to a gnuppa's flank.
His eyes came up and he measured glances with the man before him.
"And," said he a trifle quickly, "as Mouthpiece of Zitu, you claim the
greater knowledge for yourself? Perchance it were but a short step
in your belief between the greater knowledge and the greater power.
But--Tamarizia is not yet within the full grasp of your hand, and Aphur
still is Aphur, and with Nodhur and Milidhur, strong."

"My father!" Robur's tone was one of consternation. He took a quick
step in Jadgor's direction.

"Hold, Rob!" Croft lifted a restraining hand. It came into his mind
that the greater power of which Jadgor spoke was after all the main
point that was troubling the Aphurian king--that he feared a loss of
that prestige even as president, which all his life he had known--was
alarmed lest Croft with the backing of the priesthood gain the upper
hand, and Zud step into the position of sponsor for the stranger which
until now he himself had held with great honor to himself and his son.
He let an icy smile grow slowly on his lips. "Aye, Milidhur and Nodhur
and Aphur are strong. Aphur's king, through me. Also, is Tamarizia yet
an empire. Wherefore the change of government is by Tamhys' decree. Let
Jadgor beware lest success and quick attainment of his wishes may turn
his head."

"_Hai!_ You would threaten!" Jadgor exclaimed, drawing himself up to
his full height.

"Hold!" commanded Zud, breaking in for the first time. "Jadgor of
Himyra, you forget yourself, and the obedience all men owe to Zitu--and
the victory granted Tamarizia by his grace. What is the strength of
Aphur or Nodhur or Milidhur, to his designs? And think you that any or
all of those states will follow you against the word of Zitu's priest?"

"Or," Croft caught up the subject, well pleased by Zud's stand in the
matter, "think you that I who gave the strength of which you boast,
have not greater strength to give, or should the need arise to use
against that already given? If so, ask Zud, who has seen somewhat of my
plans."

       *       *       *       *       *

But Jadgor was stubborn, and years of authority had made it hard for
one of his type to yield. "Strength you may have," he retorted shortly,
"yet where shall it be produced in time to avail against Aphur's
strength? And if not in time, where produced at all, were Tamarizia
still an empire with Jadgor on the throne?" His eyes flashed sharply
and he laid a hand on the gem-studded hilt of his sword.

"Hold!" cried Zud once more, while Robur paled and Lakkon drew
instinctively back from his king. "Thy words approach treason, Jadgor,
should they come to Tamhys's ears. As priest of Zitu I command you
to yield obedience to the Mouthpiece of Zitu--to aid, not oppose his
intent."

Jadgor was heated beyond all cool judgment. He flung back his head.
"Mouthpiece of Zitu--or of Zitemku, the foul one--or man as he himself
alleges, Jadgor yields authority to no one!" he roared.

"Nor hesitated to offer his sister's child to a profligate prince,
turned traitor to his land in order to increase it," said Croft as the
Aphurian paused.

"The point is well taken," Jadgor returned, breathing deeply inside his
metal cuirass, "since the maid was almost asked by the Mouthpiece of
Zitu himself as a price."

"No," Croft denied with a greater show of emotion than he had exhibited
as yet. "I asked but your consent and that of her father to win her for
my wife if I could."

"He speaks truth, my father," Robur declared. "And--I myself know that
Naia, my cousin, loved Jasor of Nodhur as no other."

"Jasor," Lakkon spoke for the first time. "But Naia herself has told me
that Abbu of Scira said--"

"That Jasor's spirit was drawn from his lips by Zilla," Jadgor
interrupted. "How say you, Robur--think you your cousin desires
marriage with a body whose spirit has fled?"

"No," said Croft, speaking before Robur could find any answer. "Naia of
Aphur is free from any claim of mine, save as she herself decides when
she learns the truth."

"Thou hast--seen her?" Lakkon faltered, his face beginning to work.

"Yes--and told her the truth as I meant to tell it to her, save that
Abbu spoke to Zud in the time of my sleep and Zud spoke to the maid
without a full understanding of all the truth embraced."

"The truth--what is it? Is it true that your spirit is not Jasor's?"
Jadgor once more broke forth.

"Aye--my spirit is not Jasor's," Croft returned. "To Zud I have
explained it. Yet is my spirit the spirit of a man born of a woman as
any other though not on Palos nor into Jasor's flesh."

"Zitu!" Jadgor was plainly startled. "Can a man's spirit forsake his
body and enter another, and yet possess mortal life?"

"Aye," said Zud, whose single experience, as Croft had meant, seemed to
have filled him with complete conviction. "I myself have left my flesh
and returned into it again, so that while I was absent it lay sleeping.
Zitu has granted this to me through his Mouthpiece, that I might more
fully understand."

"Thou?" Jadgor eyed him, as though in doubt as to how to take his words.

"I, Jadgor, yes," Zud said. "In the spirit was I present in the palace
of Tamhys when you spoke with Lakkon and Robur concerning this same
thing, and Robur defended his friend as since coming here he has done.
And though I was not seen of you, yet heard I what was said. Hence I
believe that the spirit of Zitu hath sent to guide us to a greater
knowledge is, as he himself says, the spirit of a man of earth."

"Earth?" Jadgor frowned at the unaccustomed word.

"Aye--a world ruled over by a different sun than ours," Zud rejoined.

"Jasor--since that is the name by which I have known you, and learned
to love you," Robur began again, "is this the truth?"

"Yes, Robur my brother, Zud speaks truly," Croft replied.

"You came from--earth?" The crown prince stammered slightly over the
planet's name.

"Yes, Robur--I came from earth."

Robur nodded. "I remember now that Sinon of Milidhur mentioned the fact
that his son's appearance since his illness had changed, along with his
bearing and his knowledge. Jadgor, my father, I believe this truth.
Friend of the Crown Prince of Aphur, what was your name on earth?"

"Jason," said Croft.

"Zitu! 'tis well-nigh the same."

"Yes," Croft regarded the crown prince, smiling. "And--Robur my friend,
it is the spirit which molds the flesh. Hence Jasor's body, after I
possessed it, altered in its appearance to some extent. Think back,
Prince of Aphur; seems it the same to you now, as in those days when by
you it was first known, or has it undergone some still further change?"

"It has changed," Robur replied quickly, his eyes lighting. "Now by
Azil himself, I begin to comprehend your meaning, Jason, if I may call
you by that name."

"Call me as you will, Rob," Croft returned. "Since I know you are my
friend."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lakkon plucked at Jadgor's arm. "I--would see my daughter, O Jadgor,"
he said in a lowered voice. "Since she has seen this Jason, I would
speak to her of many things."

"Shortly," Jadgor replied. "Say to her that so soon as Jason is
proclaimed Mouthpiece of Zitu, we return to Himyra--"

"But should she desire to remain with the Gayana," Lakkon interrupted.

"By Zitu!" Jadgor gave him a frowning glance. "I speak to you and to
her through you as her king. Surely I hold place above the children of
Aphur yet. Are there not Gayana in Himyra's pyramid as well as here
should she decide to give herself to Ga? Repeat to her my words and see
that she obeys. Or--hold! I will see the maid myself." He turned back
to Croft and Zud. "These things I confess I do not understand, and in
truth to me they pass all understanding. Man of Zitu, yet is it clear
to my mind that an understanding lies between this other and yourself.
Wherefore I must ponder the matter well, and seek to determine whether
the palace or the pyramid of Zitra shall rule Tamarizia in the future.
To thee for the present, Zud--peace. Be pleased to direct that the
maiden Naia be brought to an audience chamber for speech with her
father and her _king_."

"Jadgor's request is granted." Zud lifted a small hammer from the table
and struck against a metal gong.

The door slid back and a lay brother appeared.

Zud spoke to him, directing him to lead Jadgor and Lakkon to an
apartment, and command Naia's presence there.

"Peace to you, Zud," Jadgor said again as he turned away.

"And to thee peace," responded Zitu's priest.

"Rob," Croft arrested Aphur's prince as he moved to follow his father,
"are you party to this interview with your cousin?"

"No." Robur paused. "I return now to the palace."

Croft nodded. "Presently then. Come now. I would speak with you alone."

For all his controlled demeanor, Croft was none the less disturbed as,
leaving Zud, he led Jadgor's son to the room in which for two weeks
his body had lain entranced. Jadgor's stand he could understand well
enough, as well as his veiled taunt that were it to come to a test of
strength between them, Croft might not be able to arm the rest of the
nation against Milidhur, Nodhur, and Aphur, for the simple reason that
before he would create anything with which to resist the weapons he
himself had placed in the hands of Jadgor's men and his allies, he must
create shops. Those plants he had thus far brought into being were in
Nodhur and Aphur alone--one at Himyra, Jadgor's city, and the other at
Ladhra, capital of Nodhur, where lived Sinon and Mellia, the parents of
Jasor whose body Croft had made his own--that Sinon and Mellia, whom
Jadgor had raised from the merchant caste to the nobility because of
the wonders worked by their supposed son.

Nor did Croft like the thought that because of him or anything he had
done, Tamarizia should by any chance be torn by internal conflict, or
his plans for a republic be overthrown. And yet in Jadgor's words he
had read a hint of civil war between the south and western states and
the rest of the nation, where Jadgor declined to accept any authority
higher than his own. As he had said to the man not half an hour before,
the easy victory over Helmor of Zollaria and the acclaim resulting to
himself as nominal commander of the Tamarizian army, seemed to have
gone to Jadgor's head. And in addition he appeared to feel sincerely
that through Croft a possible disgrace had been brought upon his family
through Naia, and therefore upon himself.

Also Jadgor had thrown out an intimation that with enough power behind
him he would be minded to curtail Croft's activities in so far as he
could, once he were on the Zitran throne. Nor did Croft doubt that even
were a civil war avoided, Jadgor would be elected president of the
republic if let alone. Aphur would vote for him, as would Nodhur unless
very quick action was taken. Milidhur could be counted on for support
since Robur's wife was the daughter of that state's present king.
Cathur, freed from the treason which had weakened it once, would surely
favor Jadgor, who had saved it from being overrun and meeting Mazhur's
fate of fifty years before. Mazhur might be expected to support the man
who had freed her from the slavery she had endured for fifty years.
Bithur and Hiranur alone, then were not sure. Of the two, Hiranur would
almost certainly support Tammon, the emperor's son, and Bithur might
well be expected to split his vote, with the odds on Jadgor again,
because of that boasted strength Croft's labors in Aphur had brought--a
strength Bithur might feel needed in defense, since Mazzer adjoined
her entire eastern frontier and Zollaria, beaten but not crushed, yet
threatened dangerously on the north.

All in all he felt that in what he did and said he would tread on
delicate ground, as he saw Robur seated and approached the golden
casket Zud had opened to inspect the drawings it contained.

But he said nothing of what was seething in his brain as he took out
the plans and carried them back to spread them out before Robur's eyes
on his couch.

One of them was for a dynamo, water-driven, and nothing else. There
were many streams in Tamarizia's mountains, and he had planned to
harness their power for the generation of electric force. This then he
took up first.

"Look, Rob," he began as he held it before his companion's eyes. "Can
you remember a night in Himyra when Jadgor named me Hupor, and I said
the scene would have been more brilliant were light obtained from many
lamps of glass inside which a luminous filament glowed?"

"Aye, I remember it well." Robur inclined his head. His face was
serious and he seemed ill at ease, as well as somewhat surprised that
Croft had turned to the plans rather than taking up a discussion of
other things.

But Croft had a purpose in so doing; a hope that by showing Robur the
things he planned to accomplish, he might reach Jadgor's ear in a less
direct, though no less effective fashion, since doubtless Robur would
speak concerning them to the king. "This," he said when assured that
the prince recalled his former remark, "is a device to provide such
light, and many other things."

       *       *       *       *       *

For an hour thereafter he talked, displaying plan after plan, each one
of which he explained, until at the end, Robur's face was flushed with
excitement, his eyes glowing in anticipation of beholding undreamed of
things.

"Jasor or Jason," he exclaimed at length. "Mouthpiece of Zitu must you
be indeed to devise such objects, to have knowledge of them--to draw
their designs."

"No--" Croft considered swiftly. Robur was husband to Gaya, and Gaya
had stood his friend in his effort to win Naia before. He decided to
tell Robur the literal truth. "No, Robur--these things are not mine
own. Of Zitu they are--by him permitted for man's use--yet are they
things known, and employed daily in the life of men on that star from
which I come."

"Earth," said Robur quickly. "These things are known on earth, and the
motors, the rifles--"

"Yes," Croft nodded slightly. "And a thousand other things." He took up
a final plan. "Rob, what do you think of a device which can lift a man
into the air, as a bird rises on its wings?"

"Zitu! Would you fly, Jason of earth!" Robur caught a slightly unsteady
breath.

"Aye," Croft spread out the parchment. He had drawn it in a moment
of daring impulse, and now he explained to Robur how it was driven
by a "motur"--the name he had given to his engines, modified to fit
Tamarizian speech, and the action of the planes.

For a time Jadgor's son sat seemingly lost in a silent contemplation of
this to him most wonderful fruit of his companion's hand and brain. And
then he flung up his head and looked him full in the eyes. "Jason, tell
me the truth, in Zitu's name!" he burst into an impassioned query. "Why
came you from earth to Palos--what strange force led you to seek life
with us?"

And Croft answered that heart-sincere appeal without visible
hesitation. "The strongest force in all the sum of Zitu's forces,
Robur--that force which men call--love."

"Love?" repeated Robur, staring. "Of a woman, you mean?"

"Of a woman, yes," said Croft, returning his regard directly. "You know
well the maid."

"Naia, by Zitu!" Robur sprang to his feet. "You have dared all for her?"

"All," said Croft. "Listen Rob, my true friend to whom I may open my
heart: To Palos and Tamarizia I came first, seeking knowledge, having
learned how a man may leave his body in the spirit, even as I have
proved a man may. Yet knew I not why I chose Palos, until I came to
Himyra and saw Naia of Aphur first. But having seen her even in the
spirit, I loved her, as a man may love but one woman, in either the
spirit or flesh; and because of that love--because to me she meant all
and more than any other thing in life, and because I possessed the
knowledge and the power, I dared death itself in taking Jasor's body
when he laid it down, in order that I might save her from the marriage
to Cathur, Jadgor planned, and win her for myself. Jadgor's son knows
the rest."

"Aye," Robur said. "And he knows that were the truth understood by
Jadgor he would command the maid to your arms, and make sure that these
strange instruments, the designs of which you have shown me, should be
made in the Himyra and Ladhra shops."

"Hold!" exclaimed Jason. "Stop--once have I saved Naia of Aphur from
paying the score of Jadgor's ambitions, nor will I permit it again. If
the maiden comes to me at all, Rob, it must be of her own choice--from
her own wish, not by the command of Jadgor or another, as my willing
mate--not as a price."

Robur nodded. "_Hai_, Jason!" he cried. "Now can I understand you, and
find you the man I have felt you in my heart." He approached Croft,
seized his hand and placed it on his shoulder, laid his own on that of
his companion in the posture of greeting used by Tamarizian friends.
So for a moment the two men stood eye to eye before Robur went on:
"Thy love is a true love--of the heart as well as of the body. Claim
me thy friend in this, O Jason--I and Gaya, the woman I won in similar
fashion, though I journeyed no farther than to Milidhur to find her.
You have seen the maid since your awakening. Tell me; said you to her
so much?"

"Yes," Croft told him, "save that she came to me willingly--herself she
was free."

"And what said Naia my cousin? O Jason, my heart goes out to you as
ever since we have known each other. Robur may find a way to assist a
friend."

Once more Croft felt his whole being warm to Aphur's prince. "'Tis
the matter of Jasor's body and Jason's spirit, that disturbs her," he
explained. "Concerning that I meant to tell her, as only I could tell
it, so that she might understand. That would I have done at a time of
my own selecting before she became my wife, save that Abbu of Scira to
whom I confessed that my spirit was not Jasor's but one which meant
to Tamarizia only good--Abbu, whom I swore to silence in Zitu's name,
was by Zud absolved from his oath and spoke. And Zud gaining part of
the truth only, yet carried what he had learned to Naia's ears. Zud,
startled by what he had learned, named me to her a spirit sent by Zitu.
Naia looks upon herself as one deceived, well-nigh betrayed."

"But," said Robur quickly, "when you told her of yourself--"

"Nay," Croft replied. "Naia of Aphur is not one to weep, nor ask for
explanations."

Robur nodded in comprehension of all Croft's words implied. "So that
she knows not as yet of this love that drew you from another world to
win her, even as with us a man might go from one kingdom to another.
Yet to me it seems that a maid might marvel at a love so great."

Croft's eyes lighted at the suggestion. "As I had hoped she would when
I told it in the way I meant to tell it, Rob. See you not that this
title proclaimed by Zud is something thrust upon me, rather than sought
by myself? For though I meant to be to Tamarizia a teacher in many
things, and in so far a mouthpiece in very truth, showing to her people
those things known to others, but drawn first from Zitu's mind as all
things created must be; yet had I no intent, or wish to greatly exalt
myself. In Himyra I sought the rank of Hupor merely because it raised
me to her caste. And Zud himself will tell you that in proclaiming
me to the people, I have forbidden him to name me other than a
teacher--more than a man like themselves."

"_Hai!_" said Robur. "You have done this, Jason! Did Jadgor know, it
would change his stand I think. My father's attitude in this matter
grieves me. Let me be _your_ mouthpiece in this to bring understanding
to his mind."

       *       *       *       *       *

Croft considered. In so far as he could see, it could do no possible
harm for the Aphurian king to realize that he was seeking no material
glory beyond the life with Naia he had planned. That, he felt, was
glory enough to pay for all he had done or might do in the future,
if it could be attained. He nodded. "Speak, Rob, if you like," he
answered. "I am, I confess, more or less disturbed by your father's
manner and his words, not for myself so much as for Tamarizia. I
would see no split in the nation. I would see her stand proud in her
strength, yet guilty of no aggression--ready to defend herself, yet
not wishing to attack unless assaulted first, broadening in wisdom and
knowledge rather than in lands gained by the conquest of the sword.
Speak if you will, Rob, if thereby we may turn Jadgor from what seems
to me a dream of personal power, back to that wish for the strength of
_all_ Tamarizia, which held place in his heart, when I knew him first."

Robur sighed. "Teacher you may well be called, Jason," he said in a
tone of accord with Croft's remarks. "Jadgor's name on every lip has
been to Jadgor's spirit like wine to a strong man's flesh--nor do I
myself think Zud has any wish to interfere with the affairs of state
through proclaiming you Mouthpiece of Zitu, even though my father
appears to fear some such thing himself. Wherefore I shall tell him of
what you have said, if I may. And of this other matter also I shall
speak. In that Naia has yielded you her mouth, has felt your arms about
her, who are not of her blood; to Jadgor's mind, there lies a disgrace."

Croft nodded again. "Yet would he have given her to Kyphallos, the
play-thing of Zollaria's unclean woman--the master of dancing girls,
my friend." His tone grew heavy, as he recalled the inconsistency of
Jadgor's course.

"I know--I know," Robur replied. "But that would have been in marriage."

For a moment it was in Croft's mind to retort quickly that the
degradation of a loveless union could not be legalized in the sight of
Zitu by any words of a priest. But he checked the impulse. "There can
be no marriage between Naia and myself until it is brought about by her
as well as my wish."

"Failing which she will become Gayana," Robur said and looked full into
Jason's eyes.

"Which you do not like yourself," Croft responded, recalling the words
Zud and he had heard the man before him speak in the palace room.
"Which, should it happen would deprive me of all I have labored in
sincere purpose to gain--that which I think Zitu himself is inclined to
permit--since he has permitted also that I dwell in the spirit inside
Jasor of Nodhur's flesh."

"Aye, by Zitu, I see it!" Robur exclaimed. "Were it said to her, by one
to whom she would scarce fail to give ear--then--perhaps she would see
it too. Jason--Gaya, my wife, has before this had a hand in this affair
of your love. Could she prevail upon my cousin to listen--"

"Rob!" Croft caught an almost quivering breath as he spoke the word. He
rose and began a slow pacing of the floor. But presently he paused and
once more faced the crown prince.

"At least," he said, "she returns by Jadgor's command to Himyra. Let
Gaya speak with her, friend of my heart, to whom my heart is shown, and
prevail upon her to remain outside the pyramid until she has taken time
to think. Myself, I told her I could explain if the chance were mine.
Rob, you and Gaya your wife will do this?"

"Aye," Robur declared, rising also. "Be not cast down in your heart.
Inside fourteen suns I shall be governor in Aphur--and I shall see to
it that Jadgor understands much which now he does not understand--also,
that Naia does not go to the pyramid in Himyra. I shall speak with
Magur himself. Speak of this with Zud, Jason. Have him give tablets
into my hands to Magur from himself, advising against an immediate
action. Then once I am in the palace, Jason, my friend, we shall reopen
the Himyra shops, and set the melting furnaces flaring, and make
many things for Tamarizia's welfare--even to this machine which flies
without moving its wings." His face lighted, and his nostrils flared at
the pictures in his brain.

"With you, my brother, and with Zitu it rests, then," Croft said, and
the two men struck palms as once on the day of their first meeting they
had struck in friendship's pledge.




                             CHAPTER VIII

                           SCARLET BLOSSOMS


All Zitra was _en fête_. All morning men and women in gala attire, rich
and poor and middle class, even the blue men and women of Mazzerian
extraction, the serving class of Tamarizia where their parents had been
slaves, had been thronging into that immense central square of the
island city, whose pavement was a tessellated expanse of rock crystal
white and gold.

Always Croft had marveled at the beauty of the imperial capitol since
first he saw it. Himyra--the red-walled queen of Aphur, brooding on the
banks of the yellow Na, he had thought a dream of Babylonian splendor
when first he came to Palos. Himyra he would always love, because it
was there he had first seen Naia outside its gates. But Zitra surpassed
it in the point of artistic magnificence. Himyra was a city of red and
white, of palaces, parks and terraces along the river, studded with
shrubs and trees. Zitra was a city of white and silver and crystal and
gold--a thing undreamable unless once seen--and even so more like the
city of a dream.

About the square, where, on the morning of the third day after Croft
had awakened from what he considered his final trip to earth, a huge
platform had risen overnight, the populace ranged themselves, close
packed. The scene was brilliant in a degree. From the tops of the
structures facing the square, built mainly of the predominating white
stone used in constructing the city, and even its walls, canopies and
streamers of azure blue and scarlet had been stretched as a protection
against the sun and its midday heat. They made of the square a
temporary auditorium of enormous size, into which the people jostled
with a babel of voices, a soft yet vast shuffling of feet. Only at one
point was an opening in the billowing covering of the canopies left.
There at high noon a ray of the sun would strike through and lie on the
platform in the center of the square.

Soldiers of the Imperial Guard, in metal greaves, short-skirted tunics,
and breast-plates, armed as in former days, not with rifles, but with
short swords, spears, and shields, since this was a formal occasion,
were stationed at the end of each street which entered the square, and
admitted the crowds in orderly fashion, assigning each arriving group
to their proper place in the vast temporary enclosure according to
their caste.

By degrees the audience came to seem a thing divided into particolored
segments, each composed of the caste for which it had been set aside.
There were the blue packed masses of the Mazzerians, with their almost
indigo skins scantily covered, a jostling sea of swarming, whispering
flesh. There were the laborers in their tawny smocks, their hair
cinctured by a golden or copper band, supporting the draped cloth which
protected their necks in labor from the sun. And beyond them were the
tradesmen with their women, taking on a still more brilliant appearance
according to the dictates of taste which had clad them in various
shades and colors.

And again, nearest the dais was a rippling band of color marking the
noble caste--men and women of station and wealth. And here gorgeous
might describe the play of colors, the flash and glint of jewels and
costly metals, the stately waving of plumes, the flicker of stalwart
limbs, of white arms and snowy breasts and shoulders, the iridescent
shimmer of diaphanous gauze scarfs. These were the select of the Zitran
population. Each gnuppa-drawn carriage that whirled up to the end of
the streets disgorged its recumbent passengers from the couchlike seats
on which they reclined as they rode, and then retired.

By degrees the square became utterly packed save for a space about the
platform maintained by more of the Imperial Guard, and an alley running
toward the mouth of a single street. The hour crept on. Through the
canopy the sun blazed dimly. Water-bearers with bottles made from the
hide of the tabur--an animal widely raised, with the fleece of a sheep
and the general shape of a hog--passed through the square, sprinkling
the pavement to cool the air, doubly heated by the outer temperature
and the multitude of bodies packed into so close a space. Never had
there been a greater concourse or a more brilliant in the history of
the state. Indeed, in all the annals of the nation, no more auspicious
date would appear.

This day marked what might be regarded as a new era in national
affairs. The Zollarian war was done. Tamarizia was stronger than ever
before in the memory of man, and a new and more liberal government than
any they had known was to be adopted within the next few days. And as
though that were not enough, it was common knowledge that Zitu had sent
the nation a teacher for their welfare; to greet and acclaim him they
were gathered here.

Well might the crowd be in holiday attire and humor. Well, as it
waited, might its blended voices rise in a cheerful fashion, a
ceaseless diapason of sound, changing as there came a blast of brazen
trumpets, and Tamhys appeared in magnificent silver harness, to a cheer.

Silver studded with diamonds were the casings upon his calves; silver
was the cuirass upon his breast, whereon in azure-colored stones in the
circle enclosing an equilateral cross, sign of Hiranur, was blazoned
forth. Silver was his helmet, and white as purity itself his tossing
plumes. Even the hair upon his head, mark of his years, was silver, as
he came down the alley left open, between his guards, and mounted the
dais and seated himself upon a silver chair.

Then from without, as the cheering subsided, there came a sound of
harps, and in the mouth of the alley down which Tamhys had passed, the
head of a procession appeared.

First came the harpers themselves, white clad, marching in ranks of
fours. And back of them appeared a litter borne by the brown-clad lay
brothers of the Zitran pyramid. Of burnished copper was the litter,
inlaid with a silver filigree, and curtained with fluttering draperies
of an azure, silklike fabric. From within it, as it advanced behind the
harpers, Zud's old eyes peered.

At the foot of the dais it was placed, and the high priest of Zitu
emerged, mounting the steps, while a sudden silence fell across the
multitude assembled, a reverend figure in his azure robes with the
scarlet cross ansata on his breast. He saluted Tamhys and took a second
silver chair, leaving a vacant seat between the emperor and himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

And now, as the harpers ranged themselves and struck the strings of
their instruments in perfect unison, and Zud's litter was swept aside,
a second litter appeared.

It was of silver, and its bearers, giant blue men of Mazzer, well-nigh
staggered beneath its weight. A sigh, almost a gasp, ran through the
assemblage. Zud had been borne by priests, but--the Mouthpiece of Zitu
was carried by men--the serving class of the Tamarizian state. Always a
people quick to recognize the involved symbolism of an occurrence, few
of those present failed to understand Jason's intent in the manner of
his appearance--that thereby he implied that he came to them, not as a
spiritual teacher, but as a teacher of men.

And then silence came down once more as the litter was placed before
the steps of the dais and Zitu's Mouthpiece appeared, and the harps
died, and the figure in its azure draperies, whereon flared both the
cross and the wings of Azil, mounted slowly to that vacant seat between
Tamhys and Zud, the high priest.

The crowd jostled, straining forward to see the better, and then
settled themselves once more to attention as Zud rose.

He lifted a hand, commanding silence. In his other hand he carried a
long silver stave topped with the looped cross. He began speaking at
once in the simple fashion which characterized most of the Tamarizian
ceremonials:

"Men and women of Zitra and of all Tamarizia, give ear to Zud the high
priest's voice, through which it is given to announce to you one who
comes among you as teacher, endowed with a wisdom passing the knowledge
of Zud or any other among you, by Zitu's grace.

"Jason, as he is named, cometh to instruct the people on whom Zitu
smiles, as a sign that his pleasure is in his people, and shall remain
while they are obedient to his laws.

"Mouthpiece of Zitu is Jason, and shall be so known while he shall
remain among us, and afterward, when the spirit within his body shall
have been withdrawn. Exalted he is by the knowledge which Zitu hath
seen fit to instil into his mind. Worthy of honor is he from all
true men. Yet is he man as thou art, and to him shall no knee bend.
Obedience and respect alone are his due. I, Zud, the high priest, have
said it. Let all men regard the Mouthpiece of Zitu as his brother as
well as his friend."

As Zud paused a second ripple ran through the crowd, a sibilance of
whispers. Croft looked down into the nearest rows of uplifted faces and
encountered Jadgor's own.

The Aphurian king sat with arms folded, staring directly toward him,
his dark face distorted by a frown. The glances of the two men met and
held for the merest instant. Croft's was steady. Jadgor's repellent,
a voiceless challenge more than anything else. Croft turned his own
glance deliberately away, sensing that in whatever he might attempt
in the near future he would meet antagonism from Aphur's king. His
eyes fell on Lakkon with his countenance somber, and on Robur, just
beyond. The crown prince met his regard fully and shook his head. In
the gesture, and the expression of his strong face, there was all the
poignancy of a groan. It came over Croft that in whatever he may have
said to his father since their conversation three days before, Robur
had failed.

But he gave over such considerations as once more the harps rang
out. He became aware of a spot of sunlight on the platform directly
before the chair whereon he sat--almost, indeed, at his feet. Even as
he watched it seemed creeping closer--and the harps were thrumming,
thrumming sweetly--and the buzz of the vast assembly was once more
falling still.

Suddenly the blended voices of a female chorus rang out, rising and
falling in rhythmic fashion in perfect time to the harps. Down the
alley came a group of vestals bearing flowers in their hands. Clad
all in white were they, save for a cincture of golden tissue that ran
about the neck, down between the breasts, and fastened in front like a
sash with pendant ends, hanging in a golden fringe to the edge of the
knee-length skirt. Their hair fell about their rosy faces and bared
left arms and shoulders, wholly unrestrained save for a silver cincture
about the head. Singing, they came on with a swing and flash of their
bared and tinted feet and dimpled knees.

And as they came there flashed into Croft's mind a recollection of the
first ceremonial of the noontide hour of contemplation and prayer he
had witnessed, not in Zitra, but in Himyra, the first day he had been
on Palos.

In a way this was like it, save that then the vestals had sung and
danced before the statue of Zitu himself--the statue of a man with
a face divinely firm and strong, with purity and compassion written
large in its every line. That figure had been portrayed as seated on a
throne. And the rays of the noontide sun had shone through an aperture
in the roof upon it, bathing it in pure light. With an inward gasp
Croft began to understand--his own position, the nearness of the spot
of sunlight before him, the position of the chair in which he sat.
Zitu was the God of Tamarizia--and he was Zitu's Mouthpiece--and the
sunlight was over his knees now. He felt its warmth.

"Behold the Mouthpiece of Zitu!" Zud's voice.

Croft sensed rather than saw the congregation rising--the vestals
deployed to right and left in front of the dais, kneeling, holding
their floral sprays toward him in extended hands. He became conscious
that the spot of sunlight had moved again, was bathing him from head to
foot now in its golden rays, was shimmering from a thousand facets of
the jewels that etched the cross and the wings of Azil on his breast.

The Gayana burst into a triumphal song:

    "Hail, Mouthpiece of the Omnipotent One,
    Of Him from Whom nothing is hidden,
    To Whom all things are known.
    Hail, Mouthpiece of Zitu;
    Hail, Dispenser of Knowledge;
    Hail, all hail, teacher,
    To whom those things permitted of
    Zitu, are known!"

The chant ended. The singers rose. In a scented shower the floral
sprays rained at the feet of him who sat on the silver chair with the
sunlight on his face.

Croft's senses reeled. The vast concourse faded from his vision. The
flowers fell about him unheeded. The graceful forms of the Gayana who
showered them toward him grew into a blur. His vision seemed to narrow,
contract, focus upon a single point, shutting out all else, making all
else as though it were not, leaving him staring, staring at one single
gold-framed face.

Naia. She was there before him--her blue eyes meeting his own in an
almost angry blaze. Naia--clad as a vestal, in white, bearing a spray
of flowers in her hands.

Then, as their glances met, and Croft's breath caught in his throat,
she lifted the cluster of blossoms and threw it--threw it, not tossed
it, so that it struck full against his breast, rather than fell at his
feet--struck, not as a floral offering might strike were the distance
of its throwing misjudged, but with a positive, definite force that
hinted of some weighty object concealed within its crimson mass, and
fell to the dais with a petal-muffled thud, leaving a tiny spot on
Croft's flesh that tingled as though the scarlet flowers had been
the fingers of a licking flame--as though their touch had seared him
through the fabric of his robe.

       *       *       *       *       *

By an effort he sat unmoved, unchanged in his position, giving no sign,
holding his eyes on the haughty face of the white-clad woman before
him, reading upon her smiling lips not the placid expression of the
ceremonial that held her retreating sisters as they drew back to either
side of the dais, but the curl of scorn, of contempt; so that the
contact of the cluster of red blossoms came to seem to him as a slap in
the face--a deliberately planned and executed blow. Nor to his whirling
senses was that the worst.

His chest heaved in a well-nigh stifled effort at control as he
contemplated the full meaning of her presence in the Gayana's dress.
Naia a vestal--Naia--given to Ga! The thought slowed his heart for a
moment and sent it racing into a wild, ungoverned, suffocating series
of madly protesting beats.

Naia become Gayana--Naia forming a part of the chorus which acclaimed
his new-found rank--Naia hurling these scarlet blooms, as red as her
heart's blood, or his, against him as a farewell act, a sign, a tacit
message that, in so far as he was concerned, it might as well be her
blood which lay red on the dais at his feet; that she might as well
have died; that to him, from now on, she was lost. The thought sickened
him, appalled, blotted out everything save itself so that for a moment,
despite the sunlight which fell upon him, he had the sensation of an
enveloping darkness that threatened to rise up and engulf him. He began
to tremble. Tremor after tremor of emotion seized and shook him. And
then Zud touched him on the arm. The ordeal was over. A strange babble
of voices assailed his ears. He realized that the vast assemblage was
cheering him, and in quite automatic fashion he bowed.

The action roused him to some extent. Once more he caught Jadgor's eye,
dark, piercing, filled with menace, as the Aphurian turned away in a
haughty fashion and, followed by Lakkon and his son, began to edge his
way through the departing throng.

"Thy litter awaits thee." Zud's voice was in his ear.

He saw that the blue men of Mazzer had indeed brought the great silver
palanquin into position opposite the dais steps. But even so he took
time for one word with Zud.

"The maiden--she has become Gayana?"

"Nay!" He met Zud's eyes and found within them comprehension. "She but
asked a part in their ranks, and, being virgin, it was granted."

Not Gayana--not yet--not yet. Croft's heart leaped again into freer
action. But why had she asked to be given a place in the ranks of the
vestals who had hailed him Mouthpiece of Zitu? He stiffened. Why save
to cast that bunch of scarlet blossoms, which had stung his flesh,
against him? He recalled now that it had stung him when it struck--had
stung his flesh even as Naia's expression had stung his spirit. Why
had it struck with such unerring certainty the wings of Azil, on his
breast? What had it contained save the crimson flowers of which it
seemed to consist? What was it had directed its course--weighted it
until its blow was a blow indeed, delivered sure and straight?

He glanced down. The thing still lay there, a brilliant spot of color
among all the floral tributes at his feet. On impulse he stooped and
caught it up and carried it with him, a flame-colored thing against his
blue robes, as he descended the steps.

He reached the litter, and paused again as his ear was assailed by a
single, quickly caught-in breath. His head turned. Once more his gaze
encountered a pair of fixed pansy-purple eyes. The vestals waited in
double ranks, one on each side of the dais. Naia of Aphur stood among
them, one white hand lifted and pressed against her body, to the left
of the golden cord that ran down and cinctured her garment between her
breasts. And it seemed, in that instant, to Jason Croft that her eyes
dwelt not so much upon himself as on the flowers in his hand.

He gave no sign, however, as he entered the litter and felt it lifted
into tilting, swaying motion. He took with him that final vision of
Naia, caught in a startled posture, of her parted lips, of a something
like anguish in her eyes. Like the flowers in his gripping fingers,
that picture was caught in his brain.

Swiftly the Mazzerians bore him out of the square and into a street
toward the bulk of the pyramid. The streaming crowds gave way before
them and stood waiting while they passed. Then, and then only, did
Croft seek to learn the mystery of the flowers Naia had thrown. Then
and then only did he thrust his fingers into their blood-red mass and
grope amid their stems for something he knew was hidden there--though
he knew not what.

His search was rewarded almost at once. His fingers encountered a hard
object buried among the stalks of the flowers, and he drew it forth. It
was a silver medallion, bearing a raised figure of Azil, the angel of
life, and surrounded by blood-red stones, such as Tamarizian men gave
to the women to whom they were betrothed.

Croft recognized it at a glance. He took it and laid it on his palm,
and sat staring at it as the litter swung along. He had ordered it
especially made, and given it to Naia himself at the end of the
Zollarian war. Like the maids of her nation, she had worn it on her
girdle as a sign that to one man, and one alone, Azil had set his seal
upon her. And today she had flung it from her, against the wings of
Azil himself, which Croft wore on his breast.

There was no mistaking the action. It was repudiation. It was the same
as though her lips had uttered the declaration that henceforth she
would no longer guard for him that shrine of mortal life which was
herself.

Croft's lips writhed into a strange smile. He recalled how the thing
had pained when it struck above his heart.




                              CHAPTER IX

                          ROBUR'S INVITATION


Jadgor was elected over Tammon by an overwhelming majority. Robur
became governor of Aphur as a matter of course. In Cathur, Mutlos
gained the lead largely because the populace still remembered the
treason intended by Kyphallos of Scythys's house, and refused to vote
for the dead king's younger son. This was the major result of the
elections, so far as Croft was concerned.

Before it was held, however, several things had occurred. Naia and her
father, Jadgor and his son, left Zitra the day of Jason's proclaiming,
in a motor-driven galley. Robur contrived an interview with Croft
before he left.

Croft in the meantime had seen Zud as soon as he returned to the
pyramid, and showed him the jeweled medallion, and narrated to him the
manner in which it had been returned. At the end he requested a letter
to Magur such as Robur and he had discussed, asking the Himyra priest
to advise delay, provided Naia sought admission to the vestal ranks.

The tablets of wax whereon Zud wrote his commands Croft gave to Robur,
and the two friends gripped hands.

"Jadgor had turned his face from you," Robur said. "Always has he been
of stubborn mind. But, by Zitu, once I am in Himyra's palace, there
will be a place for you, my friend, wherein we will work out your
strange designs!"

"Yes," Croft replied, sensing readily enough that Robur's interest
in the construction of new implements of commercial and industrial
progress was intense, and intending fully to carry out his plans in
regard to Tamarizia in so far as he might with or without Jadgor's
favor. And then he changed to the subject nearest his own heart. "Your
cousin goes with you, Rob?"

"Aye," Robur declared. "She yields to Jadgor's command, saying one
may forget herself no less in Himyra than in Zitra's pyramid. Yet
strengthen your heart, man of earth. These tablets I have from Zud to
Magur, and in Himyra is Gaya, to whom, I believe, my cousin will open
her heart. At present the maid is overwrought, and Jadgor's attitude
toward you does not strengthen your case."

"You spoke with him concerning those things we discussed three suns
ago?" Croft questioned.

"Aye, and to small avail." Robur frowned. "His stand is, you should
have told them to him, rather than to Zud, at first. You will remember
how Zud swayed Tamhys before the Zollarian war in your favor. Jadgor
refused to accept it other than that there is an understanding between
the high priest and yourself."

"Then must our works convince him since our words fail," said Croft.
"Robur, my friend, a safe and pleasant journey. May Kronhur, ruler
of the oceans, provide you a peaceful path to Himyra's gate. Make my
salutations to the gentle Gaya, whom I trust I may ere long greet. In
her hands and yours, Robur, is carried Jason's fate."

"It shall be carefully carried, by Zitu!" Robur promised. "Robur
strikes not his hand in friendship lightly. Soon in Himyra shall he
greet you, and we shall work. And"--suddenly he smiled--"see you not
that Naia herself will be in Himyra--wherefore once you are come again
to Aphur, the same red walls shall encircle you both?"

"Hai!" Croft's eyes lighted at the mere suggestion, and he gave vent
to a somewhat nervous laugh. And then he sobered. "But hold! Jadgor
elected, will not Lakkon and his daughter come to Zitra?"

"Scarcely." Robur looked full into his companion's eyes. "I think she
will not look with favor on life in Zitra in her present mind."

Croft nodded in comprehension. "Zitu spare you, Rob," he said, "for I
need you in my work."

And Robur, always quick in his appreciation of humor, laughed.

Yet, though Croft had spoken lightly at the last, he watched the
Aphurian depart with a mind which was deeply troubled, not only by
Naia's attitude toward himself and her return of the betrothal jewel,
but as well by the defection of Jadgor, on whose major support he had
counted much for success in his future plans. Indeed, just then it
seemed to Croft that those plans were of little account and his entire
future happiness marred.

Like many men of large mind, he suffered the pang of realization
that lesser minds, because of their limitations, must fail to follow
his own, that small natures must fall short of a full appreciation
of a greater, simply because of an inability to measure the broader
character by any standard of their own. He was meeting for the first
time in a degree that thing known as the ingratitude of men, which
every leader of men or nations must meet at times. And the taste was
bitter in his mouth.

       *       *       *       *       *

He took out the jewel and sat looking at it, holding it displayed or
shut up in a clenched palm for hours, until the sun sank and twilight
crept into the embrasure of the room, and a lay brother, slipping in to
light the oil sconces on the wall, brought word that Zud desired speech
with him alone.

Whereupon Croft rose and watched the wicks flare forth, and suddenly
threw up his head and took a long breath. His mind went back to his
talk with Robur three days before. They had spoken of electric lights.
Why not? Work--work--that was the antidote for mental pain--to work--to
throw one's self into a very frenzy of stubborn endeavor and drown
the mental woe in a physical weariness, an actual tire of the brain.
Work! He stretched forth his arms. He would work, work--he would show
Tamarizia wonders such as she had never known. He would show Jadgor.
He would bring the haughty Aphurian to his knees by force of sheer
knowledge and what it wrought. He would compel him, force him to seek
his, Croft's, favor, because he could ill afford to do anything else.
And--he smiled grimly--he would do it with the aid of Jadgor's son--so
soon as the elections were over and he might go to Himyra, where Robur
had said there would be "a place." His eyes lighted and his lips grew
firm. He made his resolve. His moment of first mental travail was past.
He put the jewel away inside his robes and waited for Zud's coming with
an expression of fresh resolve.

For four days thereafter he remained in constant company with Zud. Two
things occupied his time--the instruction of the high priest in the
mysteries of astral control, at first compelling the projections by
his own will. Later Zud gained a minor success for himself, a thing he
accomplished quickly because of his great desire to learn, and Croft
took up certain social reforms he had long had in mind.

A more general education was the first of these. At Scira in Cathur,
Tamarizia had maintained a national school. This, however, was for the
patronage of the rich. Among the masses little education was known.
Croft decided at once to alter this. To Zud he outlined a scheme
for a general system of schools. Assisted by the high priest, he
drafted a provisional alphabet, to which the hieroglyphic characters
not unlike those of the Maya inscriptions in Central America lent
itself with little change. Already in Himyra he had constructed a
form of printing press for large character work. Now he took up the
subject of perfecting and elaborating this to the wonder of Zud,
whose enthusiastic approbation he instantly gained. He thought the
matter of the schools might be easily arranged. The national school
was under the patronage of the church. Most of the priests were
educated in it. Teachers could be drawn from their ranks; and if the
matter were carefully broached, both Jason and Zud felt inclined to
believe that the move would meet with little opposition from Jadgor at
first--especially if the suggestion came from some such one as Mutlos,
governor of Cathur, whom Zud would see was properly approached by the
faculty of the national school, rather than by Zud or Croft.

Late on the afternoon of the fourth day, however, Croft went to his own
quarters, loosened his clothing, and laid himself down on the golden
couch. There had been time for Jadgor's galley to have reached Himyra,
as he knew--time for Naia to have gone either to her own home or the
palace, as Jadgor and her father had elected. Closing his eyes and
fixing his mind on the red-walled city of Aphur, he brought all his
will to bear upon his one desire, and projected his astral entity to
Himyra in a flash.

It lay beneath him as he had seen it the first day he came to Palos, a
far-flung circuit of walls--the farther lost in a heat haze until it
appeared no more than a ruddy shadow through a shimmering veil--spread
out on either side of the river Na, inside its banks of cut stone, its
quays, whereon at night the fire-urns flared red at the foot of the
terraces and shone redly on the yellow waves. Magur's pyramid--red with
its ringing band of white, to mark the quarters of the Gayana--with its
white temple of Zitu, jutted up across the river from the vast white
pile of the palace, and on either side as far as the eye could reach
along the crest of the river terrace stretched the palatial homes of
the noble or rich.

There was almost a sense of homecoming in the sight, and Croft
experienced a thrill as he willed himself swiftly toward a huge red
palace set well back from the street--the city home of Lakkon, advisor
to the king.

Today the doors stood open, and he passed into the major court, where
flowers, shrubs, and even small trees grew between the divisions of
a pavement of transparent rock crystal, cut into geometrical blocks,
beneath a roof of movable sections of glass.

       *       *       *       *       *

The court itself was two stories in height in the prevailing custom,
with a staircase ascending to the surrounding balcony at either end.
These were of a lemon-yellow stone like onyx, save that it was not
veined. The pillars of the balcony and the rest of the interior was
in white. A low-growing hedge enclosed the central portion of the
crystal floor, whereon Baska, the Mazzerian majordomo, who had startled
Croft the first time he saw his blue skin, was once more exhibiting
his magnificent form and peculiar pigmentary endowments with amazing
frankness while he trimmed the hedge. Maia--Naia's own personal
maid--in an equal state of unabashed nature, was sprawled, watching on
a red wood couch.

So much Croft saw at a glance before he turned away, judging, from
the very nature of the servants' careless manner, that Lakkon and his
daughter had not yet arrived.

The palace, then. He willed himself toward it, entered it through the
main gates between the huge carved figures of the winged dog-like
creatures set up on either side, their front legs supporting webbed
membranes from body to paw. He passed into a vast, red-paved court,
where naked Mazzerian porters passed to and fro with metal sprinkling
tanks strapped to their shoulders, and gnuppas, harnessed to flashing
chariots, champed on their bits and pawed.

To Croft, it was all an old story. He had lived in it once. He gave a
single embracing glance to the white walls of the various government
departments surrounding the huge red court, each with its guardian
sentries at the doors, and fixed his mind on gaining the presence of
Gaya, Robur's wife.

For here he felt Naia would have gone had she come to the palace, as he
believed seeking the company and companionship of a woman rather than
any one else.

In this his judgment proved right, as he found so soon as he reached
the wing of the palace in which he had formerly lived. Here, in the
portion given over to Robur and his wife, was a court containing a
private bath, set in the center, surrounded on all sides by growing
shrubs and flowers, the tessellated pavements about it dotted with
chairs and couches of the wine-red wood and silklike canopies to offer
shade against the Palosian sun. It was a favorite resting-place of Gaya
in the afternoons, when, attended by her servants, she either bathed in
the limpid, sun-warmed water or received such guests as might elect to
pay a social call.

On two of the red couches he found the women he had come in search of.
They reclined beneath a yellow awning supported by standards, with a
low table between them, holding small cakes, fruit conserves such as
the women of Tamarizia affected, and crystal glasses, scarcely larger
than a thimble, filled with an amber-colored wine.

But it was to Naia Croft gave his major attention once he had reached
the palace. She lay pale, her eyes shadowed by darkened circles beneath
their lids, her features weary, drawn with what he recognized at a
glance as a dangerous tension of the nerves. Her figure was draped in
a robe of exquisite green, across the upper part of which a strand of
her fair hair made a sheen of gold. To Croft she had never seemed more
appealing than now, in this mood of acute distress. He glanced at Gaya,
and found her eyes fixed in an anxious inspection of her companion's
face.

Abruptly Naia's breast swelled sharply and she spoke: "I shall become
Gayana. There is nothing else."

"Nay! Nay, daughter of Lakkon--you are overwrought. Robur thinks not
so, nor Jadgor, his father. To Lakkon there is none other, since your
mother died, save yourself. Would you leave him to finish his life
alone?"

Naia sat up upon the couch. "That was true," she returned in a tone
gone bitter, "until this trouble came upon me. Now Lakkon holds me
disgraced--in that I have yielded my lips to Zitu's Mouthpiece, against
all the laws of custom for a woman of my caste. Yet, in Zitu's name,
wherein was I to blame, who loved as never a woman loved before--who
was asked in marriage by the one she loved, by one who had sworn,
aye, and done many deeds to win her? In what did I wrong? How could I
foresee that he was not--what--what he appeared?"

"Nay," Gaya said, while Croft's soul quivered at this confession from
the lips of the woman he loved above all else. "Say not that in any way
were you to blame, Naia, fairest of Aphur's maids. For have you and I
not spoken concerning your love ere this, and did you not first to me
confess it, when you stood pledge to Cathur's heir, from whom this man
of Zitu saved you?"

"Man," Naia caught her up, interrupting quickly. "Say you that he is a
man--Gaya, my friend--or is the word but used as a means of expressions
since you know not what to call him save as he seems?"

"Nay, I mean man, child," Gaya returned. "Man he appears, and man he
claims to be, and man he is. You know Robur for his friend. Much to
Robur has he explained since he wakened from the last of his strange
sleeps. Yet is he such a man as never was seen on Palos before; and
though of mortal birth, as we are, yet was he not born on Palos, but of
a woman on earth."

"Earth?" Naia's eyes widened swiftly.

"Aye--a different star from ours," Gaya replied.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Robur told you this?" An introspective expression crossed Naia's face.

"Aye--ere he brought you to me."

"And he told Robur?"

"Aye. He swore it by Zitu himself."

Suddenly Naia struck herself upon the breast. "He told it to Robur--to
your husband--to Jadgor's son! Why not to me?" she cried.

"To Robur he swore he had meant to tell you ere you became his mate,"
Gaya rejoined. "Save that Zud learned these things from Abbu of Scira
and spoke to you during his sleep, I feel assured he had done it at a
proper time."

She paused, and Naia turned her head. She sat staring, staring across
the sun-kissed surface of the sunken bath. "Now I remember that he said
to me after he awakened, when he came to me in the quarters of the
Gayana, that he had somewhat to explain. What said he else?"

"Strange things--things to madden the heart of a woman, as it seems to
me," Gaya returned; "things to waken strange dreams in her soul, if
true. To Robur he swore that to Palos he came because of you, because
in you he knew the mate to whom his spirit cried out--that he remained
on Palos to save you from Cathur and win you for himself, and to that
end that he might claim you wholly, used Jasor's body when his spirit
was drawn from his flesh."

"Zitu!" The word came from Naia's lips as a strangled exclamation. She
drew herself up on the couch until she sat tense in every quivering
fiber of her being. "Now you have touched on the part of the matter I
may not tolerate or understand. Granting that he says truth--that a
spirit may enter the body of another and possess it, and cause it to
live and breathe, and move as its own--can a maid consider a lover in
such guise, surrendering to his embrace?"

"Yet consider," said Gaya softly, with a widening of her eyes as though
the spell of the subject were upon her fully; "try to measure if you
can, my princess, a love so vast that it draws its mate across the
space between the stars. Consider what this man's love must be that he
forsakes that life to which he was born and comes in search of you--the
one woman who fills his soul with longing; and consider, also, that
after he entered Jasor's form it changed--that even Sinon declared he
no longer resembled Jasor greatly. Seems it not to you that Jason's
spirit has altered the elements that were Jasor's until they are as his
own?"

"Jason?" Naia faltered.

"Aye. That was his name on earth. Also says he that it is the spirit
within us which dwells in and makes us of the flesh. He says, and Zud
supports him in saying that to the spirit the flesh is no more than to
man is a house--a something he inhabits, makes use of, and finally lays
aside."

"Stop!" Naia stayed her. "Why--why were these things not said to me
before--before--" She broke off, clasped her hands and crushed them
together, struck them down against her sides. "Nay--it might have
been," she went on, more to herself than to Gaya, "had I given the
chance. He came to me, and I berated him with words. I was filled with
pain; my spirit was blinded with horror and despair. I thought only
that I had been led to my own undoing--I knew not the truth.

"Zud's words had well-nigh unsettled my mind. Wherefore I prayed to
Ga and Azil, and there was no answer. And then I prayed to Zilla, and
even the angel of death turned away his face. Gaya, I am like one
fallen into a pit from which there is no escape. Him I knew as Jasor--I
loved with a glory of the spirit and a madness of the flesh. He was my
master. His word was my law. My heart beat like a caged bird in his
presence. My spirit faltered when he spoke to me. My flesh was as clay
in the potter's hands to his touch. I was a slave, and my glory was in
the slavery of my love. Save only Zitu, beyond him there was for me no
god!"

Once more she paused and sat panting, her bosom rising and falling, her
nostrils aquiver, her lips compressed, while Croft yearned to her and
this voicing of a love no less, as it seemed to him, than his love for
herself.

"Canst wonder, then," she went on after a moment, "with what gladness I
gave him my pledge; with what joy in my thoughts of the future I wore
upon my girdle the badge of Azil he placed within my hands as sign that
I was his--that badge which, on the day of his proclaiming Mouthpiece
of Zitu, I placed in a spray of flowers and hurled against his breast!"

"Naia! Child!" Gaya half started up at the climax of her companion's
words. "You did that--did he--understand?"

Naia nodded slightly. "I think so. He--from the dais he carried the
flowers I flung against him to his litter in his hand. Oh, Gaya--my
soul died within me at that sight--would Zitu--the rest of me had died.
I am alone, Gaya--alone. Alone, alone--the word tunes my every breath.
Jadgor opposes my seeking the Gayana. My father looks on his name as
through me disgraced. And I am tired, Gaya--tired--so very tired. And
there is no rest. If only Zilla would hear me when I call him--"

"Aye, you are tired, poor child." Gaya rose, crossed to the other
couch, and took the girl's golden head inside her arms. "Come, talk
no more at present. I shall call Bela, my own maid, who shall attend
you. You shall bathe, and afterward she shall anoint your flesh with
sweet-smelling oils, and you will sleep and awaken refreshed. She has a
soothing touch beyond any I have ever found. She shall wait upon you."
She reached out to the table and struck a small metal gong.

"Refreshed," said Naia slowly. Once more her eyes were fastened on the
sun-kissed water. "Aye, I shall bathe, gentle Gaya. I shall find rest
in your pool."

She rose slowly. Her eyes were wide; her face was very white. Turning,
she walked to the edge of the sunken basin. For a moment she stood
there in the attitude of one who listens.

Her lips moved. "Zilla," she whispered and smiled.

And then her voice raised, rang out sharply: "Zilla, I hear thy answer!"

Her arms lifted, stretched upward. She plunged face downward into the
pool and sank without a struggle into its transparent depths.




                               CHAPTER X

                         ASTRAL UNDERSTANDING


And now began one of the most amazing parts of Croft's whole tale.

He saw Naia sink. He knew the meaning of her words, her act. Her cry to
Zilla, the Angel of Death, showed him clearly that she saw in the water
the way of death for herself--read a new meaning into her words to
Gaya, that here in the pool she would find rest. He saw the water close
about her, saw her well-loved form sink down, down, cradled in the
limpid water; down, down, a slender figure, as beautiful as a Tanagra
statuette in its green robe, as it sank. He knew that indeed Zilla
hovered close above her--knew she was drowning--that the element in
which her figure was engulfed would, like the figurative lips of Zilla,
soon suffocate her breath.

And he was powerless, impotent, to do anything save watch what went
on before his eyes. He could see, and know, and understand. He could
suffer the most terrible agony of conscious comprehension, and--in his
astral presence he could do nothing else. In his soul he writhed, cried
out in a torment in which, like the despairing mind of the girl, he
would have welcomed dissolution as a relief. But aside from that he
was chained to a passive watching, was unable to make one single move
toward the rescue of her expiring flesh.

Not so Gaya, however. Nor did Robur's wife lose her head. Her
comprehension of her companion's act was instant, and she cried aloud
to the Mazzerian girl, who now appeared in answer to the summons of the
gong. Then, without waiting for even the servant to reach her side,
Gaya flung her own form into the pool in a cleanly executed dive. Bela
followed her mistress a moment later, her blue figure cutting the
liquid surface with hardly a splash. Both women were entirely at home
in the water, and by the time Gaya had reached and seized Naia, who
began instantly to struggle, Bela was at her side.

The fight below the surface was brief. Croft saw Naia open her mouth.
Her bosom expanded as though she gasped. And then she relaxed, and
Robur's wife and the Mazzerian maid bore her quickly upward, supporting
her head between them, and swimming with her toward a submerged flight
of steps by which the pool was customarily entered. Reaching it, they
lifted the limp body in its trailing robe, which clung to trunk and
rounded limb more like a shroud of vegetation, a crinkled kelp born of
the water itself, than a garment, and staggered with it from the pool
to lay it on the pavement of the court.

"Quickly!" Gaya cried as she knelt beside it. "Seek out Jadgor's
physician and command his presence." Unmindful of her own soaked
condition, she seized Naia's form and rolled her upon her face. Placing
her hands on either side of the body close to where the ribs joined
the spine, she threw her weight forward on extended arms, held so for
the space of a long breath, and lifted herself once more upon her own
flexed thighs.

It was a form of artificial respiration she was practising, and Croft
uttered a prayer for her success in his heart. And then--he forgot
temporarily her continued efforts in the wonder of something else.

Naia of Aphur was about to die. Croft knew it as certainly as he had
ever known anything in his life. Because he saw her soul come forth as
he had seen Zud's astral body after he had bidden it leave its fleshy
habitation on the day he awakened from his sleep. Slowly, as Gaya
lifted herself and sat back, it emerged from the figure on the ground.
And as wonderful as was the form of Naia, so wonderful was its astral
counterpart. Like an image of her beauty in every detail, it swam and
hovered above her, still chained for the span of a breath by an almost
invisible bond that wavered and tensed and threatened to break.

And that breaking--the snapping of that soul cord--the counterpart of
the union between the maternal substance and the body of the child in
physical birth--spelled physical death. With its severance, as Croft
knew, Naia would pass from the mortal plane to a wholly astral life.
But more than that he knew that now it was within his province to take
definite steps to preserve once more the woman he so wholly loved--that
now at last he could act.

Toward the lovely floating shape he compelled his own astral form until
he floated with it face to face. "Naia--Naia--thou other part of me,"
he thought rather than cried to her; "Naia--my beloved--hold. Return
again to thy body. Go back."

And he knew that she received the potent vibration his own soul gave
out. For slowly the head of the floating figure, the dream shape which
swung and glowed like an iridescent mist in the sunlight, turned
its head toward him--seemed to regard him strangely with wide open,
startled eyes.

"Naia!" He sent his appeal to her again. "Naia, it is that Jason whom
you knew as Jasor who commands that you return again to your flesh. In
Zitu's name, beloved."

The rainbow figure writhed. It seemed to quiver, to hesitate and sink
slightly back toward the unconscious body beside which Gaya kept up her
work, with darkly troubled eyes; so that there was some relaxing of
that binding cord.

"Jason!" Croft felt the thought impinge against him.

"Jason, who loves you--who claims you--who shall claim you yet," he
returned, driving each word into her perception with the full force of
his will.

"What do you here?"

It was a question, a wondering interrogation. He answered it truly.
"You know of my sleeps. In them my spirit leaves the body. It visits
many places. Now sleeps my body in the Zitran pyramid, yet is my spirit
present to watch over you and guard you. It was not Zilla called you
into the pool, but your own troubled spirit, beloved. Go back into your
body--in the name of the love you confessed to Gaya; go back."

"But--why--am I not myself?" a second question faltered to his
perception.

"Yes, you are yourself always," he returned. "Yet this is the real you
which speaks to the real me, beloved. Look beneath you, and tell me
what you see."

       *       *       *       *       *

For a moment nothing was said ... as the form beside him turned down
its eyes. And then a startled response: "Gaya--she bends and works
beside a form--to--to which I seem in some way connected. It--Zitu!
Azil! It is the form of one like myself!"

"It is your own form, Naia," Croft told her; "the body in which
all your life you have dwelt--the beautiful habitation of your
spirit--which you cast into the pool in an effort to gain rest."

"But--I--I--" The diaphanous soul form began once more to tremble.

"You are you--even as I am I," said Croft. "That body over which Gaya
works is but the servant which has done your bidding, which, save you
obey me, you condemn to death. Return to it before it is too late.
I, Jason, who have met you midway between the body Azil gave you and
Zilla's domain, command it. Between you and Zilla himself I stand as a
barrier. Return to the form below you and give it breath."

"How--how shall I return?" Again a question.

"Wish it," said Croft. "Wish it as I desire to hold it in my arms and
claim its love and yours."

"I--I shall return." It was a promise.

Croft thrilled at the victory he had won. "Yet hold!" He stayed her
as slowly she began to sink closer to the form beneath them. "Again
shall you leave it if I call you--leave it as now--to meet me as now
you meet me, and return." For the thought had come to him that in this
guise might he seek out her spirit and converse with it and teach it
many things--seek it and hold it until such a time as events should
straighten out the tangle in their affairs, and thereby watch over and
guard her.

"Now go, beloved. See with what a frenzy of hopeful endeavor Gaya
works."

From beside him that figure as fair as the play of sunlight through the
prism of a fine mist vanished.

Into his ears there stabbed the cry of a physical voice, upraised in
triumph. It was Gaya speaking. "She lives! Thanks be to Zitu, she
lives!"

She bent and lifted the body, which rewarded her efforts with a gasping
breath, and laid it on one of the red wood couches, caught up one of
the tiny glasses of wine from the table, and forced its contents into
Naia's mouth.

Naia gasped. Her throat contracted sharply. She swallowed. Again and
again her full chest swelled beneath her clinging robe. Some of the
waxen pallor went out of throat and cheeks. Bela appeared running,
with the physician behind her. He hurried to the couch and dropped his
fingers to the patient's pulse.

And now came Robur across the court toward the group beneath the
yellow awning. He reached it and slipped his arm about Gaya's shaking
shoulders, placing himself at her side. For now that the need of her
presence of mind was lacking, she seemed completely exhausted and on
the brink of tears.

"She--she cried on Zilla and cast herself into the pool," she half
spoke, half sobbed. "Beloved, she--she was dead to all seeming--but--I
cried on Zitu, and worked above her, and now--she lives."

The physician bowed. "The Princess Gaya has in truth done a most
admirable piece of work."

Naia's lips moved. "Jason," she whispered, "I--I have obeyed."

"Hai!" Robur started. His eyes darted swiftly from the girl to his
wife, and back to the physician. "What said she?" he asked.

"She dreams, doubtless," the physician made answer.

But Croft knew she did not, and Robur frowned slightly as one perplexed.

Naia opened her eyes. They stared up blankly at the yellow canopy
overhead.

Gaya bent above her.

"Gaya!" she cried and lifted her slender arms and laid hold upon her.
"Oh, Gaya, I--I dreamt that I--had died. I--"

And suddenly she broke--broke utterly--and clung fast to the drenched
form of the woman beside her, shaken by a storm of sobs.

       *       *       *       *       *

From the blended group Robur turned to Bela and the physician. "This is
forgotten as though it had not been, man of healing," his voice came
thickly. "By you and by Bela, it is as if it were not. I myself shall
see that it reaches Lakkon's ears." He reached into a purse at his belt
and extracted some pieces of silver, extending them to the doctor.
"Your fee. What needs she else?"

"Rest--quiet for perhaps a sun; no more." The physician accepted his
payment with a second bow of respect.

"See to it." Robur turned to Bela. "Go--and return with women to bear
her to her apartment without delay."

Then, as Bela ran once more from the court, he approached Naia and his
wife.

"Peace, Naia, my cousin," he said gently, yet with a narrowing of the
eyes. "Know you not that Robur is friend to you and--Jason?" He paused
for the barest space before the final word.

The face he watched flushed slightly despite the sluggish return of the
blood to her stagnant veins. For a single instant a strange expression
burned in her purple eyes. "You say that you dreamed, my cousin," Robur
went on. "Praise be to Zitu, it was but a dream. Yet"--and now again he
watched her very closely--"in waking you spoke Jason's name."

"He--he sent me back," Naia of Aphur faltered. "In--in my dream I
met him, and he showed me my body, with Gaya working beside it, and
compelled me to return. It--was all--very strange."

"Zitu!" Robur started. "A--strange dream indeed, my cousin," he said,
with an equally strange expression on his face. To Croft it appeared
that without fully understanding, his friend half suspected the truth.

Bela and three other Mazzerian women now reappeared. They lifted the
couch upon which Naia was lying, and bore it from the court into
the palace and to a sumptuous apartment on the second floor. Walls,
windows, and doors were hung in yellow draperies. A huge purple rug was
on the floor. A copper couch, studded with amber jewels, stood ready to
receive the patient. Caskets for clothing, tables and chairs and stools
completed the appointments. Plainly, it was a room designed for women,
as Croft knew at a glance, since in the center of the floor was one of
the mirrorlike pools of shallow water, close to which stood a pedestal
of silver, bearing the figure of Azil with extended wings.

By a strange chance, as Naia was borne in, one of the Mazzerians struck
against the beautifully carved figure. It tottered, swayed drunkenly on
its standard, and fell into the pool.

Naia cried out at the sight, and covered her eyes.

Robur sprang forward and lifted the statue, setting it back on its
base. "Fear not!" he exclaimed. "It is wholly uninjured. 'Tis a good
augury, my cousin, I think. Life fell into the pool, and life comes
forth unmarred." He smiled.

Naia relaxed from her tension. Her eyes met his. "You are quick to read
signs, my cousin," she faltered. "Perchance--you are right."

The bearers set down her couch, and Gaya took charge. "Disrobe her,"
she commanded. "Bring sweet oils and massage her body and limbs. Cover
her lightly, and do you, Bela, sit beside her, to supply her wants. Yet
if sleep comes, permit her to rest. When I have changed my own garments
I shall return."

She left the apartment with Robur at her side. Croft followed, filled
with a wonderful exaltation, since now at least he had come in contact
with Naia's spirit as never before, and in a way which assured a
repetition of the meeting on that plane when he desired. True, she
regarded the experience now as no more than an exceedingly strange
dream, but the mere fact that she remembered was proof sufficient to
Croft that the effect he desired had been gained. To himself he made
a promise that from now on, when conditions were suitable for the
experience, she should dream again.

       *       *       *       *       *

As for Robur, he was of the opinion that the Aphurian prince was not
sure that Naia had dreamed at all. And the first words of his friend,
once he was outside the door of the apartment where the serving maids
ministered to his cousin, confirmed Croft's thought.

"Thus," he began to Gaya as she turned to her own room, "does Jason
prove his sayings truth."

"What mean you?" Gaya paused.

"That he stood between her and Zilla, to whom she called, before she
flung herself into the pool," Robur said. "Heard you not her words that
he sent her back--that she beheld her body beside which you knelt? And
do you not recall that I told you he had explained to me that in his
sleeps he left his own body even so, and gained knowledge by visiting
other places in the spirit? By Zitu's grace, Jason was here when this
occurred."

"Here?" Gaya turned her eyes about her in an almost ludicrous fashion,
and Robur smiled.

"Aye--his spirit. In Zitra his body lies asleep. Yet here has spirit
met spirit and his conversed with hers. By Zitu, but I had a fright!
I had been to Magur with tablets from Zud which Jason gave me, and,
returning, I heard Bela cry to another of the maidens that one had
fallen into the pool. Gaya"--of a sudden he swept her into his
arms--"my heart died, and I ran to find that my fears were vain."

"As you might have known," said Gaya, smiling into his down-bent eyes.
"Know you not that I learned to swim as a child?"

"Aye," Robur admitted; "yet strange things happen, and never more on
Palos than now. By Zitu, I must carry this to Lakkon's ears. He takes
not the right stand with this troubled daughter of his. Go now and
change your dress, my Gaya." He released her and went stalking off, his
forehead furrowed with thought.

And he sought out Lakkon.

"My lord," he accosted him without other introduction, "have you
thought of the meaning to you of Naia's loss?"

"What mean you?"

Lakkon turned in a flash. His face darkened, and a quick, instinctive
expression of pain leaped into his eyes. "Would you question my love
for my daughter, Prince of Aphur? Know you not that in her very glance,
her every movement, I see her mother as I knew and loved her first?
And"--his voice gruff at first, grew unsteady--"know you not that I
loved her aunt, my wife? What need of your question, then, Robur, son
of Jadgor, since--should she go to the Gayana, shall she not to me be
lost?"

"She shall go not to the Gayana, I think," said Robur slowly. "Magur
will advise against it."

"How know you?" Lakkon asked.

"He himself told me." Robur met his uncle's questioning gaze with a
level glance.

"You?" Plainly Lakkon was surprised. "You spoke with him about it?"

"Aye," Robur made answer. "He told me he would advise against it at
the present. Listen, Lakkon, my uncle." He went on and told him what
had occurred. And, as he spoke, Lakkon's face took on a twitching, his
breathing became heavy.

"But she lives--she lives--Robur--she has passed this danger?" he
questioned brokenly at the last.

"Aye. And were her father to appear before her--were he to smile upon
her," said Robur with evident meaning, "she were less apt to cry to
Zilla again in the future, I think."

"Aye." A quiver sat on Lakkon's mouth. For the moment he was wholly the
father, no more the noble or the courtier. For the time his thought
was of his child, her life and nothing else. "Aye, Robur--I have been
remiss, and praise to Zitu that his lesson is by example and nothing
worse. I--I shall go to her. I--I shall try to comfort her in this."

"As you should." Robur inclined his head. "Go, and Zitu frame the
wisdom of your speech."

Lakkon went. He crept into the room where Bela sat and Naia lay relaxed
on her couch. He went quite to it and sank on his knees beside it, and
looked with misted eyes into her weary face.

"Child of my loins," he quavered to her. "Child of thy mother, seek not
to leave me again. Be thou the spring-time to my old age, the starlight
for my eyes."

"My father." Naia lifted a hand and laid it on his head. "That I sought
to leave you was that it seemed to me best--that--that I was tired in
body and spirit--that for me there seemed no place."

"Thy place is in my heart," said Lakkon with a heavy, rasping sob.

Slowly Naia drew the grizzled head toward her till it lay upon her
shoulder. "I would go to our home in the mountains," she said, "and
dwell there in quietude--and--rest."




                              CHAPTER XI

                             BLUE AND GOLD


Followed now for Croft the weirdest wooing mortal ever dreamed, a sort
of astral courtship, wherein what might perhaps be best described as
the sublimated essence of Naia's being--that astral shell containing
her conscious spirit, met and communed with his.

To the man this period became a strange source of encouragement mixed
with intervals of an ineffable delight. And the fact that to Naia
herself, the hours so spent seemed as dreams rather than a thing of
actual occurrence, disturbed him not in the least. He was content to
let the truth develop in her soul by degrees, until it should at last
be known as truth.

On the second day after her despairing attempt against herself in the
pool at the Himyra palace, and so soon as her own buoyant vitality had
made her well-nigh her physical self, Naia departed for Lakkon's palace
in the mountains of Aphur, across the desert from Himyra to the west.
Renewed understanding with her father, plus an interview with Magur, in
which the priest advised against her joining the Gayana, helped her in
the resolve to withdraw for a time to that seclusion, a wish for which
she had already expressed.

She made the trip in the motor Croft had caused to be fashioned for her
when the things were new on Palos, and had driven out to her mountain
home himself. And with Maia, her maid, and Mitlos the Mazzerian
majordomo, left always in charge of the palace, together with the great
dog-like creature, Hupor, as her body-guard, she took up the course of
restful days.

Sometimes she lay for hours on a couch in the central court--sometimes
she bathed in the sun-warmed water of a pool behind the palace--a thing
constructed of a lemon-yellow stone in sides and bottom, and screened
by a wall of white, overgrown with trailing vines. Sometimes she rode
in the motor, driving it herself along the splendid Aphurian roads--as
perfectly built as the roads of the ancient Romans--which on his
first sight of them, had excited the admiration of Croft--roads that
stretched throughout the nation; over which the huge sarpelca caravans
passed.

Sometimes, endowed with a splendid strength for all her slender grace,
she climbed with Hupor at her side, among the hills. And many, many
nights she sat in the sunken gardens, wherein the bathing-pool was
placed, watching the three moons of Palos wheel across the sky, and
thinking her own thoughts. It was Croft's purpose at this time to see
that in the latter he lacked no part.

Hence, on the night following her arrival, he visited her first,
purposely choosing a late hour, since he wished her to be asleep and
preferred to have his own action unknown just then, in the Zitran
pyramid.

And as he hoped, when he stole into her apartments, making ingress
through an open window, he found her indeed asleep. The moonlight
through a half-drawn curtain showed her to him, stretched on a metal
couch with the cloud of her loosened hair about her face. Coverings of
silken fineness lay above her. Azil, with outstretched wings, seemed
like some white guardian of her slumber on his pedestal beside the
mirror pool.

Naia of Aphur! The woman of his soul. She lay here before him. Croft
thrilled to the thought that she was his in spirit at least, as he was
hers. He recalled her impassioned avowal of the love she had felt for
him before old Zud's clumsy priestly blunder. And then he let the cry
of his spirit steal forth.

"Naia! It is Jason calling. Naia, my beloved--appear!"

"Jason--I hear!"

Like a wraith of dreams, it seemed that she stood before him--a form, a
figure pure as a blade of silver, emitting a faint auric play of blue
and gold. Man and woman they confronted one another, and the moonlight
striking upon that divine something he had called from its lovely
mansion, set it aquiver and struck through it in a million tiny points
of scintillating fire.

"Beloved." Croft stretched forth a dim hand.

It floated toward him.

"Come," he said again, and caught her hand in his, and led her out
through the window, where he had entered, under the moon and the stars.

Out, out he led her. They were free as the winds on which it seemed
they rode. Like a sheet of molten silver the pool in the garden lay
beneath them. About them and beyond them spread the wide panorama of
the wooded mountains, marked here and there by the bone-white windings
of the road. Beneath them swam the wide expanse of the desert. Far off
to the east and south, in a ruddy glow, the fire-urns of Himyra flared.

       *       *       *       *       *

Croft turned his face to that of the shape beside him, and found it
the face of a sleeper who sees visions, and knew that though the soul
of Naia obeyed him, it was still asleep. "Art afraid?" he questioned
gently.

"Nay, Jason, I am not afraid."

Some way the words afforded him a great pleasure, for he knew he would
not have had fear in any circumstance whatever, in the spirit he
regarded as the complement of his.

"Thy father--would see him?" he questioned once more, deciding upon a
further stretching of the astral cord.

"Aye." Naia smiled.

"Behold then!" said Croft, and willed himself toward Himyra, still
keeping his companion's hand.

The city glowed beneath them, its fire-urns burning up and down the
Na in double ranks. The place was white before them. Then--Lakkon lay
stretched in slumber on a couch.

"My father!" Naia left Croft's side and seemed to hover all blue and
white and gold above him, until as though subconsciously he felt her
presence, Lakkon's lips moved and he muttered: "Naia," in his sleep.

"Come," said Croft again, and led her back, since he did not deem it
well to risk too long a first excursion.

"Return now to your body as before," he directed when they stood beside
it. "Yet remember this when you wake."

For the first time she asked a question of her own volition.
"You--are--really Jason?"

"Aye."

"And--your body?"

"Lies in the Zitran pyramid as yours lies here before you. Return into
yours, beloved, and I return to mine."

"Aye," she assented. "I return, but--I shall remember---the
moonlight--Himyra--my father--and you."

She ceased and suddenly Croft found himself alone. Gone was the
radiant form with its aura of gold and purple, its dancing points of
fire, which, as he knew, were no more than the never-ceasing, vibrant
oscillation of the Pranic sparks--the fires of life--gone, and he stood
in the room where Azil spread his wings in a wide-flung benediction and
Naia of Aphur lay asleep.

Yet Croft was satisfied if not content, and he felt assured as he
willed himself back to Zitra that when she waked in the morning she
would recall this first experience as a vivid dream at least.

Indeed as the days went by his major trouble was to curb his own
impatience in setting her astral consciousness awake, in refraining
from an attempt to progress too fast, in keeping the development he was
seeking to produce within her, inside the limits of a well-nigh natural
awakening of the greater powers of the soul, in avoiding anything which
could in any way resemble a forced growth. Hence, as a sort of brake
to his own desire to return too frequently to her, he took up the
instruction of Zud, initiating the amazed old man more and more into
the mysteries of what he, in his own experience, had proved to be the
truth.

Once more, however, he visited Naia, before the elections were held,
choosing an afternoon when Zud was engaged in temple duties.

He found her in the vast red-and-yellow paved court of the mountain
palace, with Maia beside her, very much as on a former day when he had
first visited her in the flesh and spoken to her of love. She lay as
then on a wine-red couch, in the sort of diaphanous house-robes women
of her class affected, with Maia waving a huge feather fan above her.

Croft smiled as he called her forth, thinking how amazed the blue girl
of Mazzer would be if she knew that her arms swayed the fan above an
empty tenement of clay, and saying as much to Naia, so that she, too,
smiled.

And that day they wandered far over valley and hill, flitting above
wooded slopes, loitering sometimes in sun-filled hollows, where flowers
of tropic brilliance nodded in the grasses or flaunted their beauty
from swaying trailing vines. And from there to the higher places,
up, up, hand in hand, to where the eternal snows lay gripped in the
clutches of dark peaks and crags.

Until then their communion had been silent save at the first, but the
sight of the sparkling snows beneath the sunlight seemed to stir some
recollection within Naia's soul.

"It--was here I sent for snows to chill the wines for the banquet to
Kyphallos, the time he came from Cathur, by Jadgor's plan," she said.

"That Kyphallos to whom Jadgor would have wed you?" Croft replied.

She nodded. "Except that I was saved from marriage to a profligate and
traitor by"--she paused and appeared to hesitate and went on in a way
less certain--"by Jasor of Nodhur."

"Jasor of Nodhur has gone to Zitu," Croft corrected quickly. "You were
saved from that fate by me, after Jasor's body became the servant of my
spirit, as is your body the servant of your spirit, and changed it to
my purpose, made it mine, because your spirit had called me to you as
today I called you to me."

"Yet I knew you not then as Jason, but as Jasor," Naia faltered. "How
then could I call your spirit?"

"Nay," said Croft, "you knew me not, yet felt you never in those days a
yearning for some one you had as yet seen never--felt you not yourself
already to answer that some one's call, as a woman ripened must answer
to her lover?"

"Aye," said his companion slowly. "Ga the eternal spoke to me more than
once in such fashion, yet none came to sound the call I should answer
until Jasor of Nodhur appeared. Were it your spirit in Jasor's body,
you know how the call was answered afterward."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Am I not like him?" Croft questioned, thrilling at the recollection
her words invoked.

"Aye," she confessed. "And when I am with you, it seems that you
are he--that you call me to you in spirit, even as he called in the
flesh--that I come to you gladly as a maiden to a tryst with him to
whom Ga sends her. Yet, when I return to the body beside which even now
Maia stands watch, all is confusion when I wake."

"Were you to remember then that in or out of the flesh, it is the
spirit calls to the spirit, it were perchance more plain," Croft said.

"Love then is of the spirit only?" She looked into his eyes.

"Yes." Croft nodded. "Love is of the spirit--passion alone of the
flesh. Know you not then that it was love called me to you from the
earth?"

"Earth?" she repeated. "Aye--Gaya told me somewhat concerning that."

"Come then," said Croft, determining of sudden impulse on a
demonstration and seized her by the hand.

Up, up he carried her across the void. The landscape dwindled swiftly
away beneath them. Its details faded, became but a sun-smeared blur
until Palos whirled on its mighty ball, bedded in a mass of woolly
cloud. Up, up. Croft glanced at his companion and found her face
wide-eyed. Up, up, as she floated beside him, her slender shape in the
void of darkness beyond the atmosphere of Palos beginning to flash and
glow with its contained fire. For Croft had willed himself to that one
of the moons on which he had first come down from his daring journey
from the earth. And now it swung above them. Together they swam toward
it, and came to it finding its barren and lifeless crags and plains
aglare in the light of Sirius, partly steeped in impenetrable gloom.
Across the lighted region Croft led Naia swiftly. They passed from the
light.

"Look!" he cried, and pointed to the void of the eternal heavens beyond
them, where sparkled the pin-points of a million worlds. "Behold,
Palos!" He directed her vision to where the planet rolled, its clouds
now turned into what seemed golden fire. "We stand now on one of the
moons that light your world at night, beloved. We gaze at your world
from its moon, as from earth we gaze at a star--as we gaze at earth
as a star from here. By the will of the spirit have we come. By the
spirit's will shall we return."

And on his words it was as though Palos rose to meet them, and once
more they were back on the crags beside the snows.

"Zitu, may this be permitted?" Naia panted as one shaken by amazement.

"Much," said Croft in answer, "may be permitted to the spirit which
seeks truth and dares."

And after that they wandered on, finding a good-sized stream leaping
down the side of the mountain not far from Naia's home. Croft seized
upon its presence with acclaim. A glance had told him that here was
power he could harness to perfect his scheme for generating artificial
light, and he sought to explain it to his companion, outlining how by
the construction of a series of giant penstocks he would divert the
plunging water against wheels to use its force in turning other wheels.

She listened closely and suddenly she laughed. "Now are you as Jasor!"
she exclaimed. "It was so he talked concerning his devices before the
Zollarian war against which he planned."

"Always have I been as I am now," Jason told her. "Even as Naia of
Aphur has always been the same."

"Always?" she questioned and turned searching eyes upon him.

"Aye, always, and ever will be," he answered, "until Jason and Naia
shall be one."

She quivered. Her astral body glowed. Its fires leaped and flamed
before him, white and purple and gold. Croft knew that he himself was
swayed by a similar emotion and sought to check it lest he overtax her
as yet not fully awakened understanding. "Come," he said again, "come,"
and led her south along the western mountains, exploring them, pointing
out their beauties as they passed along.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was thus he found an outcropping barrier of coal. He spied it and
sank upon it, and bent to assure himself that he was not mistaken,
and straightened with a radiant face. Here was energy stored for the
furnaces he meant to raise across the land ere long. Until now charcoal
had been used mainly in the metal trades. But--here--he had a vision of
vast smelters once this coal was mined. And the Tamarizians were miners
experienced for generations in the handling of ores.

He pointed to his find and explained to Naia that here was fuel.

"Zitu!" she cried in wondering half comprehension. "Would Jason burn a
stone!"

"Nay," he said, and made plain the nature of the substance they
discussed.

At the end she nodded. "I am convinced," she said. "Him I knew as Jasor
was Jason indeed. Your words, your plans are the same. Thanks be to Ga
and Azil, I am happy. You, Jason, are he whom I--"

"Love," Croft supplied as once more she faltered.

"Aye, love." For the second time her astral figure glowed with its
auric fires. "With you I am happy--free thus and alone, with a strange
new happiness--such as I have never known. Canst not hold me thus
beside you? Must I return again to the prison of the body? Canst not
claim me now, and keep me wholly thine own?"

"No--not yet," Croft stammered, shaken as never before by her words
and taking alarm at the mood which was upon her. "Yet, some time I
shall claim you mine before all men. Come now, for the present we must
return."

Across a twilight sky they flitted back, drifting into the red and
yellow paved court where the red-and-yellow steps ran up at either end
to the yellow balcony supported on its carved pillars of red, and the
giant figure of a straining man, did battle with a beast not unlike a
tiger, to protect a crouching woman from its fangs.

"See!" said Croft. "So shall I fight for you--protect you--guard you,
wage warfare against all else for you, until indeed you are mine."

She smiled upon him. "So shall I wait for thee," she began, and broke
off sharply: "Behold!"

Croft turned his eyes. Maia knelt the length of her azure form crouched
in a posture of woe beside the couch on which Naia's body still
reclined. Her arms were thrown out across her mistress's breasts, her
face buried from sight between them. Beside her stood Mitlos, gazing on
blue girl and white, his entire posture and expression indicative of
distress.

"Woe, woe!" Maia wailed in choked accents. "Cursed be Zilla who came
upon her in her sleep! She moved not, neither did she speak. Yet when
I sought to wake her at the hour for her bath, she answered not to my
voice. Again and again I cried to her, 'Naia, my mistress,' yet she did
not wake. Mitlos--Mitlos, we are undone. This is not of our doing, yet
will Lakkon seek our lives."

"Go," said Croft to the lovely presence beside him. "Spare her alarm. I
thought not of your bathing. I have kept you overlong."

And Naia, nodding, lingered for a final question. "Yet--will you come
to me again?"

"Yes," said Croft and watched her vanish, watched Naia of Aphur's eyes
open, and the bosom beneath Maia's outstretched arms swell slowly, so
that the Mazzer girl felt and sprang up, startled, staring, with a
starting gaze.

And then he went back to Himyra and sat up on his golden couch and
smiled. He had done a good day's work.




                              CHAPTER XII

                         ON THE WINGS OF AZIL


The end of the month following the election found Croft beginning
to carry out his material plans. Robur coming to Zitra for the
inauguration of Jadgor, bringing Gaya and Naia with him--the latter at
Lakkon's request--found time to insist that Jason return to Himyra at
once, and institute the work they had before discussed.

Nor to tell the truth was Croft in any way loath. Indeed work was what
he craved, rather than a life such as for the past two weeks he had
found himself compelled to live in the Zitran pyramid. In addition
he felt that the atmosphere of Zitra would be subtly changed once
Jadgor was upon the ground, while in Aphur with Robur, his friend
and collaborator in his endeavors, the course of his plans would be
cleared. Then, too, he was thrilled by the thought of contriving a
material meeting with Naia, even more than by anything else. That
thought it was which set him to work on the development of electric
power first.

Before that, however, he took Zud and journeyed to Scira in a galley,
its hull gilded, its sails of azure-blue, with a blue canopy above its
after deck, driven by a motor, rather than the oars which had formerly
projected from its waist. And at Scira he interviewed Koryphu, the
head of the university, regarding the establishment of schools. It
was arranged that he should induce Mutlos to take the matter up with
Jadgor, and Croft and the high priest sailed south to the mouth of the
Na and up its yellow flood.

Then once more Himyra's forges flared as they had flared for the
greater part of that strange year before. Robur, democratic despite his
royal birth, went with Croft to the shops. In them was posted a notice
printed from Jason's original alphabetical blocks, announcing that past
the command of the Mouthpiece of Zitu there was no further word. In all
things pertaining to the development of the things he had planned Croft
found himself supreme. He directed and designed, while at the same time
he cultivated the friendship of his superintending captains and their
men.

One of his first steps was to set about developing the vein of coal he
had discovered. He organized a band of miners and a motor transport
train. It was a strange sight when the latter for the first time rolled
forth. Robur and he went with it, and saw to the starting of the work.
Save for his faith in Jason the new governor of Aphur would have
doubted. Laughing, Croft gave him and the staring bands of miners and
captains a demonstration, and allayed their doubts. On the second day,
after the strippers were uncovering the vein and others of the men were
erecting cabins to house the workers, Robur and he drove back.

Copper wire and rubber, or a substitute, were what he next required.
The first was easily gained. For generations the Tamarizians had
worked in metal, as shown by their couches, their molded doors, their
carriages and chariots and their tempered swords and spears. Croft
set hundreds of the workers to the task of making wire. The second
requirement was far less readily gained. But he did not despair.
Aphur's climate was tropical in the main. He believed he might find
some vegetable product such as he needed for the insulation of his
wires and set about an extensive questioning of the city's learned men.
So in the end he learned of a tree which exuded a milk-like sap, in
the forests south along the Na. Thither he and Robur went straightway
in a motor-driven galley, and the thing was done in theory at least,
depending for its practical working out on the efforts of an army of
local natives, whom the two set to gathering sap.

Back again in Himyra, save at night, Croft gave himself little rest.
And even at night since, on Robur's insistence, he had taken up
residence at the palace rather than in the Himyran pyramid, Robur and
he discussed their plans, unless the governor was called by his duties
somewhere else. Occasionally when this happened, Croft talked with Gaya
instead.

In this way he succeeded in winning her sympathetic understanding of
his position, even as concerning his love for Naia he had won it once
before. And Gaya, whose nature was characterized by a sweet simplicity,
questioned him frankly concerning the episode of Naia's attempted
suicide in the pool:

"Robur swore by Zitu, he believed you present, in the same guise in
which you have told me, you move when your body sleeps."

"Yes, Robur was right," Croft told her and described step by step what
had occurred.

The princess nodded. "Now that Lakkon remains with Jadgor at Zitra,
the maid grows lonely," she declared. "She has asked me to visit her.
May I speak with her concerning these things if she mentions to me her
dreams?"

Croft smiled. On Palos, or on earth, woman he thought was the same.
And Gaya, happy beyond question in the arms of the man of her choice,
stood ready to lead or drive Naia, a sister-woman to a mating if she
could. And, smiling, he nodded assent, but added a caution. "Yet speak
not of it save as of a dream--wife of my true friend. For the growth of
the soul must be as the growth of a flower, which the light of truth
expands."

       *       *       *       *       *

His wire being made, his rubber gathered, Croft turned next to the
harnessing of the mountain stream. He chose copper for his penstocks
instead of wood, furnishing specifications to the molders for the
sections of the pipe and designing the model of the turbines to be
mounted in the pits.

In all things Robur rendered him such assistance as he could, while he
never ceased to marvel at the very things he planned. "Mouthpiece of
Zitu you are indeed!" he exclaimed again and again, with flashing eyes
as some new detail was unfolded to his mind. "Let Jadgor be president
at his leisure. Thou and I, my Jason, shall take Tamarizia yet and make
it a new world."

And with such a lieutenant Croft found his work advance. Wire was
being made in miles, rubber was being delivered in enormous chunks
from the commercial galleys down the Na, loaded onto trucks along
the quays, drawn by the dog-like creatures harnessed to them through
the merchandise tunnels beneath the streets and stored in the huge
warehouses against future use. Indeed all Himyra, all Aphur hummed at
the end of the month, and the founders were beginning to turn out the
sections of the giant penstock pipes.

Thereupon Croft collected another train of motors and, organizing a
party of road-builders and masons, made his way into the hills to
select the site of his power station on the mountain stream.

At the camp he established beside the mountain torrent he lost no time.
Long since he had cast aside Zud's choice of temple dress, for the
metal leg-cases, the short-skirted tunic of a military captain, falling
half-way down the thighs, and belted at the waist--a costume affording
the utmost freedom of movement while he directed the beginning of
each task. Habited thus he sat one day on the hillside, watching his
laborers digging trenches for the mighty penstocks, preparing the pits
for the turbines when, with a crash, through some near-by bushes was
thrust a huge animal face.

Open it was, gaping, with a lolling red tongue, and yellow fang-like
teeth. For a moment it stared at him panting and then with a bound
the whole lithe creature advanced, and flung itself against him as he
scrambled to his feet.

"Hai, Hupor!" he cried, recognizing the huge houndlike beast which had
fawned upon him once before in Lakkon's mountain house, and excited
Naia's comment by the act.

Then as the creature dropped down beside him and turned its eyes, he
followed their direction with his own, and found his heart begin a
gladdened leaping. A trifle further up the hillside, Naia of Aphur
stood between two trees.

Soft climbing sandals of gnuppa hide were on her feet and embraced her
tapering calves to just below the knees. Brown was her garment above
them, embroidered simply in green. And on her golden hair was a band of
brown, supporting a shimmering drape against the heat of the afternoon,
and a curling plume green as the leaves above it. In that first glance
it seemed to Croft that seen so, she was more beautiful than she had
ever been.

He went toward her, his pulses hammering in his ears, the giant beast
trailing at his heels.

"Greeting, maid of Aphur!" he said when he stood before her, and bowed
deeply from the hips, in formal fashion.

"Hail, Mouthpiece of Zitu!" Naia inclined her head. "Did Hupor break
upon your meditations or distract your attention from the work in hand?"

"Hupor and I," said Croft with a glance at the beast, "are friends. Nor
is my work a thing requiring such haste, that I may not spare time to
admire the fairest work of Zitu's hands."

A swift color mounted into Naia's cheeks. Her glance shifted. "I walk
frequently with Hupor," she began a somewhat confused explanation. "The
temptation came upon me to inspect the work which I have watched from
my father's home for the past three suns, since it began. Hupor, I
think, was more surprised to see you than was I."

"You expected to find me?" Croft caught her words up quickly.

"Why not?" she rejoined with an upward flash of her eyes. "Is not the
work of Zitu's Mouthpiece under his direction?" Her manner changed,
became charged with covert meaning. "And more I dreamed."

"Dreamed?" Croft repeated, striving to still a rising tumult in his
breast, at what seemed a challenging of his spirit by hers.

"Nay, I know not," she said almost faintly, while her white lids
quivered above each purple iris. "But it was as though one told me this
stream was to be used to bring new light to Himyra--that such was a
part of your plans."

"Yes," he said, "it is--to Himyra, and to Lakkon, thy father's house,
if so you desire, and to all of Aphur, all of Tamarizia in time. If so
you saw it, it would appear as a vision rather than a dream, maid of
Aphur. Come and I will show you its beginning and explain."

       *       *       *       *       *

For an hour after that she wandered with him, and watching her now and
then, Croft surprised a puzzled expression on her face. Yet he said
no definite word, since he knew that the leaven of his past acts was
working in her, was slowly rising up until at last it should wake her
fully to the truth.

"It were hardly fitting, were Lakkon's daughter not to offer to Zitu's
mouthpiece the freedom of Lakkon's house," she said at the last, when
Croft had escorted her back to the mountain valley wherein the palace
was placed. And her tone was vaguely wistful--there was something in
her eyes that cried out to him, wholly unlike that blue fire of scorn
they had held, when she flung the betrothal seal of Azil against his
breast.

"Jason, the Mouthpiece, shall do himself the honor of Lakkon's house,
when Lakkon is within it," he replied with meaning, as he bowed and
turned and left her, and heard her catch her breath.

Yet he took with him a song in his heart because of the invitation
which had faltered from her lips; because as he knew now the cry of
spirit to spirit was beginning to actuate the flesh. And he walked more
as a god indeed than a man as he made his way back to his workmen,
threading his way on springing feet, glorying in the strength of his
free-limbed stride on the wooded slopes, holding in his heart the
knowledge that it was because she had felt he would be present--because
of an urge to be near him, to speak with him as man and woman, that she
had come to view the new work.

But he did not attempt to approach her again in the astral condition
during the week longer that he remained at the site of the power-plant.
Nor did Naia venture to it any more. And so soon as he was satisfied
that his subordinates understood the exact scope of their duties, he
returned to set about the actual construction of the dynamo that, water
driven, should light Himyra with a myriad of glowing lamps.

But that night, after he had received Robur's report of progress, and
they had talked over the dynamo plans, he sought his own apartment and
stretched himself upon his couch. And then he went seeking the two
women who in all his life he had known the best, because he thought
that it would be on this first night, with Gaya, that Naia would
unburden herself.

Failing to find them in the palace, he sought and found them in the
garden, seated on a carved bench of stone, inside the vine-grown walls
of the pool. Naia's eyes were fixed upon its surface, silvered by the
light of Palos's moons. Very wide and dark they seemed beneath the
shadow of her hair. Her lips moved.

"Whether these be dreams, induced by those things of which you told me,
or whether too much thinking has tired my mind until it makes of vain
imaginings the seeming of other thought, I know not," she said in a
musing voice. "Yet even as you said, he had told my cousin Robur that
he left his body, so has it seemed to me that I left my flesh, when
he called me to him--that hand in hand we wandered forth together, to
Himyra--over the mountains, and once that we leaped all space, as he
says his spirit leaped from earth to Palos and stood upon the larger of
the moons up yonder, whose light sparkles here on the pool."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Zitu!" Gaya's tones were a trifle unsteady--filled with a certain awe,
as Croft waited her answer. "But--Naia, sweet maid, may not dreams
embody truth?"

"If dreams they be, I think it may be so," her companion rejoined. "For
on that time we went to Himyra as it seemed, I saw my father asleep,
and he whispered my name, and the next time he came to me he spoke to
me about it; said that he saw me standing beside him and had called me.

"And,"--abruptly her soft voice took on the speaking semblance of a
child--"Gaya--the night was the same--on which I had my dream. And
again on an afternoon when it seemed he called me, and we wandered over
hill and valley, where flowers bloomed, and up to the everlasting
snows, it seemed also that on returning Maia thought that I had died,
and he bade me back into my body, promising to come to me again. And
when I woke, Maia and Mitlos stood beside me, in tears and terror,
thinking my spirit flown. Gaya--how explain such things as these?"

"I may not tell you," Gaya faltered. "In these days since Zitu's
mouthpiece came among us, Aphur and all Tamarizia have witnessed
wondrous sights, have dreamed of undreamed truths."

"Mouthpiece of Zitu," Naia repeated, turning to face her companion. "I
like not the name. Jason, he calls himself to me in my dreams, and as
Jason I prefer to think of him--as Jason, a man, and--and--my lover.
Ah, Gaya, should I blush for such a thought?"

"Nay--thou art a woman, ripe for loving," Gaya reassured her quickly.
"And to women, be they fit, I think that Ga herself sends dreams."

"Dreams!" Abruptly Naia clenched a fist and struck the tapered outline
of her thigh. "Dreams--aye, dreams they must be, Gaya--for to me he
came no more again. Only when I thought not of his coming did it
happen, and since, when I have called him, sought once more to sleep
and find him, it is vain. Yet if I be shameless, let me speak the same.
Greater happiness have I never known since I tore the seal of Azil from
my girdle, than when in my sleep he called me to him, and I answered
and saw him standing before me in my chamber, fair as Azil himself,
with his form shot through by the soft light of the moon. Or, when I
slept and Maia fanned me, and he came and led me into the outer world,
where we wandered in far places, he and I alone."

"You saw him while he was in the mountains?" Gaya asked as her
companion paused, causing Croft to smile as he saw her intent to learn
what he himself had not told.

"Yes--what am I saying? Gaya, I forget myself, even as that day I
forgot myself and bade him to my father's house." Suddenly she broke
off to throw her arms about Gaya's neck and bury her face, gone white
in the silver moonlight, against her breast.

"And--" the arms of the older woman crept about her.

"He replied he would enter it when Lakkon was within it," Naia told her
in a smothered voice.

"As he would were he careful of your honor." Gaya held her close.
"Child, when my visit is ended, you must return with me to Himyra, nor
longer spend your time in dreams and thoughts."

"But--" Naia sat up abruptly. Her question came with a sweetly feminine
inconsistency. "Would he not think I sought his presence, were I to
accompany you to the palace?"

"Are you not Robur's cousin?" Gaya answered. "Can he expect you to
remain forever in your father's house?"

Croft's smile was very tender as he turned away. Time and those
"dreams" of hers were fighting his battle for him in Naia's soul. And
had he need of other assistance in winning the one woman he desired in
a million worlds or years, Gaya was his lieutenant. He blessed her as
he returned to Himyra, for that propinquity of Naia and himself in the
future, that feminine endeavor at match-making, for which he now knew
that she schemed.




                             CHAPTER XIII

                              NEW MARVELS


That Zitran, too, ran past. During it word came from Zitra that Jadgor
had approved and recommended for acceptance by the national assembly
that scheme for a chain of schools among the masses, Mutlos of Cathur
had introduced. Thereupon Croft and Jadgor selected several expert
metal molders and set them to work at making type, and Jason choosing
some of the skilled workmen whom he had trained to exact methods in
making the motors, months before, directed them now in the building of
a rather simple set of presses in which the type should be used.

Also looking to the future he commanded others of the motor mechanics
to begin the construction of a half dozen engines of a somewhat
different design. Questioned by Robur as to his purpose, he explained
that these were destined to finish the lifting power for the first
Tamarizian airplanes.

"Zitu! Zitu!" exclaimed the governor of Aphur, flashing his perfect
teeth; "I doubt you not, Jason, but my wonder does not cease. Recall
you the morning when you drove the first motor through the streets of
Himyra and well-nigh frightened the civic guards to death?" He smiled,
and Jason laughed. And then he sobered.

"Yes," he replied. "And I recall also how the same morning, Chythron,
Lakkon's driver, lost control of the gnuppas and they bolted, and I
spoke with Naia, thy fair cousin, first."

Robur nodded. He laid a hand on his companion's arm. "Fear not," he
admonished in sympathetic understanding. "Though the maid repel you
because of a lack of understanding, yet shall she come to you at
length."

"Aye," Croft looked the other man full in the eyes with meaning. "Once
more shall I place Azil's sign upon Naia of Aphur's girdle."

Yet to all outward seeming he appeared immersed in his work, and even
as the dynamo and the turbines took shape, he sent men into the vast
plain that stretched between Himyra and the mountains of Aphur, to a
spot of his selection, and bade them build there a huge shed to house
his airplane fleet. Still others he set on the fashioning of ribs for
the wings of the planes themselves, to building the fuselage bodies out
of sheets of copper, and after a consultation with the local caste of
weavers, he picked on a fabric for the wings.

And with all his ceaseless activities he still found time in a
whimsical mood to inaugurate among his workmen a series of recreation
and games lest under the driving of Robur and himself the sweating
laborers grow stale. Indeed, he introduced a sort of competitive spirit
in the various shops, organizing from the members of each a separate
club and matching them one against the other in their sports. And of
all the games on which he might have picked, Jason Croft, Mouthpiece of
Zitu, and virtual commander of the remaking of a nation, chose baseball!

In this he gave his at times bizarre fancy full rein. The balls were
fashioned from well-turned gnuppa hide, about a rubber core, with a
covering of string. The bats, were of tough resilient wood, which the
new devotees of the pastime swung with might and main.

Then for the first time on Palos were heard the crack of the batsman
lining out a clean drive, and the cry of the umpire, Croft himself at
first: "Ball four--take a free pass! Strike--one!"

And because even the most serious mind must find relaxation at times,
Croft found he enjoyed the matches between teams immensely, while
Robur entered with almost animal spirits into the rivalry of the
games, and nearly pestered the life out of Jason, trying to master the
intricacies and comprehend the casual principles involved in curves, in
and outshoots, drops and breaks, after he had seen them first. Indeed
Jason had more than one laugh after he discovered Robur in the bathing
court of the palace one morning, hurling a ball against a backstop he
had arranged, and trying to learn to throw it around a corner, as he
somewhat naively explained.

But if Robur did not accomplish his purpose, several of the pitchers
eventually did to some extent, and Robur got a laugh of his own, when
one of them whom he had secretly had Jason coach in the copper foundry
team, was produced. The batter who happened to be up swung sharply
at what looked like a slow and easy delivery, and Aphur's governor
chuckled for days because the fellow very nearly broke his neck when
his bat failed to find the ball where he thought it was.

       *       *       *       *       *

Croft's main satisfaction, however, in the success of the innovation
lay in the fact that from rivalry in the game it was but a step to
rivalry between the various corps of laborers in the shops. He took
that step and introduced a system of bonuses and holidays for increased
production or extra-efficient work. And because the Tamarizians were a
pleasure-loving people, the plan was a success from the first. Working
three shifts, as he had before the Zollarian war, Croft found his plans
progress. Five weeks--the length of a Zitran--after his return from
the mountains, found his turbines finished, his dynamo ready to be
transported and assembled in its appointed place.

That place was ready to receive it as Croft knew from several trips he
had taken to it, in one of his swiftest motors. A stone power-house
had been erected, the penstocks were in place. Diverting gates were
prepared to turn the stream into them at the proper moment, and send
it roaring through the turbines in the pits. Telling Robur to send men
into the mountains to cut poles, and giving him a model of insulators
to be made of glass, Jason loaded the sections of his dynamo upon his
fleet of transports and set forth again on his journey to the hills.

Thereafter for two weeks he toiled and sweated, thankful at least for
the fact that in Tamarizia labor was plentiful, and regulated by
government control in regard to wages, carefully estimated on a living
scale, so that the dissatisfaction and continual strikes of earth were
unknown. The condition enabled him to command what workmen needed, and
rest assured of a steady advance in the projects he undertook.

More than once in that long, hot fourteen suns, Robur drove out to
inspect the progress made and marvel, and report the insulators being
turned out in satisfactory shape, and the poles coming down from the
hills on creaking motor trucks. Croft gave him drawings to guide him in
setting up a line of power poles across the desert from Himyra toward
the mountains, and at night, when his weary workmen were sleeping,
plunged into the task of devising Tamarizia's first electric lights.
At first he confined his plans to small-sized arcs, intending to give
public demonstration before he went on with the attempt to devise
incandescents for inside use.

Coal was coming down from the vein he had discovered by now in quantity
sufficient to use in the copper smelters, and he decided to gain his
carbons, from this, converted into coke. After several nights of
intensive working, he pushed aside his finished plans and drew a long
breath of relief. The thing was done.

Croft's eyes flashed. This enlightenment of a people and a nation was
becoming well-nigh an obsessing delight in his brain. It partook almost
of the nature of creation despite the fact that he knew those things he
was producing were but crude copies of familiar things he had formerly
known as concomitants of life. For, as he had said to Robur, and to
Zud, and to Naia herself, he was a man--was human in all his impulses
and feelings regardless of the marvelous control of the spirit he had
learned, and he thrilled with a personal satisfaction in the success of
each new endeavor, the wonder each new product of his scheming excited
in other brains.

From Robur he learned that Gaya had returned to the palace, bringing
Naia with her for an indefinite stay. That, indeed, was in accordance
with his plans. For so soon as he had realized that Gaya meant to throw
the girl and himself into a closer association, as he did after the
conversation he had heard between the two women, he had purposely meant
to be absent from Himyra himself when the woman he loved arrived.

Croft would not have been either where or what he was had he been
devoid of a vast psychological knowledge. And deep as were his own
emotions, strong as was his own impulse to indulge a desire for
Naia's closer presence, yet in all he did at that time he followed a
deliberately mapped-out course for the accomplishment of his purpose.

During those days, as her words to Gaya had shown him very clearly,
Naia of Aphur's mental condition was one of vague unrest. And the
principle cause of that unrest was, as Croft knew, himself.

The new estrangement between them, her act in returning his betrothal
jewel in so dramatic a manner, those subsequent excursions into the
unknown world of the astral plane which he had brought about, and which
she was as yet unable to consider other than as vagaries of a sleeping
brain, had induced within her a state of introspection which, even more
than his immediate presence, he felt sure must serve his purpose best.

She had cried out in a sympathy seeking confusion to the wife of his
friend, that she had sought him that day in the mountains, as a sort
of test--a means of convincing herself if her visioning were false or
real. She had admitted that, even despite her former reluctance to
consider a possible mundane love between Croft in his present body
and herself, he had appealed to her that day in his physical form and
strength. And she had complained that he had not kept the promise given
by his astral form to hers, to return to her so again; had confessed
that she had sought for a renewal of those two former meetings, had
tried to repeat her "dreams."

       *       *       *       *       *

Jason Croft, erecting his dynamo, harnessing it to his turbines with
heavy beltings of gnuppa hide, felt that the very desire he had wakened
in Naia's soul, would do its work better while it remained unsatisfied,
would gain in strength as the days passed into weeks, would receive an
added poignancy when she arrived at Himyra and found him gone again
to the hills, engaged without any seeming distraction attributable to
herself, on his work.

For Croft knew very, very well that one of the great laws of all mating
consists in this--that until mating itself is accomplished, one element
retreats, while the other as constantly seeks, before desire itself in
the one awakens desire in the other, and thereby bringing both elements
together, strikes out of them life's fire.

Yet, night after night, his work finished, stretched on a rough couch,
Croft yearned for this woman of all the worlds to his soul. Night after
night he lay picturing her as he had known her, revealing their every
association together, from his first sight of her in her father's
carriage, to those two weird astral meetings which had occurred. He
Pictured her beauty of face and form--the supple strength of the
latter, its litheness, its wonderful grace. He saw it in his mind's eye
as he had seen it time and again in life.

And there were times when he quivered, and stretched out his arms which
throbbed with a strange, numb aching, remembering as it seemed in their
very substance, the soft, warm pressure of her flesh, the glory of
her former surrender to the caress of their embrace. There were times
when his lips writhed as he recalled their first meeting with her
mouth--that quick, spontaneous giving and taking of a kiss, before she
had cried out that now--now--he must win her, or else by the customs of
her country, she stood a maid disgraced--had cried it, and yet before
she left him on that same occasion, had crept to him, inviting a second
kiss.

And though at such things Croft thrilled as may any man thrill, at the
thought of the one woman who can drive him to madness as a man, yet
unlike the ordinary mortal he thrilled still more at the beauty of her
soul. For unlike the customary lover, Croft had seen it--and because
of his knowledge of such matters, because he knew the meanings in a
spiritual sense of certain vibrations--because he could interpret the
meaning involved in auric colors--he knew that only a chastely pure
spirit possessed an aura of blue and gold. Wherefore great as was his
glory in his recollections of her physical beauty and charm, greater
still was his exaltation recalling how even like her golden hair and
purple eyes, that glorious image of her being he had twice called from
it, glowed.

Glorious was she in body, beautiful in soul. And Croft lying while the
night wrapped the mountain, and the stream, plunging over the rocks in
its bed, sent its murmur to his ears, renewed once more his purpose,
and swore by all the highest forces in his conception, that ere this
thing was finished, that glory and beauty should be his. But in his
own way--the true way--the way in which two chemical atoms might come
together--gladly--almost unconsciously because of compelling force,
affinity, desire--let the word used be what it might since in the great
law of Zitu or God, they were the same. And it was so Croft meant to
claim that woman, body and soul, whom he felt was his true twin--that
glorious complement of his entire nature--that lode star of his being
who had drawn him to her--across the empty void between the stars.

On the fourteenth day Robur came up from Himyra at Croft's request.
Jason met him as he descended from his motor and led him into the
newly constructed power-house. There, on a masonry and copper base,
insulated by a heavy plate of glass, stood what was as yet Tamarizia's
most wonderful device. Bolted and belted to the driving-gear of the
turbine it stood, waiting but the driving force of the waters through a
penstock to wake it into life.

Croft's eyes blazed with something of excitement as he gestured toward
it. "Behold, Rob," he said, "with this shall we harness the lightnings
and bid them do our will. With this shall we light the streets of
Himyra and the fire-urns along the Na, and the palace, the houses of
all men in Himyra first, in all Aphur at the last. With this shall we
ere we are done, drive the wheels in many shops, which now are turned
by men and beasts in treadmills or upon the windlass bars. So shall it
come at last that by the mere pressure of a hand upon a lever those
wheels shall move. These things I promise you, Rob--behold." He waved
a hand to a captain standing by the door of the house. And he in turn
signaled to a workman not far off. And he, who had been waiting, lifted
a trumpet to his lips and blew a blast. It was the sign on which Croft
had agreed for the men high up on the mountain to open a penstock gate.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yet for a moment there was nothing to mark the effect, until with a
whisper, rising to a roar, the huge pipe filled and discharged its
plunging contents against the waiting wheel. Then, as the wheel turned
and the belt of gnuppa hide revolved, there crept through the new rock
house a strange and droning hum. Louder and louder it rose, as faster
and faster the shining armature which Croft and Robur watched spun
round. Faster and faster, louder and louder--blue sparks began to shine
and quiver under the copper brushes. And suddenly, with a blinding
scintillation, a hissing crash, a giant spark leaped the gap between
the terminals of two wires Croft had arranged to test the ascending
charge.

"Zitu!" Above the crackling discharge the captain in the door cried
out: "Fly--we are undone, man of Zitu--fly!" He staggered back and
paused and stood staring, vaguely reassured at the smile of triumph on
Croft's face.

"Fear not," Jason told him quickly, as he struck up a lever, released
the tension of the belt, and caused the first dynamo on Palos to sink
from a dizzy whirling toward rest. "This moment speaks success for all
our toil of weeks. Go tell the men on the pipes to close the gates."

Robur's face, too, was pale, well-nigh as that of the captain's, though
he had held his place. His lips were close pressed, however, and his
nostrils slightly pinched. Then, as Croft so easily chained the fiery
breathing of the monster he had produced, his eyes began to flash.

"By Zitu, and by Zitu!" he swore the Tamarizian oath of wonder. "Jason,
you have indeed harnessed His own lightning, as you have said. For a
moment I feared that His wrath were excited by your daring, and He had
sent a bolt of His fire to destroy us, with the house." He broke off
with an almost shamefaced laugh.

"Yet now it gentles like a wild gnuppa under its master's hand," he
went on again as the dynamo stopped and naught remained save the
dwindling rush of the waters through the waste pipes from the turbine
beneath their feet. "Zitu, my friend, but all men shall marvel yet as I
do now at this! What plan you next?"

"Light!" said Croft. "Light, first, and after that to make use in all
the ways I mentioned of this force--to turn the wheels in shops, to run
the presses I have made to print from type and so supply the schools
Jadgor has favored with the means of broadening men's minds--to print
for them and their children, and so to spread the truth."

"Thou wilt build a city here to do these things?" Robur questioned, as
yet unable to fully sense quite all Croft's words embraced.

"No," Jason told him. "This power shall flow from here to Himyra, Rob,
across the line of poles your men are building, along the wires."

"Zitu!" The governor of Aphur stared.

Croft smiled. "Tomorrow," he went on, "I return to Himyra to arrange
for the making of lights, and a demonstration of their working when
the time is ripe." And suddenly his whole face lighted at an inward
thought. "Naia--Rob. Tell me of her." For suddenly at the mention of
his return her picture had leaped before him; the certainty had come
upon him that in Himyra he should meet her, speak to her, dwell beneath
the roof of the same house. And the accomplishment at which Robur, of
Himyra, was staring in awestruck wonder--the great dynamo, successful
in its primary test, and all it stood for--sank into nothingness before
the thought. Naia of Aphur's face, the hinted perfume of her presence,
blotted it out.

"Thou wilt see her," said Robur--"of course." It was as though he read
Croft's thought. "And could you see her now as each sun I see her,
perchance you would feel as do I, that she will be glad of your coming
now at last. Like one without purpose she moves, Jason, my strange
friend, whom I love as no other man, yet do not understand. There is
the look of one who waits for one who comes not in her eyes. In their
purple depths they hold a question ever that makes them doubly dark.
Yet if at times I say I am driving forth to meet you, I have seen her
lay a white hand over Ga's snowy fountain beneath her robe. I have
seen her lips part as though to speak or question concerning thee, and
having returned, I have known that her ears were like thirsty lips to
drink in what reports I made regarding the progress of your work. Yet
in such mood is she sweeter, more desirable as it seems to me, than
ever in her life."

Croft nodded. "Not more desirable to me," he said, "than the first sun
whereon I saw her. Today I place a guard and send the workmen back to
Himyra. Tomorrow I shall come."




                              CHAPTER XIV

                             BEATING WINGS


Naia of Aphur--Naia! He was now to meet her again in the flesh. The
thought held Croft as he drove toward Himyra the next day. He was to
meet her, as at Zitra, not as in the mountains beside the stream he had
harnessed to his and Tamarizia's purpose, but in Robur's palace, where,
like himself, she was a guest--under conditions where the conventions
of social life, not so far unlike those of earth, since human nature
is, after all, very much the same, would compel a certain courtesy in
their association at least.

Toward that meeting he went more like an ardent lover than anything
else. Once in the palace, he sent for a barber and had his hair
carefully trimmed. For an hour after that he lay while a Mazzerian
masseur rubbed softening oils into his skin. And then he dressed in a
costume he had ordered made when he returned from Zitra first, unlike
old Zud's robes, and of his own designing--a costume of golden leg
cases studded with sapphire-hued stones--an undervest of gossamer
tissue--a short skirt of a heavier material, white in color, with a
silken sheen, and a cuirass of gold and silver, with the wings of
Azil and the cross ansata, inlaid on the breast-plate in more of the
sapphire-like gems. Of gold and silver was his helmet topped with a
crest of azure plumes. Robur came in upon him, having barely returned
from the shops, as he put it on.

"Zitu!" he exclaimed, pausing to stare at his friend, and went on:
"Jason, thou art a sight--"

"A sight, yes--" Croft cut him short with a heightened color. He
laughed. "Rob--there are times when your tongue reminds me of speech
on earth. Were I there at this moment, they would name me a _sight_
indeed."

A smile twitched Robur's lip as he caught the unaccustomed meaning.
"And at times I find a strange application of meaning in thy words,
Jason," he replied. "It is so in the manner of speech you use
concerning the games of baseball when the contest waxes warm. 'Tear
its hide off! Lay on that pill! Lean on it! Lean on it!'--the word
'charley-horse' which you sometimes employ, and the naming of an arm a
'wing.' None the less thou art a sight to gladden a maiden's eyes, my
friend, and even now a maid and a matron await thee beside the bathing
pool. So--get thee gone! Thou art beautiful enough."

With another laugh Croft took him at his word, descending to the court
where the swimming pool sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight,
and advancing in a considerable blaze of material glory to where, on
couches beneath a shimmering awning, Gaya and Naia reclined.

"Hai, Jason!" Robur's wife exclaimed, extending a hand as she saw him.
"Welcome, thou tamer of the lightning, as my lord has said thou art.
Wilt pardon a matron's indolence, or should I greet thee on my feet?"

"Nay." Croft took her hand and bent above it. "I like thee less, wife
of Robur, in the formal mood. Retain the charm of thy ease." Then
deliberately he turned his eyes and met those of Naia. "Greeting to
thee, maid of Aphur," he said.

"And to thee, Mouthpiece of Zitu," she returned with her pansy-purple
eyes fixed on the flashing symbol on his breast.

Croft noted the glance, the slight tensing of the lines about her mouth
as he sat down. He had meant from the first to note its effect. Indeed,
he had worn it to this meeting of a purpose. It was his intent that, in
spite of it, and all it stood for, or had stood for at one time in her
mind, her surrender should be gained.

"As to the harnessing of Zitu's fire, 'tis no more than a following
out of Zitu's law when understood," he turned to Gaya to explain. "The
generation of 'elektricity,' as it is called, is no more in this case
than the changing of one force into another, a transfer of energy
from---"

"Ah, Ga, I am a woman, unversed in such matters!" Gaya exclaimed with
a dancing in her eyes. "I fear I am too old to learn. Naia is of a
younger generation, her mind of softer substance; grave thy meaning on
its tablet with the stylus of thy tongue. I would see Robur before the
evening meal. It were time he had returned."

"Aye," said Croft, smiling and rising to assist her to her feet. "Even
now he is within the palace. We spoke before I came forth."

He watched while she hurried importantly away, still smiling inwardly
at her palpable subterfuge for leaving Naia and him alone; then turned
to where Lakkon's daughter still reclined, and resumed his seat.

"You have heard from Zitra?" he inquired.

"Aye," she said, and went on with the information: "Lakkon, my father,
and Jadgor are blessed by Zitu with good health. My cousin's wife
informs me Jadgor has given sanction to thy plans for schools."

"My plans?" Jason countered the indirect accusation. "Was not the
matter presented by Mutlos of Cathur?"

"Aye." The pansy-purple eyes grew somewhat narrow. "Mutlos--a man of
the people, who writes not his own name upon the tablets, suggests
that the people be taught to read the characters heretofore known
to few save the nobles and the priests. And Koryphu of Scira joins
hands with Mutlos to support the project. Thus inside a few Zitrans
after a thousand cycles in Tamarizia--" The ivory shoulder above her
left breast twitched in something like a shrug of her own words of
rejection. "Thus, on its face, the thing appears. Also, Robur last
night came with a marvelous tale of your latest success. Zitu--one
succeeds where another only dreams."

"Success," said Croft, looking directly at her, "consists very largely,
Princess Naia, in refusing to be denied."

       *       *       *       *       *

For a moment she endured his steady contemplation, and then her lids
drooped, she picked at a fold of her garment. "And you succeed? You
refuse to be--denied?"

"Yes, by Zitu!" her companion told her quickly. "I refuse to question
the possibility of aught which Zitu permits or ordains."

And suddenly Naia of Aphur threw up her head in an almost haughty
gesture. "As were fitting, being Mouthpiece of Zitu," she made answer,
"speak further. Tell me of your plans."

Womanlike, she had touched him on a soft spot. Croft blazoned forth.
And though now in all things mortal he was Tamarizian indeed--still
he was a man--and because of the peculiar circumstances leading up to
his present position, he still clung to many of the habits in thought
of earth. Furthermore he had planned at some length the night before
concerning the manner of his demonstration of electricity to Himyra.
And in those plans he had put all his eggs in one basket, more or less.
He had planned to make it what on earth he might have called "some
time."

Hence he ignored Naia's evasion of what had been growing into more
or less a tense situation, fell in with her suggestion, and began a
delineation of his designs. And despite herself, as he went on, Naia,
being a typical Aphurian and, like her people, one of a pleasure-loving
race, found her interest quicken, her somewhat formal pose forgotten,
her brain filled with pictures never beheld before; so that long before
he had finished her eyes began to shine.

"Himyra shall see sights such as she has never witnessed," Croft
declared. "I shall make lights. Already for them the plans are drawn.
Lamps they shall be of glass and metal, which, when the new force shall
pass through them, shall glow, yet without emitting any smoke or flame.
These first I shall show at a public celebration, in small numbers.
Later they shall flare from one end of Aphur to the other. Yet before I
present them to the people, I shall have completed yet another device
which shall be for a part of the celebration--a machine which, like the
motors across the desert, shall fly through the air."

He went on, lost in the joy of portraying his intentions to her, and
described the airplane, drawing in graphic words a verbal outline of
each part, from the metal fuselage to the wings.

It was then for the first time that Naia interrupted. And not as an
interruption, but in their nature her words were surprising in a way.
Gradually as Croft described the airplane he meant to build, her whole
expression had changed, had grown wide-eyed and parted of lip, a thing
of rapt attention, until as he paused, with the promise of himself
riding the air at the coming celebration, she exclaimed:

"Thou wouldst be as a bird in thy daring, and the birds I have often
yearned to follow! To rise like them, singing in broad circles against
the sun, or with beating wings to breast some cloudy storm. Zitu
permitting"--she lifted herself on her couch, and her whole form seemed
to expand with the thrill of the conception--"I myself would delight to
fly with these thy wings."

"Thou?" Croft found that her wish both upset and thrilled him. The
spontaneous flare of daring it mirrored forth, the flash of the lovely
eyes that accompanied its expression, the light of its thought on her
face, all woke a quick admiration. But--the following consideration
of her glorious life exposed to the perils of the undertaking roused
something like consternation in him.

And as the thought clouded his face and he stammered forth his
interrogatory exclamation, Naia relaxed the tension of her figure,
reclining again on the couch. "Nay," she said, "if it fills you with
displeasure, forget my overquick speech. There shall be new light in
Himyra, and Zitu's Mouthpiece shall ride above all men's heads, on
the wings of his devising, that they may behold him and wonder at his
wisdom. What else?"

Mentally, Croft winced at the subtle turn of her words. Almost it
seemed to him that she purposely misunderstood his hesitation, seeking
thereby to mask the temporary loss of her own pose, the well-nigh
forward interest she had displayed. But, aside from an inward emotion,
he gave no sign that he noted the personal bias of her rejoinder.

"In the afternoon there will be a ball game," he said. "Robur and I
will select the teams."

"Base-ball?" Suddenly Naia laughed. Her arms rose, and she clasped her
hands behind her head. Her whole figure, clad in white, embroidered
over the breasts and about the hem in scarlet, blue, and green, with
small gems to produce something like a Persian effect, stretched its
supple length in an almost indolent fashion. She began toying with the
ends of its fringed girdle. "Robur tells me 'tis a game you brought
with you from--earth."

Abruptly Croft became aware of the scrutiny of her eyes, for the space
of a heartbeat, then they were again inspecting her girdle's fringe.

"Yes," he answered, sensing that once more she was groping for some
sign in his words or manner. "Have you witnessed a game?"

Naia nodded, without looking up. "Robur insisted, after he had
contrived to throw a ball through my chamber window and drop it into
the mirror pool with a most surprising splash, to say nothing of waking
me with the water in my face."

       *       *       *       *       *

Croft smiled. He suspected Rob had been continuing his experiments with
the intricacies of curves.

"Since then," Naia went on, "I have been seeking to aid him in the
mornings with something he desires to learn. It seems that he declares
a ball may be thrown so that it changes its direction in the air, and
I confess that, watching one of the team pitchers whom he pointed out
at a game, it appeared that it was done. We have risen and worked for
several mornings together; but, besides breaking two windows and some
flower urns, we have little to show for our pains. Gaya declares he
will destroy the palace unless you teach him the trick on your return."

"I shall join you in the morning," said Jason, laughing, as her red
lips smiled.

Naia regarded the arches of her pink feet, bared save for sandals of
scarlet gnuppa leather, caught about her slender ankles by silver
bands, to which were linked chains of silver running up on either side
of the heel and between the toes. "Then," said she, "shall I let you
take the ball when he throws it. I confess it burns my hands. As to
this new light--what does it burn, since it neither smokes nor flames?"

"A substance," said Croft, "made from koal." And now as he spoke he
watched his companion in turn. And suddenly he met her eyes in a glance
that thrilled--a glance that spoke of recollection, that seemed for an
instant to flash him a voiceless question, yet one whose meaning to him
was plain. And for a moment it seemed that an actual question trembled
on the lips of the perfect mouth he watched, before Naia spoke in an
almost breathless fashion.

"Koal--the strange, black stone you have set men to digging in the
region to the west? Jason--how knew you where to find what, before your
coming, in all Aphur was unknown?"

Croft's heart leaped, both at what he felt was the animus back of the
query, and the fact that now, for the first time to him in the unity of
soul and body, she had used his name. And suddenly daring the issue,
he let his eyes sweep from her golden head to pink-nailed toes, in a
glance that was subtly like a caress, before he answered slowly: "I
came upon its locality on a day when my body lay sleeping and my spirit
wandered as you have heard that it does. Some might say that Zitu
showed it to me--in a dream."

Naia of Aphur went pale. Her color faded. One of her hands crept up and
lay above her heart. For a moment she plainly struggled for control,
and then she faltered. "A dream, say you--a dream?"

Croft nodded. "Yes. Did you not speak to me yourself of one such, in
which you had learned of my intent concerning the use of water to bring
new light to Himyra? Said you not as much the afternoon of that sun on
which you and Hupor came upon me by the stream?"

"Oh, aye--oh, aye, indeed." Naia's tone was listless, weary. "Yet am I
not Mouthpiece of Zitu. Who am I to dream?"

And suddenly Jason Croft caught a breath deep into his lungs. Close to
the borderland between spirit and body were they in that moment, and
he knew it--close, very close. A little more thought, a little more
pondering and questioning of itself, and this girl's spirit must spread
the wings of the soul in conscious understanding of the truth. His eyes
lighted at the recognition of that fact. His nostrils tensed a trifle
about the angle at thought of all it must mean.

"No, Mouthpiece of Zitu are you not called," he said. "Nor is there any
mouthpiece of Zitu, save through the soul of man. Yet are you daughter
of Ga, and a woman, through whom man's soul must pass before man be man
indeed. Thou art the door between man and Zitu, and in so much nearer
than man to him."

Then for a moment he paused and sat with a fear beginning to stir
within him lest he had dared too much. For she said nothing, nor moved.
Nor did she look at him, or, as he fancied, at any objective thing.
She lay reclining, her body rising and falling to a long, slow rhythm
of breathing, her gaze directed off across the shimmering ripple of
the pool. But as he watched, her expression softened, became rapt--as
though the purple eyes beneath her long-fringed lashes were beholding
what save to herself was an invisible thing. Her lips moved without
sound. But Croft, reading their motion, knew that they framed two of
his own words: "The Door."

"Yes--the door--above which Azil spreads his wings," Croft repeated
softly.

Once more he broke off and sat waiting. Because his words had been
almost an allusion to the betrothal gift of Tamarizian men to their
women--that seal of Azil she had torn from her girdle and returned in
scorn to him. And that she would understand it, considering how largely
symbolism entered into Tamarizian speech, he felt assured.

Nor was he kept long in suspense. Naia's steady breathing broke
its rhythm. With a lithe movement she first sat up on the couch,
then lifted herself to her feet. Her eyes turned toward him. The
introspective light was gone from their blue depths. They blazed with a
purple fire. "Enough!" she panted as she faced him. "Friend thou art of
my cousin, and friend art thou to his wife. Mouthpiece of Zitu art thou
to my nation, and as such I yield you my respect. Yet speak not any
more to me such words as these, and let us have understanding. Daughter
of Ga am I, and a woman as thou knowest; but one for whom not--any more
does Azil spread his wings."

She paused and stood before him, head back-tilted on the round, white
pillar of her throat, arms straightened beside her a trifle extended,
drawn a trifle back, tense as a tightened cord in all her slender
length; staring wide-eyed into his eyes, until abruptly she lifted a
hand and struck herself sharply on the breast and turned from him,
crossing the court to disappear from sight.

       *       *       *       *       *

Beside the pool Croft remained more than a little disturbed by the
feeling that, urged on by the propinquity for which he had thirsted
through weeks, he had on this first meeting risked too much. Nor was
his mood lightened by the fact that Naia failed to appear at the
evening meal, and the questioning expression in Gaya's glance, which
she turned upon him from time to time. As a matter of fact, the girl's
close presence had gone to his head, and he had literally sought to
gain from her some sign--to speak not so much to her physical mind as
to her soul. But as he sought his chamber that night, it appeared that,
instead of rousing an answering flash from her spirit, he had struck a
note which in some way disharmonized.

And because of that he sought her out, safe once again in the
undertaking, since should he call her to him in the astral body now,
she might well think that she dreamed once more--a dream inspired by
his presence in Robur's house.

He willed himself to her. Long practice had made it easy. With him
now, such things occurred in a flash. It was his intent to summon her
forth, speak to her such things as he dared not speak yet in the flesh.
But once in that yellow-draped room of Robur's dwelling where he had
thought to find her stretched on the amber-jeweled copper couch, he
paused--paused and stood waiting and watching, because--

Naia knelt, a slender white shape in the dusk of her apartment, before
the figure of Azil, beside the mirror pool. And as once before, when
she had cried out to this same Angel of Life against the barter of her
body to a profligate traitor, for the saving of her nation, so now once
more Croft bent his head while she prayed:

"Oh, Azil, who carry life from Zitu to all the daughters of Ga, by his
command--thou whose sign I have torn from my girdle and flung at the
feet of him who gave it, have pity upon me. For truly am I a daughter
of Ga. And though thy sign I hurled against him, even against the
symbol of thy widespread wings, yet was my action prompted by an agony
of spirit, rather than by any wish or intent to show disrespect to
thee. And were I wrong, set me aright.

"Spread over me again thy shadow wings--let me once more be altogether
daughter of Ga, thy mother--not barren, but a fruitful thing. Or were
my impious act too great to be forgotten--if against me thy wings are
folded--if woman's birthright I may not hold, nor mirror the life of
him, as this pool mirrors thy form within it--if I may not be that Door
of Life he called me--have pity, Azil; Zitu have pity; have pity Ga,
and teach me a new strength."

She rose. Her arms lifted. For a moment she stood so before the carved
figure. Then her lips moved. "Jason," they faltered. Her breath caught
in a sob. She turned and threw herself upon her couch.

"Beloved!" Croft let the cry of his thrilling soul steal forth.
"Beloved you have called me. Beloved, I am here."

Naia of Aphur stiffened in every soft line and curve. She lifted her
head as one who listens. She lifted her slender body on her rounded
arms. Then slowly, in a wide-eyed wondering fashion, since Croft
had not waited for sleep to claim her on this night of nights when
he had heard the confession of her love in the sacred shrine of her
night-wrapped chamber, she sat up.

And now the borderland between objective and sub-conscious knowledge
was narrow--very, very narrow indeed--the consciousness of soul and
body was divided by no more than a breath, a hair. Croft felt that it
quivered as the woman sat there, rapt of expression.

"Jason," she whispered again at last.

"Beloved--come forth!" Close by the form of Azil, Croft took his
station, moved by the sudden impulse that for this girl who prayed to
be made once more all woman he was as Azil himself.

The form of Naia swayed. It bent. Slowly it sagged down and lay relaxed
upon the couch. And between it and Croft where he waited, there
appeared the diaphanous, swaying, scintillating outline of her astral
shape.

"Jason!" And now for the third time she cried it gladly with her
quivering, flaming lips. "Jason--Azil!" She stretched out yearning
hands. "Thou hast come to me again."

"Yes," said Croft, opening his own embrace and drawing her inside its
circle. "Yes, I have come--to tell you your prayer is answered--to tell
you that of all laws of Zitu, the greatest of all is love--that love
in which Ga brought Azil forth before he came to Palos to teach men
the way of life. Wherefore for Azil himself I speak when I say, as I
have said before, that for me--for me, and for me alone, you guard the
shrine of life--that some day, once more I shall place upon thy girdle
that sign that in Zitra you flung against my breast."

"Thou hast it?" The contained fire of her substance glowed.

"Yes." Croft smiled. "And some day the fleshly hands of Jason shall pin
it fast."

"I was mad, mad!" his companion panted. "Much thinking, the shock of
learning thee other than I had thought, had made my heart sick, my
mind unsettled--too much I thought of the man, and not enough of the
spirit--the real you that is here with me now, as with you the real me
is here. Ah, Jason, Jason--one time in Lakkon's palace we stood thus
together in the body, and I--I yielded you--my mouth."

"As once more you yield it." Croft lowered his lips to the strange,
lambent outline of hers beneath them. He kissed her in a strange kiss
such as he had never dreamed of--a thing all inexpressible softness,
seeming to hold in its contact a something that tingled like fire. And
as though that fire were a strange, cosmic solvent, for an instant as
short as a breath, as long as eternity, it was as though their two
individualities dissolved and flowed together, blended into one.

Croft tore away his mouth. The thing had been too real. It left a
weird, staggering sensation quivering through him, and the form within
his strong arms quivered. Its auric fires of white and gold and purple
were more radiant than they had ever been. Naia's hands clung to him.
Her eyes were uplifted. "Go--go!" she panted. "Send me back to my body.
Yet wait not so long to come to me again."

"In the morning I shall see you with Robur," said Croft as he released
her. For now he felt assured that she was very, very close to a
conscious understanding of the nature of their love--its wonder--its
glory--its truth.




                              CHAPTER XV

                         THE KING'S MESSENGER


And that she stood very near indeed to the threshold of understanding,
the weeks that followed their third astral meeting showed.

It showed in a changed demeanor of their meeting the next day. Croft
waked with the sound of her voice in his ears, and lay for an instant
startled in the half world between waking and slumber before he
realized that it drifted from the bathing court of the palace.

Instantly he sprang up, recalling her words of the day before
concerning Robur's daily practice at throwing curves with a baseball.
He glanced out. Already Naia and her cousin were at work. Croft had
overslept, as it seemed, but now his pulses quickened at the picture
Naia made.

As he reached the window Robur threw the ball, and the princess ran to
retrieve it. All in white she was--a single fluttering garment, its
skirt tucked up and caught together for greater freedom of movement,
revealing a flashing play of speeding limbs. Bare on the tiles of the
tessellated pavement were her pink-arched flying feet, and bare her
outstretched reaching arms. And her hair, free, was a cloud of flying
gold about her face. An old-time story flashed into Jason's mind. So
he thought might Atalanta have appeared, free-limbed, glorious, and
unrestrained, as she ran her race. He turned away, tearing his eyes
from her youth and grace and beauty, and hastened to dress.

As he came forth five minutes later, she flung the ball with a truly
feminine overhead gesture to where her cousin stood. "Zitu, my cousin!"
she teased with a flash of milk-white teeth between the twin crimson
portals of her mouth. "You throw wider of the mark, and still more
wide. To me it seems that you lack that which you speak of in Jason's
words as 'control.' Thy ambition to be a pitcher stands in sorry case."

And then she caught sight of Jason himself and broke off, while across
her lovely face there stole a flush as soft as the dawning Sirian
light--a flush as beautiful as that on the bosom of rising Aurora,
Croft thought. She was panting somewhat, perhaps from her exertions,
perhaps from an inward emotion as she turned toward him and held out a
tapering hand. "Hai, Jason!" Her red lips changed the object of their
speaking, and her blue eyes met his fully. "It is morning--and--I see
you again."

"And I thee," said Croft as he touched her fingers--"fairer, more
beautiful and altogether lovelier than the dawn itself. Thy voice
awaked me and told me I was late for our play with the ball."

But his blood was singing, his pulses pounding. The thrust of his heart
was a visible beating at the base of his stalwart throat. For her words
had been but a paraphrase of that promise he had spoken to the soul of
her he had held the past night in his arms. And more than any others
she might have spoken, they told him that at last, as a waking woman,
she began to understand.

Yet he gave no further sign, and Naia herself seemed contented with
that one brief interchange. "Aye, teach him, instruct him, and thou
canst. He is willing, but he accomplishes little with a vast amount of
work to himself and my feet and hands."

And Jason laughed with a wonderful exultation coursing through him as
he took the ball from Robur, who had approached.

Thereafter for a half-hour he instructed, and Naia retrieved the
Aphurian's wild heaves and pitches, until by degrees Robur gained the
partial mastery of a simple inward curve; and Naia, her face dewed
with a fine moisture from her part of the practice, protested against
any more that morning, declaring instead for a bath, and moving toward
the pool, loosening her garment on the shoulder as she walked.

It fell from her, leaving her in the Tamarizian costume employed by her
sex when both men and women bathed--a sort of harness about the back
and shoulders--thin, glinting chains of metal supporting gem-incrusted
shields above the breast--a girdle at the waist to fasten about her
hips, a gold and purple covering, not unlike a pair of trunks. Croft
was acquainted with the fashion, but never before had he seen Naia so
revealed. He caught his breath with an audible inhalation, and became
aware that Robur smiled.

"Go," he suggested as he moved to join Naia in the sun-kissed water.
"Tell Bela to ask Gaya for a garment, and join us in the pool."

Croft nodded. He hastened away. He found Gaya's maid, and once with
the trunklike article she produced, lost no time in putting it on and
returning to the court where Naia and Robur were now contesting in
the water, with choking word and laugh. In a clean dive, he cut its
surface, shot across the full width of the pool, and came up at Naia's
side.

Her hand crept out and lay against him. Almost it seemed to him that
she sought the contact. "You are strong, O Jason. You should be at home
in the water, even as an Acquor," she said with a quick-drawn breath.

There was a hint of witchery in her smile, however, as Croft knew. The
Acquor was a gaudy aquatic creature, colored something like a pheasant,
with the head of a goose, red legs, and blue, webbed feet. Consequently
he laughed as he replied: "Work in the mountains has reddened my skin,
it is true, O little fish of gold and purple and silver--yet have a
care, since the Acquor eats little fish that it catches in the water."

"Zitu!" Naia exclaimed, as very much like a silver fish, indeed, she
dived.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thereafter Croft forgot all else save her new mood and her presence,
until Robur announced that it was growing late, and that he had many
things that he must discuss with Croft.

In such fashion, however, did he enter upon the multitudinous energies
that marked the following Himyran days. He plunged into them and
their endeavors with a song in his heart. Indeed, it was as though the
absence which until now he had actually courted had worked its effect
on them both--as though that propinquity which followed brought now a
sort of reflex attitude into their bearing toward one another, swung
them from one extreme to the other more than anything else.

That first day Croft started work on the ovens to produce his coke.
With Robur he talked over all his plans. He drove out to the site of
his hangars and inspected the rising sheds. He returned to the shops
of the carpenter caste, and set in motion the work of assembling
the airplane wings. He inspected the bodies, found fault and made
corrections, looked into the motor plant, and ordered the captains
there to speed up their work. He drove to the glass plant from there,
and gave orders for the making of his arc-lamp bodies. He seemed
inspired with a ceaseless energy, which finally drove Robur into
comment:

"Zitu--Jason, my friend, where is the need for such haste?"

Then, and then only, did he realize with what a restless energy, what a
tireless thrill of driving force, he had moved from place to place.

"None, Rob," he said with a quick-caught inhalation; "save that today
the fire of life burns high within me, and my spirit seeks action, not
rest." He broke off and lifted his own hand to the spot where Naia's
fingers had lain that morning on his flesh.

And, as so often, Robur seemed in a measure to catch his thought. "Is
she not beautiful as a shaft of Zitu's own light?" he inquired, and
looked into Jason's eyes. "Gaya is beautiful, too, and I love her; yet
I think thy belief that she is the other half of thy soul is true. For
Mouthpiece of Zitu are ye, and wiser than all other men of Palos, and
Naia of Aphur, my cousin, is divine."

"Thou hast said it. Her beauty drives me as the whip against the
gnuppa's flank. It quickens my endeavor, forces me to fresh effort--"
Croft began, and broke off as a captain, followed by a servant from the
palace, appeared in the door of the room wherein they stood.

"Hai, Robur!" the captain exclaimed, advancing with uplifted hand.
"Here is one who seeks thee, as he says it, by command."

"Speak," said Robur, turning to the other--one of a number of
Mazzerian runners who as messengers were kept always at hand.

The blue man saluted in formal fashion. "One from Zitra awaits thee at
the palace. Even now others seek you from place to place."

"Go. Say that I come." Robur dismissed him and turned to Croft. A
pucker of thought lay between his eyes. "This may be from my father.
I know not the nature of his message, but--my friend, accompany me in
this."

Jason nodded. His heart warmed again, as so often, to this man. No
matter what word Jadgor might have sent, Robur, the son of Jadgor,
was his friend. David and Jonathan--the comparison flashed in his
mind as they left the glass-blowers' shop and entered the motor to
drive swiftly back to the palace at once. David and Jonathan! It had
been something like that between them from the first. He sensed the
subtle way in which, in the present instance, the Aphurian was giving
demonstration, that whatever stand Jadgor might have taken toward
Croft, his son would follow the dictates of love and honor in his stand.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the huge, red-paved court they left the motor and, passing between
the portal guards, made their way swiftly, side by side, to the
audience-hall where once Croft had seen Kyphallos of Cathur received
by Jadgor, Aphur's king. A man with the circle and cross on his
breast--Jadgor's emissary--was waiting there for their coming now. As
the two friends appeared, he rose.

"Greeting to Robur, governor of Aphur and son of Jadgor, who sends me
to him," he began, producing a ring that Croft himself had often seen
on Jadgor's finger and pressed it into Robur's hand.

Robur glanced at it and nodded. "Say on," he replied.

"On Bithur, Mazzer makes war."

"Zitu!" Robur started and turned his eyes to Croft.

Croft nodded. Beyond a narrowing of his eyes, he gave no sign of the
quiver of surprise that shook him. "Let us sit down and hear the rest
of it," he advised.

Robur waved his father's emissary to a seat and found one of his own.
"And now thy story, and quickly," he urged, while Croft found a place
by his side.

"As thou knowest who led an army into Bithur when Zollaria made war,"
the Zitran resumed; "there was promised to Mazzer, for her help of the
children of Zitemku to the north--whom Zilla take to himself--certain
of the expected spoils. And as thou knowest, in all that was
contemplated, both Zollaria and Mazzer failed. Yet was Mazzer promised
a free highway down Bithur's principal river to the Central Sea.
Mazzer, encouraged thereto as thy father thinks by Zollaria perchance,
now presses this demand. Bithur, being not as Aphur and Nodhur and even
Milidhur, supplied with the new weapons they used against Helmor's
armies, is weak. Already have there been clashes between the blue men,
better armed than ever before, and the men of Bithur along the border.

"Towns have been burned--fields laid waste--women carried into the
forests, and men and children slain. Wherefore Jadgor commands you
this. Send to Bithur the armored moturs, and a thousand men with the
new weapon that shoots metal and fire with the death-dealing bolts of
metal they discharge. For since all Tamarizia is one nation, it is
fitting and just that the weak should cry for aid in their need to the
strong, and that the strong should hear. Jadgor, who sits on Hiranur's
throne as head of Tamarizia, has spoken. Let Robur of Aphur give ear to
his words and obey."

"Aphur hears." Robur inclined his head. "Say to Hiranur that Aphur
obeys. The moturs, the men, and the weapons go to Bithur at once. Man
of Zitra, you will refresh yourself ere your return."

"Nay." Already the other was on his feet. "This matter gives no rest.
I return so soon as Aphur's obedience is assured. Zitu speed the
fulfilment of your promise." As Croft and Robur rose he bowed and left
the room.

Robur turned toward Croft. "Revenge," he said. "A war of revenge, my
friend. Zollaria, cheated of her foul designs, would harass Bithur's
borders. Hai!" His eyes flashed. "So be it. We shirk not what Zitu
sends. Jason, go with me. Help me to send what is needed forth."

"Yes," Croft nodded, and for the rest of that long day the drive of
energy within him found full vent. Runners were despatched to notify
the captains of the civic guard, and a sufficient number of the
veterans of Croft's riflemen in the Zollarian war. Cases of cartridges
were loaded into the motor galleys along the quays. Six of the armored
motors Croft had designed and used against Helmor's legions went
roaring through the streets and snorted their ungainly way aboard the
waiting ships. What Aphur had been called upon to furnish, she set
about providing without delay.

And yet, though in no way was he glad of this fresh need of armed force
on Palos; there was no satisfaction in his soul at the thought of dead
men, and women carried captive into the Mazzerian towns. Now and then
as he worked, superintending that transshipment of men and munitions,
Croft smiled. And his smile was strange as he found himself wondering
just how Jadgor would meet this flank attack--this guerrilla warfare
hurled against his most poorly prepared state by that beaten nation to
the north, which Jadgor seemed inclined to take credit to himself for
having defeated in war.

And that night, because there were things he wanted to know, he decided
to learn them in the same way he had learned many, many things to his
own and Tamarizia's advantage before. He willed himself to Zitra,
to the palace and the presence of the man who had boasted to Zitu's
Mouthpiece of his strength.

Zitra lay, all crystal and white and silver, under the triple moons.
And then he was in a room with Jadgor and Lakkon and another--a
stranger, whom he learned from the following conversation was a man of
Bithur, Parthys by name.

The latter was speaking as Croft came in.

"By Zitu!" he exclaimed. "These bands are led by men of Zollaria,
beyond any question. Some there are who have been killed in the
fighting, and--they have stained blue their skins and dyed red their
fair hair.

"Beaten in fair fight, she sends her captains to lead these barbarians
against us--to outrage our women, and dash out the brains of sucklings
and destroy our men. Jadgor, this was planned. Even among the men of
Mazzer among us have there been whispers, so that blue men have slain
the Bithurians in whose homes they were employed, and information
has been transmitted from among us to our foes. This is Zollaria's
vengeance she sends another to fulfil. Like a blue swarm of stinging
insects, they swarm against us. Ten towns lie in ashes. Medai, our
governor, is gathering our people for defense so quickly as may be.
Yet, and aid be not sent us quickly, Zitu himself knows what may be
endured."

Jadgor's dark face grew darker still at this report. He struck the
table by which he sat a characteristic blow with his fist. "By Zitemku,
the fiend whose spawn they are, they shall pay double price for what
they have undertaken," he declared. "For aid I have sent already to
Aphur. By now a swift galley should have arrived at Himyra, bearing my
agent to the governor, my son. Once has Jadgor, when of Aphur, saved
Tamarizia from Zollaria's designs. Fear not, Parthys of Bithur, that
with the same means Helmor was vanquished, we shall punish this blue
horde."

"Yet were it not better"--Lakkon put out a hand and touched the corded
forearm of his brother-in-law, still tensed as it held his sinewy
fingers doubled into an almost hammerlike fist--"were it not wiser,
Jadgor, to ask the advice of him to whom much of our success against
Zollaria, and the return of Mazhur to the nation, is due?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"This Mouthpiece of Zitu?" Jadgor turned his eyes. "By Zitemku, Lakkon,
where are thy wits? Must Zitu, even through his Mouthpiece, teach us
our lessons twice? Have we not the weapons that carried death into
Helmor's ranks by the thousands of souls? Know we not how to use them?
Know we not that a thousand men so armed are the match for five, yes,
for ten thousand equipped with sword and shield? And a thousand of
such men I have asked from Robur, with a number of the moturs which
ground Helmor's guard in the last battle beneath their crushing wheels.
Enough! In four suns I myself shall go to Bithra, with our noble
Parthys, to confer with Medai. When the Aphurian galleys arrive I
myself shall take the field. Thou, as my agent, shall stay here till I
return. Small need to question Zitu's Mouthpiece in a matter such as
this."

Parthys nodded. "Your words strengthen the heart, O Jadgor," he
resumed. "In four suns we shall depart? That is well. As yet it appears
that only Bithur is attacked. Were it not wise to send word into
Milidhur, lest along her borders these blue men forget the barter of
hides and dried meats and cheese, and turn to war?"

"Aye." Jadgor nodded. "He who is warned is best prepared. Lakkon in the
morn see to it. Let Milidhur be watchful for the slightest hostile sign
along her borders. Then shall we teach this spawn of Zitemku to pluck
Zollaria's vengeance for her; and should we capture some of these
seeming men of Mazzer who have dyed themselves to play a part, I swear
they shall wear their false tintings ever."

At least it was clear that Jadgor realized the nature of the trouble
along the eastern border. How completely he would be able to meet it
was a question which time alone would show. On the face of things, he
was acting promptly and in a calmly thought out way. Had there been
one single thing in his whole course open to objection, it would have
been his over-confidence of the final issue which Croft would have
criticised. But as he flitted back to Himyra he was fully aware that
Jadgor was one of the few men in all Tamarizia versed in the art of
war--was a good general in so far as Palosian methods of warfare went.
And it appeared that, with Bithur's man-power organized and augmented
by the thousand rifles, the six armored moturs from Himyra, Jadgor,
even as he himself had declared, was very apt to make short work of
Mazzer's naked horde.

Hence, as much because he wished to so believe as for any other reason,
it was with the feeling that the affair along the Bithur borders was no
more than a tempest in a teapot that he opened the eyes of his body and
turned himself on his couch. Let Jadgor handle it in his own fashion,
since he felt fully able, as no doubt he was, with the aid he had asked
from Aphur, even now going rapidly into the galleys where Himyra's
fire-urns flared along the quays, and the little cars trundled down the
merchandise tunnels, bearing cartridges and rifles. As for himself,
Croft smiled. He had plenty to do in Himyra, and--Naia of Aphur had
gleamed like a blade of silver that morning as she cut her slender
way through the waters of the pool. Only he had called her a little
silver fish, and she had cried out and dived. He rose and lighted an
oil sconce, and found the silver medallion, with its embossed figure of
Azil and its circle of blood-red stones. Placing it in his palm, he sat
staring at this amulet that had once proclaimed her his.




                              CHAPTER XVI

                      BETWEEN HIMYRA AND THE SUN


In the weeks that followed, many things transpired. The line of poles
stretched its length from the power station to Himyra, and men were
stringing wires. Croft made coke, ground it into powder, mixed it
with a cohesive substance, and molded it into carbon cores, to serve
his growing arcs. Also, he began experimenting in the construction
of batteries, both moist and dry cells. He succeeded with the former
from the first. And for these experiments he demanded of Robur, and
obtained, the use of an unused room in the palace, where he often
worked at nights.

Chemistry, as an exact science, was unknown on Palos, but through
consultations with the local caste of physicians Croft managed to
collect a certain number of crudely refined salts which they commonly
used as drugs. The room where Croft delved into the simpler mysteries
of nature became an apartment of wonder to Robur, who came to it first
himself, and later brought Gaya and Naia.

And on the night of their first coming, Croft explained the laws of
chemical affinity as best he could to the three, comparing the force
that drew the ions together with love, and caught a comprehending flash
from Naia's blue eyes.

Thereafter she came as she willed when he worked, and watched while he
struggled with his far from satisfactory equipment, and asked a hundred
questions, until he suggested that she assist him, whereupon she
accepted with a readiness that filled him with surprise. Night after
night thereafter she donned a coarse smock and labored at his side,
finding a new world open before her with the wide-eyed interest of a
child; beholding for the first time the deliberate manipulation of the
hidden forces of nature, beginning at length to understand man's right
and power to use them to his advantage, direct them and command, to
look upon them not as some supernatural manifestation, but as a wholly
natural thing.

Meanwhile in the motur shops, Croft's by now expert force were
assembling the first two airplanes. And in the same place, since he
could work there as well as anywhere else, and supervise their work at
the same time, he and Robur spent a part of each day constructing a
resistance coil and a temporary switch on a slab of the marble white
stone so much in evidence on Palos, against the day when the new light
should be shown to Himyra first.

At the end of two weeks, however, he moved the now finished wings
and bodies in which the moturs had been installed to the hangars
and installed a force of men with them there to complete the work.
Meanwhile at night he kept up his search for a satisfactory dry cell,
telling Naia that the success of the flying machine depended upon it;
so that when at last he succeeded, and she felt the current tingle
through her fingers for the first time, she cried out in delight.

And in those two weeks, as Gaya had planned, as Croft had known must
happen, constant association and education had its effect. As they
played ball in the mornings, and bathed, and worked, and sought for
strange, new results such as the woman had never dreamed in all her
existence, they drew closer and closer together in their aims, their
every interest, their understanding, than they had ever been. In his
own way and by his own methods, Croft was rapidly raising the woman,
whom as a woman he worshiped, toward his own mental plane. Thus in the
end she came to a realization that those things which had once seemed
as much a miracle to her as to any of her people, might very well be
manifestation of natural law within the grasp of man.

His dry cells perfected, the success of his engine ignition
assured--several arcs nearing the finished stage of their construction,
Croft had a new thought. He decided that after his demonstration of
the airplanes at Himyra, he might wish to exhibit them at Zitra, and
altered his plans somewhat as a result, and equipped each plane with a
set of buoyant pontoons, thereby converting them to the type of flying
fish more nearly than anything else. He explained his reason for this
to Naia, with whom he was now talking everything over fully, and she
smiled.

"On the water they will run as well as through the air," she said, when
he had finished. "Jason--you must teach me to fly as well as everything
else."

And as on the first afternoon of his coming to Himyra from the
mountains, Jason frowned. "I like not the thought. There is danger in
this flying."

"Danger?" Naia of Aphur arched her brows. "Think you I have any fear?"

"No," he hastened to assure her. "It is Jason who for thee would be
afraid."

For an instant she colored and then went a trifle pale. "And what of
Naia of Aphur, think you, when Jason dares this danger, my friend?"

"It is a matter of knowledge," Croft said quickly, thrilled by her
hinted meaning. "I have driven them before."

"On earth?" Naia's pupils widened swiftly, making almost black pools of
her eyes.

"Yes, on earth, where they use them also in the battles of their wars."

"Hai!" cried Naia sharply, with a quiver of her finely chiseled
nostrils as she caught the picture his words conveyed. "To rise and
wheel and fight--to struggle like great birds in the air. This earth of
which you speak must be a wonderful place."

"Yes," said Croft, as he went on and told her many things, describing
among others the aviator's dress.

"And what will Jason wear on Palos?" she asked.

Croft laughed. "I had not given it any attention. I must consider the
matter. Perhaps a garment fashioned out of gnuppa hide."

Naia nodded. Suddenly her scarlet lips were smiling. "In my mind I see
as in a painting these leather-clad men of earth. Leave the matter of
your apparel to Naia, and you will, O Jason," she replied.

And Croft assented, filled with both pleasure and surprise.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then came a night to Aphur very much like that before the first motur
was finished--a night when a very few hours would see the first pair
of airplanes done. And that night Croft remained at the hangars,
examining, tuning, testing and testing again the motur he meant to
demonstrate to Robur and the gaping workmen, with the dawn. Over and
over he turned on the spark and sent the giant-voiced engine spinning
with an ever-steadying hum. Under the flare of oil slushes burning
about him, he looked into the face of the captain in charge of the
hangar crew and found his bronzed skin pale.

"Thou wilt dare it, Mouthpiece of Zitu?" the fellow said in a tone of
awed deference, meeting Croft's glance. "Thou wilt attempt in this
device to mount the air? Brave men have there been in Tamarizia, aye
and brave women, yet none like to thee before."

"Nonsense!" said Jason, and laughed with a catch in his breath. For
indeed he was thrilling with a vast sense of accomplished purpose as
the motur roared. "With the sun I shall be a thousand vestrons over
your head," he declared, meaning thereby approximately three thousand
feet. And he laughed again, more in sheer nervous tension than from
any humor as the captain instinctively tipped back his head and stared
at the hangar roof.

Satisfied at length that everything was ready, he threw himself on
a pallet, from which he rose at dawn. To his rousing cry came the
captain and his men. The doors of the hangar were opened, and the first
airplane on which Sirius had ever shone was trundled out, rolling on
wheels affixed to the bottoms of each pontoon.

And even as it appeared, a motur flashed from the blurring shadow of
Himyra's red walls and dashed toward it along the road. It was Robur
coming to witness his friend's latest venture, driving in a smother
of dust and impatience. Leaning against a vane, Croft watched his
progress, and so received a surprise. Robur was not alone.

At first Croft noted the fact with wonder, and then with a leaping
heart. Naia was with him--Naia of Aphur. He was to make his first
attempt to scale the air of Palos before her purple eyes. He caught a
deep breath, and his own eyes flashed as the motur approached, and he
went toward it, and Robur sprang out.

"Hail, Jason, Tamarizia's first man-bird!" he exclaimed, glancing from
Croft to the huge machine. "Zitu, I can scarce believe that so large a
thing can rise and take to wing."

"Bird-man, not man-bird, Rob," said Croft, giving Naia a hand to assist
her from the motur, and becoming aware that she carried a package
across her knees.

"Thy garment," she explained, extending it to him. "Go into the cote
where you house your bird and put it on."

"My thanks for it, and your presence," Croft accepted and helped her
from the car. "Hai, Rob--don't fool with the engine, will you, while I
don my new attire?" He turned away and disappeared through the hangar
doors.

And there he opened the bundle with unsteady hands and lifted what it
contained. Trousers, or rather breeches, they seemed of leather as
soft as the finest earthly ooze grain--a tunic--a helmet--leg-cases
fashioned to strap on. And Naia of Aphur had designed them, had planned
them, directed their making, had brought them to him this morning.
Croft's hand actually fumbled the buckles as he put them on. Yet in the
end the thing was done, and he stepped forth clothed from toe to head
in russet brown, save for the front of the helmet, through which shone
his face.

"Zitu!" cried Rob, and Naia's eyes were shining as he advanced toward
them followed by the hangar's crew, and mounted into his seat.

Over the fuselage edge he looked down directly into their blue depths.
And suddenly they lost their glint of pleasure, grew dark and a trifle
strained in the white oval of her face. "Take places!"

The hangar crew ran to the stations Croft had already assigned.

"Ready!" Two of the men laid hold of the propeller and sent it around.

With a roar the engine caught on. A cloud of backdriven dust half
veiled the men who steadied the huge plane against the drag of the
motur holding it, checking it as it strained and quivered like a hound
against the leash.

"Let go!"

The men fell back. The plane quivered, moved slowly in advance. Out
across that same desert where once Jason had driven the first motur in
a mad, reckless dash to save Naia of Aphur's life, he now shot forward
in the first quickening dash of Aphur's first airplane. Forward--faster
and faster--faster and faster--then up. Obedient to his shifting of
the controls, the huge machine tilted, seemed to rear on its haunches,
lifting its nose, its wheels, rising, rising--free of the ground at
last--free and rising, higher and higher, up! up!

       *       *       *       *       *

Up, up! A spear-point of the rising sun caught it and set it aglisten
as it rose. Up, up, its well-tuned motur roaring out the song of a
marvel's birth. Up and up against the pink and blue of morning. Up and
up, smaller and smaller to them who watched it from beside the hangar.
Then, as they watched, it turned. It turned and flew back above them,
five hundred feet in air. It began to spiral, ever rising higher above
the ground. And suddenly, though Croft did not know it at the time, and
Robur, lost in amazement, did not sense it, Naia of Aphur ran swiftly
to the motur and, carrying something crushed to her bosom, from there
to the doors of the hangar, and disappeared.

Over the fuselage Croft looked down. The hangar was a little shed
beneath him. The cluster of watchers were a group of ants. A vast
elation filled his breast. Once more his efforts were crowned with
complete success. With no more than some minor changes, he felt that
his mastery of the Palosian atmosphere was assured. He altered the
inclination of his vanes and began sliding swiftly down, gliding
gracefully back to a rolling stop at the end.

"My friend!" cried Robur, running up. He caught Jason's hand as Croft
climbed out, and stood clinging to it.

And though an hour before Croft would have been well satisfied with
such recognition, he became aware now of hunger for something else.
Naia--it was her praise, her congratulations, he wished. He turned his
head, seeking her presence, and found it, and gasped.

For Naia of Aphur had changed since he left. No more was she a glowing
girl in her fluttering garments, waiting to see him essay human flight
with bated breath. Gone were the filmy draperies that had swathed her;
and instead, she stood before him, habited like himself, in a smaller
suit of brown, which clung to her graceful limbs and supple torso like
a loosely fitted skin. Gone even were the masses of her golden hair,
veiled under a helmet of brown.

But as he met them, her blue eyes were the same. And they were fired
with a light of excited anticipation. "Again!" she cried. "Again--and
this time I shall go with you, Jason--I would fly!"

"Naia! My cousin!" Robur started forward a pace in instinctive protest.

"Nay." She wheeled upon him, stamping a small foot incased in the soft,
brown leather. "Nay, Robur, I shall be the first woman in all Tamarizia
to fly." She stretched out slender, appealing arms. "Jason--is there
not place between your wings for me?"

"Yes." There was something almost a veiled suggestion of wider meaning
in her words, and Croft caught it as he gave her his hand. The thing
was madness--but--it thrilled him--excited his admiration afresh as he
realized that the whole thing was no matter of the instant, no impulse,
but something she had thought out, planned--for which she had caused
her costume to be made at the same time as his own. And he had not the
heart to deny her, in the flush of his recent success.

"Come," he said instead as Robur fell back, and caught her under the
arms, lifting her lightly up, until her foot gained a supporting hold
and she climbed to her place in the pit of the fuselage.

And then, settling himself once more in position, Croft cried to
his men, and once more the engine roared. Briefly he glimpsed his
companion's face. It was eager, expectant, in the morning light. Her
breast rose and fell in a barely quickened rhythm under its covering of
brown.

"Let go!"

Once more the plane advanced, jolting, tipping a little, swaying to the
slight irregularities of the ground it ran ahead. Croft moved a lever.
The obedient monster answered. The desert fell away beneath. Up, up,
Jason of earth and Naia of Aphur, daughter of Ga, and child of Palos,
swam toward a brightening sky of pink and gold. Up and up. Once more he
stole a sidelong glance at his companion's face. It was lifted, tilted
a little back--its blue eyes closed.

"Naia!" Croft spoke to her above the motor's roar.

She lifted her lids, met his somewhat anxious regard, and smiled.
And from him she let her gaze wander over the whole vast panorama of
desert and mountain and the Central Ocean, blue and green and black
and gold, with a froth on the nearer waves like a fringe of white to
their shadowed flanks as it caught the light, and Himyra--the red city
beginning to glow as Sirius shot his shafts against its ruddy walls,
and like a dull chain, supporting the red jewel of the city on the
breast of Aphur, the yellow Na, outlined as far as the eye could reach
by a band of shimmering green.

And suddenly her breast lifted, her lips parted, and she began to
sing--to sing as she had once cried to Croft that the birds she envied
sang as they rose against the morning--gladly--clearly--freely as a
bird itself might sing.

So sang Naia of Aphur, between Himyra and the sun.

After that Croft taught her how to fly. Having once yielded, he could
not well again refuse. And Naia had her way with him, as she had
meant to do ever since she first was taken with the notion of herself
controlling one of the new machines that he had made.

       *       *       *       *       *

But the promise to teach her she exacted that same morning after they
had returned to the palace. Robur ran off to tell Gaya concerning the
success of the trial flight, and Naia dared Croft to bathe. Afterward
he was half inclined to think she adopted the time and place to a
gaining of her point. Woman she would not have been had she not
realized her beauty and its appeal. But at the time he gave the matter
no thought.

"You will surely teach me to fly?" she said almost as soon as they
floated side by side.

"No," he denied in a somewhat uncertain fashion. "This morning I
yielded because of your great desire to be the first woman of Palos to
take to the air. In that I was not altogether wise. Again I would not
dare."

"Yet and you yielded to my desire in the matter of this morning,
your excuse should be the same in yielding to me again, no less. Ah,
Jason"--her hand crept out and lay upon his arm--"now know I the
feeling of a bird when it rises and sings from pure joy, for the first
time in my life, and the knowledge thrills me; I would know it again,
because--" She broke off with a little, gasping breath.

"Because of what?" Croft turned his head and looked into her
pansy-purple eyes.

"Because," said she very slowly, "it is to me as though I was no longer
mortal--as though I had in some way left the body--cast off all the
weight of the flesh."

"Naia!" Croft stammered. "Thou knowest?" and paused, strangely shaken
at the knowledge her words showed.

"Aye--since the last time you called me to you. Come and I shall show
you, Jason." She turned and dived.

Croft followed. Down, down, he followed her gleaming form through the
clear water. Down, down, until he swam beside it. And then lost, buried
deep in its liquid embrace, screened from all observation by the play
of the sun upon its surface, she turned still closer to him, and for
the first time since old Zud's blunder had brought misunderstanding she
offered him her scarlet mouth.

From that kiss man and woman came up gasping almost as to a new birth.
Misunderstanding, all barriers of restraint, seemed to have been washed
away in the shimmering pool's soft flood. "Ah, Acquor, Acquor," Naia
panted, "thou has caught thy little fish at last."

"Fear not, little fish," said Croft in a voice which quivered, "I shall
not eat you, but--this time I shall surely hold you fast."

"And you will teach me to fly?" There was witchery in Naia's words
and in her smile; witchery, whimsy, almost a conscious knowledge that
now--now--she could not be denied.

"Yes," said Croft in open surrender. "And Zitu pity me if aught befall
thee."

"Nay, I will be careful," Naia sobered. "And--and--"

"And what--is there something more, beloved?" Croft questioned softly.

"Nay." She lowered her eyes. "I must go fasten my girdle about me lest
we be late for the morning's meal." She swam toward the sunken steps.

And suddenly Croft knew--the thought that had stirred her soul, and
it set his own soul glowing. In one swift stroke he overtook her.
"Beloved, beloved," he whispered to her, "on the day the new light
comes to Himyra I shall once more fasten thy girdle with Azil's seal."

"The new light--" The fires in her blue eyes quickened. "Aye, Jason,
I would wear it in the new light," she said as, side by side, they
clambered from the pool. "Once in these waters I sought the mouth of
Zilla, and in them today I found Azil's, beloved, in the touch of
yours."

Half an hour later Croft met Gaya, and she stopped him. "Wise man, and
one of great wisdom, are you, Jason, as Robur, my husband, tells me,
saying, accompanied by Naia, you have conquered the air." She put out
her hand.

Croft took it. He bent toward her. "Hark you, Gaya, my sweet friend,"
he said, speaking softly. "The air is nothing. I have conquered
something else."

"What mean you?" Gaya questioned.

"That Naia of Aphur, on the day the new light comes, will wear my
seal," Croft told her.

"Zitu," she exclaimed, smiling, "you have spoken, then, at last. Wise
man I have confessed you, yet to me you have seemed most blind in this
as most men are with women. Glad though am I for you both. But now she
was in my chamber, and radiant as Ga. She declared you would teach her
to fly, and easily deceived as I was, I thought it that."

       *       *       *       *       *

After that two causes hastened Croft's arrangements for the celebration
of the coming of the light. One was the renewal of his formal betrothal
with Naia, of course. The other was of a wholly different sort.

As for Naia, save for the hours he spent in the shops, he was with
her the greater part of the time, either teaching her the control of
a plane, which she mastered quickly both on land and water, or in the
laboratory, or, in the evening, sometimes speaking with her alone,
sometimes with Robur and his wife. And in the laboratory, one evening
shortly after the day of their first flight together, Croft spoke to
her of love as he had spoken once before but with a different meaning.
Taking two salts in solution, he poured them together.

"Behold," said he, as he mixed them and formed a substance compounded
of their blending which fell slowly to the bottom of the glass,
"behold, beloved, the chemistry of love--how each atom draws the other
atom to it, until they blend and are no more, but lose themselves each
one within the other to form a definite something which was not before!

"Behold--for even so, beloved, it is with the souls of men and
women--each drawing the other to it; each blending with the other,
until in the will of Zitu, and they are truly mated, they melt into
perfect union, and a perfect spirit is born!" It was one way of
portraying the doctrine of twin souls, the "marriage of the lamb,"
the birth into angelhood, dependent on the union of the two original
spiritual halves, and Naia nodded with a widening of her eyes.

"Each draws the other to it," she said, coming close beside him. "Ah,
Jason, did I draw you to me really from the earth?"

"Aye, by Zitu," he swore, and slipped an arm about her.

"Thy need of me brought you unto Palos, even as thou hast called my
spirit from my flesh."

"Aye," Croft said in a voice gone husky with emotion. It was the first
time she had mentioned those astral meetings in a fashion so direct.

She eyed the new-formed substance in the glass before them. And
suddenly she smiled. Face, eyes and lips, her whole fair being glowed.
"They meet and mingle, melt into one another," she went on softly, and
lifted his other arm and drew it about her form to meet the other. "Ah,
Jason, thou messenger of Azil to me--that first night you lay in the
palace, yet came and bade the presence of my spirit, and held me even
so as you are holding me now; it was as though I forgot all else and
knew thee only; as though I was not, save as a part of thee truly, save
that I felt the strong fire of thy mouth."

And, again, on a night when the sky was cloudless and the triple moons
had turned all the Palosian world to a dreamland of silvered plain
and sea and mountain, Croft spoke to her of love. That night he drove
her to the hangars, and they entered a machine. Up, up they whirled
through an air aquiver with moonbeams; up, up to a land of dreams. And
there between the heavens and the far-flung landscape they swam in a
dream world of their own making, while the plane wheeled in wide spun
circles, like some huge, dark bat against the skies.

"Behold Palos!" Croft cried to her above the roar of the whirling
propeller, heard as it swept them forward, yet not seen. "Is it not
lovely, is it not fair--this one of all the millions of stars on which
we live? And yet why is it; for what purpose; why was it brought into
existence, even as you and I, beloved, and sent spinning through the
void from Zitu's hand, save for love; save that a million million men
and women might find a spot whereon their spirits, the real they,
should be given substance, in order that they should live and meet,
and know one another, and--love. Wherefore is the body of man no more
than the servant to give to love expression, since this is Zitu's plan:
that no man's spirit is complete without the woman's, that no woman's
spirit is complete without the man's; so that in his wisdom, each ever
seeks the other to make it whole and satisfy its longing. Thus then is
love assured, and life inspired."

He shut off the engine and began a long, slanting, coasting down a
moonlighted, sloping path.

"Love," said the girl beside him, "love so great that it spans the
space between the stars. And did I call you to me, without knowing,
yet now it seems to me, beloved, that I should know and find some means
to answer, no matter where you were."

In a long sweep Croft brought the plane back to the ground. And then
without any verbal reply, he lifted her from her seat and bore her back
to the motur in his arms.




                             CHAPTER XVII

                          IN THE GRIP OF WAR


As for the other matter which speeded his preparations, it had nothing
whatever to do with love--was the exact antithesis of it, dealt wholly
with human passion, human strife.

It was now over five weeks since the relief expedition had sailed to
Bithur from Himyra, and no word had come from Zitra since.

Mentally, Croft had allowed at least two weeks for the galleys to reach
Bithra, the capital of the northeastern state, and unload their moturs
and men. Another week, he figured, should bring them well into contact
with the Mazzerian forces, if Jadgor moved as quickly as he felt
assured he would. And drunk as he was with love, busy as he was with
his own endeavors, Croft forgot not entirely affairs of state.

As a result he chose a night some weeks after he felt sure the
Bithurian army and its reinforcements should have reached the Bithurian
borders, and willed himself to Jadgor's tent.

A strange sight met his eyes. He swam above what at first appeared
to him as an enormous grassy plain; and beyond it was a forest, dark
in its own shadows beneath the moonlight, and beyond that again was
a flare of fires. Toward these he propelled himself without knowing
whither exactly he was going, yet arriving to find them the flaring
remains of burning houses, spread out on yet another open space beside
a river, a mere village, such as the peasant classes were accustomed to
inhabit, rather than one of the larger walled towns.

And around it, through it, their bodies picked out by the moonlight and
the leaping of the flames, were hundreds--not of Bithur's soldiers, but
of leaping, howling, spear-shaking, blood and lust gloated Mazzerian
men. And beyond it as he saw now, overcoming his first surprise, lay
one of the armored moturs, ringed with intermingled Bithurian and
Mazzerian corpses and tipped upon its side.

Disaster! For the first time Croft suspected a Bithurian route. In a
flash he returned to his original purpose and once more demanded that
Jadgor's position be revealed.

And now a walled town appeared before him, not so large as Himyra, but
decidedly greater than Zitra, to judge from the circuit of its walls
inside which countless fire-urns flared. And within those walls, as he
sped above them, Croft beheld a beaten army's wrack--two of the moturs,
parked close inside a gate: weary men showing the marks of conflict,
stretched out beside them in a sodden bivouac.

Then into a palace, built of what seemed a brown sandstone, with a
huge inner court paved in green, where fire-urns flared and guardsmen
stood before a door through which men in armor, with stern, drawn faces
passed in and out. Croft followed the progress of the latter and so
came at last to the presence of the man he desired.

Jadgor, of Tamarizia--Jadgor, of Aphur--president of a nation, once
a haughty king. Jadgor, of Aphur, wounded slightly, with a binding
bandage wound about his grizzled head, with his armor dust-stained and
smeared with the grime of conflict, Jadgor scowling like some savage
creature overborne, driven into a corner, with the sinewy hand of a
muscular arm fingering in nervous fashion at his sword.

And about him a cluster of drawn-browed, armored men, one of whom Croft
judged to be Medai, governor of Bithur, since his armor was jeweled
with the sign of the state, a green medallion halved by a bar of
iridescent crystals, to symbolize the mighty river Bith, which crossed
it with its flood.

"Mazzer," said Jadgor, "has loosed upon us her whole horde. Armed are
they by Zollaria, led by Zollaria's men. By sheer weight of numbers
were we overborne--the wings of our army cut so that the center was
engulfed. Two of the moturs broke down, and those in charge of them
knew not the secret of the one device which causes them to run, because
he who constructed them first held the knowledge to himself.

"The men with the rifles within them were cut off when their supply
of bullets was gone. Those others so armed, killed so long as their
bullets held out, when they also fell back before these blue fiends as
well. The fault is not with the weapons, but with the first seeming of
the matter. Men of Bithur, we face no barbarian border raiding. This
the principal city of your eastern lands shall soon be assailed. Men
of Bithur, this is war. For fresh aid I have sent--for more men and
weapons. Thrice on as many fields have we met them, and thrice have
we been driven back by press of numbers. They swarm like blue vermin,
and where one dies two take his place. Yet though crushed, we are not
vanquished. Wherefore we fall back on Atla as a strong place for our
defense."

"Strong walls has Atla," Medai replied. "And Jadgor speaks strong words
from a strong heart. Yet if this be war indeed inspired and sent
upon us, not Bithur alone, but all Tamarizia may be affected thereby,
if Bithur fall. And since he who made these new weapons knows surely
best their use, were it not well also to send one asking him as Zitu's
Mouthpiece, to give us aid?"

       *       *       *       *       *

For a single moment Jadgor winced, and then he inclined his head. "Aye,
Medai of Bithur, so have I done. In the mouth of him who departed for
Zitra and Himyra, for speech with Zud the high priest, and Robur, my
son, have I placed words to that effect. For, as you have said, this
matter affects not one man or another, or even yet one state. The peril
lies now to our welfare as a nation. Were Jadgor to avail himself not
of all means to combat it Jadgor were wrong, and, by Zitu, I swear that
above all other things in life, it is Tamarizia that Jadgor loves."

Croft thrilled to those words. Here spoke the old-time Jadgor, patriot
again. Even as the first time he had watched the man and listened,
as now, to his words, in those days when he sought to strengthen his
nation through the sacrifice of Naia, hoping so to block Zollaria's
plans, so now the _generalissimo_ of Tamarizia's forces seemed thinking
of his country first. Wherefore Croft felt shaken in his soul, so
that a responsive emotion toward Robur's father waked within him and
glowed. And he vowed that such aid as was asked he would give, both
as Mouthpiece of Zitu, and as a man to whom Tamarizia's welfare, both
present and future, was identical with his.

Swiftly he made calculation. At the best it would take eight days for
the messenger Jadgor had despatched to arrive. He willed himself back
to his own apartments in a flash and sat up on his couch. Much might be
done in a week he thought, and there was much to be done. Jadgor had
failed largely because the drivers of the moturs understood not the
nature of the magnetos which Croft had kept secret in their making,
and the ammunition for the rifles had given out. Well, for the first
part, he had dry cells now to insure ignition, aside from the more
complicated device. Moturs must be equipped with them without delay
and the arsenal Robur and he had equipped many Zitrans before, set
working--much ammunition, many cartridges and grenades turned out.

He rose and called a guard and sent him for Robur at once. And when
he came to him, his face somewhat puzzled by this summons from his
slumbers, he told him all that he had learned, and how.

And from past experience Robur believed without question. "Zitu!" he
cried, springing up and standing before Croft with eyes that were
flashing. "They are driven back on Atla, shut up inside her walls, two
of the moturs destroyed, their bullets well-nigh exhausted. They send
for fresh aid. Hai! Mouthpiece of Zitu, how do you advise?"

Croft told him. "Start all men working on more bullets and the bombs
we throw by hand. Send men to call the assembly together against the
time Jadgor's messenger comes, yet state not why, save that Robur
commands. Order all captains of decktarons to hold those men we trained
in readiness for a possible call to arms. Give these orders merely; say
naught as yet of war."

"Aye," Robur nodded, "it shall be done."

"Speed also," Croft went on, "the completion of the other airplanes.
In the morning I begin training men to fly them when they are done.
Also"--his eyes narrowed with a sudden thought--"Rob--we shall remove
the dynamo, and transport it to Atla, after we have shown Himyra this
new light."

"Thou wilt do that still--in the face of this?" Robur stammered.

Croft nodded. Before his mind's eye floated Naia of Aphur's face--Naia
who was to pin the seal of Azil on her girdle the day the light he had
promised to Himyra was born. Come weal or woe, come war or peace, Croft
swore naught should interfere with that occasion.

"Aye," he said, "on the seventh sun from this."

       *       *       *       *       *

Yet despite Croft's interdiction on the spreading of the word abroad,
Naia and Gaya were told--the latter as Robur's wife, the former as
Croft's assistant in his work. For from now on she became fully that.
Day after day, from the hour of the morning bath until late at night,
she toiled in the laboratory he had equipped in the palace, preparing
the chemicals for the dry cells, aiding him with a tight-lipped, yet
unfaltering purpose while the cells were packed, taking full charge in
the daytime while he was engaged elsewhere on other work.

Clad in a coarse smock, acid stained and scorched, her hands soiled
by the manipulation of reagents, she yet had never to Jason presented
a fairer, braver sight. She worked. She neither complained nor cried
out. She gave her service to her country and to him, in the depths of
her purple eyes an almost Spartan light. And Gaya helped. Day after day
she labored beside her, under her direction, learning in turn from Naia
what she had learned from Croft.

"Are you not glad you have taught me to fly?" Naia questioned one night
as they worked. "See you not Zitu's hand in this, beloved, since when
you are gone to this spawn of Mazzer's undoing I may continue your
work?"

"You?" Croft faltered, sickened at the picture of her meaning. "You
must not. As I have told you, there is danger."

"Ah, but"--her smile was very gentle--"is there not danger to thee as
well? Think not my heart is like a frightened bird, did it speak in
place of my mind. Know you not that to me the loss of you blots out the
world?"

"No," Croft cried, and swept her into his arms. "Tis a brave, brave
heart, beloved!" He caught and held her fingers. "O brave, brave heart!"

For a moment she lay against him. He felt her shake. Then it was over,
and she straightened up again. "In three suns," she said, "your seal
shall glow again on my girdle. Tell me, beloved, for I hunger for
the knowledge, how may this separation of the spirit from the body,
which you have thrice brought about within my knowledge, be by oneself
attained?"

"By desire," said Croft. "By a focusing of all the yearning of the soul
on that one thing--without doubt, without fear--by centering the mind
on its attaining and on the object whereat in that state you wish to
arrive; for indeed, beloved, it is the desire of the spirit in life
that accomplishes all things."

"Desire," she repeated softly, "desire. Aye, now I see. One must forget
all, save only it, alone to attain it. It must be so great that nothing
else save only it remains--as great as the love you have wakened in
me--as your desire for me. Ah, beloved, when first Gaya told me of
your seeking me from earth, I thought it madness, though even then the
thought itself set me aflame. And then"--she threw out her arms and
stood before him glorious in her soul's surrender--"then you come to
me, in what at first I called--a dream."

"Naia!" Croft stammered, lost in the glory of her. "Naia, what have you
in your mind?"

She came closer. "Am I not your mate, who am about to lose you? Yet
were this power mine, perchance I, too, might visit you--in dreams."

And now Croft saw her meaning, and like her quivered as once more he
held her in his arms.

Then came to Himyra light! Croft smiled in singular fashion on the day
it came. Aphur's red city was in carnival attire. Its pavements swarmed
with life. Open refreshment booths did a thriving business, jugglers
plied their skill on woven mats stretched out in open squares. Jostling
crowds swarmed about them, filling the air with jest and good-natured
cries. The whole place hummed with a myriad life.

And yet to Jason the whole scene was unreal--a mask, a carnival domino
spread as it was above a grinning skull. To him driving in his motor
with Naia in purple and gold, above which her snowy left shoulder and
throat made a band of ivory, the whole vast assemblage seemed no more
than the shifting fantasmagoria of a dream--a gorgeous play of color
through the mind of a sleeper not as yet awake. For Himyra made merry
in her ignorance of the catastrophe striking against the national
borders to the east. Jadgor's messenger had not as yet arrived.

And though Himyra dreamed a dream of splendor, in which none had a
thought of care, though the crowds moved in indolent leisure through
street and public square, though copper-bodied motors roared and panted
over pavements laid in bitumen as smooth in their surface as a floor;
though plumed gnuppas pranced with a clatter of slender feet, and
bright-eyed, softly shrouded and perfumed women rode within them to the
games of the afternoon--the beginning of the celebration of what all
thought a new era in the life of Tamarizia and Aphur, still beneath the
surface seeming, because of Croft's knowledge, and the words he had
spoken to Robur, and Robur's orders, the inner soul of Himyra and all
Aphur prepared on this day for war.

In a way the aspect of the city reminded Jason of the condition of the
woman at his side in those past days when the soul of her had been his
as always, and only the objective mind had failed as yet to wake.

Today she had come to the game with him alone at his own request.
Outside the vast stadium where formerly all public games had been
held--a huge thing of red stone, that always reminded Croft of the
Colosseum of Rome--he helped her down. Through bowing crowds they
gained the entrance giving on what had once been the royal box, now
reserved for the governor of Aphur's suite. He led her in through a
gilded and frescoed passage, and conducted her to where a scarlet
canopy was spread above a tier of seats. She sank down, inclining her
head in salutation to a hundred greetings from neighboring boxes, until
the purple plume, rising from the cincture in her golden hair, was set
a-nodding above her lovely face.

       *       *       *       *       *

Robur came with Gaya a few moments later. The vast assemblage rose and
the games began. First was a chariot race, entered by six chariots
drawn each by a team of four plumed gnuppas, driven at top speed.
Marthos, a young noble, won handily, amid acclaim from the thousands
ranged about the immense amphitheater, and was awarded a metal garland,
standing flushed with triumph before Robur's box.

Followed various athletic contests, javelin throwing, foot racing,
shooting with bows and arrows at a herd of wild taburs driven into
the arena from pens beneath the tiers of seats, wrestling matches and
other sports, in which both men and women took part. In a way, as he
sat at Naia's side, the scene reminded Croft of a reproduction of a
public ceremonial of ancient Greece. For as in Greece and in Tamarizia,
for generations untold, the contestants threw off all their clothing
as they came to their stations and worked frankly nude until they had
ended their exhibition of skill or strength, when once more their
garments were donned.

The minor events ended, there came a pause. Then from the far end of
the arena suddenly there dashed a chariot drawn by four pure-white
gnuppas, orange plumed. Straight for Robur's box they plunged and came
to a rearing halt as Marthos, to whom had been awarded this further
honor, drew them to a stand.

Croft rose. He descended from the box and entered the car. Clad in
brown he was, in the suit Naia had designed and had made for him as
once more the gnuppas traversed the arena's length and stopped near to
where the men from the hangars had trundled the great plane into sight.
In a leap he was aboard. The attendants ran to their places. Two men
turned the engine over. It caught!

Above the whispers of the multitude its roar rang out. The great plane
trembled. Its attendants released it. It trundled forward over the hard
packed floor of yellow sand. Straight as a die it surged toward Robur's
box until suddenly Croft changed his vanes. And then it rose. It shot
up at what looked like a forty-five degree slant. Up and up and up,
until it swam above the vast concourse of back-tilted faces. Like the
hum of a giant beetle, the sound of its whirring engine came down from
a cloudless sky to a myriad ears. Once, twice, Croft made the circuit
of the arena, and then began to settle, finishing with a graceful
volplane, which left him within a few feet of his start.

"Hai! Hai! Hail to the Mouthpiece of Zitu! Hail to Jason, teacher
of all Tamarizia! Hail to him whose mind Zitu has enlightened above
all others!" the cry of the multitude rang out. Croft once more in
Marthos's chariot pushed back his leather helmet and bowed. Bowing to
right and left, acclaimed as a conqueror might have been, he rode back
toward Robur's box, and left the chariot and ascended to his seat, and
looked into Naia's face, finding it somewhat white, but smiling, and
bowing again before the tempest of acclamation began to subside.

Then came the game of ball, on a diamond arena attendants were
beginning already to mark out, between the men from the foundries and
the team from the airplane shop. Robur himself rose and, taking a ball
from an ornate box extended to him by a guardsman, cast it out. Then,
as it was passed snappily to the pitcher of the foundry's team which
had won the inning and elected to send the airplane aggregation to bat:
"Play ball!" he cried.

And suddenly as the first batter fanned and flung his bat away and
walked to the bench, very much like any disgruntled batsman of earth,
Croft smiled. It was unbelievable, of course. It was a fantasmagoria
of the brain. The thing couldn't be, and yet--there was the pitcher of
the founders, in a short-skirted tunic, below which his lean thighs
showed above his leg-cases of leather, cradling the ball, and cuddling
it in his palm. And there was the catcher, squatted down back of the
plate in breast-plate and mask, twiddling the signaling fingers of a
huge labor-browned hand, and--whir--snap! There was the ball thudding
against his mitt.

"Strike on-n-n-e!" That was the umpire's voice.

_Cr-a-a-a-a-a-c-k!_ That was the sound of a ball met fairly and lined
swiftly out. And there it went, a clean drive between first and second
base, into the right outfield.

"Run, run--go on--go on!" That was Robur yelling in ungovernorlike
excitement.

"Run--go on--run--oh, run--run!" That was the voice of Naia--of the
woman by his side.

Croft turned to her and found her leaning forward, straining her
slender length from the hips, lips parted, her eager blue eyes wide.

"Hold it!" That was the airplane's captain coaching the runner.

Thud! The right outfield had slammed the ball into the second baseman's
glove.

Croft smiled again. It couldn't be a baseball game on Palos, but--it
was.

And as it went on the assembled multitude went wild. They cheered, they
jeered, they urged and encouraged, and cat-called and howled. They
stamped on the tiers of seats with leather and bare and metal-shod
feet. They waved hands and arms. State assemblymen already gathered by
Robur's orders, and guests of the occasion forgot dignity and joined in
the rising roars that greeted the different plays. And Naia of Aphur
was beating against Croft's thigh and yelling--yes, yelling, as the
founder's first baseman romped home on a far-reaching drive. "Come
on--come on," she was urging the runner. "Come on--atta boy--come home!"

Croft prisoned her beating little fist and held it. The runner scored.
She looked into Jason's face and smiled. Croft thrilled. She was all
woman---all glorious, lovely woman. He knew it, had seen it proved in
the last week when she worked stern-lipped for the good of her nation.
But today in this new-found pastime she had forgotten for the moment
and become a child.

The game ended for the Founders, three to one, bringing with its
termination an intermission, since not until dusk would the lights be
turned on.

       *       *       *       *       *

Blue men of Mazzer with torches began moving about the vast circuit
of the arena, lighting hundreds of oil flares. Blue girls with skins
of tabur hide on their naked backs and shoulders, and metal cups in
their hands, began threading the tiers of seats selling a mild, light
wine. Vendors of fruits and conserves for the women, and baked meats
and wheaten cakes plied an active trade. In the rear of Robur's box
was spread a table, and a meal was served. And before its beginning
Magur, high priest of Aphur, arrived. To him Croft and Naia rose side
by side and bowed. And suddenly Naia was once more all woman, as she
looked into her companion's face and flushed from throat to eyes.
Magur's coming meant she was to pledge herself to Croft before all the
assembled men and women of Aphur, once the new light came on.

And in such fashion was it done. Two heralds with silver trumpets
appeared in scarlet livery, the color of Robur's house. From the front
of Robur's box they blew a blast.

And on that signal the arena attendants began running to and fro
extinguishing all lights. Over the arena night came down as one by one
the oil flares died.

Croft gave a final glance to the woman at his side--to her face, her
form, to her dress of purple and gold. He had asked her to put it on.
It was the garment she had worn on the first formal occasion in which
he had ever seen her take part. And its colors were the same as the
auric colors of that astral form of hers which he had seen and found
divine. Taking her hand he led her quite to the front of the box. There
on either side had been placed one of Tamarizia's first two arcs. And
in the back of the box was the controlling switch. And miles away in
the mountains men were waiting for the signal of a flare on Himyra's
walls to release the power. Already one had gone to see that the flare
was lit. And a captain was without to carry word when it shone forth.

Now suddenly he appeared.

Croft closed the switch.

A click--a hiss--the crackling ignition of incandescent carbon--a
rising glow in the darkness--then--light--clear, radiant light!

Light that flared up and wavered and steadied and shone on Naia of
Aphur, sheathed in purple and gold.

A babble of sound, a cheer of acclaim.

The trumpets of the heralds rang out.

Jason stepped forward and took his place close by Naia's side.

Magur, the high priest, arose, robed in his vestments of azure,
accompanied by two temple boys. Each bore a silver goblet on a tray of
the same metal that sparkled under the light.

Magur lifted a silver stave crowned with the cross ansata. "Who cries
to Magur?" his voice rang out.

"A maid who would pledge herself and her life to the man of her
choosing, O Prince of Zitu," Robur replied.

"The man is present?" Magur went on in ritualistic form.

"Aye, he stands beside her," Robur declared.

"Who sponsors this woman?" Magur inquired.

"I, Robur of Aphur, her cousin--child of the sister of her who gave her
life."

"Come then in the name of Zitu," Magur said, and advanced to face the
arena, back of Naia and Croft.

"Naia of Aphur--thou woman, and being woman, sister of Ga, and hence
priestess of that shrine of life which is eternal, the guardian of the
fire of life which is eternal--is it thine intent to pledge thyself to
this man, who stands now at thy side?"

"Aye," said Naia of Aphur clearly, and looked not at Magur as she
answered, but into Jason's eyes.

"And thou, Jason, known as the Mouthpiece of Zitu, whom Zitu has
inspired with his wisdom, even as no other man, do thou accept this
pledge, and with it the woman herself, to make her in the fulness of
time thy bride, to cherish her and cause her to live as a glory to the
name of woman, to whom all men may justly give respect?"

"Aye, so I pledge, by Zitu, and Azil, giver of life," said Jason,
gazing on the woman as he spoke the words.

"Then take this, maid of Aphur." Magur drew from his robe a looped
silver cross and placed it in her hands. "Hold it and guard it, look
upon it as a symbol of that life eternal that you shall be kept
eternal, and which, taken from the hands of Azil the angel, shall be
transmuted within thee into the life of men."

Turning, he took the two goblets from their bearers and poured wine
from one to the other and back. One he extended to Naia and one to
Croft.

"Drink," he said. "Let these symbolize thy two bodies, the life of
which shall be united from this time in purpose. Drink and may Zitu
bless thee in that union which comes into existence by his intent."

Jason raised his goblet. "I drink of thee deeply," he spoke to the
lovely chalice of mortal life standing there.

Naia set her goblet to her lips. "And I of thee."

Then, and then only, Croft took that medallion of silver ringed with
red stones, which Zitra had burned against his breast. And lifting the
golden girdle which cinctured Naia's body above the hips he pinned it
once more upon it, so that it flashed like a scarlet eye, beneath the
newborn light.

Magur lifted his stave. "Azil's seal has he set upon her. Let it speak
to all men's sight."

"Hail! Hail! Mouthpiece of Zitu. Hail! Hail! Hail! Naia, maid of
Aphur!" From the vast arena a roar of acknowledgment and approbation
tore its way upward in the night.

So as it seemed ended Himyra's greatest holiday; so for Croft and Naia
began a new phase of life. Yet though she had never seemed nearer,
dearer to him, the Mouthpiece of Zitu was vaguely disturbed as they
rode back to the palace through the still pleasure-making crowds.
Everything seemed very peaceful, very auspicious. But he could not rid
his mind of the picture which had troubled him for a week--the picture
of a burning village--of blue men leaping in savage exultation of a
beaten army's rout.

Hence it was with no pleasure that an hour after their return from the
arena, while yet the city flared and rang with the carnival life of
the people, a palace guard brought word to him from Robur, asking his
presence at once.

Nor when he had followed to the audience chamber of the palace was he
surprised to meet a man with drawn face, and eyes a trifle haggard--a
man wearing Bithur's green and silver circle, who rose now and saluted
him with flat palm forward, and burst into hurried, excited speech.

"Mouthpiece of Zitu, Bithur is sore assailed--her armies beaten, the
aid Aphur sent her largely destroyed; wherefore in the name of Bithur
and of Tamarizia, Jadgor, president of the nation, now at Atla, sends
me to you and to Robur of Aphur, his son, to speak what is in his
heart."




                             CHAPTER XVIII

                          THE MAN OF THE HOUR


Jason went to Bithur. Naia remained behind. In the week before the
celebration of their former betrothal they had so planned. Now, with
the red and silver seal of Azil once more glowing in her girdle, Naia
did not object. She was a woman. Croft knew she suffered. It was in
her eyes, the touch of her hand. But--as he had seen her prove once
before--she was a Tamarizian first.

In the night Jadgor's messenger arrived, the assembly of Aphur was
called together. To it the Bithurian explained. Faces darkened and eyes
flashed as the startled statesmen learned that once more the integrity
of the nation was threatened. But, as a man, in firm determination they
empowered Robur and Croft to respond to Jadgor's plea, and accepted the
challenge to war.

At daylight, with the airplane he had flown from the first and a supply
of grenades and fuel, together with the additional armored motors
aboard a swift galley, Jason left for Bithur and the battle-front,
taking Jadgor's messenger along. With him also he took a supply of dry
cells to insure the better performance of the motors already on the
ground.

To Naia and Robur and the trained captains he left all the rest--the
assembling of troops, the lading of galleys with all sorts of supplies,
the forwarding of other completed airplanes with the men he started to
train in their use, whose training Naia of Aphur declared she would
complete.

Only at the last did he hold her in his arms and lower his lips to the
low burning flame of her mouth. For Naia of Aphur's lips were pale
as they lifted to his farewell caress, and her slender body quivered
inside his arms and her purple eyes were dark with her soul's distress.

"Yes," she said, clinging to him briefly, "you will come to me again.
Swear it to me by Azil, whose sign you have placed upon me--swear!"

"Yes, by Zitu and Azil, I will return to you, woman of all women,"
Croft declared, as he held her and once more pressed her lips.

Then gripping the hands of Gaya and Robur, he left the palace, and Naia
herself drove him down to the quays.

Seven days later he entered Bithra, the capital of Bithur, and left
it inside an hour, heading east along the Bith between banks where a
tropic vegetation came down to the water's edge, and the mighty flood
of waters swept in a turgid current between banks of trees.

Morning brought him close to Atla, as the pilot taken on at Bithra
declared. Also it brought attack of a sort. From the banks as they
advanced the galley was suddenly greeted by a flight of slithering
shafts. Most of them, thanks to the range, fell into the water, but
one or two reached the deck. Croft lined a company of riflemen he had
hastily mobilized and brought with him on either side of the galley
replied with a crashing volley as the galley advanced. So after that,
meeting flights of arrows with bullets, he progressed, reaching a bend
from which the gates in the city wall spanned the river's flood and
flinging the flag of Aphur into view before the sentries on the walls.

The gates swung open. The galley ran through. The gates were closed
again. The galley tied to a quay below the brown palace Croft had
visited in his astral presence; he marched off with his men. A
procession was debouching from the palace gate. It came toward him
quickly. He recognized Jadgor and Medai in the van. He halted his
company and waited. The others came on. Five paces before him they
halted.

"Hai! Mouthpiece of Zitu," Jadgor spoke in greeting. "Thy coming is
welcome. What word from Aphur and my son?"

"Aphur sends men and weapons to Bithur," Jason responded. "As for
Robur, son of Jadgor, he remains in Himyra to speed the departure for
Bithur of all that may be required."

"It is well," said Jadgor. "Return with us to the palace where all
things may be explained. Medai of Bithur greets you in Bithur's name."

Medai bowed deeply. The guards behind him and Jadgor turned. Followed
by Croft's company they retraced their steps until the palace was
gained.

       *       *       *       *       *

And there in the room, Croft, Medai and Jadgor sat down. The latter
eyed his former adviser and friend. "You are looking wondrous well," he
said.

"Yes," Croft nodded. "In all things have my efforts by success been
crowned."

"In all things?" Jadgor gave him a piercing glance.

"Yes," Croft again inclined his head. "Thanks largely to Robur,
Jadgor's son. But more of that later, Jadgor. Inform me how matters
stand."

Jadgor shrugged. "It would appear to go not so well with the things
in my hands as with your plans. From the first was the extent of this
matter with Mazzer misjudged; and in addition there is a fault in these
motors of yours, when not controlled by the builder's mind. Wherefore
they failed when most needed at times, and were by sheer force of
numbers overborne. As a result the blue flood of Mazzer laps even now
against Atla's walls on all sides."

"Yet breaks against them," said Jason.

"Aye as yet," Jadgor replied.

"And shall break utterly," Croft went on. "Of this defect in the motors
already I had learned, in the same way in which I have learned other
things in the past, as Jadgor knows. Wherefore his messenger came not
to Himyra as a surprise, and for seven suns before his coming, Robur,
Jadgor's son and I prepared." He broke off and watched the Aphurian
closely.

But Jadgor merely nodded as he responded: "Say on."

"Among those things which have been completed since my return to
Himyra," Croft resumed, "is one which flies in the air. Riding upon it
a man may cast down such bombs as were used at the taking of Niera in
the Zollarian war."

And now Jadgor started and narrowed his eyes, and Medai half rising
from his seat exclaimed: "Zitu! Is this the truth?"

"Yes," said Croft. "One came with me aboard the galley. Between decks
are the bombs. Today shall it be set up and tomorrow shall these blue
men meet with a surprise. Also have I brought devices to make the
performance of the motors more assured. From the ground and from the
air shall we smite the Mazzerians at once."

"Hai!" Medai roared. "Jadgor--to fly above them and rain death on their
heads. Never was such a thing heard of. You believe?"

"Aye." Jadgor of Tamarizia rose. "Zitu's Mouthpiece is a man who speaks
not in idle fashion, O Medai. He speaks true words. One does well to
give credence to his speaking." His hand snapped back and drew his
short sword from its scabbard. He presented it hilt forward. "Man whom
Zitu has sent to Tamarizia's strengthening, to thee I yield."

"No." Croft waved the sword aside. He looked into Jadgor's face and
found it working. "Mouthpiece of Zitu have I been called, in that at
times I have been given the power to direct or to advise. In Jadgor's
heart and mine must Tamarizia find first place always. Let Jadgor wear
the sword."

And suddenly Jadgor's lips set together. He sent the blade back into
the sheath with a rasping clash. "You and I together for Tamarizia
then," he said with abrupt decision, and thrust out his palm. "Accept
Jadgor's hand at least."

The two men gripped and the Aphurian resumed: "Speak, Mouthpiece of
Zitu, what do you advise?"

"What men have you at your disposal?"

Jadgor and Medai explained, and Croft decided upon a tour of the walls.
The trio set forth. And as they went Jadgor explained further that
three times within the past ten days had the Mazzerians attacked them.

Indeed, Croft gained evidence of that when the top of the wall was
reached. It came to him first as an almost insufferable stench. Jadgor
noted the twitching of his nostrils and burst into a savage exultation.

"Aye, by Zitu! they stink to the skies, these dead litter of an unclean
birth. The trenches about Atla's defenses are filled with their
corpses. They lie in heaps. They carpet the ground with a blue carpet,
even more foul in death than in their life. By the thousands have we
slain them, yet by the tens of thousands have their following spawn
arrived. Their souls have we hurled to Zitemku and their bodies to
the ditch." He swept his arm toward the outer parapet in a wide arc.
"Behold!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Croft looked out of an embrasure and down. An arrow rattled against
the stones beside him, and he drew back. But the one glance had been
enough. This was grim reality he faced. In heaps and rows the rotting
bodies of uncounted dead lay jumbled in dissolution beyond Atla's
walls. He began to think it would be no mean undertaking to defeat the
men of an army who fought like that.

"Back!" he said. "Back to my galley, Jadgor! Let us put together the
flying device I have brought. Tomorrow I swear we shall give them new
death from the skies."

And for the rest of that day Croft sweated and worked, assembling the
airplane on Atla's broadest street, which, like Himyra's, faced the
river--a splendid concourse, above a terrace, offering him a spot
for starting, two hundred feet in width. What of the armored motors
remained he had also driven up, and under their metal bodies he
installed his batteries, wiring them to the ignition system--explaining
to their drivers, how, should the former supply of power be thrown out
of service, this auxiliary source might be employed.

Toward evening, however, he altered his plans. To his mind it appeared
that the more unseen the destruction which came upon them, the greater
on superstitious minds the effect might be. And as he knew even from
his association with the Mazzerian serving-caste in the nation he had
literally adopted, the Mazzerians were superstitious to a degree.

About twilight he loaded the plane with a good supply of bombs.
Ascending from the broad thoroughfare, and returning to it, outlined
as it would be by the fire-urns, which, as at Himyra, marked the banks
of the Bith along the quays, would be no more than child's play. As
a result, he decided to make his first bombing expedition beyond the
walls so soon as night came down, carry what consternation he could
to the Mazzerian forces. This decision he definitely reached after a
conference with Jadgor, who announced that for a great distance before
the walls the Mazzerian camps were nightly marked by the flares of many
fires.

Jadgor, Medai, the major captains of their armies, and many of
the citizens of Atla stood to witness Croft's start. Wearing his
flying-suit which he had brought for the purpose, Jason climbed aboard.
Then at his instruction two frightened-looking soldiers seized the
blades of the propeller and turned the engine round. They let go and
scampered well out of the way as it roared. The plane quivered, moved.
It darted forward along the perfect pavement, tilted and took the air.
In a moment it soared high above the walls. Croft shouted once and then
forgot all else in the sight beneath his eyes.

As far as he could see before him, and to either side, the night was
dotted with fires. In a wide semicircle they blinked and winked and
flared. They outlined the main position of the Mazzerian army. His
heart leaped into his breast, as a rising stench told him he was
passing those rotting bodies stretched out among a mass of broken
weapons at the foot of Atla's walls.

Then the walls were passed, and with the breath of a clean night in his
nostrils, the roar of the engine in his ears, he swept toward the line
of fires.

Far, far out he swung. It was his intention to circuit the back areas
of the Mazzerian line--to come upon them not from in front, but from
the rear--to make his coming appear that of some huge, undreamed
monster of superstitious seeming, to traverse their main body from one
end to the other, dropping bombs which, under the conditions, he felt
could hardly fail of a telling effect.

Far, far out he swam on the new wings he had built for himself--and for
Naia. Naia? He smiled. In Himyra she was perhaps flying by day even as
he was flying now--flying as he had taught her to fly in body and soul;
teaching others to fly for the strength of her nation, as he was flying
for her nation and his, to make it strong and secure. For a moment the
thought gripped him, and he flew on in a sort of waking dream, until
the flare of a hundred leaping fires directly beneath him brought him
back to the matter in hand. He passed the first line of the Mazzerian
bivouac and darted above a wood and came above a great savanna--a
tree-dotted plain, where the camp-fires were flashing again.

Then, and then only, for the first time he reached down and took up a
bomb, and sailing high above that plain where the camp-fires looked
like a myriad of fireflies far beneath him, he let it fall.

A flash, a ruddy, great mushroom of golden, raying light--a splash of
rending destruction in the night. The explosion came up to him long
after he saw it, on the lagging vibrations of sound. Again and again he
hurled a second and third as he swam from left to right.

Faint, far away, oddly detached, he thought he heard a distant
shouting, though it was hard to be sure above the motor's roar. But the
light of other fires showed him the silhouette of many figures running,
of arms uplifted, as though those who swarmed like a hill of angry
ants driven into panic were pointing into the air. Where that cluster
of pointing forms seemed thickest he soared on swift, sure wings and
let go another bomb. It fell beyond his vision. It burst. The blur of
bodies into which it descended was no more.

       *       *       *       *       *

And now a strange mood seized Croft in its grip. It was unlike anything
he had ever known. It was in reality a sort of air intoxication one
may suppose. But suddenly it was as though he were a superman indeed,
above all things mundane, so far above the puny mortals who crawled on
the ground beneath him, who writhed under the force of his bombs, that
he moved in a world detached from them, or any one, or anything save
himself.

It was as though he rode on destiny's wings rather than upborne by
those of the roaring airplane. He tilted his vanes from no sane
purpose, with nothing to gain. Up, up he shot; up, up, until he
could see the whole night-wrapped region about him, the forest, the
fire-studded camp of Mazzer's army--Atla, a ruddy glow behind her
walls, where shortly he must return.

But not yet--not yet. For a time it was enough to chase this new found
exultation, to swim here in the void between earth and heaven, alone
with the thing he had made, on which he rode; alone with it, with his
spirit, and his thoughts of Naia of Aphur, of the time when these blue
spawn, driven back to their lairs in the hinterland of Palos, he should
return to claim her. It was enough to ride thus the winds of eternity,
as it were, sweeping on and on in the wheel of a mighty circle beneath
the stars.

A sputter, a cough from the motor. Croft came back from his dreams to
the present in a flash. The engine was missing. Apprehension touched
him with a breath-arresting recognition of the fact. And hardly had he
taken it into account when the motor missed again. And having coughed
for the second time, it died.

He was falling--falling! The bombs! Oddly enough he thought of them
rather than of being dashed to death. He reached down and found the
remaining four he had brought. He hurled them over the side of the
fuselage, tossing them wide. Then he began a frantic effort to once
more start the engine--in vain.

Below him four ruddy flashes told him the bombs had struck. In a
rushing whirlwind the air of night was driving past the plane. Doomed
as it seemed, still the will to live, to struggle, to overcome danger
and death itself remained within him. He began an effort to straighten
out the dead plane's course, to catch and use to his own advantage that
wind that was whistling past him now. To catch it, to ride once more
upon it, if only as a kite may sink back to the earth, and so alight,
little damaged rather than broken, splintered by a giddy fall.

So in the end he did straighten out at last and slid swiftly, where
before he had eddied and whirled.

"Zitu!" he breathed a prayer of thanksgiving. "God!" For an instant the
face of Naia swam before his mental vision, so clear, so bright, so
seemingly herself, that it was almost as though he beheld her in the
flesh.

Then--the fire-dotted plain was very close. And the airplane was
shooting down toward it, even though no longer falling, and there was
little chance to choose a course. With a crash the pontoons beneath it
struck through the top of a tree, and the whole machine swerved. In mid
air it staggered, checked, lunged ahead again like a restive living
creature, tipped, slid off sidewise, and crashed down on a crumpling
wing.

Unable to maintain himself in his shaken condition, Croft gave vent to
an inarticulate cry of anguish. The entire bulk of Palos seemed to rise
and hit him, as catapulted from the fuselage by the ruinous landing, he
struck and lay in a dark and senseless huddle on the ground.




                              CHAPTER XIX

                            A TAWNY VAMPIRE


Hours afterward, as it seemed, Croft opened his eyes, and blinked at a
flare of light and closed his lids again, while he sought to collect
his shaken senses.

He remembered by degrees.

The plane had fallen. There was nothing after that. But he had fallen
upon a night-wrapped plain, studded with the fires of a camp. Now,
instead of stars above him, there was what looked like the bellied top
of a tent. Slowly he spread the fringes of his lashes and sought to
verify the impression he had gained.

He was correct. He lay in a tent, seemingly of skins joined to form
the sloping top and walls. The interior was lighted dimly by a couple
of flaring torches. But the light was sufficient to show Croft piles of
military gear, rugs of native skin, on one of the latter of which he
seemed to be lying, and some crude stools scattered about.

He lay with head half turned as he had been thrown down, and now
he became aware of other life in the tent as his senses more fully
returned. There was a sound of voices. He opened his eyes widely and
stared about. And inwardly at least he gasped.

This was the headquarters of the army he had sought to bomb, past any
doubt. Blue men--a dozen, a score were clustered about a huge chair
to one side, in which another blue man sat. And yet--in the latter
Croft detected something familiar in a flash, and immediately after he
understood. He had heard it alleged that certain Zollarian captains
had stained their bodies and shaved their heads and dyed the remaining
scalp lock of their light hair to match the Mazzerian red.

And--and--this was Bandhor of Zollaria--brother of Kalamita--that tawny
female magnet with which the northern nation had sought to bind the
profligate Prince of Cathur to her cause. This was Bandhor, his massive
body stained blue in its every ungainly line, seated upon this chair
before which the other blue men stood. And inspecting the latter more
closely, marking their features well in the murky light, Croft decided
that most of them were men of Zollaria tinted and shaved and dyed like
Bandhor himself.

Here then was proof of Zollaria's hand in the Mazzerian invasion, proof
that Croft lay in the spot which was the brain center of the Mazzerian
army in the field. Croft's head was splitting, but he sought to focus
his attention on what was being said.

"Sayest thou that this man fell out of the skies?" Bandhor roared,
turning his eyes toward where Croft lay on the farther side of the tent.

"Aye," said one of the captains, whom Jason felt positive was a
Zollarian for all his naked blue length. "Aye, Bandhor, he fell from a
device like to a pair of wings. Before that had strange weapons fallen
upon my men from the skies in a rain of death. Then suddenly came this
man."

"Tamarizian devil," Bandhor swore with savage force. "This newest
method of their fighting would seem to be like their last, when they
struck Zollaria's army with a blast of fire. Go see if still he
breathes."

Two of the men turned and approached Croft. They bent above him. He
stared straight into their faces.

"Aye, Bandhor of Zollaria," reported one. "He has opened his eyes."

"Bring him here."

Croft rose. Without waiting the touch of a captor's hand he staggered
up and faced Bandhor's chair. "Stand back," he hissed to men beside
him. "I would walk alone." He took a step forward, swaying; whereupon
the others seized him and hurried him to Bandhor's place.

"Spawn of Tamarizia," Bandhor began, "what is thy name?"

"Thou hast said it, Bandhor," Croft retorted, determined to give no
information.

"Came you from Atla?" Bandhor roared.

"Yes."

"How many men inside her walls can Jadgor and Medai claim?"

"Enough," said Croft. "Enough blue-dyed men of Zollaria to pile other
thousands of your naked dupes before them. There are not men enough in
all Mazzer to scale at Zollaria's command Atla of Bithur's walls."

"Hai! By Bel of Zollaria thy fall has not broken thy tongue at least!"
Bandhor exclaimed. "But thy man-made wings are broken, and thy insolent
spirit may be broken also. Hai--bring a brazier and a spear head.
Since this Tamarizian fights with fire we shall give him a taste of it
himself, and learn perchance what within Atla transpires."

"Hold!" Suddenly the wall of the tent behind Bandhor's chair swept
back, revealing a small private tent beyond it, and a tawny woman
appeared.

White she was in the murky light as a ray of moonlight in the
dusk--white, and splendidly formed in every supple line of sensuous
body and limb. Jeweled cups covered her breasts, and a scarf of
shimmering tissue was twisted about her sinuous loins and fell half
down her thighs. With the grace of a stalking panther she advanced,
accompanied by another blue-stained Zollarian captain, and took her
stand beside her brother. In the flare of the torches she gleamed among
those blue-tinted bodies like a silver wand.

"Bethink you my brother," she continued as Croft recognized in
her that Kalamita, that feminine magnet of flesh, who had tempted
Cathur's Prince Kyphallos through the spell of her unclean charms, her
unhallowed embrace, "would destroy or even mar the weapon in your hand?"

"Hai, by Bel," began Bandhor.

"Aye," his sister went on. "Where are Bandhor's eyes? Call on Bel
and you will, yet have you not sacrificed to him enough of blood to
glut his heart, without adding this? See you not this is a man of
importance--and one to me before this described? Mark you not the
closeness of the hair upon his head, his stature? Know you not that
before you stands the Mouthpiece of Zitu of whom Tamarizia boasts--him
to whom Zollaria must mark the score of her defeat, her loss of Mazhur?
Rather than for gaining information can Bandhor not think of a better
way in which such a one may be used?"

"Hai--you mean a ransom, Kalamita my sister?" Bandhor burst out as she
paused.

"Aye." The eyes of a tigress looked into Croft's as she answered,
studied his every expression, marked the effects of her words. "Aye,
Bandhor, and you and other captains--and the ransom--should be--large.
Much should Tamarizia be asked in payment for her Mouthpiece of Zitu,
who tumbles from the skies."

And suddenly she smiled as she broke off her flippant taunt--smiled and
looked steadily into Croft's staring eyes.

"By Bel!" once more Bandhor roared. "The words of Kalamita are of
wisdom. Go--Mamai. Take portions of the device from which he fell. See
they are carried to Atla. Say that this man fell among us with them.
Demand a parley, at which terms for his return shall be named."

"Aye, Bandhor!" One of the captains saluted and left the tent.

       *       *       *       *       *

Inwardly Croft writhed. Here was a pretty pickle, indeed, since by
his own blunder he had become to Tamarizia a weakness rather than a
strength--since because of it, Tamarizia would seem to be confronted
with the choice of leaving him to fate or paying Mazzer's and
Zollaria's price. And--he had caught all the meaning in the tawny
depths of the Zollarian courtezan's eyes. That price would indeed be
large.

And now she bent and whispered into Bandhor's ear and he nodded. "Bind
him," he said, and pointed to Croft. "Lift him and bear him into my
sister's tent. Place a guard about us when it is finished. That is all,
my captains. We wait for word from Atla. Go!"

To resist was useless. Croft did not try. He stood passively while
his hands and feet were trussed. Even then he was trying to think, to
scheme some way out of the mess into which he had brought himself.
And--a vague question roused as to Kalamita's object in having him
carried into her own tent. Object he was sure there was, but it baffled
him for the moment. Then he was lifted and borne beyond the flapping
door through which she had entered, and laid on a pallet of skins
beside a copper couch.

The woman followed, remained standing until his bearers had left, then
approached and reclined on the couch from whence she could watch his
eyes.

"Mouthpiece of Zitu," she began after a moment of contemplation,
"Mouthpiece of Zitu, who tumbles from the skies."

Croft made no answer, and suddenly she left the couch and knelt beside
him. "You are a handsome man, Mouthpiece of Zitu; am I not beautiful
myself?"

"Yes," said Croft, since in a purely physical way she was no less than
a creature to drive most men mad, and he knew that she knew it, and
because of the knowledge, left none of her charms concealed.

"And"--she bent above him, closer, closer, until her reddened mouth
seemed about to touch him, until her breath played softly against his
cheek--"wisdom and beauty may accomplish much together, Mouthpiece of
Zitu, think you not?"

So that was it--wisdom and beauty together. A sudden loathing--an
impulse to put more space between that gleaming body, that blood-red
mouth so very close above him, gripped Croft and shook him. But he kept
it out of his voice and out of his eyes as he replied. "What mean you,
Kalamita of Zollaria, you magnet of the flesh?"

She laughed--laughed with a note of exultation in the sound as though
his words were a tribute to the power she knew was her own. "Why think
you Kalamita saved you from the fire?"

Croft quibbled. "Said she not the reason in words?"

The woman frowned. "Think you Jadgor of Tamarizia will pay the price
for you that Mazzer will ask?"

Croft knew that his heart leaped. He had been afraid--afraid--yet now
he recalled Jadgor as he knew him--Jadgor who had bowed his haughty
crest on the day just passed for Tamarizia, but never for himself.
Turning the thought in his brain he forget to answer.

"You know he will not." Almost Kalamita hissed. "And if not, is death
preferable to life, power--love? Wouldst prefer to lie in the ground,
wise man of Tamarizia, or in Kalamita's arms? Wouldst prefer to give of
your strength to Zollaria and her, or to the worms?"

       *       *       *       *       *

More and more Croft sickened at her words. For this he had been brought
into her private tent. There alone with this shameless woman he was
to be intrigued, turned traitor, in spirit and body seduced. Almost
instinctively he turned away his eyes. Her beauty had become a deadly
menace--the perfume of her tinted flesh had become a stench. To him she
was offering what to Cathur's prince had been given, which had made of
the man's name a synonym for treason in his nation. And now once more
she was speaking.

"Behold, we are alone. I can unbind you, and--Kalamita's couch
is--wide."

"Aye, too wide, by Zitu!" suddenly Croft roared. "The need was too
patent in its making to have foreseen the fact that width would be
required. Sister of Bandhor, beautiful as the dream of a soul in the
realms of Zitemku you may be, but--Jason of Tamarizia barters not the
welfare of his nation for a moment's lust."

"So!" Kalamita rose and stood above him. Cruel was her red lips' smile,
and cruel was the light that flashed from her oval, tawny eyes. "So,
then, we know your name at last. Hark ye, Jason--for Kalamita's favor
prouder heads than thine have bended down in the dust. Nor is her favor
a thing to be lightly brushed aside. Wherefore and Jadgor pays not the
price we ask, then the Mouthpiece of Zitu dies."

A space of time dragged past and Croft had not replied.

Suddenly Kalamita was again beside him. "Or, perhaps," she said in a
softer fashion, "it is because of that maid of Aphur, of whom one has
told me--that Jason turns aside. If so, forget her--and remember only
that Kalamita also is a woman."

"Nay--by Zitu, and Azil and Ga, the pure woman," Croft flamed. "Jason
forgets not the virgin to whom he is plighted for one who has lain in
Kyphallos of Cathur's or another's arms."

"By Bel." Once more Kalamita rose. A tremor shook her tightened figure
and quivered in her tones. "By Bel, who delights in slaughter, you
shall die by torture. Tested by fire shall you be, and staked out for
the insects to devour. The carrion birds of Mazzer shall pluck out your
beauty-blinded eyes. The beasts of the forest shall tear thy entrails
from thee for thy words to me." She turned and went swiftly toward the
flaplike door and flung it open. "Bandhor, O ay Bandhor!" she cried.

Her blue-stained brother appeared. They conferred together. Bandhor
turned away.

But only for a moment longer were Croft and the woman alone. Then
came Mazzerian soldiers, and lifting the trussed figure, bore it
swiftly into the night through Bandhor's tent and to another, smaller,
unlighted as to its interior, with naught for a floor save the
grass-grown ground. And there they flung him down.

But Jason smiled. That quiet dark, the sweet, pure kiss of the grass
beneath him was better than the atmosphere he had left. He stretched
out his limbs so far as his bonds would let him and breathed a sigh of
relief.

And after a long time, as it seemed to his troubled senses, all his
planning focused on Zud and Naia--dwindled down to those two words.
Lying here, bound, practically doomed to die, he could yet communicate
with them in the astral state. To Zud, whom he had taught to recognize
his coming, he could go then, and even though thereby he made his own
death practically certain, he would still serve best the Tamarizian
states. And Naia---he quivered at the thought. Naia--as he knew her,
would like himself, consider him unworthy if he did less than that.
Therefore he took a deep breath; he would go to Zud.

And swiftly as the thing was always accomplished when he so desired
it, he was bending over the high priest's body, asleep in the Zitran
pyramid.

"Zud," his spirit was calling. "The Mouthpiece of Zitu commands you.
Come forth."

And Zud appeared. "Aye, Jason of Zitu," he quavered. "Zud is here."

"List ye, Priest of Zitu," Croft replied, and told him what had
occurred. "Wherefore give ear further to my words. Go to Lakkon, and
bid him, in Zitu's name, to send to Jadgor at Atla, advising him to
hold out and seek for delay until the aid from Himyra arrives. Let it
be said to him that Zollaria inspires all things which Mazzer requires.
Let him know that through the power of the spirit which is mine, I
shall inspire Naia of Aphur to cause Robur, his son, to come swiftly
to Atla in person, to direct the use of the weapons that together with
myself he understands, and that through you and Naia of Aphur, I shall
keep him informed of all that transpires while yet my body survives."

"And thou--thou?" Zud faltered in distraught fashion, clasping his
shadowy hands.

"I? I know not," said Jason. "My fortune is in Zitu's hands. To you I
give this mission. Say that you understand."

"Zud hears, and Zud obeys."

Croft left him. His work was finished. He sought Himyra and Robur's
palace, and Naia---his other self. And this part of his plan he felt
would be the hardest, since in order to make her comprehend fully he
must tell a painful truth--must confess that through his own daring
was Jason at last undone--that his body lay prisoner to Mazzer,
condemned if what he meant to attempt were accomplished, to what seemed
inevitable death.

And suddenly, as he gained her chamber, Croft had the odd sensation
that he stood before a tomb. Why it was he did not know at the moment,
but it was as though he faced a ravished or an empty shrine. So
strongly had he willed himself to this spot that the very concentration
of his purpose had blotted out all else, and only now, when he reached
it, did there come upon him the feeling that his coming here was vain.

Yet he crept inside. He moved swiftly toward her couch. In the dusk her
form lay stretched upon it. But--it was motionless, with no stirring
of the coverlet stretched above it, no evidence of breath. Pale as a
lovely image it lay before him, in the semblance of what might be death.

       *       *       *       *       *

Fear--sheer, stark fear gripped Croft and held him through the span of
a startled instant. And then he knew the truth. Because as he stood
there it seemed to him that Naia of Aphur was calling--not from the
form on the couch, but from somewhere else. "Jason--Jason--O Jason, my
beloved!" that subtle cry rang out.

And it drew him. It compelled him. It was the voice of love--the voice
of the affinity of the ages, soundless, as the spinning of the planets
down the grooveless tracks of time--a blind thing, a mad thing, beyond
all thinking in its sweetness--the voice of atom to atom--of the soft
wind to the pollen--the voice of the bird to its mate--of the maiden to
her lover--the ceaseless song of creation--the voice of God to man.

"Jason--O my beloved!"

It filled Croft's being. It engulfed him. It caught him up and carried
him he cared not whither on the tide of a swift irresistible flood. It
made of his astral substance no more than a straw swept up and off and
about in an eddy of compelling force. It was more like that ceaseless
urge which had drawn him from the Dog Star always while yet he dwelt on
earth.

It carried Croft out of the palace and across the Central Sea. It swept
him across Bithur, with its plains and night-wrapped woods. It drew him
above the camp of the Mazzerian army, and inside that tent where his
body lay stretched out upon the ground.

And then Croft understood--that Naia had accomplished for herself, what
heretofore had been by him induced--that her spirit's love--her desire
for knowledge, had enabled her soul to break the body's bonds. That as
she suggested she might, in a former conversation, she had found the
way to visit him in dreams.

Yes, Croft knew all this in a blinding flash of comprehension.
Because--there in the little tent, its auric fires paling and glowing,
its soft arms twined about his unconscious body, lay Naia's astral form.

She had come to find him. Suddenly it seemed to Croft that he might
have known. And all at once he was glad, with a great unreasoning
gladness that when she came, she had found him here alone, like this
rather than in Kalamita's tent.

Then very softly, "Beloved," he let steal forth the soul call.

She heard. She lifted her head from where it had lain upon his breast.
She turned its wide eyes toward him, and saw him and rose swiftly
toward him, and into his embrace.

"Jason--I came to Atla, and could not find you. And I sought
you--sought you. What is the meaning of this?"

"The plane fell. I told you always there was danger," he explained
briefly. "I was taken prisoner by the Zollarian masters of the men of
Mazzer. I am held to ransom for a price."

"Zitu!" Naia panted. "And what else?"

"I went in the spirit to converse with Zud, and send him on a mission
to thy father," Jason told her, loath to answer her questions with a
mere avowal of the numbing truth--that truth which as it seemed must
blast their own hopes for the future, unless in some blind way he could
contrive escape. "Through him I shall send word to Jadgor that the
price must be refused."

"Refused?" Naia drew back slightly. Those quivering fires of her life
force faltered, grew dim and uncertain, died down like a flame well
nigh blown out by a deadening wind of fear. "But Jason--thy body--which
I found lying--here?"

"Belongs to thee, while yet it survives," Croft answered slowly, and
went on before she could find a reply. "Then went I to Himyra, and
finding your form stretched on its couch, seemed to hear you calling,
and returned to find you here. Listen, Naia, my beloved, you must find
Robur and speak to him for me. To Jadgor you must send him, explaining
what has befallen, telling him from me as the one Lakkon sent will tell
him, that when Robur shall arrive to take charge of the motors and
the riflemen of Aphur, they must strike, strike, strike until Bithur
shall be freed. Also to Robur you must say he shall call on Nodhur and
Milidhur to arm so quickly as they may, and send their men to reenforce
and support Aphur. So shall Tamarizia vanquish Mazzer and once more
defeat those things Zollaria plans."

"And--you ask me--to do this?" Naia faltered.

"Aye--for Tamarizia I ask it," Croft replied.

"But--you--you?" She glanced toward the tight-bound body.

Croft sought to stay her questions. "Look not there, beloved. I am
here."

"But--unless this price of Mazzer you mentioned--be paid?" She would
not be refused.

       *       *       *       *       *

Croft drew her to him. His position was perhaps rather more peculiar
than that of any living man. The answer to what she had asked was
death, and he knew it. Once he had snapped the astral cord that bound
him to a body, but only after control of another had been gained. And
that second body, the one he had made his own on Palos when he forsook
earth because of the woman whose vital substance now glowed and paled
against him, was the one which lay bound beside them on the ground.
There was no other--the loss of it meant to him what the loss of
physical life must mean to all men--nothing else. "If the price is not
paid, it is easy enough to snap the cord that binds my life within it,
at the proper time," he said at length.

"And," said Naia in a tone of horror, "you would ask me in taking your
message to Robur, in sending him to Jadgor, to consign our love to
death?"

"The price," said Croft in justification, "is very great. Much will
Mazzer ask--more than by Tamarizia can be paid for one man's life."

Swiftly the auric fires leaped up in Naia's slender figure. "Is there
no escape?"

"I know not," Croft made answer. "It is as Zitu wills. These Zollarians
with the men of Mazzer have stained themselves blue. Yet whom have I to
stain my body, were the stain within my grasp, or shave my hair and dye
it red in time to make the venture? This tent is under guard, and will
be, and the hands of my body are bound."

Naia considered. "And the price Mazzer will ask," she spoke slowly
after a time, "is large?"

"Aye, as large, I fear, as though the Zollarian war had been lost by
Tamarizia and Mazhur not regained."

"And if not paid--your body--dies--and mine."

"Thine?" Croft tightened the grip of his arms upon her. "What mean you,
maid of Aphur, by such words?"

"Aphur means what Aphur says," she returned, and looked him in the
eyes. For a moment her own were steady, and then they wavered. She
clung to him in an almost frantic agony of what seemed a momentary
panic of more than mortal grief. Then that, too, had passed, giving way
to an almost passionate mood. "Think you that when life has left your
body, Naia of Aphur, too, shall not lie dead; that to her the body has
no longer any meaning, save as it delights you, save as through it she
knows the touch of yours? Did you not swear to me by Zitu and Azil to
return and claim me? And if that promise remains unfulfilled, think you
that Naia of Aphur will live?"

"Yet," Croft stammered, shaken by this breath of passion, dazzled by
the flashing of her being's fire, "if the welfare of Tamarizia demands
the failure of that promise--if not with honor can I return to Himyra
in the body. If your words, beloved, make doubly hard my purpose,
when you shall have left me and returned to carry my message to your
cousin--"

"By Zitu--and by Zitu," Naia fired into desperate protest, "it shall
not be. Azil, giver of life! Shall these foul spawn of Zitemku keep you
from me? Nay, as I am a daughter of Ga, with your seal upon me, now Ga
speaks to me!" She broke off and lifted her hands to her breast. Her
very eyes were fired.

So for a moment she stood before she went on. "Hark you, Jason, whom I
love more than my own soul. This tent is guarded as you have said, and
a price is laid on Tamarizia for your returning. Yet am I not woman
whom you have wakened for nothing, and my love is not in vain. What
price for a man who is dead?"

"By Zitu!" Croft caught her meaning. His glance turned toward the body
on the ground beside their feet.

And Naia nodded. "Aye--Gaya told me in speaking of those things you
told to Robur and to Zud, and now I know for myself that when the
spirit is without it, the body lies as dead. Wherefore were it possible
for you to remain as now you are for a space sufficient to deceive
these men of Mazzer into thinking that injured in your fall you
perchance had died--think you they would keep your body under guard or
even near them, lest it foul the air even like those rotting corpses
which tainted it with horror as I passed this night by Atla's walls?"

"No by Zitu--they would cast it forth in some other place," Croft
answered quickly. "Naia--Ga--priestess of life, you have said it.
Together we shall beat them yet."

"Aye, we shall beat them. Listen further," Naia said. "For a few suns
you shall appear to be alive, yet faint and not recovered from injury.
To Himyra shall I return and carry your message to Rob. When seven
suns beginning with the next are passed, then must you seem to die.
Thus shall they carry you forth. But the seven days shall be to gain
time for what you direct to be done. Hai, I am not daughter of Ga for
nothing. Beloved--give me your mouth. I must be gone."

Life! Life and this woman! There was a chance. Her wits had found it
where his had milled around. Daughter of Ga was she as she said--and
perhaps Ga--the eternal woman, _had_ spoken to her through the elements
which went into forming her nature first. Croft took her once more
closely into his arms.

"Seek not to leave your body for one moment between now and the end of
the seventh sun," she cautioned, "lest one should note it and so at the
proper time entertain a doubt of your real death."

Croft marveled. To him she seemed to think of each infinitesimal
detail. "No," he gave his promise. "I shall be merely as one who from
one sun to another fails."

Naia lifted her lips. And as once before in similar fashion, she
yielded them to him. For an instant it was as though their two beings
blended, intermingled, and then she had torn herself from him, divinely
glowing. "Zitu keep you, beloved," she whispered, and vanished from
before his eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

For the succeeding seven days Croft endured--simply endured
discomfort--the trussing up of his arms and feet at night in none too
gentle fashion, the scant irregularity of poorly furnished meals, the
absence of aught save trampled grass to sleep upon, renewed attempts on
the part of Bandhor to force from him some intimation of Tamarizia's
plans--the haughty, venomous hate that glared out of Kalamita's
tawny eyes--that fury of a woman of the purely physical type, whose
allurement has been scorned--of an adventuress, a schemer, whose scheme
has failed.

But on the seventh day, as he lay brooding in his tent, close by the
huge skin headquarters tent of Bandhor, which reminded him more of some
Tatar chieftain's domicile than anything else, with its hide walls, its
semibarbaric trappings, its red-and-green standard floating on a pole
before its door, the door of his own tent was drawn slightly to one
side and a face appeared to send his heart leaping into his breast.

Maia, Naia's own maid, was looking shrewdly into his starting eyes.
And as lost in a maze he lay staring at her, filled with a vast wonder
at her presence here in the heart of the Mazzerian camp, yet afraid to
speak--torn between a desire to learn the meaning of her presence and a
fear lest any sign of recognition should destroy whatever purpose that
presence might portend, she flung the flap entirely back and darted
inside.

"Thou canor of Tamarizia!" she cried in the voice of a termagant--a
shrew--and struck him with her right hand a smart blow. "Thou foul
offspring of Zitu fallen to the ground--thou devil who sent fire
against my people, whose own people have cast him off, die--like the
canor thou art!" And all the time she was shrieking she continued to
buffet him with blows, striking him with her bare hand, kicking him
with her feet. "Die, thou pale-faced fiend, whom Bel--greater than thy
Zitu struck down and hurled among us--die--die now!"

But Croft, under the storm of her words, her buffetings, made no
movement of resistance, lay limp and unresisting on the grass. Because
even as she struck him, even as she lashed him with her tongue, calling
him fiend and devil and canor--the name of the great beasts such as
Naia's pet and protector, Hupor, which was the nearest approach in
Palos to a dog; yet as her one hand rose and fell above him, her other
drew from the narrow apron about her blue loins a little looped silver
cross, and showed it to him briefly and thrust it back, and between
the anathema of her lips they moved in almost soundless speaking.
"Hupor--give ear to my berating of thee closely. I come from one who
loves thee greatly--to show you the cross."

The cross ansata--the looped symbol of life--the little sign Zud had
placed in Naia's hands at their betrothal--the sign of immortal life
which came to men through women--Naia of Aphur was sending it by this
servant of hers, who loved her, to him! He closed his eyes and nodded
slightly in understanding as Maia continued to rave. Only now his brain
was whirling, seething; was a caldron of troubled questions he dared
not voice--questions as to why Maia had been sent to aid in his escape,
as he felt sure now she had. Yet to question the girl was impossible
under the present conditions, and what was she screaming?

"Die--thou canor--die as Bandhor has decreed thou must, since Jadgor
has refused thy ransom! Die now--thou Tamarizian dog!"

And she had told him to listen closely to her vituperations. Croft
gained the message she intended. Jadgor had done as he advised, and
Bandhor's captive had lost value. Wherefore he kept his eyes closed,
and seemingly died.

Footsteps! Croft's guard burst through the door. He seized Maia and
flung her to one side, and stooped above the body with a face of
terror. And then he straightened and turned upon her. "By Bel, you have
killed him!" he stammered. "He has been ailing ever since he fell among
us. Fool that I was to listen to your plea to view him. May Bel send
you our commander's rage."

"That rage," Maia said, panting as it seemed from her exertions and
emotions, "seeing that he is of value no longer, should not be so
intense."

"Come!" The guard seized her by an arm and led her toward Bandhor's
tent.

Croft went along, trailing the man and woman's steps. And once inside
the huge shelter of skins, the guard saluted sharply and hurled Maia
before the Zollarian noble, so that she sprawled her length on the
ground.

"Behold, O Bandhor"--he made his report in a gruff bluster designed to
cover his own face as well as he could--"this woman who made her way by
stealth into Jason of Tamarizia's tent and struck him so that he died!"

"Hai!" Bandhor half rose, and sank back and narrowed his eyes. He
regarded Maia, who groveled before him, her body caught and held,
half-raised, on stretching arms, her head lifted, gazing into his
startled face with watchful eyes.

"How are you called?" he inquired.

"Maia," stammered the woman. "Child am I of a father and mother who
have lived among his people. All my life have I served them until Bel
sent Bandhor and my father's people to bring liberation. Then I slipped
away and made my way to thy army, with which I have stayed the past
sun. Wherefore, hearing that Bandhor had condemned this one to death,
I desired to see him and, seeing him, rage overcame me, and I threw
myself upon him. Mercy, O Bandhor, mighty commander of my people, for
this which I have done."

"Hai!" said Bandhor again, his lids contracting still further. "After
all, it is a small matter, though my sister will be annoyed. She had
planned a more lingering death for this insolent man. Yet to death was
he condemned, and it is finished. Say you that from the bondage of his
people you have come?"

"Aye, from Atla, lord."

"Atla! Now, by Bel!" Bandhor roared. "And what inside the penned-up
city do these white spawn plan?"

"They speak of resistance," Maia made answer, "as Bandhor knows. But
perchance he knows not that many men from Aphur have arrived, armed
with the chariots they call moturs, which run by fire, and breathe it
forth as death, and with the sticks that throw death unseen with noise
and smoke, unlike the flight of an arrow or spear. Ten thousand have
reached Bithra, and are advancing to the relief of Atla even now. More
are said to be journeying from Aphur across the Central Sea, and yet
others from Nodhur and Milidhur are to come."

"Hai!" For the third time Bandhor said it with a heavy frown. "This
is of importance. For the information your words contain, I give you
pardon--were those other of thy father's children in Tamarizia as
loyal--much might be wrought of ill among them were their caste of
servants to rise and kill and burn. Go!" He turned to the guard, whose
face had lightened. "Take men and bear forth this body, and cast it
beyond the camp. Or hold! I will view him myself." For the third time
his eyelids narrowed, and he rose.

       *       *       *       *       *

Followed by Maia and the guard, he entered Croft's tent and bent over
the body on the ground. "Aye--his spirit has left him," he said as he
straightened from the inspection and swung about on his heel.

"Mighty Bandhor," Maia stayed him. "I may remain for a time in the
camp."

Bandhor eyed her. "Oh, aye," he said in careless fashion. "You are a
comely girl of your people; you should have small trouble in finding
some man to take you to his tent."

He turned away, and a moment later a brazen trumpet began sounding
a summoning blast. As Croft learned, this was a signal to Bandhor's
captains and advisers to assemble for a council with their chief.

Maia stole out with the arm of the guard about her, walking coyly at
his side. Quite plainly the fellow was inclined to take Bandhor's
suggestion about her to himself. Croft watched them vanish, and
remained beside his own body, still huddled on the grass.

And in the end he followed it--followed his own body when it was borne
outside the limits of the encampment and cast into a thicket of bushes,
where its disposition was watched by Maia, who accompanied the now
openly amorous guard and lingered beside the thicket with him after the
other soldiers had cast down their burden and gone.

"Let us remove its clothing," she suggested. "To waste it were a loss."

The guard assented.

Five minutes later, more than a little aghast, Croft found his material
tenement stretched stark upon the ground. Maia and her lover were
moving off. In her arms the girl bore his suit of soft, brown leather.

In a way now Croft became more and more disturbed. Vague fancies filled
his mind. At the first he had trusted her wholly, but this last move he
did not understand. He recalled the story Parthys had told of the blue
servants rising against their employers during the present trouble, and
he marked the manner in which she accepted the blue man's advances.

After all, she was a Mazzerian herself, he thought, and there was no
reason save her possible affection for Naia to insure her worthiness
of trust. Still--she had shown him the tiny cross from the apron about
her waist, and she had told him to die, as Naia had advised he should.
After all, she might have some definite reason beyond his present
knowledge for divesting his body of clothes. And he could do nothing
until nightfall. That being the case, and the night being several
hours removed, there was nothing to do but wait. Dead it might be in
seeming, yet Croft knew that lying thus in the open his body needed
protection. In the middle of the thicket he settled down beside it. It
was rather odd, he found himself thinking, to be sitting there keeping
an invisible watch of his own form.

Now and then, as the afternoon passed, he stole a glance at the camp.
There was bustle there, a moving and shifting of men. It came to him
that Bandhor, after his council, was preparing for another attack
of Atla, urged thereto by Maia's report concerning the approaching
reinforcements of weapons and men. Well, let them attack, he thought
with a grim satisfaction. Jadgor would hold out through yet one more
attack surely, and by then Bandhor would have lost his chance, once
Robur and his forces had arrived.

Night came at last. Purposely Croft waited until late before making his
venture at escape. And while he waited, there stole into the thicket a
dim shape, which approached his body and sank beside it on the ground.

It was Maia. More than a little surprised, Croft watched her. She
carried a bundle. She undid it. She moved higher beside his body and
raised his head, supporting it on her thighs. Then swiftly she began
to shave it, turning it to reach the back, and working rapidly on the
sides. That done, while comprehension flashed into Croft's mind, and
with it renewed confidence in this girl, as he recalled his words to
Naia concerning some such thing as this, she took a small box from her
bundle and began rubbing the scalp-lock she had left upon his poll with
a substance it contained. After that she lifted a flask and removed a
stopper. Working rapidly, she began smearing the body with some dark
fluid, spreading it thinly upon the skin, rubbing it to as even a
coating as she might with rapid hands. And as she worked Croft's body
lost its ivory whiteness and became a dark-hued thing like her own. At
the end she took a small cloth from the articles she had brought with
her and twisted it deftly about his loins.

And as she finished and straightened herself from her labors, Croft,
sensing it time for his reviving, opened the eyes of the body over
which she had worked and spoke.

"Hai," said Maia, without any particular evidence of consternation. "It
is even so she said it would happen when I had finished. She said that
when I had shaved you, lord, and reddened your hair, and stained your
body, and put the loin-cloth upon it, you would reappear."

"She?" Croft questioned her quickly. "You mean Naia of Aphur, Maia?"

"Aye. Who else, Hupor Jason?" She rose and picked up her bundle. "Naia,
my mistress. These are your garments. Come, Hupor, till I lead you to
her. She lies near."




                              CHAPTER XX

                        THE BLUE GIRL OF APHUR


She lies near! Croft's senses reeled and then steadied into the
blinding truth--the sweetness of it, the full meaning of it--and yet
the possible peril to her whom it concerned.

Naia of Aphur lay near him--had come to his rescue.

Then--then--seven days before she had not told him all the plan she had
in mind. She had told him only the essential portion which most closely
concerned himself--and the rest--this thing--the part which dealt with
her aid and assistance when the time for it should arrive, she had
left unspoken, knowing no doubt he would forbid her risking her own
integrity in an effort to succor him.

For an instant he thrilled with blended feeling, and then he spoke to
Maia. "You mean?"

"That she lies hid some distance beyond the camp of thy enemies, Hupor.
Come."

"But--" Croft found himself confused by the manner of Naia's presence.
Barely seven days had passed since she must have wakened in Himyra
after their astral conversation in the tent where he lay bound. The
time was not sufficient to brand Maia's words as truth. And yet Croft
knew that he believed them. How, then, had Naia come?

Almost with impatience Maia interrupted. "Seven suns from now she waked
from her slumber, Hupor, in a most strange mood. For the Hupor Robur
she sent me, and for long they spoke together, and after that she spoke
with me again. Bidding me place her in the garment she wears when she
dares to rise in the air, she took me with her to the great house where
the thing she rides is kept, and compelled me to enter it with her, so
that my spirit turned as weak as water when, with a great roaring, we
leaped into space."

"Zitu--you mean she flew to Bithur?" Croft's stained chest rose
sharply. His eyes began to flash.

"Aye, Hupor--partly in the air like a bird, and partly on the water
like a boat--which, praise to Zitu, was calm, and with wonderful speed."

"But fuel--what is burned in the motor?" Jason questioned.

Maia shrugged. "Her lips, not mine, should tell you how, like a bird to
its mate, she came to seek thee, Hupor," she admonished. "Yet--were not
the great galleys already seeking to reach Bithur with men and weapons
by the Hupor Robur's orders? And though he swore by Zitu and Azil she
should not undertake this madness, he did not refuse to his cousin that
which would spell her death. On the waves we rode beside the galleys
when the thing that makes the motor turn was required."

"My God!" Croft spoke not as a man of Tamarizia, but of earth. Naia had
solved all difficulties, driven by the desire of saving him from the
results of his own misfortune. She had overcome all obstacles in her
desire to reach him. And this was love--the flight of Naia of Aphur, as
the blue girl had phrased it, like that of a bird to its mate.

"On the night of the sun before this we came down in an open place in
the forest," Maia explained further. "There the great wings we rode on
lie hid. And some distance farther in this direction she awaits thee,
Hupor. Come."

"Aye," said Croft, and caught a great, a wondrous breath of
realization. "Aye, come." And now as he moved off, where he had delayed
before he seemed fired by an all-compelling haste.

To reach her--to meet her--to greet her and gather her into his arms!
To hold her, sense the strength, the softness, the ripened glory of
her; to hold her, and know that no matter how beautiful she was in
body, the beauty and strength of her spirit was no less. To hold her
and know, realize, feel that the beauty, the strength, the glory of
both soul and body were his. He started out of the thicket at a pace
that made Maia gasp:

"Walk not so quickly, Hupor, and permit that I walk at thy side. Seen
we may be of many, and though thou are stained to the seeming of a man
of Mazzer, yet were it best that you seem also not as one in haste, but
as a man who strolls through the camp with a woman at his side."

"Aye." Croft nodded in understanding and slackened his stride.
"Aye--Maia--yet lead me to her as quickly as you can."

Their course led them after a time into the depths of the gloomy
forest, where the moons were blotted out or their light filtered in
streaming tatters through the trees. And there Croft spoke again to his
companion.

"I failed to understand when you put it into the mind of the guard to
make way with my clothes."

       *       *       *       *       *

Maia made a clicking sound suggestive of an almost impish amusement
as she answered. "But--since I was to paint your body, Hupor, it
was easier for me to bring the pigments wrapped inside them, when I
slipped away from him after he had drunk wine into which I had dropped
a substance to induce heavy slumber I had brought with me inside my
girdle band. Indeed, we three appear now no more than as other children
of Mazzer. My mistress, when we come upon her, will seem no other than
myself."

"You mean you have stained her?" Jason questioned.

"Aye, lord, from the roots of her golden hair to her graceful heels.
For two suns, as I have told you, has it been needful for her to lie in
the open while I made my way to the camp and performed my mission, and
had any come upon her--"

She turned aside and swept back a screen of branches. She plunged
through and came into a break in the forest close to the banks of a
tiny stream across a little glade. And there she pursed her lips and
sent quivering through the moonlight what seemed a nightbird's call.

It was answered. Maia repeated, and paused, and whistled again. Then
touching Croft on the arm, she urged him forth from the shadow until he
stood revealed in the rays of the Palosian moons.

And from the shadows beyond him another shape appeared. Slight it was
and slender, graceful as a faun, as it came swiftly toward him on
flying feet, graceful as a dryad of the forest in its every supple,
sweeping line save for where it was girdled by a band of white.

So much Croft saw, and advanced to meet it, and found it Naia, veiled
as she stood before him from head to waist in the heavy cloud of her
auburn-tinted hair.

And then she lay against him--his arms were straining her to his
breast, and that cloud of ruddy hair was like the kiss of satin against
his naked chest. And her hands were clinging to him, her arms were
holding him fast.

"Jason, beloved," she panted, "you are safe--uninjured, alive!"

"Yes--thanks to you, beloved, and to Maia," Croft replied, and kissed
her.

"Thou"--Naia of Aphur flung up her head and turned to the girl of
Mazzer--"thou who this night have brought me more than life or anything
besides--thou shall never leave me--thou shall remain always with
me--and with him. My children you shall cradle in your arms--and if
love comes to you as to me and offspring, I swear it--to me they shall
be as mine."

"My mistress," Maia faltered, bending her head before Naia.

"Nay--you are my sister," said Naia, smiling, and took her by the hand.
And after that she spoke again to Croft. "Yet--I am forgetting. Not
yet are we free from danger. Thrice today have men roamed through the
forest while I hid me beneath the leaves. But thy huge bird waits to
bear us high above them. Come, beloved, come."

For an hour after that, his arm about her, or walking hand in hand--as
though now they were once more together they sought the assurance of
the fact through every thrilling sense--they hurried on. And then once
more the moonlight filled all the bowl of a tree-ringed opening in the
forest, and struck dull gleams from the copper body of the waiting
airplane. Huge, impotent, in seeming, it squatted there, waiting
their touch to wake it; its interlacing struts and trusses making a
spider-webbed pattern in shadow on the ground.

Naia drew her ruddy tresses about her as they stepped into the forest
meadow.

"Put on your flying garments now, beloved," she prompted, "while Maia
and I find ours and put them on."

Five minutes later Croft lifted both women to their seats. Then as
Naia, save for her strained face and changed hair, very much herself in
her brown flying garments, took her place at the control, he seized the
blades of the propeller and sent the engine round.

       *       *       *       *       *

The plane swung with them like some monster bat beneath the skies. It
turned. It rushed off under Naia's guiding, its vanes all silvered now
like the top of the forest in the moonlight, bearing its burden of
renewed life and love.

Far, far away on the plain where Croft had lain captive, still winked
the light of fires. They came closer, closer, as the airplane ate
through the trackless distance--were beneath it--were left behind.

Around, in a monster circle--a descending spiral. Once more around.
Again and again in a vast, wide turning, sinking lower and lower down.
The lights on the Bith were closer. Closer the fire-urns burned. Below
was the wide-flung reach of the street along the river, and straight
above it the airplane swung. The hum of the motor died, and the night
wind sang in a sinking whisper past it. It slipped down a long hill of
air and sped along the ground.

And as it stopped, as Croft lifted Naia from her seat, from the
entrance of Atla's palace there dashed a chariot drawn by gnuppas,
their plumes tossing, bearing down on the plane with flying feet.
Straight as though driven in a race, it approached and paused, with
the gnuppas on their haunches. Robur of Aphur flung aside its silklike
curtains and sprung down.

"By Zitu--and by Zitu, my friend--my brother--and thou, Naia, my
cousin, thou chosen of all Zitu's children!" he cried, all poise or
thought of dignity vanishing as he caught them in his arms.

       *       *       *       *       *

They entered the carriage and reclined upon the padded cushions, the
princess commanding Maia to take a place at her side. They were driven
to the palace, and there Croft was led to a room. And there attendants
labored until the last of the blue pigment vanished, and his skin
merged from beneath it a most surprising pink from the necessary force
they used. As for the ruddy scalp-lock, he had it shaved off as the
simplest way of settling the matter regarding his hair. He was glowing,
both literally and with the thoughts induced by the manner of his
escape and return when Robur appeared.

Bidding the servants fetch his customary garments, leg-cases, tunic,
helmet, and metal cuirass, he dismissed them and proceeded to clothe
himself.

"Hai!" Robur eyed him. "As once before I remarked, thou art 'a sight.'
And a sight thou art for more than the eyes of a maid, Jason, my
friend. In Zitu's name, what chanced to the airplane that thy plans
went wrong? In Atla there was well-nigh a panic when you failed of your
return."

Croft explained, and Robur nodded.

"Aye, it was the same with the motors when they 'stalled,' and they
knew not how to start them; and as you have explained to me, there is
small time to work upon a motor in the air. My father, however, swore
it was a judgment of Zitu against him for his stand of the past few
Zitrans toward thee. Then came Zud and Lakkon with your message, and
word that fresh men and weapons were assured to lighten his cares."

"And the dynamo, Rob?" Croft questioned, buckling his cuirass straps
and standing once more appareled in silver and gold, with the wings and
cross in blue upon his breast.

"Lies on a galley even now beside the quays," Robur replied. "What of
it, Jason? You have a plan?"

"Yes," Croft nodded as he laid a hand on his sword. "A plan to show
that its wires as well as light, may build a cordon about Atla's walls,
to touch which shall mean death. Then let Mazzer's Zollarian-commanded
horde attack."

"Aye--say you so." Robur gained his feet. "Two thousand riflemen are
with me; four times their number come from Bithra, and should arrive
tomorrow. Nodhur and Milidhur will send us others. Also, there are the
motors--twelve, all numbered--and the remaining airplanes, with men who
know how to fly them to some extent. Aye, let Mazzer and her Zollarian
leaders attack. But if you are ready, come. I was sent to bid you to a
feast."

"A feast?" Croft eyed him sharply.

And Robur smiled. "Aye, a feast in quality, my friend, if not in
numbers," he replied. "Come along, you favored one of Zitu. Naia of
Aphur acts hostess tonight to her lord."

Yet even so, Croft did not understand as he followed his friend to a
small apartment where a table was spread, and found Medai of Bithur,
Jadgor, Lakkon, Zud, and Naia, already reclining on the couches ranged
about the board. Nor did he consider greatly, after he had gripped
the hand of each man present and looked into old Zud's eyes with a
glance of mutual understanding, and taken the place at Naia's side she
indicated by a gesture of her hand.

She was in white--all save the golden fabric of her girdle where
against the glistening background the seal of Azil blazed. Save only
for that spot of color, white as the robe of a vestal, her garment
showed. White even were the sandals and leg-cases on her feet and
tapering calves--of white leather as thin and soft as kid. White, too,
were the stately plumes above her hair, once more a shimmer of gold.
And her lips were scarlet as a poppy, and her eyes twin lakes of pansy
purple, and softly pink, as the blush of innocence itself, her warm
skin glowed.

Wherefore Croft was content to put by all consideration to eat; to
drink of the wine before him with his lips, of Naia with his eyes;
listen to the congratulations of the others stretched about the tables,
while the harps of musicians hidden somewhere out of sight were softly
played.

Nor did he dream that anything beyond the celebration of their safe
return was toward, until old Zud, rising, signaled them to rise.

So that, all uncomprehending, he obeyed and rose, and giving Naia his
hand, assisted her to her feet, and stood in silence waiting for the
priest to speak; becoming aware as he did so that the others had also
risen and were standing with their eyes on Naia and himself.

"Children of Zitu, I give ye to one another. May he send his blessings
upon you, as I, his priest give--mine."

So spake Zud of Zitra, high priest of all Tamarizia, than whose words
was no higher priestly voice.

And Naia, reaching down, unpinned the seal of Azil, and placed the
gleaming jewel in his palm.

"O Jason, Jason," she stayed his halting question, "think you not that
in our case custom may be set aside? See you not that so I compelled
Zud to promise--before I flew above Atla's walls to find you--that if
we returned together, it should be so--tonight?"

And then Croft comprehended all the sweetness of her planning. And drew
her into his arms and held her--held her until it seemed that all else
faded away and there was naught in the world save their two selves.

"My bride," he said; "my--bride."




                              CHAPTER XXI

                           LOST CONFIDENCES


This is the story told me by the lips of the sorry wreck on the bed,
the spirit that looked out of its eyes--Croft's spirit, as I have
every reason to believe, since he so frankly admitted what he had
done, and because every detail of the narrative itself showed complete
familiarity with the events embraced in the story Croft in his own
earthly body had told me before.

"And that's all--or practically all--Murray," he said at last with a
sigh and laid his cigar aside. "I've done a lot of things since then,
and Tamarizia bids fair to develop into a very up-to-date nation; only
I needed information concerning a lot of things in regard to which
I was lacking. It was to gain this information I reversed my first
experiment in changing bodies. Will you help me to what I need?"

"I'll help you, of course," I told him; "but what about the Mazzerian
invasion?"

He gave me a glance, and the light in his eye was quietly amused.

"Lord, man, I was forgetting. To me it seemed that the moment in which
I knew Naia mine was the logical ending. But we beat them. Hadn't I
gained what I went to Palos to attain? Small chance that Zollaria's
blue rabble could accomplish the revenge for which she schemed.

"Rob and I went to work the next day. We put about a thousand riflemen
on the walls. And then we went outside and set up a lot of posts about
twenty feet from the base of the walls. Ugh!--it was nasty work--with
all those rotting corpses under foot. But we got them up while the
riflemen kept the blue men back out of arrow range, and then we hitched
one end of our wire to an armed motor and pulled it about the walls.
In the meantime, however, we had to repulse an attack. On the second
day Bandhor sent about ten thousand Mazzerians against our defenses,
and we rolled them back considerably less in numbers than when they
started, though I must say they fought like devils, and for a while it
was pretty warm work.

"We had quite a time getting the wire strung, too, because they used to
slip in and cut it down at night, so that finally, while I was rigging
up a motor to run the dynamo and generate the current I meant to charge
the wire, we gave it up. Then, when the motor was properly harnessed,
we took a couple of cars and ran half-way around the walls each way
between daylight and dark, and hooked the two ends up. And that night,
you can take my word for it, the Mazzerians found trouble when they
came up to undo our work. All you had to do was to stand on top of the
wall and watch the flashes when those blue men hit the wire. Robur
thought it was about the best piece of work I had accomplished yet.

"By that time, however, the eight thousand from Bithra had come up, and
we began to get ready to stage our own attack. Murray, the present war
was just started when I went to Palos first. But at the time I defeated
Helmor, of Zollaria, these tanks I've been reading about in the papers
the past few days hadn't been thought of, let alone used, on earth.
That's one instance in which Tamarizia beat this more advanced planet."

"It was a man of earth who did it," I pointed out.

"Well--possibly, yes." Croft laughed. "What I started to say, however,
was that I seem to have in a measure duplicated their performance
and manner of offensive use myself. We used them to break the first
resistance of the opposing line and pave the way for the infantry
attack. You will recall the success of their work against Helmor's army
in the Zollarian campaign. Well, they made good again.

"We sortied from Atla, with the motors in advance. Under a screen of
rifle fire from the walls, we moved them out of the gates and placed
them back of the wire, and filled them with men and grenades. And I
picked two men Naia had trained in flying better than I could have done
it myself. I suppose, Murray, fliers, like other men with some special
aptitude, are born as much as made. My wife is a born aviatrix--nothing
less. She'll do things with a plane I daren't attempt, and she'd licked
two of the hangar crowd into mighty decent shape. I took them, and we
used three planes and about a ton of bombs. Naia wanted to go along,
but I wouldn't let her, but I know she went up on the walls with Lakkon
and watched.

"Rob led the motor squadron and I the planes. We gave Bandhor's army
everything at once. Jadgor had charge of the foot forces. And when
everything was ready the sortie began.

"The motors advanced straight over the wire in which the power was
turned off. I took my planes over the walls from the concourse along
the Bith, and hit the blue army first with a shower of bombs. That
upset them more or less. I honestly think the sight of the planes
themselves shook them as much as anything else.

"And, of course, Robur made contact with his armored cars before they
had steadied themselves. They fought--oh, yes, they fought, but they
were beaten from the first. They tried to stall the motors and overturn
them as they had when Jadgor used them against their army first. But
this time they didn't stall, or not for long at a time--and what of
the enemy weren't shot by the men inside them either ran away or were
crushed. One did get stuck in the timber, and was in a pretty bad way
until Robur himself got to it and drove the Mazzerians about it off. On
the whole, however, they did splendidly, and tore some awful gaps in
Bandhor's line.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The infantry, coming up to the attack behind them, finished the work.
Inside thirty minutes there wasn't any real army before us so much as
the fragments of an army fighting where they fought at all, in small,
disorganized bands. Thousands ran away in bodies. Hundreds hid in the
woods. The riflemen mopped them up in droves. In a surprisingly short
time Rob broke clear through the line with three of the motors, and
got out of the fringe of forest between Atla and that great plain
where Bandhor had his tent. And as luck would have it, he was just in
time. Bandhor was about to leave. Rob"--the eyes of the man on the bed
twinkled--"suggested in a somewhat urgent fashion that he remain--and
his sister with him. I mustn't forget Kalamita at the last. He stuck
both of them into one of the motors under guard and sent them straight
back inside Atla's walls, and after that, what with the planes above
them and the two remaining motors--Rob's own and the other--the
Mazzerian army met a warm reception when it streamed out of the forest
upon that plain. The end came right there. Mazzer's organized force
broke up. It quit cold and ran. For a week we were hazing them in small
bands out of Bithur, but they never stiffened up enough to offer a real
fight again."

"And what about Bandhor and his sister?" I inquired.

Croft smiled. "I have every reason to think they were surprised to find
me alive. I know Bandhor swore when we met the first time, and Kalamita
turned a bit whiter that I had ever seen her before. We held them,
Murray. Zollaria found out two could play at the same ransom game.
Only Zollaria paid--a million sesterons, which, you may appreciate, is
equivalent to about a million pounds. I hardly think she'll care to try
conclusions with Tamarizia very soon again."

"And since then you've gone on introducing innovations, I suppose?" I
said.

He nodded. "Yes. Naia and I went to Lakkon's mountain house. He gave
it to us for our own. There were a lot of associations about it, and
I was glad to accept it for a dwelling. As I told you, Tamarizia bids
fair to come up to date. We're printing papers in Himyra and Zitra
now, my friend. We've established a system of free schools. Now I'm
after more rapid means of communications mainly--we've a sort of
telephone--short-distance lines which I want to improve, and I want to
establish telegraph and wireless. Astral communication may do between
harmonized minds, but it's too much to expect to educate a people into
anything like that.

"Also, I want to improve the medical caste. Oh, I've done a lot, but
I want to do a million things yet. So I talked it over with Naia, and
we decided that I should come back--reverse the experiment. We've been
back in the astral condition, of course, more than once. I've brought
her with me--shown her earth. She understands--and she's waiting for my
success in this matter even now, up there in the mountains where I told
her I loved her first. And see here--it may be that some attendant will
tell you I'm pretty sound asleep almost any night. If I take the notion
I'm apt to slip up to tell her how things are going along. So--if
that happens, don't let it fuss you--though, with your understanding,
I don't suppose it would. Anyway, I'll promise you now to give you
warning when the work I came back for is done."

"And you're happy?" I questioned.

"Happy?" He gave me a strange glance. "Man, the word's inadequate.
I've found the complement of my nature--speaking in that sense, I'm
satisfied. And--as though that wasn't enough--it's five Zitrans
now--six months about, as you estimate time, since Naia told me--that,
in the quiet of the night, she had heard the whisper of Azil's wings.
I--I don't know, Murray, both she and I hope it will be a boy--but
whether it is or not--boy or girl, it is ours--the final proof of our
love--of the blending of my life and hers."

I helped him. Of course I helped him. I did everything within my power
to furnish him with the information he required. A month went by, and
two, and nearly every night of that time we spent at least an hour in
confidential talk.

And then, one night, he caught me by the hand and looked into my eyes
and gripped my fingers hard. "I'm going, Murray," he said, smiling.
"I've got what I came for, I fancy--so don't be surprised. And see
here--Naia knows all about you. I've told her; and when I speak to her
first in the flesh on Palos, I'm going to tell her how much you've
contributed to the success of this undertaking. And if ever you give
us a thought, you can feel that there's a woman--a wife and mother--up
here on another star whose heart holds a warm spot for you--the one man
on earth who knows our story--big enough--broad enough to refuse to
balk at the truth."

I returned his gripping pressure, more than a little affected by his
words. "Naia of Aphur is as real to me as I am myself," I replied. "And
hang it, man--I--I wish I was up there with you. I'd like to be your
physician. I'd consider it a privilege to watch the light in her eyes
when they first see Jason Croft's son."

"Man," he said, "man, I could love you for that," and wrung my hand
again.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was midnight when the night superintendent called and told me No. 27
had died.

       *       *       *       *       *

     The last story in this trilogy will be "Jason, Son of Jason."

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