JASON, SON OF JASON

By J. U. Gíesy

CHAPTER I

THE GATEWAY OF LIFE

It was midnight when the night superintendent called and told me No. 27 had died. I rose. The thing was no surprise. I had known it was going to happen. No. 27 had told me so himself. None the less, I went to his room. Routine in the mental hospital had nothing to do with that strange secret held in common between myself and the man—that strange state of affairs which had enabled him to predicate his own death so accurately.

And yet as I mounted the stairs to the room where his body now lay as a worn-out husk I had none of the feeling which so customarily assails the average mortal in such an hour. To me it was not as though he had died. To my mind in those moments it was no more than the casting aside by the activating spirit of that instrument which for its own ends it had used. The body then was a husk indeed—an emaciated, worn-out thing which, because of our mutual secret, I knew had been kept alive by the sheer force of the spiritual tenant, now removed.

I stood looking down upon it, with very much the same sensations one might have in viewing the tool once plied by the hand of a friend. It was nothing more than that really. Jason Croft had used it while he had need of its manipulation, and when his need was accomplished he had simply laid it down.

Jason Croft. Dead? I felt an impulse to smile in most improper fashion. Not at all. The man was not only not dead, but I knew—as positively as I knew I was presently going to leave the room where his dead shell lay on a hospital bed and return to my own quarters—exactly where he had gone.

The statement sounds a bit as though I were better qualified as an inmate than the superintendent of an institution for the care of the insane. And I don't suppose it will help any for me to add that I had seen Jason Croft die before—or that he had informed me on the former occasion, though in less specific fashion, of his approaching end.

That was after he had told me a most remarkable tale, which, in spite of its almost incredible nature, I found myself strongly inclined to believe. It had concerned Croft's adventures on another planet—Palos—one of the spheres in the universe of the Dog Star Sirius, to which he had traveled first by astral projection, but on which he had found means to establish an actual existence in the flesh.

"Unbelievable—can a man be dead and yet live again?" you will say. Well, yes, but—Croft's earth body died just as he had told me it would, and was buried, and time passed, and this patient No. 27 was committed to the institution of which I was the head; and when I went to examine and inspect him, he asked me to dismiss the attendants, and then he spoke to me in the voice of Jason Croft.

More than that, he took up the story of his adventures where he had left off in the previous instance, admitted freely that he had reversed the experiment by which he had gained material existence on Palos, and, driven by the necessity of gaining knowledge for use in his new estate, had deliberately returned to earth. Unbelievable, you will say again. And again I answer:

"Yes—but wait."

Croft was a physician, even as am I. He was a scientific man. In addition he was a student of the occult—the science of the mind, the spirit, and its control of the physical forces of life.

He was an earth-born man. The home in which I first met him contained the greatest private collection of works on the subject I have ever seen. In dying he left them to me—I have them all about me. They are mine. According to his statements and his notations on margins, he had gone so far in his investigations that he could project the astral consciousness anywhere at will. And when I say anywhere, I mean it in the literal sense.

Many men have mastered the astral control on the earthly plane. Croft had carried it to an ultimate degree. He shook off the envelope of the earth atmosphere, led thereto, as he frankly confessed in our conversations, by the attraction of a feminine spirit, though he did not know it at the time, and recognized it only when he first viewed Naia—Princess of Tamarizia—on a distant star.

I had dabbled in the occult to some extent myself. Hence when he spoke of the doctrine of twin souls he had no further need to explain. He alleged that since a child the Dog Star had called him subtly through the years in a way he could not explain. Once having come into her presence, however, he knew that it was Naia—the feminine counterpart of his nature—whose existence on the other planet had called across the void to him. Or so he claimed. And certainly his portrayal of the events on Palos were characterized by a detail that made the atmosphere of his alleged other existence most vividly plain.

To an accomplishment of his marrying her, Croft declared that he had done a weirdly wonderful thing. Discovering a Palosian dying of a mental rather than a physical ailment, he had waited until his death occurred, then appropriated the still physically viable body to himself, as he most comprehensively explained, describing his act in a scientific way that counseled belief while staggering the mind.

Over that body he obtained absolute control, exactly as he had gained the same ability with his own. For a time thereafter he led a sort of dual existence, sometimes on Palos, sometimes on earth, until he had fully shaped his plans. Then, and then only, did he voluntarily forsake the mundane life to enter that other and fuller existence he felt that Naia of Aphur could make complete.

I questioned him closely. I was faced by a most amazing thing. I took up first the question of time required in passing from earth to Palos. He smiled and replied that outside the mental atmosphere a man's time ceased to exist; that it was man's measure of a portion of eternity, and nothing more, and that he could not use what was non-existent, hence reached Palos as quickly in the astral condition as I could span the gulf between that member of the Dog Star's Pack and earth in thought. All other points I raised he met. Even so it was a good deal of a shock to find my new patient speaking to me with Croft's evident understanding, looking at me out of what seemed oddly like Croft's eyes.

But in the end I was convinced. The man knew too much. He was too utterly conversant with Croft's accomplishments, his aims and ambitions and hopes, to be anyone but Croft himself. And, too, he naïvely explained that it was a poor rule that would not work two ways, and that he had therefore repeated his experiment in gaining a Palosian body when he felt the pressing need of a return to earth.

This night, earlier in the evening, he had bidden me goodbye—told me he was going back to Naia, the woman he had dared so much to win, his mate who ere long was to bear him, Jason Croft of Earth, a child. And now—well, now as before, it would seem he had kept his word. Jason Croft was dead again.

Is it any wonder that I felt that strange, almost amused desire to smile? Dead! Why, Croft, in so far as I knew him, could practically laugh at death—he was a man who had actually demonstrated, if one believed his narrative, of course, the truth of the saying that the spirit is the life. He was a man, who, because of the needs of his spirit, had deliberately switched his existence from one to the other of two spheres.

I gave what directions were needed for the disposal of No. 27's body, returned to my bed, and stretched myself out. But I didn't sleep all that morning. I buried myself in thought.

Both the narratives to which I had listened—first from the man I knew to be Jason Croft really, secondly from the pitiable wreck he had employed on his return, that worn-out husk which had just died—had produced on me a somewhat odd effect. So clearly had he portrayed the events and emotions which had swayed him in his almost undreamed courtship of the Aphurian princess that I had come to accept the characters he mentioned as actually existent persons, acquaintances almost, just as, in spite of all established precedent, I still regarded Croft himself as alive.

Naia of Aphur—many a time as I listened to his account of their association I had thrilled to the picture of that supple girl with her crown of golden hair, her crimson lips, her violet-purple eyes. So real she had come to seem that I had felt I would know her had I seen her with my physical rather than my mental vision. So real indeed was her mental picture that when he told me she was about to become a mother I had cried out, on impulse, that I wished as a medical man I might attend her—would be glad to see the light in her eyes when they first beheld his, Jason's, child.

And Croft had replied, "Man, I could love you for that," and he flashed me an understanding smile.

So now that he was gone back to her—I lay on my bed unsleeping, and let all he had told me unroll in a sort of mental panorama, dealing wholy with the Palosian world.

Tamarizia! It was into the empire Croft blundered blindly when he went to Palos first—a series of principalities surrounding the shore 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 Nodhur to the west and south. From the central sea a narrow strait led into an outer ocean to the west.

This was known as the Gateway. To the north was Cathur, a rugged, mountainous state, the seat of national learning, in its university at the capital city of Scira, and east of Cathur was Mazhur, known as the Lost State at the time of Croft's first arrival, because it had been wrested from the empire some fifty years before, in a war with Zollaria, a hostile nation to the north.

Croft, after gaining physical life on Palos, succeeded in winning it back, and in gaining thereby the consent of Naia's father, Prince Lakkon, and her uncle, Jadgor, King of Aphur, to their marriage. It was at this point his narrative had ended first.

East of Mazhur, still hugging the sea and extending into the hinterland of the continent was Bithur. And Milidhur joined Bithur to the south. West of Milidhur, completing the circle, was Aphur—the name meaning literally "the land to the west" or "toward the sun." Aphur was the southern pillar of the Gateway, ending at the western strait. Nodhur lay south of Aphur, gaining access to the sea by the navigable river Na, on whose yellow flood moved a steady stream of commerce driven by sail and oar until Croft revolutionized transportation by producing alcohol-driven motors. And—if I were to believe his second account—since then he had actually electrified the nation, harnessing mountain streams to generate the force.

Except for the waterways, traffic prior to Croft's innovations was by conveyances drawn by the gnuppa—a creature half deer, half horse, in appearance—or by means of caravans of the enormous beast called sarpelca, resembling some huge Silurian lizard, twice the size of an elephant, with a pointed tail, scale-armored back, camel-like neck, and the head of a marine serpent tentacle-fringed about the mouth.

They were driven by reins affixed to these fleshy appendages, and streamed across the Palosian deserts, bearing huge merchandise cargoes upon their massive backs.

Indeed, it was a wonderful world into which Croft had projected himself. Babylonian in seeming he had described it to me at first.

North of Tamarizia was Zollaria, inhabited by a far more warlike race. Its despotic government had long cast a covetous eye on the Central Sea, through which, and the rivers emptying into its expanse, most of the profitable trade lanes were reached. Tamarizia, controlling the western Gateway, had remained master even after the fall of Mazhur, collecting toll from the Zollarian craft on her rivers despite the foothold gained on her northern coast.

East of Tamarizia, beyond Bithur and Milidhur, lay Mazzeria, peopled by a race little above the aborigine in their social life. Tatar-like, the Mazzerians shaved their heads of all save a single tuft of hair, with a most remarkable effect, since the race was blue of complexion and the prevailing color of their hair was red.

Mazzeria, at the time of Croft's incursion into the planet's affairs, was the acknowledged ally of Zollaria, although at peace with Tamarizia. In earlier times, however, numbers of them had been taken captive in border wars and brought to both nations as slaves. These, in so far as Tamarizia was concerned, had later been freed and given citizenship of a degree constituting in their ranks the lowest or serving caste.

Each state was governed by a king, by hereditary succession, in conjunction with a national assembly consisting of a delegate elected by each ten thousand or deckerton of civil population. The occupant of the imperial throne was elected for a period of ten years by vote of the several states.

On Croft's advent, Scythys—a dotard—had been king of Cathur, with his son Kyphallos, the crown prince, a profligate of the worst type, sunk under the charms of Kalamita, a Zollarian adventuress of great beauty, with whom he had plotted the surrender of Cathur to her nation in return for the Tamarizian throne with Kalamita by his side.

Jadgor of Aphur, scenting the danger, had sought to bind the northern prince to Tamarizian fealty through a marriage with Naia, his sister's child. To win Naia and overthrow Zollaria's scheme had been Jason's task. The introduction of both the motor and firearms enabled him to overthrow the flower of Zollaria's hosts on a couple of bloody fields. Victory gained and Zollaria forced to cede Mazhur after fifty years of occupation, Croft prevailed upon the nation to accept a democratic form of government, it being at the end of Emperor Tamhys's term. This was accomplished without too much difficulty.

As to the Tamarizians themselves, they were a white and well-formed race. Their women held equal place with men. They believed in the spirit and a future life. They had made no small progress in the sciences and arts. They worked metal, gold being as common as iron on Palos.

They tempered copper also and used it in innumerable ways. They wove fabrics of great beauty, one being a blend of vegetable fiber and spun gold. They cut and polished jewels. They had a system of judiciaries and courts and a medical and surgical knowledge of sorts.

They were a fairly moral and naturally modest people. Their clothing was worn for protection and ornamentation, rather than for any other purpose. It was donned and doffed as the occasion required, without comment being aroused. In women it consisted, rich and poor, of a single garment falling to the knee or just below it, cinctured about the body and caught over one shoulder by a jeweled or metal boss, leaving the other shoulder, arm, and upper chest 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 soldiers generally wore metal casings, jointed to the sandal to permit of motion and extending upward to the knees. Men of caste wore also a soft shirt or chemise beneath a metal cuirass or embroidered tunic. Save on formal occasions the serving classes wore a narrow cincture about the loins.

Agriculture was highly developed, and they had advanced far in architecture, painting and sculpture. They lavished much time and expense in beautifying their homes. They had well-constructed caravan roads. As Croft had pointed out, he found them an intelligent race waiting, ready to be trained to a wider craft.

And among them, in Naia of Aphur, he believed he had found his twin soul. And he had set about winning her in a fashion such as no other man, I frankly believe, would have dared.

He had won her according to his belief and returned to earth, for the last time, ere he should return and make her his bride. He had told me about it, and he had cast off his earthly body, severing the last tie that held him from his life in Palos. He had died.

He had gone back and found his plans disarranged through the actions of Zud, the high priest of Zitra, the capital city of Hiranur, where he had left Naia waiting his return in the Temple of Ga, the Eternal Mother—the Eternal Woman, in the Zitran pyramid. Zud, moved by Croft's works and by a story told him by Abbu, a priest who knew Jason's story, had proclaimed him Mouthpiece of Zitu, thereby raising an insurmountable barrier, as it seemed, between him and Naia, since celibacy was one of the tenets of the Tamarizian priests. And yet Croft had won to her, overcoming all obstacles, even winning a second war, with all Mazzeria egged on, her armies officered by Zollarians in disguise this time, ere he gained the goal of his desire.

These things had been told me inside the last few weeks by No. 27—the man who had been committed to the institution for a dissociation of personality, at which he quietly laughed after he had obtained my ear; because he wished to gain contact with me, who knew his former story, and win my aid toward the fulfillment of his mission.

Only he wasn't dead, and I knew it as I lay there with the names of men and women of the Palosian world buzzing in my head. He had gone back to them, now that his work was ended—to Naia, his golden-haired, purple-eyed mate—to Lakkon, her father; to Jadgor, her uncle, and Robur his son, governor now of Aphur in the palace where his father, president of the Tamarizian republic, had been king; to Robur, who, like a second Jonathan, had ever been Croft's loyal assistant and friend, and Gaya his sweet and matronly wife; to Magur, high priest of Himyra, the ruling red city of Aphur, by whom Croft and Naia were bethrothed to Zud himself, to whom he had taught the truth of astral control. And I found myself portraying them as Croft had described them, predicating their thoughts and feelings, as I might have done those of any man or woman I knew on earth.

Actually I was projecting my intellect, if not my consciousness, to Palos. The thought came to me. In spirit, if not in perception, I was there for the moment with my friend. In spirit at least I was bridging with little effort billions of actual miles. Thought and spirit and soul. They are strange things. Croft, if I was any judge, had gone back to Naia—and there was I lying, picturing the scene, where she waited for his coming in their home high in the western mountains of Aphur, given to them by Lakkon, a wedding gift, after the war with Mazzeria was won. Croft had gone back to Palos, and here was I picturing the thing in my spirit, certainly as plainly as any earth scene I had ever known.

His body would be lying there, covered with soft fabrics, waiting for its tenant on a couch of wine-red wood such as the Tamarizians used—or perhaps of molded copper. And Naia—the woman who had given him her life, would be watching, watching for the first stir of his returning.

Only—I smiled—Croft had told me he could gain Palos as quickly in the consciousness as I could project myself there in my mind—so, by now, that stirring of her strong man's limbs, beneath the eyes of the fair watcher, had occurred, and once more those two were together.

I smiled again.

The picture of that reunion appealed. There was nothing else to it at the instant. For even in my wildest imaginings I did not in the least suspect what its nearness, its clearness, the vividness of its seeming, might portend.

No, even though I myself had delved more or less deeply into occult lore, with a resulting knowledge of the subject that had brought about the sympathetic understanding of all Croft had told me from first to last, I had little or no conception that night of the inward meaning of the distinctness with which I could conjure up the scene of his return to Naia, or to where the ability might lead. Rather, I felt merely that through his narrative of her wooing he had built up within my mental cells a picture of the fair girl now his bride, so clear, so positive in seeming, that to me she appeared no more than a charming personality—a feminine acquaintance, such as one might on occasion meet. She was no more removed, so far as my feeling of familiarity with her was concerned, than had her residence been not on Palos, but simply across the street. It is so easy to bridge distance in the mind.

I slept after a time, as one will, drifting from continued thought upon one subject into slumber. And I woke with the thought of Croft's weird homecoming still in mind. It stayed with me more or less, too, in the succeeding days.

Naia of Aphur! Oddly I dwelt upon her. Jason himself had told me that she knew me—had actually seen me—that he had brought her to earth more than once in the astral body—had pointed me out to her as the one earth man who knew and believed his story—that she looked upon me as a friend.

The thing seemed some way to establish a sort of personal bond, just as the secret Croft and I had kept between us made me feel toward him as I have never felt toward any other man.

Jason Croft and Naia of Aphur—the interplanetary lovers. It was certainly odd. I knew her, even though I had never seen her; save through the instrumentality of his description of her, and the resultant picture printed on my mind. Yet I could close my eyes at will and see her, slender, golden-haired, with her lips of flaming scarlet, and her violet-purple eyes.

And I knew her home. I could lift it into my conscious perception as a familiar scene. I could imagine her moving about it, young, vibrant, happy, alone or with Croft by her side. I could fancy her bathing in the sun-warmed waters of the private bath in the garden—the gleam of her form against the clear yellow stone of which it was constructed—until she seemed the little silver fish Croft had called her, disporting in a bowl of gold, behind the white, screening, vine-clad walls. Or I could dream of her walking about the grounds, with the giant Canor—the huge, doglike creature she called Hupor, who was at once her pet, her companion, and guard. Distant? Why, she seemed no more distant to me in the days after Croft had gone back to be with her when her child would be born than some fair maid of earth waiting for the coming of her lover across a dividing wall in an adjacent yard.

And yet so blind is the objective mind, that even then I did not suspect I had established a sympathetic chain of interest between the atmosphere of her existence and myself, capable of stretching out to a most peculiar climax in the end. Then, one night something over a month after No. 27 had died and been laid away, I dreamed.

I don't say I thought of it as a dream at the time. Then it was all too seriously, too grippingly, real to seem other than the actual thing. It was only after it was over that I thought of it as a dream—perhaps because, despite the occurrence and all Croft had told me, I was still not fully convinced.

Later—well, that's the story. I'll let it unfold itself.

I went to bed that night and fell asleep. How long I slept I do not know. But a voice disturbed my slumbers after a time. At least it disturbed the restful unconsciousness of my spirit. To this day I am not sure whether or not my body moved.

"Murray—Murray." I heard it, dimly at first, but insistent. It kept repeating itself over and over. Beyond doubt someone was demanding my attention. I sought to rouse.

"Murray—in the name of Zitu—and Azil—"

I stiffened my attention. It was nothing short of startling to hear those words spoken.

Zitu was God in the Tamarizian language, as I knew, and Azil was the Angel of Life—as Ga was the Virgin Mother. Ga and Azil—the mother and the life-bringer—they were the ones to whom the Tamarizian women most frequently prayed. I gave over my endeavor to waken my sleeping body and lay straining the ears of my spirit to the voice.

It came again. Whoever the speaker was, he seemed to know he had stirred my conscious perception.

"Murray—I need your advice—your council. Naia needs you. It's life and death, Murray. You told me you would gladly render her assistance as a physician. Murray—will you come?"

My spirit staggered. It was most amazing. For now I knew that the speaker was Jason Croft.

I knew that he was appealing to me in the name of Zitu and Azil—in the name of motherhood—that he was calling on me as a brother physician, by the oath of my profession—in the name of all that was highest and holiest in life.

I knew that Naia's hour was upon her—and I knew it as clearly as if the thing were taking place somewhere within a neighboring home on earth. I lay and let the knowledge beat in upon me. I recalled in a flash all he had told me concerning medical knowledge on Palos. If some complication in the birth of their child impended, there would be none on that far planet to whom he could turn for aid. He knew more than all the physicians of Palos put together, but—

"Murray!" the voice repeated. "Murray, in the name of God!"

There was a desperate urge—a desperate plaint about it. I reached a decision. I had never married. There was no one dependent upon me. With a strange thrill I realized the fact. If I failed to return from this strangest of calls to which a medical man was ever bidden, if the body of me were not to be revived, I would be little missed.

So what did it matter? A man—or most men—surely could die but once; and how better than in performing the duty of a physician, in an endeavor to save other life? I recall now that such thoughts flitted swiftly through my brain, and left me ready to dare the venture suggested by Croft's voice, if thereby I might render an intimate service to him and Naia of Aphur, in spirit if not in the flesh.

"Murray!"

Again the agony of a strong man's appeal for all he held dearest in existence.

I think the lips of my sleeping material being must have moved at last. Be that as it may, I know I answered:

"Yes."

And I know Croft sensed my acquiescence, for his response was beating into my consciousness in a flash.

"Then—fix your mind on our home in the western mountains, visualize it, Murray, as I have described it to you. Will your conscious presence within it. I shall be waiting for you. Call up the scene and demand that our will be granted. Think of nothing else."

Save for the directions for reaching to him, the thing was as real as a telephone message, and the assurance that the husband of your patient would be waiting your arrival at his house. But there was about Croft's promise to await my coming a definite note of conviction in my ability to encompass our mutual purpose that aided me most materially in what followed, as I now confess.

He was so seemingly sure that I would not fail them—that what assistance I could render would be granted—that for the time being it overthrew all doubt of success. Too, I had grown so accustomed to thinking of Naia of Aphur as a woman—a palpitant creature of radiant flesh and blood—that the very reality of her seeming robbed somewhat of its weirdness, its eery quality, the fact that I was about to respond in the astral body to an urgent medical call. Consciously then I sought to follow Croft's directions.

I fastened my thought on his Aphurian home.

I strove to exclude everything else from my mind. I brought up the picture of it as a thing at the end of a distant vista, down which I must pass to attain it, and—all at once that picture moved!

I say it moved, because that is how it at first appeared. At all events, it seemed to come toward me with amazing swiftness.

For an instant my comprehension faltered, and then I knew. I knew I had gained my purpose—that I was astrally out of my body, even though I had not known the instant when I had left it; that I was speeding with incredible rapidity toward the scene into which I had wished to be projected; that darkness was all about me, like an impenetrable wall; that I was like one in an infinite, an interminable tunnel, with the lighted picture I had conjured up at the end.

Then that too faded, dissolved, lost its comprehensive quality, and gave place to more finite detail, and—I was in a room. But it was not strange. I knew it—recognized it instantly, thanks to Croft's previous words.

Its walls were hung with purple hangings shot through with threads of gold. There was a shallow pool of water in its center edged round with white and golden tiles. Beside it on a pedestal of wine-red wood there stood a figure—the form of a man straining upward as if for flight, with outstretched arms and uplifted wings, translucent—formed of a substance not unlike alabaster—the shape of Azil.

That too I recognized in a flash, and I seemed to catch my breath. At last I was on Palos! This was Azil, the Angel of Life, before me—poised by the mirror pool in the chamber of Naia of Aphur—ablaze now with the light of many incandescent bulbs in copper sconces against the walls. All this I saw, and became conscious that, as well as light, the chamber was now full of life.

Naia of Aphur! She lay before me on a copper-moulded couch—and I turned my eyes upon her, her body beneath coverings of silklike fabric.

A woman, of whom two were in attendance, wearing the blue garment embroidered with a scarlet heart above the left breast—the badge of the nursing craft, as Jason had told me—spoke to Naia in soothing accents the words of which I could not understand.

"Murray!"

Whirling, I beheld Jason Croft. Rather, I seemed to see two Jason Crofts, instead of one. One sat in a chair of the same wine-red wood of which the pedestal supporting Azil was formed, in the posture of a man in more than mortal slumber. One floated toward me, ghostlike—a shimmering, shifting, vaporlike semblance of the other as to physical shape.

And it was this second Croft that seemed to speak.

I say seemed, because as I recall the episode now I know that communication was in reality by thought transference, although it appeared then to reach the understanding in the form of spoken words. It came over me instantly that Jason had purposely assumed the astral condition to welcome me on my arrival here.

I had been too much occupied with my surroundings until then to give thought to my own possible appearance. But as I put out a hand in answer to his single word of greeting, I found it no more than a thin diaphanous cloud. I was even as he was—a nebulous something. Still, that was to be expected. I put it aside and considered the man before me. The features of his astral presence were actually haggard, marked by a suffering plainly mental, yet akin in its way to the lines that contorted Naia of Aphur's face in her present mortal woe.

"Croft, in God's name what is the trouble?" I asked as once more a low sound of smothered anguish came from the couch behind me.

Nor do I think I overshot the mark in declaring what followed to have been the most remarkable medical consultation mortal man might know. He lost no time in explaining the situation. It wasn't his way.

He gave me at once an exact and scientific understanding of her condition, ending his narration simply:

"Murray, you know how I love her. I faced the thing as long as I could have alone. And then—knowing all that depended on me—I became unnerved, and called for you. There was no one else—and you'd said you'd be glad to attend her. Can you blame me, my friend, now that you see her?"

I shook my head in negation, turning it for an instant toward the glorious woman shape on the copper bed. "Can she see me? Does she know I am here? Can I speak with her?" I questioned.

"She will sense your presence at least," Croft said. "I shall revivify my body and draw the chair in which it is sitting close beside the couch. You will sit there, Murray, and I shall tell her you are present, watching, nerving me to my task, before I set to work. She knows I called you, Murray, and now you must help us both. Your brain must use my hands to save her. Come—what do you advise me to do, Murray?"

I told him as soon as he had brought his almost panting response to an end. His exposition of the problem we faced had made it dreadfully plain.

He heard me out and then nodded with set lips.

"I—I'll do it, Murray," he said. "I—I felt it was the thing, but—without counsel—simply on my own judgment, I could not do it. And—you must coach me. I'll work in a purely subjective condition. That way, even in the body, I'll be able to sense the guiding impulse of your brain. God, man, how I need you! Come!"

The form beside me vanished. The body in the chair flung up its head and rose. It pushed the chair it had occupied quite to the side of the copper couch, and bent to speak to the woman who lay upon it.

I followed. I sank into the seat provided. Croft straightened. Naia turned her head directly toward me.

I looked for the first time into her violet-purple eyes.

They were clear, steadfast, flawless as a perfect amethyst, though darkened by the ordeal through which she was passing—the eyes of a true woman, high-spirited, brave, loyal, and pure. They strained toward me. And suddenly she threw out a perfectly rounded arm, a slender hand, as one who asks for succor. Her lips parted, and once more she smiled, a smile so wistfully yearning that my whole heart answered its appeal.

This was Naia of Aphur—wife of my friend Jason Croft. In that instant I felt she was worth all that he had dared to win her. This was Naia, the woman who months ago had told him that in the silence of the night she had heard the beating of the wings of Azil, the bringer of new life, because of which I was here now beside her in that holiest of moments in a medical man's existence, when with hand and brain he waits to welcome a new life's birth.

Her lips moved. Distinctly I heard her speak:

"Dr. Murray—good friend of my beloved, who tells me of your presence in response to his appeal for your assistance to us—I bid you welcome to our home. Thrice welcome are you, upon whose coming depends, as he tells me also, our future happiness together, as well as the life of our child."

She addressed me most surprisingly in English, until I bethought me that Croft had doubtless taught her the tongue, exactly as he had taught her so much else; to fly the first airplane in Palos, the control of the astral body itself. Her words moved me oddly. I rose to answer:

"I am more than happy to be here, Princess Naia, and to bid you be of good cheer, remembering that even now Azil stands close by the gateway of life, in charge of a newborn soul."

And then I sank back, confused. I had spoken wholly on impulse, voicing the inmost emotions of my heart, forgetting my nebulous condition entirely for the instant, in the spell of what seemed so real. With a feeling akin to acute annoyance at my inability to speak thus to her directly I resumed my chair.

But even so, it seemed that I had reached her—that in some way akin to that in which Croft had assured me he would be able to follow my mental direction while working, she had sensed my meaning and intention. Women are intuitive by nature, more susceptible to the waves of a personal or thought vibration. Her lips moved again as I ceased speaking.

"Azil," she whispered. "But—that new soul is so long in passing, my friend."

I turned to Croft.

"Come," I hurled my thought force toward him. "Let us spare her more bodily anguish than must be endured. Let us make an end."

Of what followed I shall say no word. Suffice it to state that Jason Croft labored, grim of lips and pallid of feature; that I sat in that weirdest position of assistance capable of conception; that the lights burned on in that room where the pale form of Azil spread his wings on the pedestal of wine-red wood; that the eyes of Naia of Aphur widened until they were two dark pools no more than fringed by the purple iris; that the two female attendants waited, intent on naught save the catching, the rendering of obedience to each of Croft's intense though low-pitched words.

And then suddenly the man turned to me a face transfigured past anything I had ever pictured—a thread of sound—a wailing, trailing vibration—the first note of waking vocal strings, pulsed through the room—and Jason Croft the physician, the father, was kneeling beside that couch of copper, no longer the iron-nerved worker, the laborer for unborn life, but the husband, the lover, clasping the slender body of Naia of Aphur in his arms, and shaken by a strong man's sobs. I turned away my eyes.

And then his voice boomed out, strangely exalted and triumphant:

"Murray—we win—win, man—thanks to you and—God!"

I turned back. Croft spoke to one of the attendants. She crossed to a curtained doorway and lifted the purple drapings. There stole into the room a girl of Mazzeria—a graceful creature, for all the odd blue color of her skin. Twin braids of ruddy hair fell from her head to her waist. Her figure held all the untrammeled litheness of a panther as she advanced. Across her outstretched arms she bore a pure white cloth.

Upon it, the child of Jason Croft and Naia of Aphur was placed.

She wrapped the fabric about it, cradling it against her breast. She turned to Naia, smiling, sinking down beside her on her supple rounded thighs.

And then—for one brief instant I saw the light of the Madonna flame in those wonderful eyes—the light with which Naia the mother looked first on Jason's—son.

Croft addressed me.

"Maia," he said softly. "I've described her to you before if you remember, Murray. She asked that you might be permitted to attend the—the little one."

His voice broke. His face was weary, overstrained, worn. I understood. The graceful girl was Naia's personal attendant—the Mazzerian woman, who had aided her mistress in saving Croft's life at a time when he was taken captive during the Mazzerian war. I nodded my comprehension. He bent again as though by irresistible attraction above the couch where the blue girl still was kneeling, and Naia seemed waiting his undivided attention. Once more I turned my head. It was the holy moment—the hour of realization between man and woman.

Through the half-drawn curtains of a window, light stole into the room. It shamed the incandescents in their sconces. A finger of golden glory touched the tips of the upflung wings of Azil. With a start, I realized that the night of anguish was ended—that new life had come into the house of Jason—with the dawn.

CHAPTER II

THE CHRISTENING

I went toward the curtains and stood looking out between them, removing so far as I could even my invisible presence from the tableau behind me.

The attendants were moving about. I heard the soft pad of their gnuppa-hide sandaled feet, the softened tones of their voices. I heard Naia speaking and Croft's deeply quivering answer, and once more the wail of the child.

"Murray," Jason was speaking to me. I sensed his touch on my arm. Again he was in astral form. "Come, while the women perform their task."

My glance shot beyond him to where his physical body was seemingly lost in a lethargy of exhaustion, once more in the red wood chair. It did more. It fell on Naia. The ray of sunlight had lowered as Sirius had mounted above the eastern horizon. It made her golden tresses seem more than ever an aureole about her face on the pillow—a face grown exquisitely tender, lighted not merely with the sun of morning, but by the inner, the newly ignited glow of motherhood. I turned from it and followed Croft through the curtained doorway of the chamber, onto the balcony, along which one approached the room.

He had described it minutely to me, but even so I marveled at it as we stood together, sensing its proportions, its brilliant yet not offensive blendings of yellow and white and red. White was the balcony rail about it, red and yellow the alternating tiles that paved its floors. Red and yellow, too, were the steps of the stairs that mounted to the balcony from either end of the court, and red the carven pillars that supported the balcony on a series of arches, between which pure white examples of Palosian sculpture showed. Golden were the plates of glass in the roof above us—open mainly now to the air of heaven, that the flowers and plants and shrubs which dotted the unpaved portions of the court beneath us might breathe.

And then I think I must have started very much as Croft himself had done the first time he beheld such a sight, as I became conscious of a man, blue as the blue girl of Mazzeria in the room behind me, wearing upon his shaven poll a single flaming tuft of red. He was a stalwart man, and he bore a skin equipped with a sprinkling-nozzle upon his back while he sprayed the beds of growing vegetation—accompanied in his occupation by a slow-stalking beast remarkably like a hound.

Croft noted the direction of my glance and manner. "Mitlos—our majordomo, and Hupor," he said and smiled. "Zitu man, when I told you about them, the last thing I dreamed was that some day you should see them."

"And now?" I returned with a strange inclination to chuckle as I thought that Jason was no longer alone in being the first mortal to reach Palos in the astral presence, even though his potent will had helped me to my present position.

"And now"—he laughed in a tone of exultation—"you see not only them, but me, husband of Tamarizia's most beautiful woman, and thanks to you—the father of her child."

"Nonsense," I exclaimed, doubly abashed by his praise and my thoughts of a moment before, "I did nothing—what can a ghost accomplish?"

He turned fully toward me. His eyes burned with the strong fire of his spirit.

"I came here even as you are, Murray, and"—he waved a hand in a comprehensive gesture—"I have accomplished this, and other things besides—yet not so much that this morning—the most wonderful of all my span of existence, I have either words or deeds in which the assistance your presence within the last few hours gave me, may be repaid."

And no matter how he voiced it, I knew he meant it. The sincerity of his feeling forced itself upon me.

"Let us not speak of payment," I said—and I confess I felt embarrassed by the value he seemed to place upon what was no more than my agreement with his own valuation of a now favorably passed condition. "As it happens, Croft, my presence here was no more than the granting of an expressed wish."

He nodded. "The thought is father to the deed—isn't it, Murray? I thought of that last night. Come—I'll show you about the place."

Turning he led the way along the balcony to one end. We went down the red and yellow stairs.

At their foot was a group of sculptures—the figure of a man straining to defend a crouching woman from the fangs of a rending beast. It was of heroic size and wonderfully perfect in detail. I recalled it from Croft's description of it, and how once he had told Naia that so he would defend her were his right to do so granted. Well—last night I had seen him do it. I had seen him strain body and soul to guard her from the yawning jaws of death. I said as much.

He gave me a glance. "You're an odd sort, Murray. You've a lot of the symbolism, the mysticism of life in your make-up. Come along. Let's get a breath of the morning air outside."

Once more I followed his lead across the red and yellow court where unknown plants bloomed about us on every side. Mitlos, intent on his duties, knew not of our passing, but Hupor sensed us, I think, and turned his huge head toward us, and stood looking at us out of amber eyes. Then we were outside the arch of a doorway at the head of a flight of pure white steps, on a far-reaching esplanade.

On every hand there were mountains, wooded on their sides. The house stood on one side of a natural mountain valley, in the emerald cup of which was a tiny lake, its waters gilded now by the rays of the Dog Star. And winding past it, and off along the flank of the hills in a series of perfect tangents was a wonderfully metaled road. I followed its turnings until I lost them, and my vision found itself baffled by a further reach of the landscape, blanketed as it seemed beneath a singular dun-colored haze.

In its way the scene was not unlike that of a morning on earth. I turned my eyes back to the dim shape of Croft beside me. He lifted an arm. "Over there is Himyra," he said, pointing, "but a ground fog is hiding the desert. If you'll look across it, however, you'll see a silver sort of shimmer. That's the Central Sea."

Himyra—the capital of Aphur—the Central Sea. And this was Palos. The weirdness of the whole adventure came upon me. It was hard to realize. And the sun up there was Sirius and not the sun to which I was accustomed.

Abruptly Jason chuckled. "Murray—do you remember the night my housekeeper thought I had died, and routed you out in a storm, and you came to my house and compelled me to return from Palos by the infernal insistence of your will? Well, tit for tat, old man. That night I did your bidding, but last night I called you here."

"Quite so," I assented, smiling. In a way his remark seemed to lighten the atmosphere between us. I caught sight of a rapidly moving object. "Look there, Croft—that's one of your motors or some or sort of speedy contraption coming up the road."

He glanced down the course of what I could not but agree he had done well at first to compare to the ancient highways of the Romans because of its permanent type of construction.

"Lakkon, by Zitu!" he exclaimed. "I telephoned him last night, but—I'd forgotten all about him. He said he'd drive out the first thing in the morning, and he seems to be burning the wind. See here—I'll have to leave you, Murray, long enough to welcome grandpa, if you don't mind."

I nodded. Lakkon was Naia's father. And it was no more than natural surely that he should be hastening to her, especially as she was the old noble's only child.

"Run along," I said. "There's plenty to look at. I'll amuse myself." Then, as an afterthought, I added, "Only don't spend too much time with him. I've got to be getting out of here, Croft, or someone's likely to fancy Dr. Murray is dead."

It had just occurred to me that it was morning also on earth and that unless I returned to my body, I couldn't tell what might happen in the institution of which I was the head.

Croft understood my meaning.

"You're right. I'll be as brief as possible," he agreed and vanished, leaving me quite to my own devices.

I smiled. If one considered it was rather odd to be telling a man to go get back inside his own body in order to welcome his father-in-law in the flesh—or to contemplate a return flight across billions of ethereal miles to accomplish a reunion between my material body and myself. Myself. I took a deep breath of the mountain air—at least, I went through the conscious effort with all the satisfaction of fulfillment. I was myself, really. I felt it, knew it—and I felt a buoyancy, a lightness, such as I had never known before now that the weight, the restraint of the body was removed.

I stood and watched Lakkon's motor arrive. I saw Croft's material form stalk forth to meet him at the head of the stairs. I saw Lakkon descend from his car and hurry upward, the strong figure of a man with graying hair, an expectant light in his beardless face. I marked his dress.

It consisted of a tunic of purple, embroidered with an intricate design in small green stones, skirted, falling to just above the knees, and the metal, ankle-jointed combination of greaves and sandals Croft had described, plainly fashioned of gold, and reaching above the bulge of his muscular calves.

He met Croft and crashed his flat palm upon his shoulder with an exultant gesture. Croft extended his arm and laid his hand on Lakkon's shoulder. The two men passed inside.

I turned away. There was something vastly formal, vastly ancient, about that greeting—an old world atmosphere—that spoke of age-long custom, despite the throbbing motor in which the noble had reached the house of his daughter. There was almost something Biblical about it, the thought came to me. They had met and laid their hands on each other's shoulders—two strong men, and looked into one another's eyes. I knew it the Tamarizian greeting of unfaltering friendship, no more a greeting than a pledge.

Well, then, Lakkon had gone to see his daughter. I gave a glance to the driver of his motor—a chap dressed plainly in blue unembroidered tunic, and copper leg-casings, with a fillet supporting a sun screening drape of purple fabric, about his head. Then I turned and made my way into the garden. It had occurred to me to examine the private bath.

I found it, screened behind vine-clad walls, and slipped inside it, past a staggered entrance wall that screened its gate. It lay before me, a limpid pool in a basin of lemon stone like onyx save that it was neither mottled nor veined. It shimmered in the Sirian ray, an oblong of water as brilliant as a bit of polished silver, inside the expanse of the enclosure, paved with alternating squares of rock-crystal and pure white stone. I stood gazing upon it, recalling that it was here Croft had once met Naia of Aphur—the first time when in defiance of all social custom on Palos, she had yielded him her lips.

Then I went back to the front of the house, and seated myself on a carven stone bench. I lifted my eyes to the light-filled heavens. This was Palos—and up there somewhere or down or sidewise—or however you chose to call it—was earth. It was like Omar as to direction when he says:

"For Is and Is not though with rule and line

And Up and Down without, I can define—"

Anyway, out there somewhere in the void there floated the mundane sphere, where the body of me might even now be exciting consternation among the staff of the hospital, where it had been moved and held a little prestige in its work. And here was I. Suddenly there stole over me the sensation that the whole thing was a dream excited by Jason's stories—a feeling that I ought to rouse myself and get about my business. I rose. I felt all at once restless, vaguely disturbed. I turned and found Jason beside me.

"I was longer than I meant to be, Murray," he said. "And, see here—I know you'll understand me when I tell you it's past ten o'clock on earth."

I nodded. It was no time for misunderstanding or niceties of speech. More and more I was finding myself filled with a vital urge—to be away from here and about my own affairs.

"To tell the truth, with all respect to your feelings and those of Naia, I was getting impatient of your coming," I replied.

"She sends you her deepest thanks, and the blessings of Zitu and Ga the Mother," he responded quickly. "I know you know how I feel, old fellow. Now fix your mind on your body—and try to open its eyes."

I was ready. I put out a hand and laid it on his shoulder. He did the same. We looked into one another's faces.

"Some time—you'll come again," Croft told me. "And—now that we've established the astral power, I'll come to you, Murray—and when I speak you will answer. Don't forget it. Man—mayhap we'll build Tamarizia up together—at least, I can come to you like this from now on for knowledge—conversation. Can you see where the thing may lead to?"

"Yes," I said. "It's big, Croft—big. But if I don't get out of here now it may lead a very important part of me to the grave. Make my adieus to Naia. I'd envy you, man, if you weren't my friend. Now—do what you can to help me, for I'm going to try a pretty broad jump, as such things are considered."

I closed my eyes.

A sound like splintering wood assailed my ears. A blended sound of voices beat upon them.

"Murray—Murray—doctor!"

There was no doubt about it. A very human voice was calling to me—a hand laid hold upon my shoulder—only it wasn't the hand Jason Croft had laid upon it in farewell. The thing bit into the flesh. It seemed trying to shake me.

With an effort I lifted my lids and stared up into the face of a hospital orderly, strained and anxious. I was back on earth, there wasn't any doubt about it. I was on earth, in my room in the mental hospital and in bed.

"Yes," I said; "yes."

The man's breath actually hissed as he let it out. He stammered. "You'll excuse us, doctor, but you didn't show up and you didn't answer when we rapped—and—well—we broke in the door at last. It seemed best."

His use of the pronoun arrested my attention. I made another effort and sat up. The orderly had fallen back from my bedside as he spoke, and beyond him I saw a nurse—a woman—not blue-robed like those I had seen in Naia of Aphur's apartments, but crisply gowned in white—and back of her the door of my own chamber, sagging open with a broken lock.

"It's all right, Hansen," I made answer. "I must have been pretty sound asleep." There wasn't anything else to say, any use to attempt fuller explanation. "What time is it?" I asked.

"Ten thirty," said the nurse, consulting a watch on her wrist. "You're sure you feel all right, doctor?"

"Perfectly," I nodded. "If you'll withdraw, I'll get up."

She left the room and Hansen followed. I rose and began to dress. Outside a brilliant sunlight was visible through my windows. It showed me familiar objects. The Palosian landscape had faded. It had been after ten when Jason had come to me, to, as it were, speed a parting guest, and now it was half after ten, and I was back on earth. Well, he had told me the gulf could be bridged by the spirit in a flash.

Or had he? I fumbled my way into my garments in a somewhat clumsy fashion. I felt odd. Just what had happened, I asked myself. And it was then that the thing began to seem like a dream to me, really, no matter how vividly real it had seemed while it occurred. Save only for that vividness I think I would have considered it no more than a dream indeed.

But dream or not, it continued to go with me through all the familiar routine of the succeeding days. It kept bobbing up, in all its colorful details. I kept recalling that gorgeous chamber in which I had seen, or seemed to see, Naia of Aphur. I could even recall the soft thud of Lakkon's metal sandals as he mounted toward Jason, waiting to welcome him at the top of a flight of pure white stairs. And I could see again that light I had seen in the purple eyes of Naia—that exquisite look of the Madonna, I had seen in the faces of other new-made mothers, and in their eyes. Yes, if it had been a dream instead of an actual occurrence, it had been very, very real.

For the life of me, I couldn't decide. The mind of me balked no matter what the spirit decreed. As an actual fact, I wanted to believe I was in a somewhat similar position to men I have known, who tried to accept a religion, feeling their salvation depended upon it, and yet could not quite compass full acceptance in the end.

At the last I settled down to a sort of compromise with myself, based on my recollection of Croft's assertion that he would come to me some time for an astral conversation, similar to those meetings with Naia he had employed to sway her decision, before he finally won her and that I myself should visit Palos some time again. If those things happened I felt I could give credence without reservation. I did a lot of reading in Croft's books and waited. But he did not come.

A month passed and a little more, approximately such a span of time as they called a Zitran on Palos, where the year was a trifle longer than ours, though divided in similar fashion into twelve periods. I had about settled back into acceptance of a completely corporeal routine, and then—once more I had word of Jason's son.

"Murray—Murray," a voice whispered to me in my slumber.

It roused me. I sat up, distinctly conscious of an intelligent presence in my room.

"Murray—get out of that cloud, and let's talk," what seemed a whisper prompted.

Something happened. Suddenly I was intensely awake, and I saw—the nebulous form of Jason, seated against the metal rail at the foot of my bed.

"That's better. How would you like to take another trip to Palos?" he inquired.

He smiled as he said it, and I answered in similar fashion. "If I can make the round trip a little quicker I wouldn't mind it. What's wrong up there now?"

"Nothing's wrong up there. Everything's all right."

His expression quickened. "But what happened?"

I told him, and he nodded. "Well, this will be different as you'll get back before morning. Murray, both Naia and I want very much that you should be present in so far as you can, two nights from now, at the christening of our son."

The christening of his son. The thing thrilled me. It was real then, and not a dream after all. I had really gone to Palos that night over a month ago, and now—Croft had kept his promise. He was here asking me to essay the venture again.

"Of course," he said as I delayed my answer in the grip of full realization, "you'll see without being seen, but—after it's over—Naia wants to meet you astrally at least. Will you come?"

Naia wanted to meet me. After the thing was over and the others were gone, we three would meet as Croft and I were meeting now and establish a personal relation.

"Will I?" I exclaimed. "Well, rather."

Croft smiled. "It will be a somewhat brilliant spectacle. You'll enjoy it."

We talked for an hour after that, before he vanished, and I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed, staring into the darkness and filled with the firm conviction that on the second night from this I would witness the christening of Jason's son.

That conviction went with me during the two succeeding days and it was with the positive expectation of its fulfillment that I locked myself in my room and stretched myself out on my bed the second night.

I lay there and fixed my mind on the home of Lakkon in Himyra—the great red city of Aphur, where Croft had said the ceremony would occur. I pictured it even as I had pictured Jason's home in the mountains, its splendid court paved with the purest of rock-crystal—he had fancied it was glass when first he saw it—its circling balcony reached at either end of the court by yellow onyxlike stairs.

I focused every vestige of my will on reaching to it, and—suddenly—it seemed that I heard Croft calling me just as he had said he would do; the sense of lightness, of untrammeled freedom I had experienced on the other occasion came upon me—and—I was there.

Light, color. They were all around me. The flawless crystal of the floor caught the radiance from the lights above them in a million facets, broke it into a myriad flashing pin-points of refraction until the whole, vast court seemed paved with a shimmering iridescent carpet. White was the balcony about it, and the pillars on which it was supported, and the gleaming bits of sculpture between. And the shrubs, the banks and hedges of vegetation, in the unpaved beds of the court were green, save that they were blooming, loaded down with colorful flowers everywhere.

Tables a-glitter with gold and glass stretched down the central portion of the sparkling pavement in the form of three sides of a rectangle, with a purple-draped dais at the closed end. Guests thronged the vast apartment, seated on chairs of wine-red wood or reclining on couches interspersed among the beds of flowering vegetation. Nodding plumes of every hue and shade graced the heads of the women. Of every grade of richness were their jewel-embroidered robes. Nor were their men-folk any whit behind them in the lavish ornamentation their tunics or metal cuirasses displayed.

Men and women, they were like birds of brilliant plumage, and as the lights struck down upon them, save for the gleam of the bared arms and shoulders of the women, the glint of their fair limbs through the intricate slashings of their leg-casings and sandals of softest leathers, the rose tint of their knees, they blazed. A babble of voices—the rhythm of music from concealed harps, was in the room. I indulged in a single comprehensive glance and looked about for my hosts.

But I did not find them anywhere among their guests. Nor did Jason appear to greet me, though that I did not expect. We had arranged between us that he should summon me just before the ceremony occurred, and that we would meet only after the departure of the guests. Hence, failing to sight either Croft or Naia or even Lakkon, I made shift for myself.

A trumpet blared with a softened tongue. I became aware of a page in purple garments, standing with the instrument at his lips, on the topmost tread of one of the flights of yellow stairs.

The thrum of the hidden harps quickened. The assembled company rose. They stood and faced the stairway where, now, something in the nature of a ceremonial procession showed.

Naia and Croft came first, Naia in white from the tips of her slender sandals to the feathers that nodded from a fillet of shimmering diamondlike jewels in the masses of her golden hair. Croft led her downward. He was in all his formal harness, golden cuirass, on the breast of which glowed the cross ansata and the wings of Azil in azure stones—golden greaves and sandals gem-incrusted, golden helmet supporting azure plumes.

And after them came Maia, the blue girl of Mazzeria, bearing on a purple cushion, the child.

Lakkon followed, walking side by side with a man, stalwart, grizzled, strong-faced, clad in a cuirass of silver, rarest of all Tamarizian metals, wearing the circle and cross of Zitra, the capital city of the nation, done in more of the diamondlike stones upon his armor.

Jadgor, I thought; Jadgor, president of the Tamarizian republic, recognizing him from Croft's former descriptions and the quality of his dress.

Behind them, azure-clad—the cross ansata on his breast, a flame of vivid scarlet gems—stalked a man, white-haired and most benign of appearance in company with a second, more stalwart, also in azure robes. They carried staves tipped with the looped cross and were followed by a boy supporting a tray of silver, on which were two silver flasks and a tiny, blazing lamp.

A man with a cuirass, on which showed a rayed sun, and wearing plumes of scarlet, and a woman, scarlet-robed, with the same ruddy feathers above her soft brown hair brought up the rear.

Zud and Magur, and a temple boy, Robur and Gaya, his wife—high priest of Zitra and his deputy of Himyra, governor of Aphur and his consort, I named them to myself.

While the company kept silent and the harps filled all the air with a sort of triumphant paean, the little procession advanced. It reached the foot of the stairs and crossed to the dais, mounted its steps. It formed itself in a shimmering semi-circle, Croft and Naia—and Maia kneeling before them in the center—the others on either side, and before them the boy of the temple and the two priests.

Him I named Zud, because of his bearing and his mane of snowy hair, raised his stave. The music died. Silence came down for a moment, and then the voice of Magur rose:

"Hail Zitu, giver of life, and Ga, through whom life is given, and Azil, bringer of life, we are met together that a name may be given unto this new soul thou hast seen fit to assign to the flesh.

"Greetings to you, Naia, daughter of Ga, and to you, Jason, Hupor, named Mouthpiece of Zitu among men through whose union Zitu and Ga have expressed their will that life shall remain eternal, renewing its fire from generation unto generation, in the name of love. Is it your will that a name be given this, thy child?"

"Aye, priest of Zitu." Naia and Jason inclined their heads.

"And how call you it between yourselves?"

"Jason, son of Jason," came Croft's voice.

"Then present him unto Zud, high priest of Zitu, that he may receive Zitu's blessing at his hands," Magur said.

The girl of Mazzeria raised the cushion of her arms with the child upon it. The temple boy advanced his silver tray, and knelt. Zud uncorked the silver flasks.

"Jason, son of Jason, in the name of Zitu, the father, and Ga, the mother, and Azil, the son, I baptize thee with wine and with water and light," he began. Moistening his fingers from one of the two flasks, he went on, "With wine I baptize thee, which like the blood, invigorates the body, and strengthens the heart and makes quick the brain." Bending, he touched the child on the forehead, poured water from the other flask into his palm and continued, "I baptize you with water which nourisheth all life, purifies all with which it comes in contact, makes all things clean."

He paused and sprinkled the glowing little body before him, took up the light and a tiny bit of silver I had not noted before and threw into the little face a golden reflected beam. "With light I baptize thee Jason, Son of Jason, since by the will of Zitu it is the light of the spirit which fills the chambers of the brain. May that light be with thee ever and forever, nor be absent from thee again."

Of course I didn't understand it. It was only afterward when Croft had translated it to me that its inward meaning was plain, but the solemnity of the ritual, the rhythm of well-balanced words, the quiet attention of the assembled guests and the reverent voice of the priest affected me, who stood unseen with the company on the dais, as he baptized Jason's son.

And then he took the cushion from the kneeling girl of Mazzeria, lifted it, turning to face the brilliant assemblage.

"Jason, Son of Jason," he cried, holding the infant toward them.

"Hail, Jason, Son of Jason," the guests responded like a well-drilled chorus, and the thing was done.

Followed a feast, similar I fancied in every detail to those Croft had told me he had witnessed at first and been privileged to attend. Men and women reclined at the tables on padded divans. Blue servitors moved about, filling the golden and crystal goblets with wine, loading the golden plates with food. Once more the harps broke forth. And suddenly from under the farther yellow stairway there broke a band of maidens, clad in garlands of woven flowers, and danced to the music of the harps, with a waving of slender arms, a bending of supple, unrestrained bodies, a flashing of whitely rounded limbs. With dances and music the feast ran to an end.

The guests departed, last of them, according to Tamarizian custom, Jadgor, president of the Republic, the guest of honor, and with him Gaya and her husband Robur, governor of Aphur and Jadgor's son. Naia took the child into her arms from the hands of its Mazzerian attendant. She and Jason moved toward the stairs. I knew that the hour I had waited had come.

I followed up the stairway and along the balcony and to a room—hung here in golden tissues, furnished with wine-red woods and twin couches of molded copper—with the mirror pool in its center and once more the figure of Azil close beside it as in Jason's home.

Naia placed the child on a tiny couch and covered its sleeping form with a bit of silken fabric. She turned to Jason, her blue eyes shining. He drew her into his arms and held her, smiling.

"There is yet one guest, beloved," he said in English.

"Aye," she responded softly; "but—one who understands the heart both of the wife, and the mother of Jason's son."

"And awaits a welcome from her," said Jason. "Come, beloved." He led her to one of the copper couches and sat down with an arm about her white-sheathed form.

From it there crept a lovely thing—an exact replica of it—the very essence of it, as indeed it was and seemed, as the lights in the chamber flooded down upon it. And that shape stretched out its slender hands. It swayed toward me, with Croft's astral presence close behind it.

"At last," said Naia of Aphur, "I may welcome you, Dr. Murray, as mine and Jason's friend."

"At last, I may converse with Naia of Aphur, and thrill with the glory of her—a thing I have long desired," I replied, and took her shadowy hand and raised it to my none less shadowy lips, yet with a distinct sensation of the contact none the less.

She smiled, and glanced at Jason. "Beloved, are all the men of earth so courtly? It was even so if you remember that you met me first in the flesh."

Croft chuckled.

"Life is much the same on earth or Palos," he made answer. "Well, Murray, what do you think of Palosian life?"

"Babylonian," I said. "You were right in the simile beyond question. I was thinking tonight when I watched it that it was almost a pity in one way you should be changing it all with your innovations."

He nodded. "In a way I've thought as much myself. I get your meaning. But I'm going to try and preserve it at least in part."

"Babylonian?" said Naia in a tone of question.

Jason and I explained, and she heard us out.

"Oh, but—things must change, must they not, Dr. Murray?—and the common people will be so much happier for the knowledge Jason brings to Palos. And even I—think where I and my child would be now save for the knowledge possessed by a man of earth. It is to you and Jason that we owe our lives. Think you not that I carry your name to Ga and Azil in my prayers—that I have wished to meet you in order to express my thanks myself?"

Her words gave me a feeling of something like exaltation, even while in a way they embarrassed. "I, too," I faltered, "am very glad of the meeting, to be able to assure you that it was my happiness to serve you, and to wish you and Jason the happiness of each other, and your son a long and useful life."

She glanced toward the tiny couch and back again, smiling. "Life," she said softly. "It is so wonderful to hold him—to realize that his life is but the blending of Jason's and mine. Sometimes I even think that I understand in a measure what Ga must feel as she guards the eternal fire."

And what is one going to say to a wife and mother when she talks like that? I know I mumbled something to the effect that what Ga probably felt was an all compelling compassion and love. And then I asked Croft to translate the words of the baptismal ceremony as voiced by Magur and Zud the high priest.

He complied and I questioned him of Jadgor and Gaya and Robur, confirming my recognition of Naia's relatives and his friends. Conversation became general for something like an hour, and then Jason prompted. "Beloved, shall we accompany Murray somewhat—show him Himyra in passing when he returns?"

"Aye, as you like," she assented. "And he must come to us again. Now that our need has rendered possible such communion it will not be necessary for you to seek earth in the flesh when you need additional knowledge, or leave me overly long again."

Croft nodded. "Yes, Murray is going to have his hand in Tamarizian affairs from now on, and the boy there will know more than any man ever born on Palos in the end. Well, Murray, want to see Himyra?"

"I've always wanted to see it since you told me about it first," I assented.

"Then come along."

"But," I added as he led the way with Naia through one of the open windows of the chamber. "I never expected to see it exactly like this."

Naia turned her eyes and smiled as we floated free of the house and upward under Croft's guiding will. "Dear friend," she said, "you know so much of us that to me it does not seem strange to find you one of us at last."

"Behold Himyra," said Croft, and flung out a shadowy arm.

The city lay beneath us. I saw the double row of lights that fringed the flood of the Na, the mighty pyramid of Zitu, up-reared against the skyline, black now instead of red, save where the lights threw ruddy splashes upon it, banded with white at the apex with the pure white temple of Zitu upon its truncated top—the long line of the houses of the nobles of the old regime, fronting a wide street at the top of the river embankment in an amazing vista, set down each in its private grounds among night-darkened shrubs and trees, the wide-flung palace of the governor of Aphur, once the palace of Jadgor, Aphur's king. The thing swam a shimmering vision before me under the light of the Palosian moons. I strained my eyes and saw the mighty sweep of Himyra's shadowy walls.

It moved me oddly. Already I knew so much of the city's history as involved in Croft's romance. I turned my eyes.

"Himyra," I said, "I shall not forget it—nor Naia of Aphur, nor Jason, mouthpiece of Zitu, nor Jason, Jason's son. Zitu guard you, my friends. I must be going."

"Zitu guard thee," Naia answered.

And suddenly I was back in my own room, remembering her parting smile.

These things have I narrated in order to show how there was built up between Croft and Naia of Aphur, his mate, and myself, a subtly intimate relation that must, as I hope, make what followed plain.

Life went on pretty much with me after that for some further eight months, however, before the events I intend to relate occurred. Now and then during the interval Jason Croft came to me in the astral presence, and on several occasions I succeeded by my own endeavors in visiting him and Naia in their home.

Between them they taught me somewhat of the Tamarizian tongue, Croft explaining that as all life was the same in reality, and the thought back of the word similar in intent even though the word itself might vary in sound, all languages were really one in thought and purpose. With that as a key, I soon discovered that the spoken words of those about me were not difficult for one in the astral condition to understand—that the vibrations of their thought affected the astral shell in a manner that made their meaning plain.

I suggested to Croft that it was because of that very thing he had so readily apprehended the speech of Tamarizia when he first projected himself to Palos and came down outside Himyra's walls, rather than because of the similarity of their speech to the Sanscrit, now nearly a forgotten tongue on earth, and he nodded and smiled.

"Exactly, Murray," he agreed, "but then I didn't realize it altogether, and—" He broke off and glanced at his wife.

"And you had something else to think about," I said, grinning as I recalled how he had seen Naia that first morning and followed her to Lakkon's house, drinking in her beauty.

"It's true I wasn't very logical in my considerations the first time I heard the language," he replied, and Naia of Aphur dropped her eyes. The inner fires of her spirit seemed to quicken. I think she would have blushed had she been in the flesh instead of sitting there with us like an inexpressibly lovely wraith.

So at least in those months I acquired a fair understanding of their speech, and I came more and more to regard their home in the western mountains of Aphur, across the desert from Himyra, on Palos, with the same intimacy of feeling I might have experienced for the home of two friends of earth. My conversations with Jason came more and more to resemble consultations on modern affairs. He asked me constantly concerning this and that fresh progress in mundane matters. He discussed with me his plans for improving material and social conditions on Palos.

He had already established a series of public schools for the masses where, before his arrival, education of a sort had been provided only for the nobles and men of wealth. Plainly the man was planning to do more where he had already done so much. He had given them moturs—as they called them—airplanes, electricity, printing, telephones of short radius at least, weapons by which Zollaria's schemes had been overthrown. And now he planned to lead them toward higher standards of national and commercial and individual life. And but for what occurred there is no telling what, working together as we were at the time, we might have accomplished.

Indeed Croft had established both wireless and telegraphic communication between Zitra and Himyra, and was planning railways on which he intended to run motur-driven trains—was dreaming of a great beltline about the Central Sea, with lateral branches to reach every part of the nation.

And then—one night he called me to him as he had called me the night of Jason's birth—and I found him in the self-same chamber, with the purple draperies half torn down and trampled—the fair form of Azil drowned in the mirror pool, beside which the dead body of Mitlos the Mazzerian majordomo lay sprawled.

CHAPTER III

NAIA OF APHUR

Violence, conflict. The marks of the thing were on every side. The ghastly gash in the breast of Mitlos bore dumb testimony to the fact that the man had battled grimly till he died.

I gazed into Jason's face, even in its astral semblance haggard.

"Croft," I stammered, "what in Zitu's name has happened?"

He jerked out an arm in an all-embracing gesture.

"Gone, Murray," he told me with a vibration of agony in his answer; "both of them—both Naia and the—child."

"Gone?" For a moment my senses seemed whirring. "Croft—what do you mean? Gone—where?"

"Into the western mountains, toward the outer ocean—she told me, Murray. She came and told me as soon as she felt it safe to do so. She came to me tonight in the Zitran pyramid—astrally, of course. You know I told you I was going to Zitra to see Jadgor in a matter concerning the government railroad control—"

I nodded.

"She found me there tonight. She had been afraid to leave the body before, lest something happen to little Jason. It was last night this thing occurred—and my body's still in Zitra." I sensed the tenseness of his emotion. "I'm so utterly impotent to help her, Murray. Would Zitu I were here to follow and wrest her from them."

"From whom?" I questioned. Plainly he knew more of the matter than I did—as much at least as Naia had told him. "See here, Croft—"

He appeared to grip himself as he answered. "Forgive me, Murray. The Zollarians, of course. It was an armed band of those Sons of Zitemku that attacked here in my absence. There"—he pointed at the body of Mitlos—"lies an example of their work."

His words whipped my attention—brought up a vivid picture of all the abduction of Naia and her child by men from the northern hostile nation might embrace.

"Zollarians?" I said. "She told you?"

"Yes." He nodded. "They—they must have been planning it, Murray—they must have been using spies."

"Unless," I rejoined, "it was merely a wandering band of marauders." I had a general knowledge of the western coast of Aphur and the intervening country. Practically uninhabited, wild and rugged, it would be easy, I thought, for men of such ilk to have landed on its shores.

"Wandering band?" Croft said with something like impatience. "Murray, talk sense. They knew enough to seize Naia of Aphur—the fairest woman of her nation, of its best blood—the wife of the Mouthpiece of Zitu, who has twice defeated their schemes and their armies—and her child."

I nodded. He had not lost his ability to judge the situation even then, and judge it clearly. I ceased offering either suggestions or comment and asked a question:

"Then what do you intend?"

"I intend to follow her—learn what is behind this damnable action first."

"Astrally?" I recalled that more than once ere this he had adopted such means to gain information toward Zollaria's undoing, and I began to comprehend.

He gave me a glance. "Of course. It's the only way I can follow with the cursed hulk of me in Zud's pile of rock in Zitra. And I want you to go with me tonight. Man, I'm trying to keep as cool as I may, but—I'm in need of sympathetic support. Before Naia left me she said they stopped for an hour's rest, but that before daylight faded they had seen the outer ocean from a hill, and a ship. I think that ship is waiting for her, Murray—and that once we are on it, to see and not be seen, hear and not be heard, we shall learn something of the truth."

"Then let's get on it," I suggested. "This is a terrible ordeal for her. When she came to you tonight, was she frightened?"

"Frightened?" Suddenly Croft drew himself up before me. "Naia—Naia of Aphur frightened—" And then abruptly the force of his thought wave, beating upon me softened. "Or if she felt fear, Murray, it was for the child, and not for herself."

He turned toward the tiny couch where the infant had been wont to sleep between the twin couches of its parents, and stood brooding down upon it. "Now Zitemku take the scum of life who have made my house empty," he burst forth, and seized my hand. "Come."

In a flash we were outside. And as on that night after the christening of Jason, Son of Jason, when Croft and Naia showed me Himyra, we floated upward. Only now there were no lights to fasten the attention, no mighty piles of architecture, no wide embracing walls. There were just the tumbled masses of the mountains, their sides cut and gashed by night-filled ravines and tortuous canyons, and the silvery radiance of the Palosian moons, and the stars. I recalled that once in the past Croft had called Naia of Aphur, still then a maiden, forth from her body and floated thus over Aphur's hills from the house we now were leaving.

And then his voice was in my ear.

"Look, Murray—they've reached the shore-line, and—they're building a flare."

I turned my gaze into the west, where low down on what might or might not be the horizon, but was certainly not the heavens, there winked a point of light, too ruddy, too unsteady, to be a star.

We swept toward it. For the first time I saw the Zollarian manhood in the light of the leaping fire they had built upon a beach. Tawny-haired they were, for the most part, stalwart, with muscular arms and heavy limbs, as they stood straining their vision across the water toward the moonlighted shape of a ship—or perhaps galley were a better term, since it seemed to be equipped with banks of oars as well as sails.

So much I saw—the ship, the bodies of the men, the glint of the firelight on spearheads, and the short metal scabbards of swords, not unlike the ancient Roman weapons, to judge by their dimensions, and then Croft led me to where Naia and the blue girl of Mazzeria were seated, little way apart.

Maia was speaking softly as we reached them. "My mistress, you are quite assured then that the Hupor Jason understands?"

"Aye." Naia bent her cheek to rest it against the head of the infant. "Be of good courage, Maia, and fear not."

"I fear not for myself, but for you and that one against your breast," the blue girl answered. "Had it been my part to do so, I had done as Mitlos and died in your defense."

"I know." Naia stretched out a hand and touched the girl upon the shoulder. "May Zilla bear Mitlos as tenderly as my thoughts shall hold him—and did I not name you my sister Maia, after you rendered me aid in preserving my lord—and did you not insist on coming with me, though these men did not desire to take you, saying you were the child's attendant?"

"I came gladly," the blue girl said quickly, "yet do I not understand these sleeps in which you lie as dead, and I remember once when Mitlos and I worked above you thinking Zilla had taken your spirit, before you were the Hupor Jason's bride—and it was even so with the Hupor himself in the camp of the Mazzerian army, when we went to save him—"

"Peace, girl," Naia interrupted, and paused and caught her breath sharply, as Jason bent the force of his presence on her.

She smiled, handed the child to Maia, and reclined her body on the warm sand of the beach. Then she let the fair astral tenant of her body steal forth!

"Beloved," said Jason Croft, and drew her close. "Beloved—woman of gold—we have heard your words, I and our friend of earth."

Naia turned her head toward me from the shelter of his arms.

"Once more," she addressed me, "you come to our aid, good friend. Did Jason, my lord, call you to him?"

"Aye, Princess of Aphur." I inclined my head, finding the Tamarizian idiom in that moment best fitted to my tongue.

She spoke again to Jason. "You have followed me, beloved; what else lies in your mind?"

"Naught for the present," Croft told her. "It is plain that they intend taking you upon yonder ship, and we shall follow you aboard it. It is our purpose to learn, in so far as we may, what these spawn of Zitemku and Lith, his filthy consort, have in mind. Yet fear not—though I do no more than this in the spirit, I shall do much more in the flesh, once the spirit is informed."

"I shall not fear," said Naia of Aphur. "Have I not given myself wholly into your keeping? My part it shall be to meet what Zitu sends upon us boldly and without fear, and safeguard that smaller Jason, who even now is a mirror of his father."

"And thyself, beloved," Croft added quickly. "Look to thyself. It were hard choice for a father between child and mother, but—"

"Nay! Say no further," she stayed his almost passionate answer swiftly. Yet something like an inward fire seemed to light her mistlike form until it glowed.

"By Bel—they are awake out there at last," the sound of a rough voice drifted to my ears.

Croft turned his head at the same instant, toward the group of Zollarian raiders and the ship beyond them, between which and the beach a boat now appeared.

"Aye," growled another speaker. "And time enough. Look to the women and the slave."

"The time is at hand, beloved," I heard Jason speaking. "Return, soul of my soul, to your beautiful mansion—and think not I shall not be near."

For a moment he clasped her closer and sank his lips to hers uplifted, and then—she was gone and her body stirred, sat up as two of the Zollarians approached and ordered her to rise.

"What did they mean by 'the slave'?" I questioned Jason.

"Wait," he said as another group of Naia's captors led a blue man into the light of the fire. "Bathos—one of my house servants," he went on. "Now, for what purpose in Zitu's name have they brought him along?"

I could offer no suggestion, and I didn't try. The boat had reached the beach by the time the women and the blue man had been brought to the edge of the water, and now they were thrust in. Part of the Zollarians crowded aboard, and the boat shoved off, leaving the rest of the band to await its return.

Croft and I followed, as propelled by the straining muscles of well-nigh naked rowers, it moved across the waves. With a sense of the bizarreness, the weirdness, of it all, I found myself perching upon a gunwale, while Croft actually took his place at Naia's side.

It was an odd sensation to realize myself a part of that strange archaic scene; wherein a beautiful woman had been abducted, and her captors, bronzed men dressed more in the fashion of the soldiery of forgotten empires than anything else, drove their boat across a moonlight silvered tide. I found myself wondering how they would have acted could they have seen us seated there among them. But they did not, and the steady sweep of the oars brought us presently close to the side of the galley, up which the Zollarians swarmed on down-flung ladders to reach the deck.

Naia and Maia followed, climbing a ladder with surprising ease until I recalled what Croft had told me of the wiry strength in Naia's supple figure in the past, and I considered the bodily freedom allowed by the Tamarizian fashion in dress. Last of all to leave the boat, before it returned to the beach, came Bathos, whom, being blue, the Zollarians had termed a slave, as were all of his race born of captive parents, in the nation to the north.

I glanced about me, recognizing the craft as similar in the main details at least to those Jason had found in common use on the Tamarizian rivers and the Central Sea, when he had reached Palos first. There was a high deck forward, a lower deck in the waist, where the oarsmen sat on benches, close to a series of ports in the skin of the vessel, through which were thrust the butts of the heavy oars. Aft again was a second higher deck, covered by an awning beneath which were placed padded divans and several quaintly shaped and ornamented chairs. Indeed, the vessel was nothing less than regal, as I perceived. Green was the awning and the sail on the gilded mast running up between the banks of rowers' benches.

Gilded too were the railings of the twin stairs that led up to the after-deck on either side, from the lower level of the waist. And the sheathing of the decks seemed to be made of closely fitted strips of the wine-red wood, customarily used for the fashioning of couches and divans and chairs.

Plainly, then, we had come aboard the craft of someone of more than ordinary station, I thought, and gave my attention to a man standing on guard beside a door in the facing of the space between the level of the after-deck and the waist, where, as I judged, whatever private cabins there might be on the vessel would be placed.

Huge he was and florid, muscled like an ox, his mighty thorax banded with metal, fitting him so closely that the bellies of the shoulder muscles bulged above their upper edge. Head, shoulders, and arms were naked, as were his legs save for a short cloth skirt below his armor, falling half-way down his thighs, and the metal casings on his heavy calves. Thick-lipped, flat-nosed, bulging of forehead, he was a veritable giant, his appearance little short of ferocious as he leaned on the haft of a spear and watched, straightening to attention only when the captain in charge of the raiding party advanced with his captives toward him. But only for a moment. Then as the captain paused, without speaking, he shifted his spear, put out a hand, and opened the door.

It gave into a passage, with curtained doorways on either hand and a lighted apartment at the farther end, toward which Naia, her maid, and Bathos, with the Zollarians who led them, passed.

They reached it, and then, in so far as sensation went at least, I gasped. The room was ablaze with lights that struck back on every hand from woodwork carved and tooled in most magnificent fashion, hung with woven fabrics of green shot through with threads of gold. But if the apartment was amazing in its appearance, its occupant was in no way overcast. Rather, she seemed the center of all its blended richness of furnishing and color. I say she because it was a woman who lay stretched on a couch of what seemed molded-silver. And such a woman! For a single instant, as I saw her, she seemed more gorgeous in her voluptuous physical perfection than anything in all that gorgeous place.

Tawny she was as a lioness, of hair and eyes, as she lay there on that splendid couch, draped with the mottled hide of some tawny beast; lithe as a tigress she appeared in all her supple, wonderfully rounded length, save for a jeweled girdle supporting a drapery of almost transparent tissue. And as she lifted her fine torso, raising herself to a sitting position before the captain, who sank with uplifted hand to a knee before her, one sensed there were tiny bells on the jeweled bands about her tapering ankles that tinkled as she moved.

Suspicion, swift as a lance-thrust, came upon me as I saw her, even before the captain spoke. "Hail to thee, Kalamita, Priestess of Adita, goddess of beauty; thy servant returns from that mission on which it was thy pleasure to send him, bringing with him those thou named."

Kalamita! Kalamita, the Zollarian, magnet of the flesh, by whose shameless charms and yet more shameless favors Kyphallos, Prince of Cathur, had been seduced. Well I thought was she named magnet—and one could fancy how she might draw men to her as irresistibly as the moth is drawn by the flame, and with equally fatal results. I glanced at Croft.

His face was a blended thing of conjecture and consternation on thus once more beholding Zollaria's lovely magnet of the flesh. But he said no word, though his hand crept out and touched me as we stood side by side to watch.

Kalamita smiled. "'Tis well, Ptoth," she made answer. "Arise. You have proven faithful, and you shall have your reward. Found you any obstacle worth naming on your mission?"

"Nay, Sister of Bandhor," said Ptoth, rising. "None but the house slaves lay there to oppose us—one we brought with us, since so it was ordered—the rest were slain."

I glanced at Croft again, and he nodded. I understand that, although he had made no mention of it, the fact to him was already known. And I felt my own anger harden. Mitlos was not the only one of Jason's retainers who had paid the penalty of their fidelity to his trust. The entire foray had been a deliberate bit of murder.

"'Tis well," said Kalamita again, turning her tawny eyes beyond Ptoth to where Naia and the others stood. "Found you any trace of this Mouthpiece of Zitu?"

"Nay," the captain answered, smiling, "but we left him ample trace of us."

Kalamita's whole expression darkened. Her amber eyes flashed. "Aye—and may Adita forsake my beauty and blast it if I give him not another. Let this woman wait, and bring me his slave."

Ptoth turned to Bathos, seized him by an arm, and flung him at the feet of the woman on the couch.

The blue man groveled. He made no attempt to rise.

Kalamita put out a pink-nailed foot and touched him.

"Come, get up," she prompted. "How are you called?"

"Bathos," the servant faltered, lifting himself on limbs that shook beneath him, to stand with downcast eyes.

"Listen, then, Bathos," Kalamita continued. "Canst find the way over which my captain led you, and return?"

"Aye, if I be granted the chance." Bathos glanced toward the end of the passage.

"It will be granted, provided you will bear a message."

"Aye, I will bear it," Bathos assented promptly.

"Then give ear. It is for your lord. Return to his dwelling and from there to Himyra; seek out one in authority, and bid him send word to the Hupor Jason that the woman he has taken to wife and her child are in Kalamita's hands. Say further that they shall be taken to a place I know of and held until I have received word from him, and that I shall await his coming in a hunting house, one of my possessions, in the mountains north of Cathur's border, half a sun's journey, where, when he comes to listen to my requirements, he will be led by men who will lie in watch. Repeat now my own words to me, Tamarizian canor, and make no mistake in the telling. I desire that this Hupor Jason fails not to understand."

Bathos complied. He mumbled the message quickly, too fired by the thoughts of freedom, as it seemed, to resent in the least Kalamita's use of the word canor, the Tamarizian equivalent of dog. "So shall I say to the one I find to send word to the Hupor Jason," he made an end.

Kalamita nodded and turned to Ptoth. "He has his lesson. Take him and see him put ashore. That done, see that we turn north at once, and say to Gor that I deny my presence to any, as you pass him. Take also the blue girl with you. I would deal with the other alone. You may leave her the child."

Ptoth threw up an arm in flat-handed salute and bowed, motioned Bathos to precede him, and caught Maia by an arm. Gor, I fancied, must be the name of the giant on guard at the outer door. And, too, I fancied that, under the conditions, Bathos's message was going to be old news when delivered.

I glanced at Jason, and found his expression one of intense attention. He seemed to feel my gaze, however, and shook his head slightly, as though to say this was no time for anything more than observation.

I turned back to the two women, now confronting one another.

Ptoth and his charges had vanished. They were alone, Kalamita, the Zollarian adventuress, the lure of men, and Naia, Princess of Aphur, with the son of a man in her arms.

For a moment each seemed appraising the other.

Then Kalamita rose.

It was like Aphrodite rising, the tissue of the draperies dependent from the gem-incrusted girdle clasping her rounded body seeming no more than a white foam, a shimmering streaking of froth, more than half revealing what it concealed. She went a lithe pace forward and paused, still holding the woman before her with contemptuous yellow eyes.

"So," she said, "at last I see Tamarizia's most beautiful woman, and find her rather pale of feature, rather wide-eyed, possessed of a not unattractive figure, but scarcely so favored of Adita as I have been led to believe."

"Favored rather by Ga, the true woman, Kalamita," Naia returned in level accents, glancing down at the child in her arms. "You do well to call on Adita, goddess of the unclean love."

For the moment the Zollarian made no answer. Once more her yellow eyes flashed. Scarcely, I thought, had she looked for the cold taunt from Naia's lips, aimed at her own unsavory reputation.

Then, "By Bel, you dare such speech to me!" she cried. "Think you I have it in mind to treat you as my prisoner or a guest?"

"As prisoner, I pray Zitu," said Naia of Aphur. "Other treatment from Kalamita were disgrace."

"By Bel!" Kalamita mouthed again, her face distorted with passion, and flung herself back on her couch. "You have a bold tongue at least." I thought she seemed disconcerted. She was breathing deeply. "How think you your Mouthpiece of Zitu will accept your being prisoner to Kalamita?" she asked.

For the first time Naia's pale face twitched. But only for an instant, before she controlled it and rejoined with proudly upflung head, "Jason, my lord, will answer that question to Zollaria and Kalamita in person."

"Bel grant it." All at once Kalamita laughed. "If so I shall have something to say to that self-exalted spirit—that panderer to priests, who scorned the open offer of my favor for the softer affection of yours."

Once more I glanced at Croft, and found his face contorted at the woman's reference to the time he was captive during the Mazzerian war. And, too, I found myself thinking that, no matter to what extent Zollaria might be involved in the abduction of Naia and Jason, Son of Jason, Kalamita as her agent was bent on glutting a personal revenge—that here was the old situation of a woman scorned.

Then once more Naia of Aphur was speaking. "Jason, my lord, like to the wild gnuppa of the mountains, prefers that the fountain at which his thirst is slaked be clean—and like it once it is captured, when led to a foul spring, he refused."

"Thou fool." Kalamita sprang up. The action held all the lithe menace of a tigress's spring. She began pacing the floor with an undulant swing of her body, a tinkling of her anklet bells. "Thou fool," she said again. "Think you not I shall make you repent these words—or that, save this Mouthpiece give heed to my demands and those of my nation, he shall return to your arms, or see your offspring again?"

"Nay," Naia said, as Kalamita came to a panting pause before her, "these things lie with the gods, Zollarian magnet. Once ere this, when you fancied you had tricked me to my undoing, the plans of Zollaria went amiss, and the menace was removed by death. Bzad, the Mazzerian to whom I was to be betrayed, paid for his attempted aid to you with his life, and his body was spewed forth from the Central Sea, refused even by Tamarizian waters, to lie rotting on the shores of Anthra, where it was your custom to dally with Cathur's prince."

"Whom you consented to wed," Kalamita sneered with a curling lip.

"To whom it was planned to give me as a sacrifice," said Naia, "if so by it were possible to stay his hands from treason and offset the work of your unholy charms. Tell me, Zollarian, stand I prisoner to all your nation, or to Kalamita alone?"

I felt a quiver shake me. For all the scathing tongue-play in which she had been indulging, Naia of Aphur had herself in hand. She knew Croft and I were present, that we could see and hear and understand. And she asked a question, fully aware that our presence was something Kalamita could not know.

Nor did she. Something like gloating leaped into her tawny eyes as she turned again to her couch and sat down.

"So," she said, smiling coldly, "we begin to stand on common ground. You stand prisoner to all Zollaria, wife of Jason, you and Jason, Son of Jason. There be two forms of warfare, Aphur, that of wits as well as that of arms. Wherefore, in your capture and that of your child, I serve both the interests of my country and my own. It was so Bandhor, my brother, and I planned."

Naia nodded. Her tone became one of musing. "Bandhor and Kalamita, his sister, on whose beauty he mounted to his position as general of all Zollaria's armies, rather than by any ability of his own, and the court of Zollaria at Berla, have planned before."

"Aye," said Kalamita quickly, "we planned, and had won, save for the undreamed weapons this Mouthpiece of yours brought against us—weapons against which no army might stand. Yet before he reclaims Naia of Aphur and her suckling—the secrets of those weapons shall be known. The Zollarian and the Tamarizian armies shall stand on equal footing again. Your Mouthpiece and your nation shall go down through Naia of Aphur—and what then of Jason's son?"

Once more I caught my breath. Once more Naia of Aphur went pale as the full scope of Zollaria's scheming was revealed with its undoubted future crop of bloody war, wherein Zollaria would indeed take the field on equal footing with the Tamarizian forces, should Naia's welfare compel the Mouthpiece of Zitu to yield to the demands for ransom the Zollarian woman so confidently proposed. I saw the astral form beside me clench its shadowy hands, sensed something of Jason's emotion, and then Naia of Aphur made answer.

"Yet not so surely on equal terms, Zollaria, since he who made the weapons of which you desire the secret may have others still in mind. 'Tis a poor plan to purchase or barter with unlaid eggs."

Croft's presence beside me breathed an exclamation softly. "By Zitu—woman of gold."

But Kalamita stretched her rosy arms and limbs with a tinkle of little bells, and remained upon the couch. A glint of something like amusement waked in her narrowed eyes.

"Your position is worth considering, Aphur," she said slowly. "It may even be put in the agreement that he shall refrain from attempting what you suggest—or that, should he attempt it, the act be an excuse for war."

"In which, were the excuse used against her, Zollaria would perchance again be foiled?"

"And Naia of Aphur, and Jason, Son of Jason, be emptied of the spirit."

"Nay—that is with Zitu," Naia made answer. "Ere this my lord has saved me from the embrace of Zilla. I trust him wholly." And all at once she smiled.

Kalamita frowned.

"By Bel, at least you have spirit," she said in almost wondering fashion.

"Which will not break before you, Priestess of Adita." Naia began a slow rocking of the infant Jason in her arms.

The act seemed to drive Kalamita to fury. Once more she lifted herself to a half-sitting posture. She threw out a jewel-banded arm and pointed. Her voice came shrilly—the voice of the termagant robbed of all pretense of control, or poise. "Go—hide yourself in one of the rooms yonder—get out of my sight."

Then, as Naia moved toward the mouth of the passage and the curtained doors of its rooms, she relaxed. A quiver shook her. "Now, Bel and Adita befriended me, and give me my will of this woman. Adita judge between us and blast her beauty. Her son to thee, Bel, if Tamarizia refuses our demands, as a sacrifice. I swear it," she cried.

"Come." I sensed Croft's emotion-clogged direction.

We made our way outside. The ship was in motion, the benches filled with straining rowers, between whom stalked men in armor bearing knotted lashes—the green sail spread to what there was of breeze. Kalamita's galley was straining north, bearing Naia of Aphur and Jason, Son of Jason, helpless captives aboard her.

"Where now?" I asked.

"Zitra." Croft seized my arm in his grasp. Then the creeping galley, the moonlighted flood of the outer ocean, were behind us, the tumbled region of Aphur's hills were beneath us. They too fell away and gave place to the shimmer of the Central Sea. An island appeared in its center—the walls of a mighty city. White they were as milk in the moonlight—white as the foam of the sea. And the city was white when we reached it, all white and purple shadows, with the mighty pyramid of Zitu lifting the pure white temple on its lofty top above the walls.

"Zitra," said Croft again. "I've got to get back in the flesh."

And even as he spoke, I sensed that we were in a room somewhere within the pyramid itself. Bare was its floor of tessellated paving, bare were its walls save for here and there a light in a metal sconce. Bare, too, it seemed of furnishings, save for a chest of metal, a stool and a couch, on which the body of Jason found a place.

The astral Jason seated himself beside it, and fastened me with his eyes. "You heard, Murray. You see what they intend." And then his expression altered. "Saw you ever a more glorious woman than Naia, wife of Jason? Well, I've got to get to work. I've got to save her."

"Just how?" I questioned, baffled, I confess myself, as to how the thing might be accomplished.

"I don't know," he admitted rather slowly. "Beyond the first step, that is. I'll explain things to Jadgor and Lakkon, of course, and I'll have a wireless sent to Robur at Himyra. After that—well—you heard the instructions given Bathos. There's no denying Kalamita has won the first trick by her unexpected attack—or that she'll enter largely into the rest of the affair until it's finished, but—since she's sending me word to meet her, I think I'll fall in so far with her proposal and meet her face to face."

"You mean, you'll go up there north to Cathur in the mountains?" I asked, surprised he should consider the action for a second, and with a feeling that his sense of bereavement, the anxiety of the husband and father to extricate his loved ones from the hands of their captors quickly, were certainly swaying his mind.

He nodded without other answer, his expression one of a frowning consideration.

"And thereby lose the second trick and the game altogether," I rejoined. For it had come to me that Kalamita's suggested meeting was in the nature of nothing more nor less than a trap.

"Eh?" Croft threw up his head. His glance burned into mine.

"Do you really think if you went up there to meet that tawny she devil, the Mouthpiece of Zitu—Tamarizia's big man—would be given chance to return?"

For a moment after I finished Croft said nothing, and then, "By Zitu—Murray, you're right! I must have been blind! I'll—I'll have to send another than myself. We've got to keep a few cards in our hand. But—consider my position."

"I do," I said. "I understand it perfectly, old man. I don't expect a man to keep cool in a game where the stakes are his wife and son."

He shook his head. "It isn't that only, Murray. I dare not sacrifice Tamarizia, either—and I won't fail Naia. Think, man—think—there must be a way to serve both ends."

"Perhaps what Naia herself suggested," I made tentative answer.

Pride flashed momentarily in his eyes and died. "The invention of another—a superior weapon," he said. "Zitu—the thought fired me when she named it. Hah! She knew we were present—and she led the conversation to inform us in advance of what was proposed. It was like her, Murray, but—man, how can I risk it? You heard that fiend of Adita's oath after Naia left her—to Bel with Jason's son."

"I know," I said slowly.

"But do you know its meaning?" Croft's question was strained.

"No," I admitted.

"Murray"—he leaned toward me; there was agony in his thought vibration—"they practise the hellish rites of ancient Phoenicia in the northern nation. The child would be burned."

Burned—Jason, Son of Jason—a living sacrifice! The rites of the Phoenicians! The thought staggered me, revolted, as it lifted to mind the picture of Moloch—the brazen god into whose insensate arms children and babes and maidens were cast—and I recalled that, as well as Moloch, that savage divinity had been known as Bel, and marveled at the similarity of names. A tremor of horror shook me. And yet by a strange association of thought, as it seemed to me then, another thought was born. Bel—Moloch—flame. On impulse I named the thing to Croft, and waited, until:

"Zitu—God," he said, and then, "Man—it may be the answer, if there is nothing else. Now, I've got to let Zud and Jadgor and Lakkon know what has happened. And I've got to get a message off to Robur. He's Naia's cousin, as I've told you, and I love him like a brother. Will you go with me on my missions, or will you return to your body, as I must to mine?"

"If you don't mind," I decided, "I'd like to know all that happens, and I'll linger around until dawn."

He nodded. "I'll be glad to feel you with me, and as soon as I reach Himyra I'll manage to visit you again. Look into the thing you suggested, won't you?"

"Go on. Get about your business," I told him. "I'll have the information for you the next time we meet, if I can find a certain man."

The body beside which he had been sitting raised itself on the couch and swung its feet around. It rose. "You've got to find him, man," Jason's physical voice told me without making the least break in the conversation, as he began to dress. "You know, Murray, I can perceive you dimly even so, and I can get your thought waves, of course—just as Naia was able to do the same thing the night of Jason's birth—so if you have any more suggestions to offer in what occurs inside the next few hours, make them of course. I'm not exactly myself. My spirit is still hot within me, where presently I think now it is going to grow deadly cold."

He jerked the fastenings of his leg-casings into position and clasped the belt of a short sword about him. "Now, I'm going before Zud first."

He turned to a door that slid back before his touch into a recess in the massive wall. I followed him into a corridor, constructed top and floor and sides of huge blocks and slabs of stone, lighted at intervals by a lamp whose rays served to no more than partly dispel the night-shrouding gloom. Age—age—the age of the pyramids of Egypt. The thing impressed me. Countless generations had passed since mortal hands had set those walls in position, where Jason's sandals now clanked along the passage. And then he paused before another door, lifted his sword, and rapped with its hilt for admittance. From somewhere a night breeze sighed along the hall and stirred the plumes of azure on his helmet.

"Who calls on Zud?" a voice came muffled through the door.

"Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu, man of Zitu," Croft replied.

The door slid back. Zud stood before us, blinking aged eyes.

"Mouthpiece of Zitu," he questioned, "what does this visit betide?"

"Work of Zitemku and his agents," Croft said hoarsely, stepping inside the high priest's apartments and pausing while Zud closed the door.

"Thou knowest of my sleeps, O man of Zitu—and what occurs at times when my body lies sleeping, and how my spirit gains knowledge beyond the power of most men in the gaining—for I have explained to thee, and shown thee somewhat, O Zud, so that by thyself something of the same power was attained," he went on.

"Hence will ye give credence when I declare to you, in the name of Zitu, that this night the woman whose union with me was blessed by thyself appeared to me, saying my home in the mountains of Aphur had been assailed by a Zollarian band, and that she had been carried from it with our child—and ye will credit me still further in that I left the body and went to my house, and found things even as she had described them, and that I followed her to the shore of the outer ocean, and aboard a ship, whereupon was Kalamita, the Zollarian woman of whom thou knowest—and that even now she is carried to Zollaria captive, to be returned to Tamarizia and my house only for a price."

He paused and caught a heavy breath, the fingers of his left hand toying with the jeweled hilt of his sword.

"Zitu," stammered the high priest, advancing a step to lay a withered hand on Jason's shoulder—"may he befriend thee, and guard the woman I know thou lovest. In what way may I aid thee, Jason?"

"In no way, save that I desired your acquaintance with the knowledge. I go now to Jadgor, and Lakkon, her father," Croft replied. "Grant us thy prayers, Zud, and those of the Gayana, since once she lay among them waiting to be my bride." He turned to the door, crashing it back with a wholly unneeded force, and strode off, clanking down the passage, leaving old Zud staring after, out of troubled, aged eyes.

CHAPTER IV

JASON TAKES THE TRAIL

At another door he stopped, wrenching it open and laying hands upon a cord that hung within it. He jerked upon it, released it, and stood waiting with hands clenched as though in impatience, until there rose slowly into sight a platform, upon which he stepped. The platform sank slowly, carrying him downward inside a rock-faced shaft, which ended in a dimly lighted chamber, where blue men strained about a capstan and windlass by means of which the primitive lift was controlled.

"Hai! The Mouthpiece of Zitu requires a motur and one to drive it," Croft addressed the man in charge.

The fellow saluted and turned away. I saw there were several moturs parked against one of the chamber walls. And too, I recalled that Croft had found a similar arrangement in the pyramid of Himyra when first he called on Magur, save that then the room had been used to house the carriages and gnuppas of the priests.

Croft strode toward one of the waiting cars, and a man appeared. As Jason climbed to a seat he took his place at the wheel and the engine roared. Blue men set open a heavy door and stood aside. Through it the car darted out of the base of the pyramid to reach the street beyond it.

"To the palace of Jadgor, and hasten!" Jason cried.

Then, as the motur fled between the white-walled houses of Zitra, he leaned back, his face pallid in the moonlight beneath his plumes of azure. His lips parted. "Zitu—Zitu," I caught a whisper, and knew that to him in the urge of his need its progress seemed slow, no matter how swiftly it moved. Yet in reality the time was very short ere the official residence of the President of Tamarizia was reached.

Jason was out of the motur almost before it paused. And then for the first time, save as he had described it, I saw the inside of the former imperial palace, with its silver-sheathed beams supporting the roof of varicolored glass above the inner court, its tessellated pavement of sparkling crystal and silver and gold, across which, once he had gained admittance, Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu, strode toward the captain of the guard.

The soldier came to attention, saluting with uplifted palm.

"Go," Croft directed. "Say to Jadgor, President of Tamarizia, and Lakkon of Aphur, that the Mouthpiece of Zitu seeks speech with them concerning a matter of importance."

"Aye, Hupor and Mouthpiece of Zitu." The captain saluted again and departed at once.

We waited, Jason and I, Croft a commanding figure in his physical presence, clouded of brow and set of lip, standing with bent crest and deep-heaving chest while the guardsmen watched out of speculative eyes this proud man of their nation who came on some urgent, undreamed mission in the night, myself seeing it all but unseen by any save Jason dimly, as he had said.

The captain returned.

"If my lord will follow...." He spoke in suggestive fashion, saluted once more, and waited his superior's pleasure.

"Lead on." Croft lifted his bended head and followed his clanking escort up a flight of crystal stairs and down a far-reaching corridor, resplendent with scarlet hangings on walls of silver and gold.

Before a door of silver embossed with the circle and cross of Zitra, the captain paused, striking three times against the metal surface with the butt of his copper sword.

Jadgor himself set the portal open, peering at Croft from dark eyes set on either side of a high-bridged, slightly aquiline nose. Seen so, he seemed a less commanding figure than in official dress, for now he was gowned merely in a shirt of silken fabric, reaching from his strong neck nearly to his heels.

"Hai, Jason, what cause, in Zitu's name, brings you to disturb our slumbers?" he began as Croft passed inside.

"Cause in plenty," Croft made answer, his glance sweeping the apartment, "of which I would speak with you and Lakkon. Cause enough to warrant the driving of sleep from your eyes."

Jadgor closed the door and turned.

"Come, then," he said, and led the way toward a farther room, hung in scarlet, furnished with a silver bed and table and carven chairs of the usual red wood, in one of which sat Lakkon.

Croft followed, and just inside the door of the sumptuous apartment he paused.

"Behold in me, Jadgor, and Lakkon, father of Naia, my wife, a messenger of evil tidings," he said hoarsely, "in that the house of Jason in the mountains has been betrayed, and the light of it removed."

"Betrayed?" Lakkon stiffened.

"Removed?" Jadgor repeated. "Jason, what mean you?"

"Sit, Jadgor," Jason suggested. "My heart is heavy within me, and there is much to be made plain concerning the affair."

Jadgor complied without shifting the scrutiny of his keen eyes from Croft's face. Croft himself drew a chair to the silver table, where the other two men had taken place. And then he told them all that had happened, from first to last, save that he omitted any mention of my presence.

As he spoke, I watched each face. Plainly the men believed him. Their expressions gave no evidence of doubt. They had been given sufficient proof of his astral ability in the past, and they did not question the truth of what he alleged he had discovered in the spirit while his physical body seemed wrapped in heavy sleep. Jadgor held his thick-set figure stiffly. He clenched his heavy hands. Horror waked on Lakkon's sternly molded features. And at the end it was Jadgor, the soldier, the patriot, the man who had labored to make strong his nation, who spoke first.

"Now, by Zitu, and by Zitu," he roared the Tamarizian double oath, and struck the burnished top of the table with his fist, "are the affronts—the annoyances—the ceaseless schemings of these spawns of Zitemku beyond Tamarizia's borders to never cease! And if not, what duty lies to Tamarizia before that in the fulfillment of which Zollaria shall be crushed? Jason, twice have you led the armies of Tamarizia against them and their allies. Gather them once more together, with my approval, and punish these treacherous beasts."

And if I had thought him more the man and less the statesman when first I entered the room and viewed him in undress, I felt myself moved to reverse my judgment now. This was no lesser spirit, stern of visage, glaring half risen from his seat toward Croft, leaning slightly toward him, still resting his weight upon the knotted knuckles of his heavy fist.

Croft, too, I am sure, was momentarily moved by Jadgor's swift readiness to resort to arms, since for an instant, as the president faced him, his own eyes fired. But then he shook his head slightly, setting the azure plumes on his helmet nodding.

"Nay," he said slowly. "Nay, Jadgor—I am a man, as thou art, and the notion quickens my pulses, but—in my judgment this matter is less to be settled by force of arms than by a resort to craft."

"Hilka!" Suddenly Lakkon's voice broke forth. "Hold! You would balk the issue? You would seek by a use of trickery—a matching of wits—to answer an insult to Tamarizia and thyself? Was it for this I gave my consent to your union with my daughter—or that she went down to the gates of Zilla's realm in the bearing of your child? Has marriage softened you so much, Jason, that the blood turns to water in your veins? Now, by Zitu—"

"Hilka! Hold!" Croft mouthed his own words at him. His face was pallid, its eyes narrowed, its lips gone livid. "Father of Naia—I respect thy surprise and grief, and therefore forgive your words. Yet speak not so concerning my position in this affair, until you consider all sides of the matter. Think you that, had I any suspicion of what was intended, I had left her whose love is the crowning glory of my existence unguarded in my house? Nay, by Zitu—she had lain in the house of Robur, son of Jadgor—safe within Himyra's walls. And take thought on what I have told you, Lakkon. Recall the oath of Kalamita. Consider, in judging my position, that a resort to arms would forfeit the life of your grandson and my child. Since you are a father, take heed of a father's fears."

His voice faltered. He bent forward, resting his head upon folded arms on the table. For the first time in all his life on Palos, Jason's haughty crest was bowed.

Jadgor glanced at Lakkon. He nodded. "By Zitu, my brother, we were overquick. It were well that Jason appears to have kept his wits."

The anger faded from Lakkon's face and he rose. Passing about the table, he laid a hand on Croft's bended shoulder.

"Your pardon, my son," he stammered in the embarrassed fashion strong men use on such occasions. "I was over hasty. What, then, do you propose?"

"As yet I know not." Jason lifted his head and turned clouded eyes on Lakkon. "Nor would I have you in this matter think me cold. Word I will send to Robur, and myself shall depart for Himyra at once. Let Jadgor give me orders for the captain of his swiftest galley. Even so my man Bathos will reach the city ere I arrive. And since this Kalamita proposes a meeting at which Zollaria's demands will be presented, it occurs to me that as a first step she should be met."

Jadgor appeared to consider. "But not by the Mouthpiece of Zitu?" he said at last.

"Nay?" Croft eyed him sharply.

Jadgor nodded. His first flash of spirit appeared to have passed. "Think you Zitu's mouthpiece would be permitted to return from such a meeting? And we are to match treachery by craft, we must guard ourselves from traps. Ill as are the circumstances that confront us, were they not a hundredfold increased with Jason in Zollaria's hands? Then indeed would Tamarizia find herself in evil case!"

Lakkon's old eyes widened under his grizzled brows. "You suspect a trap, then, Jadgor?" he questioned.

"Aye, and this lure of the flesh, this Kalamita, is connected with it," Tamarizia's president declared. Warrior, he was prone to think first of arms, but as it seemed to me now, not lacking in statecraft either, once he gave his mind to it. "To me it seems she has taken into account the hearts of men, in sending word of the meeting—deeming the husband and father would rush to his and his country's undoing without due consideration of where his act might lead. Against such an ending, thanks be to Zitu and Jason's ability to obtain knowledge in his death-like sleeps, we are forewarned, and Tamarizia keeps what yet she has. What say you, Jason?"

"That Jadgor's words lighten my position somewhat," Croft made answer. "Since, had his mind not so clearly seen what in my belief was intended, it had been no easy task to make my stand in the matter understood, and perchance I would have seemed to him and Lakkon rather a man of milk and water, than one of blood—"

"Nay," Lakkon interrupted, his face gone haggard, "forget my words. Horror of what had befallen had dulled my understanding, husband of Naia. How mean you—that Zollaria's terms shall be refused?"

"By Zitemku, the fiend of the foul pit of damnation, what else?" Jadgor roared before Croft could answer. "Does Tamarizia weaken herself or yield one hand's-breadth to that northern horde?"

Croft nodded. "Zollaria's demands may not be granted. Let that be understood," he replied to Jadgor's outburst.

Lakkon winced. "Thou canst say so, who having asked me not to think thee cold, seem yet so little moved?"

For the second time Croft stiffened at his father-in-law's words. His face flushed deeply, and he rose, towering, the splendid figure of a man, against the end of the table, while Jadgor and Lakkon watched.

"Tamarizia must not be weakened," he reaffirmed his position. "Cold I may seem to Lakkon, and little moved, and now, thanks to him, I am cold indeed. Yet have I sworn an oath not to fail her who looks on me to save her. And I shall succeed in what I am undertaking, without forgetting the interests of this nation, or—by Azil himself I swear it—let all men cease to speak of Jason as one among living men. From here I go to send a message to Robur, and after that upon a galley. Come, Jadgor, give me your order to its captain that he may prove bidable to my commands."

For a moment as he ceased speaking silence came down in the room where the lights pricked out the azure cross and wings of Azil on his cuirass, as he waited. Cold he had said to me he would become and to Jadgor and Lakkon cold—as cold as some deadly tempered weapon, in all outward seeming now he was. Lakkon's expression altered, became embarrassed. He glanced from Croft to Jadgor, and moistened his lips with his tongue.

Jadgor moved. He left his seat, found wax-coated tablets and a stylus, and returned. For a moment or two he wrote rapidly, cutting his official mandate to the captain of the galley into the virgin surface. Then, rising, once more he handed it to Croft.

"Go," he said, "and Zitu go with you. You will keep us informed in this matter?"

"Aye, as it progresses." Croft accepted the tablet. "Zitu keep you, Jadgor." He turned to leave.

"Jason," Lakkon quavered.

Jason paused.

"Depart not from me in anger. I sought not truly to give you fresh offense. And—and carry my blessing to my daughter when next you meet her in the spirit, as she has told me thou canst."

For a barely perceptible interval Croft appeared to hesitate, and then he caught a heavy breath.

"Against the father of Naia of Aphur it were hard indeed for anger to find a place in my heart. Zitu be with you, Lakkon, also," he said, and left.

Outside the room he made his way, outside the palace of Jadgor, once more to a seat in the motur, and in it toward the city walls and the foot of a mounting flight of stairs.

A sentry stood with sword and spear before them. Croft addressed him. He saluted and permitted him to pass. Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu, climbed up in the silvery moonlight, his shadow a purple blot beside him, to reach the top at last. And there strangely in all that archaic scene he paused before the door of a hut, above which towered the spidery outline of a wireless mast. For an instant he turned his eyes outward over the expanse of the Central Sea, and then he passed inside.

A man seated at a table, with the key of the wireless before him, started to his feet.

"A message to Robur, Governor of Aphur in Himyra, and quickly," Croft said.

The operator regained his seat and produced his headdress, clamping it against his ears. Croft gave the message. There came the hissing crash of the spark. Strange, I found myself thinking as I watched—an anachronism surely that this youth of Palos, clad in plain tunic and sandals and leg-casings of leather, above which showed the sinewy flesh of his lower thighs and knees, should be sitting here on top of the ramparts of a walled city, hurling forth across the ocean beyond him the potential Hertzian waves. And yet it was no more strange than that I should know it—than that the grim-visaged man in the metal harness of a Tamarizian noble was the one through whose genius it was inspired.

And then the thing was done. The crashing of the spark was silenced. Croft tossed a coin on the table and passed outside and down the stairs. And when next the motur paused he gave the driver another coin and dismissed him. He stood before a galley, moored close to the semi-circular quays of Zitra's inner harbor, stretching like a pool of liquid silver beyond him to the mighty sea-doors that closed the entrance to it in the overarching walls.

But though I thrilled to the massive grandeur of the picture, Croft heeded it little. To him it was an old scene, and, too, he was ridden with the spur of haste.

"Hai! Captain of the watch, aboard the galley!" he hailed sharply and stood waiting until a head appeared above the rail of the waist and a voice replied:

"Who calls?"

"Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu, with the mandate of Jadgor from the palace of Jadgor. I would come toward you," Croft made answer.

The head disappeared. For possibly two minutes nothing happened, and then a gangway was shoved out to reach the quay.

Croft strode along it, presented Jadgor's tablet to a suddenly wide awake captain, and was led to an apartment under the after-deck, richly furnished in red woods and hangings of scarlet, the personal color of Jadgor's house.

Life woke on board the galley. There was a tramping of feet, a sound of voices bawling orders, suddenly the sibilant hiss of water past the hull. The galley heeled slightly on the long arc of a circle, straightened back to an even keel. Through the windows let into the stern I became conscious of a graying of the eastern heavens, and then a shadow fell upon us. It came to me that the monster sea-doors were opened to permit our passing.

Croft sank down upon a couch of burnished copper and sighed. He turned his glance about the apartment. "Are you still here, Murray?" he questioned.

"Aye," I bent my thought upon him, and he smiled a trifle wanly as he caught the form of my answer.

"Better be going," he said. "But give me the benefit of your thoughts in the next few days. If you've waited until now, you've had recent proof of how hard it is for the father to hold his personal interests of lesser importance than matters of state."

"Nonsense, man," I returned. "We'll beat them. Once you're in Himyra, you and Robur will get your heads together, and I'm going to work collecting all the information I can obtain on the device I suggested earlier tonight."

"Do so." He nodded and stretched himself out on the couch. "I'll use it if we can think of nothing else. You and Rob—" All at once he used a diminutive form of Robur's name, of which he had told me before. "Murray, I thank Zitu for you both. I know I have your sympathy and understanding, and—I'll find the same things once I am in Himyra. I'll see you inside the next few days, of course."

From now on this narrative must become, until the end, an account of Croft's efforts toward the rescue of Naia and Jason, rather than of things experienced by myself. For now I was become little more than his lieutenant on earth—a collector of knowledge to whom, when he came in the astral presence to gain it, he told how that knowledge was to be employed.

In the body he went to Himyra first. But astrally he willed himself back that morning after I had left him, aboard Kalamita's gilded craft, where rather than the tawny siren, the lure that led him was his wife and child. Naia of Aphur—the love of her, as ever since first he had seen her, was a flame in Jason's breast.

Gor he found sleeping within the passage, sprawled barrierlike inside its door. Kalamita, too, lay wrapped in slumber, her scheming brain at rest. Inside one of the curtained apartments Maia slept also on a couch drawn crosswise of the door. Naia of Aphur alone was wakeful, brooding with troubled eyes above the sleeping infant.

To Croft, as he saw her, she seemed then the embodiment of all the meaning involved in the wonderful statue of Ga the Eternal Mother he had seen once in the quarters of the Gayana—the Tamarizian vestals brooding above the altar of the sacred fire, with the form of a babe on her knees.

Thrilling at sight of her so, he stood before her.

"Beloved," he called her.

She stiffened to attention, lifting her head. Her lips moved.

"I have waited thy coming, Jason," she whispered, her fair face lighting as she responded to his summons.

"You heard all, know all?" she questioned as Croft drew her wraithlike form inside his yearning arms.

"Aye—golden woman—and marveled at thy spirit," he made answer, ere he told her what he had accomplished and gave her Lakkon's message, mentioning at the end the possible means of rescue I had suggested.

"Zitu!" Naia faltered. "It were strange indeed, were it not, if the answer to this riddle be found by our friend of earth?"

"Aye, strange," said Jason, "yet not more so than that, despite their knowledge, I stand here now before you."

"Yet he is wise," she replied, clinging closer to him, "in that he saw quickly the true meaning of the meeting between you and herself this Zollarian woman saw fit to propose. Myself have I promised throughout the night that, once you had come again to me, I would see you warned."

Croft smiled in rueful fashion. "Jadgor, too, was against it. It would seem that all perceived the motive of it, save only Jason alone."

"Ah, but"—Naia lifted a hand to lay it against his cheek—"Jason, my beloved, was overwrought."

"Aye," he confessed; "and now it appears to him that it was on that Kalamita counted to lead him into a trap."

"And will count," said Naia, "not knowing the strange power you have taught me, by which we meet."

Croft nodded. "And through which their every move may be watched. To my mind, beloved—this meeting on which she is bent at present must be brought about."

"But not by Jason!" The fires of Naia's astral body paled in swift alarm. "Not by you, beloved."

"Nay," Croft reassured her, "not by Jason, but another, in a fashion, once I am in Himyra, Robur and I shall devise."

"Hold, then." Naia paused to consider before she went on quickly. "Perchance against a woman, a woman's wits may aid you. Told she not Bathos to say this meeting would be north of Cathur—and sought she not once ere this, when before you fought to make me thine, beloved, to work harm to Tamarizia through Cathur's prince, so that the succession was lost to Koryphu, his brother, and in the elections for governor, even though he sought to gain the station, he was ignored? Think you not that in Koryphu, Scythys's younger son, you may find one with hate in his heart for this woman and an agent to your hand?"

"Aye, by Zitu!" Croft cried, gazing into her lifted face out of startled eyes. "Naia, you have said it. Koryphu, and he will consent, is the man."

And so to Scira, capital city of Cathur, he willed himself.

Long familiarity with Scira made it easy for him to reach the residence, which, after the overthrow of his family, had become the home of Cathur's lesser prince. And there he found Koryphu, always unlike Kyphallos, his brother, more or less of a student, already busy with the tablets and scrolls that as yet in Tamarizia took the place of books. Satisfied that his man would be easy to locate when needed, he returned to the galley at once.

Thereafter followed a weird four days and nights, during the lighted portion of which Croft occupied himself as best he might, while the galley plowed across the Central Sea toward the mouth of the Na, up which lay Himyra. And when the daylight faded he stretched himself on the couch in his apartment and joined Naia in the spirit, going with her north to a Zollarian seaport, and from it in gnuppa-drawn conveyances wherein the passengers reclined on deeply padded cushions, toward Berla, discovering thereby that no matter what Kalamita may have said to Bathos regarding the place of Naia's holding, she was to be taken to the seat of the Zollarian government first. So much he had learned both from his astral conversations with her and the remarks of the guards which reached his ears, by the time Himyra was reached.

Himyra. Croft stepped upon its quays, where lapped the yellow Na, with a feeling of relief. Himyra—home. It was so he regarded that red city more than any other place on Palos outside his own house. Himyra—it was here he had labored—here he had molded the present strength of the Tamarizian nation—from here he had gone twice to make good his claims of that strength—here, outside the circling walls towering like ruddy buttes above the sands of the Aphurian desert, he had seen Naia of Aphur, read love in the depths of her purple eyes first.

"Jason!"

He whirled, to behold Robur coming toward him from a motur.

"Rob!" He turned in his direction.

They met, and Robur clasped him to his breast.

"My brother in all but birth," he said with emotion. "Would Zitu he had not sent this thing upon you. Gaya sends her greeting. Myself I timed your arrival, and so soon as the gatemen reported your galley's passing, drove down to carry you to a friendly house."

"Like thee, Rob," Croft said, his heart warmed by such a meeting. "In Himyra, and thy presence, I breathe easier than for days. Bathos, my servant, has arrived?"

"The sun before this," Robur returned as they moved toward his waiting motur. "Himyra, Aphur, and Robur stand ready to aid you in all things toward the rescue of our cousin. Jason need but say the word."

"Presently," said Croft, "when I sit in the presence of Gaya and Robur, my true friends."

Suddenly he found himself yearning for the compassion of the gentle, brown-haired matron, Robur's wife, who ere this had listened with patient understanding to his troubles—had aided him more than she knew herself in Naia's wooing. He laid a hand on Robur's knee as the Aphurian drove the motur up the easy grade of the embankment to reach the thoroughfare fronting the Na. "Then, Rob, must you aid me both as a man and an avenger indeed."

"Zitu!" Robur eyed him. "Are you, then, so broken?"

Croft's expression hardened, his voice deepened.

"Aye—I am shaken, Rob, but—once let my course in this be plain, and you shall find me far from a broken reed."

"Hai!" Robur nodded. "That is better—more like the old Jason. For a moment you dismayed me."

He reached the top of the embankment and increased the motur's speed.

In through the wide doors of the palace, with their doglike guardians of stone, and their weblike wings, to the red court where blue men sprinkled water upon the ruddy pavement, he drove. Past sentries armed with spears and short swords, who sprang to swift attention at sight of Aphur's governor, and the Mouthpiece of Zitu—the wonder worker of their nation, descending from one of his own creations—he led Croft into a private wing of the palace, and through it to the inner court, where Gaya waited on a couch beneath a striped awning, close to the sun-kissed waters of the bathing pool.

Croft's heart swelled as he once more entered the well-known lounging place. Here Naia and Robur and he had played at ball more than once together. Here it was she had called him Aquor, when they bathed. And in those shimmering waters he had caught his "little silver fish". For a moment his eyes dimmed as he bent above Gaya's hand, in silent salutation, not trusting himself to speak—so that, moved by a swift emotion, the woman caught his face as he raised it between her palms and kissed him on the cheek.

"Jason, my friend," she said softly, "take thought that the ways of Zitu are past understanding, and that from this further ordeal now laid upon you may come a double peace."

"Hai!" exclaimed Robur quickly. "Give heed to her, Jason. At times she seems given prophetic vision. Perchance this double peace is for thee and Tamarizia also."

"Zitu grant it," said Croft, deeply affected by Gaya's greeting. "It is of that we must speak after I have made certain things plain."

Robur nodded. Gaya returned to the couch. The two men drew other seats beside her, and Croft narrated his story.

"First in my mind comes this meeting with the woman herself. Since she journeys first to Berla, it is certain some time must still elapse ere she goes to her hunting lodge. And as regards the meeting itself, here is what I propose." He rapidly outlined a plan for sending a Tamarizian party into the mountains north of Cathur, and at the last he mentioned Koryphu's name.

"Hai!" Robur's face lighted. "Now, by Zitu, Jason, you have found the proper man. True is he in his heart, as I believe, and a sufferer from his brother's treason. He should welcome this task as a means of proving his loyalty to his nation and in so much reestablishing himself—and where were a better agent to represent us before this unclean woman, by whom his brother was disgraced?"

"Naia brought the man to my mind," said Jason, unwilling to appropriate the credit.

"Aye"—Gaya smiled—"the step savors of a woman. Kalamita will gain small satisfaction when she meets him face to face. It is a proper choice."

"He lies at Scira?" Robur questioned.

Croft nodded. "Aye—I have visited him in spirit inside the last five days—and found him busy with tablets and scrolls, more student than man of affairs."

"Then," Robur declared with quick decision, "we go to Scira and lay the matter before him without delay."

"Nay"—Croft shook his head—"first shall I be present in Berla in my own fashion when Naia arrives. Meanwhile, Robur, you and I arrange other details for the mission to this meeting, and prepare to reopen the shops."

For a moment Robur regarded him out of narrowed eyes, and then he nodded. "Has the Mouthpiece of Zitu some new device for the making, he will find me ready to work with him upon it as in the past."

Jason smiled at his ready acceptance. There had been no time when he had failed to find Robur's interest in the modern innovations he had introduced on Palos lacking, or had been denied his aid in their production. The Aphurian was of a most progressive mind.

"Nay," he said now, "I know not, nor will till after this meeting with the Zollarian woman. And after that it may be I shall revisit earth."

"Earth!" Robur exclaimed. "When last you attempted such a matter, the thing was an affair of Zitrans. Think you—"

"Hold, Rob," Jason interrupted. "Within the last cycle—I have visited and conversed with a man of earth in the spirit rather than the flesh."

Gaya caught her breath sharply. Both she and Robur knew the history of Croft's former mundane existence. Yet now she seemed shaken.

"Jason," she faltered, "as man I know you, yet are there times when to me you seem more like to a spirit in man's form even as on a time Zud of Zitra said." Her eyes were wide.

Croft turned to her.

"Man is a spirit, Gaya, my friend and wife of my all but brother," he said slowly. "Yet now my spirit is heavy, in that I am a man bereft. Wherefore, ere this thing be finished, I shall work in body and spirit to regain what I have lost."

"Enough," Robur prompted. "This is between ourselves. Man thou art, and husband and father. This visit to earth has somewhat to do with a new device?"

"Aye—should nothing develop from the meeting after Koryphu's return, if he accepts. Rob, have you stores in plenty of metals, rubber, and cloth?"

"Aye, in plenty—and if not, since Koryphu's mission will take the best part of a Zitran to arrange and carry out, it were possible to put double shifts at the forges and send the weavers to their looms."

"Then do so," Jason accepted, filling his chest with a heavy inhalation, "for it is in my mind that ere Naia and Jason, Son of Jason, shall see Aphur again strange things shall be seen in the skies."

"In the skies!" Robur cried, his dark eyes flashing.

"Aye," said the Mouthpiece of Zitu, "in the skies."

CHAPTER V

IN BERLA

Freedom of action, cooperation, a friendly understanding, marked the following days for Croft. That night he visited Naia while his body lay in a room in Robur's part of the palace, covered with a silken tissue, worked over by Gaya's own maids, whom she sent to rub into its stalwart muscles, soft, nourishing, perfumed ointments, such as the Tamarizian nobles used.

He found the Zollarian party not far from Berla, confident that the succeeding day would see them inside the city itself. He returned to Himyra for a few hours, spoke with Gaya and Robur, stretched himself out once more, and willed himself back to Naia, and slipped into the conveyance where she rode with Maia and Jason, very much as he had sat and gazed upon her, drunk with the beauty of her, the day he had seen her first outside Himyra's lifted walls. So it was he had promised her the night before he would accompany her into Berla when she arrived.

The entry itself was made a spectacle for the crowds. In fact, it was clear to Croft that the thing was staged. Whatever doubts he may have entertained concerning Zollaria's participation in Kalamita's abduction of Naia and Jason as a state, vanished, leaving a cold conviction that the woman had acted less as an individual than in an agent's place.

Outside the walls of Berla the party was halted by a patrol. The curtains on Naia's carriage were drawn back, leaving the occupants exposed. Guardsmen approached and placed golden bands joined by a golden chain upon her slender ankles, and on her arms. A chariot such as the Zollarians used in war, save that it was burnished to the last degree, as it advanced behind green-plumed gnuppas harnessed four abreast, emerged from Berla's gate and deposited a massively built warrior, in splendid harness, beside the conveyance in which Kalamita rode.

Croft recognized Bandhor, general of the Zollarian army, as Kalamita appeared. She flung herself from her carriage, her face distorted with displeasure, almost before his chariot had paused with lunging steeds.

"By Bel, what is the meaning of this interference with my entry into the city?" she broke forth in a voice of passion.

"Interference! Nay, it is a triumph. They make a holiday of your return with your captives, priestess of beauty," Bandhor roared.

"Holiday? Triumph?" the woman repeated with a curling lip. "Are we then at war, Bandhor, since I departed?"

"Nay," he returned, viewing her rage with what seemed a sense of amusement. "Nor will be—since Kalamita brings with her the guarantees of peace. Come, I will lead you into the city."

For a moment his sister considered, tapping the metal of the roadway with a sandaled foot. Plainly her displeasure in this change of whatever plans she may have had was in no way diminished, but in the end she accepted. "So be it. But wait." She turned and disappeared into her carriage, from which after some few moments she again emerged.

She had altered her dress, and now in the Sirian sun she blazed. Jeweled shields, supported against her fair skin by a gem-incrusted harness, covered her breast—a green skirt embroidered with flashing stones fell from a scintillating girdle about her hips and thighs. Green were the plumes above her tawny hair, and the sandals on her feet, the casings on her calves. A barbaric picture, she strode toward Bandhor's car with its restive gnuppas.

"If we triumph, let us triumph fitly," she said in scornful fashion, and stepped into the driver's place. "It is my pleasure, Bandhor, my brother, to lead my triumph myself."

Gathering the reins into her hands, she turned the gnuppas back toward the gate of the city in a swirling smother of dust.

"Thou tawny devil!" Bandhor cried, his eyes flashing with admiration as he caught the tail of the rocking car and sprang aboard. "Forward, Zollarians—into the city!"

The patrol that had stopped them formed on either side of Naia's carriage. Kalamita's party fell in behind it. They passed through the gate, and between the living banks of a swarming, jostling, neck-craning crowd that lined the main avenue of Berla as far as the eye could reach.

Their advent excited a roar. Small doubt but their identity was known—or that this haling of the wife and child of the strong man of Tamarizia, captive, seemed a triumph to the minds of the Zollarian populace indeed. Yells, shrieks, and screeches filled the air. Curses of every degree of vileness were mouthed. The mob jostled, pressed closer to the carriage of the captives. Someone threw a stone. Naia lifted Jason and placed him under the rear wall of the conveyances, where it curved upward to form the canopy or top.

Her body formed a shield before him. For the rest, her pale face remained unmoved in its haughty calmness. Watching her, Croft's heart was filled with pride. Maia crept to her and crouched on the cushions beside her, plainly frightened. But save for that instinctive guarding of her offspring, Naia of Aphur gave no sign of fear.

"Hail to Kalamita, priestess of beauty. Hail Bandhor. Hail to Kalamita, who brings to Zollaria those through whom she shall be made once more stronger than the strongest," the populace roared.

It occurred to Croft to see how Kalamita herself was receiving the acclamation. He left Naia's vehicle briefly and joined himself to the woman, reining the prancing gnuppas with a practised hand.

He found her face wreathed in a forced smile, and her tawny eyes, back of their fringing lashes, ablaze.

"Who has spread the report that these shall make Zollaria strong?" she hissed at her brother.

"Helmor," he told her after a moment's hesitation. "So soon as your advance messenger reached Berla, he commanded the success of your mission announced."

"Helmor," said Kalamita thickly. "Him whom Tamarizia has most grievously defeated. Is the emperor one to gain credit from my work before the masses, or a fool to consider a thing as accomplished ere it is done? Was it not agreed between us, Bandhor, that after she should have been brought quietly to Berla she should be taken into the mountains until I had tricked this Tamarizian Mouthpiece?"

"To a meeting?" Bandhor muttered.

"Aye, to a meeting," said his sister, "after which he also would have been in our hands."

"Provided he came to the meeting."

"Came?" Kalamita curled her lips as she answered. "You, Bandhor, are one to whom women are no more than a moment's toys, but to that one, that pale-faced creature, behind us, means more. Aye, he had come, for I sent word that I held the woman, and bade him to a meeting to give ear to my demands."

"By Bel," growled Bandhor, "Helmor believes it not, and who was Bandhor to stay his hand? Say what you will to me, my sister, but, once we reach the palace, curb your tongue."

"Nay—I fear him not." Kalamita shrugged her shoulders. "This display is a mistake, as I shall show him. The matter should have been conducted in quiet, till it was past."

Vastly pleased that Kalamita's plans were already going contrary to her liking, Croft returned to Naia, and remained throughout the noisy progress until the palace was reached, and she was led inside between double rows of guards.

Into the palace of Helmor, Emperor of all Zollaria, her golden head proudly lifted, Naia of Aphur passed, walking with steady footsteps once her shackles were removed. And Maia followed across a huge interior similar in most respects to the Tamarizian structures, bearing in her blue arms Jason's son. Palace guards opened a door before them. They passed into an audience chamber to stand before Helmor at last.

He sat there on a silver chair upon a dais, the steps leading to which were spread with gorgeously colored rugs. And as her guards led Naia of Aphur toward him, with Kalamita and her brother close behind them, he glowered.

Croft knew him by sight. There had been a time when he had forced him on a stricken field to enter his own armored motur, prisoner of war, and guarantee of an early peace, on the day Zollaria's hopes of conquest over Tamarizia had gone down in red defeat. And now he watched as he opened his lips to speak, in a somewhat taunting fashion:

"Greetings to Naia of Aphur, whose presence gives all Zollaria pleasure, in that times are changed, and that where once Helmor was held hostage for Tamarizia's demands, Naia and her child are now the guests of Helmor until their ransom be paid."

For a moment the woman before him said nothing, staring straight back into his gloating visage out of steady purple eyes. And then her lips parted. "And were apt to be a guest overlong, should Zollaria ask more than Naia of Aphur, or any other woman, were worth?"

"Say you so?" Helmor seemed somewhat taken aback by that haughty response, at which the quick fires of admiration stirred in Jason's spirit. "Yet perchance the Tamarizian Mouthpiece will place upon her a greater valuation than she lays upon herself."

"Those things lie with the gods, Helmor of Zollaria," Naia said, though at mention of Jason her delicate nostrils twitched.

"Did Helmor say that this woman lies as his guest?" Kalamita cut into the ensuing pause.

Helmor turned his eyes upon her. "Aye, priestess of beauty, now that you have so faithfully accomplished the task entrusted to you."

"The first step, Helmor," Kalamita dared to correct him, advancing close to the foot of the dais. "Naught save that is accomplished as yet. And was it not agreed between us that she should remain in my charge until after I had met this Mouthpiece and spoken with him?"

"Aye," Helmor admitted somewhat sharply. "But—since you departed upon your mission I have taken thought."

"And Helmor has thought what?" Kalamita stiffened, drawing up her supple, unrestrained figure to its fullest height.

Helmor's visage darkened. "That were this Mouthpiece as clever as he appears, he will not fall into your trap. Wherefore, it were best to retain the woman and child he values in a strong place."

"And forsake the meeting on which we were agreed and of which I have already sent this Mouthpiece word?" Kalamita questioned further.

"Nay." Helmor smiled. "The meeting shall take place. Said you aught in your message, save that she was held by you in a place he knew not of, and that he needs must speak with you of her ransom?"

"Does Helmor think Kalamita a fool?" The Zollarian adventuress smiled.

"Nay—the question were useless, since it was in her mind the matter first had shape," said the man on the dais.

"And Helmor, who changed his form, sending Bandhor and his guardsmen forth to change into a paltry triumph what had been better carried out in secret, nor mentioned until the matter were concluded, in the judgment of her who, as Helmor himself declares, conceived it first," the woman before him retorted and broke off. Her tawny eyes were flashing, the green plumes above her upflung head were aquiver, the jeweled shields against her rosy bosom rose and fell quickly as she panted rather than breathed.

For a time Helmor regarded her closely before he answered.

"Enough," he said at last. "Much may be forgiven to beauty—and much I forgive to Kalamita. Yet lies there a point beyond which Helmor grants it not to any man or woman to question his words. Wherefore give ear, and heed to Helmor. This meeting shall take place. Since naught was said of Zollaria's part in the woman's capture, wherein falls it out any different from what was planned—save that she lies in Berla rather than in another place, under Helmor's protection rather than in fair Kalamita's hands?"

"Helmor does not trust his agent with a thing of so much value?" Kalamita flung her challenge full at the emperor of her nation, taunting him, daring him, as it seemed, to answer.

And all at once it seemed that Helmor evaded.

"Nay," he said slowly. "None doubts Kalamita's loyalty to the interests of her nation. Yet were it best for her to lie doubly safe should Zollaria's demands be refused, or this Mouthpiece fail to appear at the meeting she has proposed."

Once more the form of Kalamita stiffened into a haughty posture.

"Refused?" she flared. "Nay, Tamarizia dares not refuse, since I shall say to their Mouthpiece that I have taken an oath that unless Zollaria's demands are quickly granted I shall offer the child in sacrifice to Bel. And by Bel himself—"

Naia of Aphur caught her breath and drew back a pace, staring at the woman before her out of widened eyes, as innocence may always stare at the incarnation of vice.

So for a horrified instant she stood, and then, turning to Maia, swiftly she seized the child, straining it for a moment to her breast, and then extending it on quivering arms, uplifted to the man above her.

"Helmor of Zollaria—in the name of Zitu!" she cried.

"Hold!" Helmor roared. "Peace, Naia of Aphur. It seems well I have decided on your safety."

He turned to Kalamita. "And it seems clear to me, sister of Bandhor, that in this you would serve your aims of vengeance as well as your country's ends. Ere this it has come to my ears you have cause for anger against this Mouthpiece because of a slight placed upon you. And in that it is not my wish to in any way obstruct you, save only as toward a glutting of your hatred against him, you would lessen Zollaria's chances of gain. Yet an oath to Bel is not to be lightly broken. And—should Tamarizia finally refuse to yield in this matter or chance a resort to arms against us, we may surely need his favor. Wherefore I pledge you the word of Helmor that, should those things transpire, I shall place the child directly in your hands."

"Helmor has spoken." With an unholy light in her voluptuous face, Kalamita knelt before him.

Croft writhed in his spirit, at the meaning of Helmor's words—the picture of Jason, Son of Jason, torn from the breast against which now he rested all unknowing, and fed into Bel's foul body filled with flame. The thing was unthinkable to a man or woman of a nation where the gods were no longer savage spirits to be appeased by blood and suffering, but divinities actuated by mercy and love.

And, too, a sudden swift regret assailed him that though he had known of Kalamita's purpose from the first, he had said nothing concerning it to Naia, thinking thereby to save her from the consideration of it. For now the horror came upon her without warning, and she swayed upon her feet so that Maia put out a hand and drew her back against her body in support, and Kalamita, noting the action, turned to her from Helmor.

"What now of that spirit you boasted would not break before me, Tamarizian?" she hissed.

The thing struck Naia of Aphur like a whip and saved her from what seemed an impending collapse. She forced up her head to meet her tormentor's taunt.

"As yet it has not broken," she denied. "Rather will Zollaria's footmen, her horsemen, her nobles, all that strength of which she has boasted in the past, be broken if this thing is dared. And think not the blood of a suckling will give Bel strength enough to aid you, against the vengeance Zitu's Mouthpiece shall send upon you. Zollaria may call upon Bel in that day, but—by Zitu, I swear it—she shall call in vain."

"Enough," said Helmor. "Guards, let this woman be removed, with her child and slave, and kept in a safe place under penalty of death to them who watch her, if save by Helmor's orders, they be harmed. Kalamita, arise. You will depart to the place appointed for this meeting, so soon as we have considered together concerning Zollaria's demands."

Kalamita rose to her feet. Naia's guards led her and Maia out.

Croft went with them. Already he knew in the main what Zollaria would ask—knew in his soul that her demands must be refused for Tamarizia's good. There remained then naught for him save to support Naia in so far as he could in the spirit, and devise some means of freeing her from her present position, other than any true consideration of what Zollaria might propose.

And now it appeared to him that the best he could do was to bring about delay in whatever negotiations might grow out of the situation—to see them dragged out without a definite decision—to gain time, wherein he might think and scheme. Or if there were no other way, seek to perfect some such device with which to strike a counter-blow against Kalamita's nation as that I had proposed.

Such thoughts held him, therefore, as he followed out of the audience room and along a corridor and down a flight of steps to a room deep amid the foundations of the palace into which Naia and her maid and child were thrust.

A litter of straw was upon the floor. It was dimly lighted by a single oil-lamp in a sconce against one wall. There was a copper couch with a none-too-clean sleeping pad upon it, and nothing more. With a quick rebellion of the spirit, Croft found himself thinking that it was not so Helmor, when a prisoner of Tamarizia, had been housed.

Yet he had no fear of Naia's welfare, the measure of her endurance, remembering how she had lain in the forests of Mazzeria, her fair skin blue so that she might seem one of their own women to any Mazzerian prowler, when she had flown to his rescue over Atla's walls, during the Mazzerian war. Wherefore he waited until Maia had induced her to stretch herself upon the couch, and taking the child in her arms had crouched beside her on the straw, rocking it gently and crooning to it a quaint Tamarizian song. And then as Naia's lips moved and he caught her whisper, "Beloved," he answered:

"I am here."

She sighed, and her body relaxed as its astral tenant stole forth.

"You heard all, beloved?" she questioned as they sat together in the weird communion of spirit with spirit that was theirs.

"Aye," Croft told her.

"Now Zitu help us!" Naia of Aphur cried. "For if my spirit be not broken, as I said to that fiend in the form of woman, yet it is shaken within me, Jason, because of that little life Maia now holds in her arms."

"Nay—fear not." Jason drew her to him and told her his plan to gain delay while perfecting his other plans. "Azil gave not the spirit of our son to us, beloved, to be set free in Bel's unclean arms."

"Zitu grant it." Naia glanced about the barren chamber. "Forgive me my weakness, Jason. If delay seems best to you, I shall endure it, so you come to me frequently to tell me of all of your progress."

"Aye." Croft's soul rebelled at the thought of her durance in such quarters, though there seemed nothing else for it. Still the thing hardened his purpose, drove one more argument nail-like into the determination forming in his mind. "Here we may meet in safety since Helmor himself denies all access to you. And I shall visit earth, beloved, ere I come to thee again."

"Earth?" Naia's glance flamed with quick understanding.

"Aye." For a moment man and woman looked into one another's eyes, sensing those things as yet in the dark womb of the future, before Croft concluded his answer with a grim assurance. "And when I return, unless our good friend has failed in his efforts, strange things shall come once more out of Aphur, and even as Naia of Aphur warned them in a prophecy of horror, Helmor and Bandhor's shameless sister shall call on their impotent god in vain."

"Zitu!" Naia's astral form lighted with comprehension of his meaning. "Now are you Mouthpiece of Zitu again wholly."

Behind them the blue girl of Mazzeria still crooned to the child which she was holding in her arms.

These things Croft told me on the night he kept his promise to visit me again. From Berla he went to Himyra first, speaking with Gaya and Robur, directing the latter to mobilize the workmen who had labored on the airplanes, before the Mazzerian war. Croft also visited the motur shops and gave command for the immediate inception of work on engines of a somewhat more powerful design than any used on Palos heretofore.

Robur accompanied him on his rounds, his lips set, his dark eyes flashing as he listened to Croft's directions concerning his as yet, to Rob, not fully understood plans, his admonitions for the production of a certain quality of cloth, the mixing of vast quantities of what was in reality little more than a rubberized paint. But at least here was work to hand in plenty—and work that spoke of more work to follow, to the Aphurian's mind.

Furthermore, Croft requested that he see what airplanes were already constructed, thoroughly overhauled, as part of the preparation for Koryphu's mission into the mountains north of Cathur. And that part of his intentions he explained.

"They follow a course of deception already, Rob, and two may play at the game. Much must be done ere we attempt a rescue, and toward the doing we must needs gain time. Wherefore since to the minds of Helmor and Kalamita it is unknown that I am forewarned of their intent to hold Naia in Berla, rather than in the place of which by Bathos she sent me word, it appears best to me that we make it seem we are deceived. These planes shall mount the air from Cathur, therefore, and fly above the mountains in advance of Koryphu's party, as though seeking for some place of concealment, wherein her captives may lie hid. Thus we shall help Kalamita play her part to her mind at least, and perchance throw at least some dust in Zollaria's eyes."

Robur nodded. "I sense your plan, Jason," he agreed. "Yet I have taken thought that a plane may fall, and that it is the secret of the moturs which Zollaria wishes in part to gain. How then if disaster comes upon one of your men? Would it not in so much weaken Tamarizia's hand?"

Croft smiled rather grimly. "Aye, Rob. The point were well taken, nor has it escaped my mind. To such an end each flier must be provided with a device by which his motur may under such conditions be destroyed, and with orders to burn his machine, escaping thereafter by the aid of the other planes on duty with him, or in any way he can."

Once more Robur nodded.

"Aye," said he, "you think of all things. And this other device toward the forming of which you are preparing?"

"Nay," Jason replied. "It depends upon my visit to earth, after which I hope to give you plans and figures."

"Zitu grant you be successful," said the Governor of Aphur. "You will seek this knowledge when?"

"Tonight," Jason told him; "after which Scira must be visited and the consent of Koryphu to head the party to this meeting with Kalamita gained. She will lose small time in hastening to it, hoping to add another prisoner to her number, despite the fact that Helmor has altered her plans."

"Aye, and were swift moturs or an airplane to descend upon her lodge after Koryphu has reached it, it might be that Tamarizia would have a prisoner to exchange with Zollaria without a longer waiting," Robur growled, and laid a tense hand on the hilt of his sword.

Croft eyed him for a moment of heavy silence.

"That, too, have I thought of, Aphur, yet though we match craft with craft and violence with violence, if the need arises, let none say that Zitu's Mouthpiece counseled the violation of an embassy's seeming or used it as a mask to another purpose than that to which it sets forth."

"But—if this Zollarian plans to trick you into her hands by such a meeting?" Robur flushed a trifle under the implied rebuke of Croft's words.

"Nay, she will fail," said Jason. "Yet think not, meaning to seize me if so it falls out according to her wishes, she will come to that place so poorly guarded that an attempt to make her captive would result in aught save a clash of arms. Wherefore let her fail of her aim and return to Berla the next time with empty hands. How stands Zollaria then, save to deal direct with Zitra, which shall quibble with her—neither accepting nor refusing, appointing a place perhaps for a more representative meeting, while you and I, Rob, labor over our designs?"

"I have talked with Zitra by means of the message tower you have placed in Himyra and upon Zitra's walls," Robur replied. "Jadgor, my father, stands ready to aid you in whatsoever way he can, and the spirit of Lakkon writhes with thoughts of his daughter. May I say to them those things with which you have made me acquainted?"

"Aye," Croft assented. "Say also that Naia sends a greeting to her father, and that at present she lies safe from harm. Come, let us return to the palace since things are now arranged."

Robur nodded. They entered his motur and drove back toward the red court, and the residential wing of the Aphurian government buildings, side by side, as they had on many another occasion when they labored together in Himyra's shops.

And that night it was Croft made his promised visit to me to discover what I had learned concerning the thing on which more than anything else Naia's rescue appeared to depend.

I was ready for him. I had not delayed in instituting my efforts at gaining the knowledge the use of which I had suggested, and I had been fortunate indeed. I had found the man I wanted almost at once—one who had served his country well in the chemical arm of the service, and was therefore qualified to give me the information of which I stood in need. My greatest difficulty had been in convincing him that I desired the knowledge for no improper use, but in the end I surmounted the task. And that night after Jason had roused me to his presence I recited the formula to him, and he cried out:

"Zitu! Murray, the thing can be accomplished! Palos holds all that will be required."

Considering the stage of life on the other planet, that was a self-evident fact, but I knew he meant more than that. Before the Mazzerian war he had established a laboratory at Himyra in which he and Naia had gone more or less fully into chemical matters, and I felt he was fully assured concerning the things of which he spoke.

"Good," I said, "then you can make it?"

His thought waves beat back at me in a very passion of conviction. "Yes, and we'll carry it to them in something like your earth-born blimps—isn't that what you told me you called them when I was here in your institution as a patient?"

"Blimps—dirigibles, you mean?" I questioned.

"Yes," he said. "That's what I've been considering making, though I haven't told Rob about it yet. They'll be far more stable for the purpose than planes."

"Why, yes," I agreed. "Croft, it's a rather peculiar thing, but before the armistice was signed in Europe each side was planning to blot out the major cities of the opposing nations beneath a fiery rain."

For that was the thing I had proposed to Jason, and the secret for the production of the unquenchable liquid fire which could be stored and carried, and sprayed in a rain of death upon those against whom it was used, was the thing I had gained from Captain Gaylor, formerly connected with the department of gas and flame.

Horrible—well, yes, but surely subtly suited to Croft's needs for use against the nation which, enraged by the defeat of its former plans for aggrandizement at the expense of the country he served, had struck against the most sacred, the highest and holiest interests of his life—seeking in such fashion, rather than by any legitimate method, to finally effect their aims—a nation, a representative of which I myself had heard in the spirit at least vow that, unless those aims were thereby accomplished, an innocent child should be sacrificed to a savage deity by fire.

Yet because of Kalamita's oath and Helmor's agreement, a move to exercise force in her rescue would be equally fatal, unless—well, unless it was a force that could strike silently and swiftly—a force in the nature of a total and terrifying surprise. And surely the blimps—the dirigible balloons Croft suggested, equipped with a flame-spraying device and plenty of liquid fire, might well prove a terrifying, a paralyzing spectacle to even Helmor's and Kalamita's eyes. Paralyzing not only to the body, but to the brain itself—warranted to make simple any bargain which would preserve themselves and Berla from a blazing rain of death.

His whole astral presence glowed with the intensity of his emotions, the deadly determination by which he was stirred. For the first time I realized fully how he had won Naia against all opposition, and had carried all before him in Palos after he gained existence on the planet in the flesh. No ordinary mind could stand against such concentrated mental force.

"By Zitu," I cried, "I believe you!" I felt a quiver shake me. It was as though already the doom of Helmor's plans and Kalamita's vengeance was sealed. "Croft," I questioned, "you know the general nature of these blimps?"

"Aye," he nodded. "But if you have any suggestions, Murray—"

"Well," I said, "Captain Gaylor gave me the general plan in describing how the stuff you're going to demonstrate to Helmor was to be carried—as well as a description of the fire bombs they meant to carry aboard their planes. You know just before the armistice, Jason, there was talk of a new deadlier gas. In reality it wasn't gas at all, but this stuff of which I've told you. The gas talk was just a mask."

"Go on—tell me, Murray," he prompted tensely. "Give me all you can to begin with, though if I get stuck I'll be back again, of course."

"Of course," I said, and told him all I knew myself, while he drank in my descriptions, storing them in his mind for future use, his expression firing now and then as he pictured the creation of the monster envelopes, the suspended cars, the motive power by which they should be flown across the Central Sea and Mazhur, to hang a sudden embodiment of Tamarizia's answer, above Berla, freighted with their deadly stores.

"Murray," he exclaimed when I had finished, "Naia of Aphur, and Jason, Son of Jason, will owe you their salvation."

I couldn't answer, and I didn't try. I said instead, "The thing seems plausible to me, Croft."

"Plausible," he repeated. "It shall be accomplished. Now, Koryphu may start upon his mission, while every shop and forge in Himyra roars."

I asked a question. "By the way, how does the populace cotton to this fresh Zollarian move?"

"They don't know it yet, old fellow." He gave me a glance. "You know, Murray, Tamarizia, even yet, isn't earth. There's only the wireless between Himyra and Zitra, and a telegraph across the Gateway to Scira in Cathur—but in view of what's going to happen in Himyra almost at once—the preparations, I mean—I think I'll tell them, and suggest that in Zitra the masses be informed by Zud—that Zollaria has struck at the Mouthpiece of Zitu in order to coerce the nation. It won't do any harm to have the sympathy of the populace behind us in this."

"Nor in Scira," I said. "Cathur hasn't forgotten how nearly she was enslaved, I imagine—or that her fate would have been the same as Mazhur's for fifty years, if it had not been for the Mouthpiece of Zitu's intervention in hers and Tamarizia's behalf. And see here, Croft—if you've a telegraph up there, why don't you send Koryphu a message instead of going after him yourself? You've enough to tend to in the matter of the blimps without trapesing about."

He smiled for the first time. "It might do here, but not on Palos, Murray. They're great for delegations, personal representation—the old ways. You can't change them all at once. But—it won't do any harm to announce my coming or its reason, or that the Mouthpiece of Zitu comes in person to the house of Koryphu. That in itself might even serve in preparing the mind of Cathur's prince for the proposition I shall make him once I arrive. According to Palosian standards, Murray, even though it sounds bald for me to say so, such an occasion should be an important event in Koryphu's life."

"Yes," I agree and nodded. More and more it impressed me that Croft's mind was working again in its normal fashion, now he had actually decided on a definite course. "Being honored by a visit from the Mouthpiece of Zitu, publicly announced in connection with Zollaria's action, ought to impress him favorably, I guess. His fellow citizens can scarcely fail to draw the connection, and besides it will give him a chance to put a spoke in Kalamita's wheel, perhaps—at least to meet the woman who brought disgrace and death upon his brother face to face. If he's human, Jason, he'll accept."

"He's human enough," said Croft. "Murray, I actually feel as though I were facing some positive action at last. It's a relief. Ever since this thing happened I've been in an even worse state than I was after I'd seen Naia first—and before I'd managed to acquire a physical life on Palos. There was a barrier between us then that seemed insurmountable, as you know, and yet I knew her, the one woman, in all the teeming multitudes of feminine spirits I had ever longed to know. I—I knew her—mine. And now there's another barrier between us, scarcely less fatal, though of a different kind."

"But—you overcame the first, and—"

"I'll overcome the second," he interrupted in a flash. "I get your meaning, and I'll do it. Zitu, what did I not overcome to reach her in the first place! But I reached her, and I'll reach her again."

I didn't doubt it. Again I felt to its full the driving power in the will of Jason Croft. And at last the man was aroused—at last he had become less man, torn and harried by the loss of his dearest possessions, than an intelligent fighting force. Or so he impressed me as he sat there in the astral body, while his physical form lay billions of miles beyond us both, in Himyra, at Robur's house.

"Aye, you'll reach her," I said, and looked him in the eyes. "You'll reach her, Croft, and Naia and Jason, Son of Jason, will come back to Aphur and to Jason's house."

"Aye, by Zitu! Murray, your words fire me. I go to make them true, and Zitu guard you!"

He vanished, leaving me to open my bodily eyes.

Darkness met them. There was naught but the night in the room. Yet I had seen Jason's figure plainly while we conversed, and I did not doubt he had been able to equally perceive mine. What, then, was the answer? Was there no darkness to the spirit, even as between Palos and earth outside of the atmospheric envelope there was no time? Was the riddle held in that? Was there no such thing as darkness, concealment to the understanding mind?

Was it only the objective eye for which light was a necessity toward making the truths of creation plain? Was it only the physical ear that required the vibration of sound? Were time, light, sound, touch, but material things? Was rhythm the basic principle of soul existence as expressed in mind? Certainly Croft and I conversed as easily by thought transference, a variant of astral vibration, as in the body we would have used spoken words. What, then? Were life, consciousness, rhythm, all, but expressions of a universal force—existing already bridgelike between God's far-flung worlds?

CHAPTER VI

PREPARING THE PEOPLE

Croft went not to Himyra, however, as I fancied, but to Zitra, after he left me, and the sleeping apartment of Zud, taking his stand close to where the high priest lay wrapped in slumber on a copper couch.

"Zud! Zud! Man of Zitu!" he let the call of his spirit steal forth. Once in a past time he had taught the high priest something of the astral body, finding it necessary to his purpose then to convince him of the truth. And he had told him that when he should call him in the future he would answer.

"My lord," he muttered. "Aye—my lord."

"Spirit of Zud—come forth!"

Zud of Zitra's body relaxed. His spirit obeyed. Mistlike it hovered above his physical form.

"My lord," it faltered again.

"Peace," said Croft. "Ye have answered me, Zud, in such wise. Give ear and obey me in the flesh, when dawn comes again to the world. I, Mouthpiece, say unto thee this:

"Word of the abduction of Naia, wife of Jason, and of Jason, Son of Jason, shall be noised abroad. Be it said that Zollaria, envious of Tamarizia's progress, has seized them and borne them into her country, holding them ransom to her demands against this nation, under penalty of death to Jason's son.

"Let it be understood. Let Zud himself sponsor the announcement, first going to Jadgor's palace and saying to Jadgor that Jason, the Mouthpiece of Zitu, gives the word.

"Say also to Jadgor that Jason requires him to send, from the tower on Zitra's walls, word to Mutlos, Governor of Cathur, requesting him to see that word is spread in Scira—also that Jason himself shall not come to Scira to hold speech with Koryphu on the matter—and that he notify Scythys' younger son. Let this be done by command of Jadgor. The message being received from him in Himyra will be forwarded to Scira at once."

"Aye, Mouthpiece of Zitu," Zud made answer. "Once ere this have ye appeared in such guise before me, and I obeyed thee. Even so shall I obey you now. These things shall be done."

"Yet counsel the people to remain calm in the announcement," Jason said. "Zitu's Mouthpiece desires no more than their sympathy in this."

"But the woman—my lord has word of her and the infant?" the high priest questioned.

"Aye," Croft told him. "As Zud knows, I may meet with her in the spirit even as with Zud himself."

"Aye"—Zud inclined his astral head—"that Zud no longer doubts, since within his knowledge it is proved."

"Say also to Jadgor that Jason goes to Himyra to labor in the flesh with Robur, son of Jadgor," Croft continued. "Now return to thy body and finish thy slumbers, man of Zitu. Yet, waking, see that in all things my counsel is obeyed."

"Aye, Zud obeys on waking," the high priest promised.

"In Zitu's name," said Croft, and with that he left.

Dawn was breaking over Zitra as he emerged from the pyramid and made his way swiftly north.

Dawn was breaking over Berla when he reached it. It struck him through a tiny orifice for ventilation high in the wall, and fell in a golden shaft of light across the dungeon in which Naia of Aphur prayed to Ga, Mother of Life Eternal, for aid.

Then as she moved and rose from her knees, he called her, as always:

"Beloved."

Naia of Aphur heard, and smiled. Seating herself beside the child, she let the soul of her womanhood steal forth.

"Jason, Jason," she cried, the flame of life within her swiftly glowing with the meaning of his presence, "you come to me with the dawn, from whence, my dear one?"

And Jason Croft answered her simply, "From earth."

"And?" She stood before him—searching his soul for some hint of those things he had brought within it. "Jason—"

Croft replied to that appeal in almost cryptic fashion, yet knowing she would understand. "True, woman who prays to Ga for courage, it is a new dawn for us indeed."

"Praise Zitu." She wavered toward him. For a moment it was as though their two beings blended, lost each itself in the other, became one. And then Naia lifted a face exalted by a new hope. "Yet not so much for myself do I praise him, beloved, as for the little one. Knowledge waited you then when you arrived?"

"Knowledge," said Croft, still holding her to him. "Aye, knowledge enough to make Zollaria a waste of scorching bones, a burned-out world, if so by I may hold not only thy spirit but thy body again in my arms."

Naia's astral being quivered; she lifted her eyes to the fading spot of sunlight. "Then," said she in a whisper of understanding, "this dawn on which I lifted my woman's cry to Ga is a new dawn for us indeed—and once more courage fills my being. Go, beloved—hasten that other day which shall bring me again to thee. The past sun Kalamita departed for, as she hopes, a meeting with you. She and the giant who attends her, Gor by name, came, ere she left, to this chamber, asking what message I would send to the Mouthpiece of Zitu."

"And Naia of Aphur told her what?" Croft questioned, looking into the eyes beneath his.

"To tell you when she met you that Naia loved both Tamarizia and thee."

"And what said Zollaria's magnet to such a message?" Jason asked.

Naia of Aphur smiled as she answered. "Nay—she seemed not overly well pleased with it. She bade Gor strip my signet ring from my finger. Be warned against any message wherein it may be used as a seeming proof of word from me."

"Aye," said Jason, scowling at this fresh proof of duplicity in Zollaria's dealing; "such trickery shall gain them nothing."

Naia nodded. "Yet I think I puzzled her somewhat, since I myself took the ring from my hand ere Gor could touch me, and gave it to him, knowing full well I could explain when next we spoke together, and liking not the thought of his hands upon me—or the touch of any man save only Lakkon and thee."

Croft bent his lips to those below them, thinking even in that instant that Kalamita had gained small satisfaction thus far in her meetings with Naia of Aphur, and asking himself what use the Zollarian siren might mean to make of the ring—a bit of purple stone into which was cut the ideographic symbol of Naia's name.

"Kalamita plays an impossible game," he said, "since, thanks to our ability thus to speak together, her moves and even her intent is known. Be of good courage, therefore, beloved. I go now to Himyra to prepare against the day when in truth you shall feel my touch again."

The waters of the Central Sea were a golden ripple in the early sunshine, as he sped back then to Himyra and opened the eyes of his body to Robur's wing of the palace and sat up on his couch.

Throughout the next day Jason and Robur passed from one place to another, calling the captains, whom Croft himself had trained, before them, explaining, issuing their orders, bidding them put night shifts to work upon the task—giving here the commands for the forging of copper beams and trusses—there the design for huge tanks in which the death-dealing liquid fire would be stored.

Late in the afternoon, bulletins struck off Jason's presses appeared posted on the corners—flaunting the news of Zollaria's latest move before the people's eyes. Those who could read gathered about them and translated the message of ink and paper to their less erudite fellows. Inside an hour Himyra was howling with anger and amaze.

Leaving the metal foundry, where they had been giving orders for the making of the fire-containing tanks, Croft and Robur found their motur all but mobbed by a wildly inflamed crowd. The caution for a quiet acceptance included in the bulletins was temporarily ignored. Naia of Aphur, the beauty of the state, was captive. The Mouthpiece of Zitu—the strong man who had twice brought the northern nation's plans to disaster—was robbed of wife and child.

"To Zollaria! To Berla! Seize and punish! Death to the spawn of Zitemku—the torturers of women and children!" the populace howled.

Corner orators appeared and harangued their fellows, giving way as Robur's car approached with the sun flag of Aphur flapping above it, to point toward Jason, and shriek that here was the Mouthpiece himself.

Time after time Croft was forced to rise and address the seething press of men and women that blocked the thoroughfare, begging them to give him passage on an errand connected with the safety of Naia and Jason—counseling a quiet demeanor—asking the sympathy and support of the men of Aphur in his endeavors to meet the situation—suggesting that any move of a violent nature would hinder rather than help him in the present instance—promising action—declaring that in order to keep spies from Himyra all vessels mounting the Na would be searched by Aphurian guardsmen, and that all strangers would be stopped at Himyra's walls.

Time and again Robur rose to stand beside him in the motur. "Zitu's Mouthpiece has spoken. Aphur hears and obeys. Give way. The Mouthpiece goes to Scira to organize a mission!" he roared.

"To what end?" a strong voice questioned on one such occasion. Despite their royal caste, the Tamarizians were a democratic nation.

"To meet an emissary of the northern nation," Robur replied.

"Then let the mission be one of the sword."

"Nay. Not so says the Mouthpiece of Zitu, who plans already a different measure," Aphur's governor answered.

"Silence. Give ear to the Mouthpiece of Zitu!" yelled the crowd. "Make way—he desires a passage! Make way! He goes to Scira."

The press opened, making a free way. The motur moved forward. "They are with you," said Robur, speeding the car toward the gates of Himyra according to their plans to visit the airplane hangars beyond the walls.

"Aye." Croft nodded. That quickly up-flaring spontaneous anger and rage of Himyra's population acted as a subtle tonic to his spirit, set his heart to beating faster, woke a strange fire of unfaltering purpose in his eyes.

At the hangars he explained the situation and called for volunteers from among the fliers to cross the Gateway and land of Scira, later taking up the deceptive patrol above the mountains north of the Cathurian border he had already planned.

They heard him and stepped forward in a body. Not one man held back. They pressed close before him with eager faces. Again his heart was warmed. He had organized their force. By himself and Naia most of them had been trained. Nominally at least he was their commander-in-chief. They were the pick of Tamarizian manhood—as eager to dare the venture as restrained hounds on a leash.

He selected a half dozen quickly, telling them they must destroy both moturs and planes if disaster overtook them and forced a landing on Zollarian terrain, explaining that Robur would see them equipped with small grenades by which the moturs could be blown to atoms.

Their faces stiffened a trifle, but they did not falter.

"Aye—they shall not have them," they made answer.

"By Zitu," Jason prompted.

"By Zitu," they returned.

Croft saluted them flat-handed. "It is an oath," he said. "To break it were treason to the nation. In four days you will descend at Scira. Look to your machines."

Back in the motur he found his pulses leaping to the spur of action and the ésprit du corps among the fliers he had seen. They were men, men—their number would furnish him others—to man the blimps and urge them over Berla—if need be, to blot out the Zollarian city beneath a fiery rain.

"Tonight, Rob, I give you many plans and dimensions," he told Robur, breaking the silence of his introspection. "That done, I board Jadgor's galley for Scira. Till I return, the work lies in your hands."

All Scira was en fête, or seemed so, though there was a strange sullenness about her crowds, despite the flags, the banners that decked the houses and lined the streets, and flew above her blue walls.

The Mouthpiece of Zitu was coming from Aphur on a mission, and the city was adorned to greet him by the orders of Mutlos, Governor of Cathur himself. The throngs which waited his coming, to welcome him, and escort him to the house of Koryphu, where the sun-rayed banner of Aphur hung beside that of Cathur in the almost breathless air, wore their brightest garments. But his mission forbade holiday spirits in the minds of the crowd.

True, vendors of sweetmeats and light wines in tabur hide sacks slung on sinewy, naked shoulders, passed among them, jugglers and acrobats performed their tricks and feats of strength on mats spread on the pavement. But that was merely the seeking of profit on the part of those who plied their various trades. It had naught to do with the kidnapping of Naia, wife of the Mouthpiece, her carrying into the neighboring nation which had twice endeavored to capture the northern pillar of the Gateway—once over fifty years before, and again at a more recent date.

"Wherefore, Koryphu, the man with whom the Mouthpiece would lie as guest in Scira, was no longer of unimportance in Cathur. Why Koryphu in this hour?" the people asked. And possibly Koryphu asked himself as he prepared to welcome his guests, "Why the honor of the Mouthpiece of Zitu's presence in this time of his bereavement?" When a messenger from Mutlos had come and told him of it, he had gasped.

What was the purpose of the man to whom all Tamarizia looked as little less than a demigod in his knowledge, in visiting Koryphu, who had pored over tablets and scrolls in a semiseclusion ever since the disgrace Kyphallos, son of Scythys, now happily dead, had brought upon Cathur's royal house?

Be that as it may, he prepared his residence for the occasion and on the day of the expected arrival of Jason Croft donned his bravest apparel and waited to welcome his guest.

Yet it was mid-afternoon before Jadgor's galley, bearing the standard of Zitra—the circle and cross—appeared and bore down on Scira's walls.

The giant sea-doors swung open, admitting her to the harbor, and closed again when she had passed. Breaking forth Cathur's flag, she advanced across the inner harbor and swung to a mooring. A band of trumpeters ruffled forth from the quay, where Mutlos waited. The gangway was thrust forth, and the Mouthpiece of Zitu, walking alone and unattended, appeared.

"Hail, Mouthpiece of Zitu!" the assembled populace roared.

Mutlos advanced. The two men struck hands on shoulders, and joined their palms in a moment's clasp. Side by side they entered Mutlos's motur. The trumpeters fell in before them, breaking a pathway through the crowds.

So came Jason to Scira once more, somber of mien, yet steady-eyed.

"My sympathy as a man I give thee, Advisor of Tamarizia," Mutlos said as the car began to move. "My assistance and that of Cathur I pledge you an' it be needed. This thing passes all endurance. Say but the word and Cathur will gather her swords."

"Nay," Jason replied slowly. "Thy sympathy, Cathur, warms the heart of the man. But the time of rescue has not arrived. Armed interference at present were ill-advised, since Zollaria fears it, and should it be attempted, thinks to offer my son to Bel a sacrifice."

"Zitu!" Mutlos gasped. "What then, O Mouthpiece? Where lies a chance of rescue? Zollaria makes demands of ransom?"

"Aye—or will. Even now one approaches a rendezvous in the mountains north of Cathur to meet with an agent of ours. It is because of that I am here."

"To arrange a mission to this meeting?" Mutlos said with ready understanding.

"Aye. Zollaria sends Kalamita of ill-fame to Cathur as her agent. Tamarizia, with the knowledge of Cathur and his own consent if it is forthcoming, sends Scythys' son."

"Now, by Zitu!" Admiration waked in Mutlos's eyes. "'Tis well thought of—to face that tawny enchantress, this creature of Adita, by one in whose heart must burn hot hate against her. Guardsmen I place at your disposal and his. My palace lies open to you, and you will honor it with your presence—or plan you to lodge in Koryphu's house?"

"With Koryphu this night at least," said Jason. "Yet with Mutlos things must be discussed ere the mission fares forth. Hence at the palace on the night succeeding the sun after this. I accept the offer of guardsmen gladly. A score will be enough."

"They will be forthcoming," Mutlos promised, and spoke to his driver. "To Koryphu's house."

Up to the door of the lesser palace stalked Jason alone, once he had descended from the motur.

But Koryphu had marked his coming, and the door slid open before him.

"Hail to thee, Tamarizia, in the person of Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu," Koryphu exclaimed and drew back a pace before him, that he might enter under the eyes of the watching crowd.

His eyes were a trifle bright with excitement, his features a bit flushed with unwonted color at this sudden prominence thrust upon him—wherein the governor's car, with the governor in it, set down so distinguished a guest at his doors.

"My lord," he said once the portal was closed, shutting them in together after Mutlos had risen in his motur and bowed and he had returned the salutation. "My lord!"

"Greetings to you, Koryphu, son of Scythys," Croft responded. "Behold in me not so much anything as a man bereft and sorely troubled by his loss—one who comes to you thus in a time of trouble to ask you to lend him aid."

Koryphu's eyes widened swiftly. "But, by Zitu—in what can one of fallen fortunes aid you, Mouthpiece of Zitu?" he questioned in uncertain fashion.

"It is of that we must speak together, Prince of Cathur," Croft replied.

"Come then." Koryphu turned and led the way across a court done in blue and crystal, surrounded by a balcony of blue and white to a room at the farther end—the same room in which Jason at the time of his astral visit to him had seen him bending over his tablets and scrolls—his study—the room in which more than any other Koryphu spent his life.

"Be seated, lord," he invited, indicating a redwood chair and taking his place in another drawn close to a table of copper, littered with numerous scrolls. "Loss is not unknown to Scythys' son, nor the feeling of it. Yet never, praise be to Zitu and Azil, has he lost either wife or child. Wherefore, only in the mind may he conceive faintly of thy sense of loss, and therein share thy grief with thee. Speak—Koryphu lends his ear to thy voice."

Jason explained—going at some length into past events—advising the Cathurian of the meeting to be held in the mountains, declaring it of vital importance to establish negotiations with Zollaria as quickly and protract them in indefinite fashion, in his estimation, proffering Koryphu the leadership of the first embassy at last.

"I—Koryphu!" The Cathurian noble stammered, his breathing a trifle quickened, his nostrils a trifle tightened. "Zitu's Mouthpiece chooses me for such an errand as this?"

"Aye." Croft inclined his head, watching the man before him. "Koryphu the Tamarizian."

"Tamarizian!" Koryphu repeated and paused and went on again in a somewhat bitter fashion. "But why Koryphu—why the son of a discredited house? Why not another, whose loyalty none could question?"

His eyes narrowed slightly and he clenched a hand.

Croft looked him full in the face. In it he saw how deeply his brother's action had affected this man—how the loss of confidence, the lack of support by the people of Cathur, as shown by his overwhelming defeat in the last elections, had rankled without expression in his mind. The thing looked back at him a smoldering fire from between Koryphu's lids. It had quivered in his voice.

"Because," said he, "who heads this mission, will meet Kalamita of Zollaria in the north."

"Kalamita!" Koryphu stiffened. Suddenly his body stirred, he half rose in his chair and sank back, well-nigh gasping. "That—foul sepulchre of dead loves and unholy emotions—that stench in the nostrils of true men, and blot on the name of women. Say you she comes herself to this meeting?"

"Aye," said Jason Croft. "Wherefore, there appears no better agent in all Tamarizia to meet her when she comes to trap me also as she hopes, seeing she had bidden me to this conference in person, than one who loves her not nor is apt to fall captive to her shameless graces—than Koryphu Tamarizian first, and son of Cathur, and loyal in his heart to both, as I believe."

"Thou believest?" Koryphu questioned with an eagerness almost pathetic.

"Aye. Else were I not sitting in his house."

For a moment silence came down, save for Koryphu's audible breathing. For a moment his eyes flamed with a sudden light, and then he turned them away since, in the code of Tamarizian manhood, there was little room for tears. Then he rose.

"Zitu!" he broke forth hoarsely and lifted his arms. "Father of life—hast then given ear in such fashion to my prayers? Is the time of penance ended? Am I again to step forth proudly among men as among my peers? Is it so your Mouthpiece brings this labor to me—placing upon my shoulders a task that through it I may prove my love of nation, tear to ribbons the garment of sorrow in which I have been clothed? If so, I thank thee, Zitu."

He sank down again, dropping his head upon his folded arms on the table.

For a time Croft watched him, elation and sympathy blended in his regard. Here was his agent ready. There was small doubt Koryphu would accept the chance to prove he had been misjudged as blood brother to Kyphallos. The mere thought of what the opportunity offered had left him too deeply moved.

"Nay, Koryphu," he said presently as the Cathurian kept his face hidden while his shoulders heaved. "None questioned thy loyalty really. Half thy worry was of your own conceiving. Few spake illy of thee. Men deemed rather you had taken for comfort to your tablets and scrolls. By Jadgor and Robur of Aphur, my choice of thee is approved."

"Hai! Jadgor—Robur! Say you so?" Koryphu lifted his head. "Perchance thou art right," he went on more calmly. "Perchance I have brooded over much. Yet comes this now as the realization of dreams born in nights of brooding, hopes formed in sorrow, and well-nigh dead."

"You accept, then?" Croft questioned.

"Accept. Aye, by Zitu—and I shall serve you loyally. Speak what you wish, Mouthpiece of Zitu. What do I when I face this beauteous slayer of men's souls—shall I slay her for you, watch for opportunity and strike her dead? If so the life of Koryphu were a small price—"

"Hilka!" Croft interrupted the man's hysterical outburst. "Hold now, Koryphu of Cathur—Koryphu does naught save listen to her words. Think you the death of their agent would help us—or render my dear ones more safe—or that the dead body of Koryphu would bring to Tamarizia more swiftly the demands Zollaria will make through her toward those negotiations that shall follow? Nay, small danger lies in this mission so that rather than inflamed with rage when he stands before her, Koryphu appears but one come to return with her words."

"Aye." Koryphu caught his breath quickly. "Yet owe her I a debt of overlong standing."

Croft nodded. "I deny it not. Let Koryphu's vengeance begin when she sees me not of Tamarizia's party—and finds herself outplayed."

"Thinks she the Mouthpiece of Zitu a fool to walk into her trap?" Koryphu questioned.

"She thinks me a husband and father, less well informed of her true purpose than perchance I am," Croft replied. "It were well she be not undeceived. Wherefore I send airplanes north before you—to fly above the mountains as though seeking a place of concealment, that she may not know I am aware Naia of Aphur lies in Berla, and fancy I think her hidden in the mountains as in her message to me she said."

Koryphu narrowed his eyes in appreciation of what was intended. "The thought were well conceived. I do naught then save meet this Zollarian and give ear to her terms of ransom?"

"Naught else, save say that those terms will be brought to my ears and the ears of the nation."

"'Tis well," the Cathurian now accepted. "That shall I do, and naught to endanger the success of the undertaking, because of my personal affairs. When do I depart upon my mission?"

"Presently," Jason told him. "Mutlos will furnish you a score of guardsmen. You will go north after the airplanes have arrived."

"Two alighted before Mutlos's palace this morning," Koryphu announced. "They declared to the crowds they came by your orders, yet said nothing further. Are there others?"

"Six in all," said Jason, smiling, well pleased that his fliers had lost no time. "Doubtless the others will arrive."

Dusk had fallen as they talked. A Mazzerian major domo with lighted lamps appeared and set them in the metal sconces on the walls. Koryphu rose.

"A momentous day in the life of Koryphu," said he, "is drawing to a close. Zitu's Mouthpiece will pardon, if he withdraws to the presence of his wife to acquaint her with his decision and the changed fortune of his house."

"Aye," Jason assented, well enough pleased to let the man carry his news to the ears of his family, and remain with his own thoughts for the time. "Carry my greetings to her and say I wait her pleasure of a meeting."

Koryphu appeared slightly embarrassed. "We have lived much alone of late, Hupor. You will dine with us or shall I have food sent to you?"

"With you if it suits your convenience," Croft replied, forming a vivid picture of the seclusion that held this house once second in the state only to that of the king.

Later he met Pala, a not uncomely woman, though showing the effects of that self-same seclusion in face and manner, and her two children, a daughter and a son, and reclined with them at their common table—speaking of general topics with the two elders until the meal was done. Once more back in Koryphu's study he went into the details of the mission with him, finally arranging to go before Mutlos the succeeding afternoon. Long before the oil-lamps had burned low in their sconces the thing was done, and his conversation with Koryphu had convinced him that in Naia's suggestion of the former prince, the right man had been found.

Passing from the study to the apartment set aside for his slumbers, the two men intercepted Pala, speeding a parting guest, and she spoke to her husband.

"Laira, wife of Gazar—Koryphu. Thou hast not forgotten."

"Nay." Koryphu bent before the matron in greeting. "Yet it is long since I have given her salutation."

For a moment the face of the caller regarded him almost blankly and then she smiled. "Ah, but—old friends should not be forgotten." She glanced at Jason.

Koryphu made the introduction, and she sank to a knee before Zitu's Mouthpiece.

"Hupor, my obedience to thee. It came to my ear you were present in Scira, and somewhat of the reason. Zitu uphold you in a troubled hour."

"And spare them to you," said Jason, bowing.

And yet when he stretched out on his couch and drew its silken coverings about him, the thought came again as it had come while he watched Laira rise, that life on Palos or earth was very much the same thing, and those with friends were, after all, those on whom those in power smiled.

The next day he spent with Mutlos, arranging for Koryphu's departure and explaining his purpose in the airplanes, the last of which arrived. The evening passed in meeting many of the Cathurian officials, bidden by Mutlos to the occasion and a feast at which Koryphu and Pala were among the more prominent guests. No secret had been made of his mission. In fact, word of it had been given out.

For the time being Koryphu found himself again a person of importance—one in whom Tamarizia herself had given evidence of faith. Watching him under circumstances more or less trying to a man of inferior metal, Croft found himself pleased by his demeanor—satisfied that he would see the meeting with Kalamita carried off with what it held of success.

Well pleased then, he gave orders that the planes depart in the morning, and that later Koryphu and his escort should leave for the north. Taking tablets, he wrote rapidly a message to Kalamita, setting forth the fact that the bearer was his representative in person, and gave it to Koryphu after pressing his signet into the waxen surface with instructions to place it in her hands.

It was the last move. In so far as it could serve the meeting on which Kalamita counted for far more than it was fated to bring her was arranged.

Stretching himself on the couch in the sumptuous chamber in Mutlos's palace, to which he had been led, he freed his consciousness from his body and went in search of the woman herself, to find her in the midst of a wayside camp of Zollarian soldiery, asleep on the pads of her gnuppa-drawn conveyance, beside which the giant Gor of the galley mounted watch.

Koryphu went north with the dawn, and Kalamita was hastening to meet him. Satisfied, he left her in slumbrous ignorance of his presence and visited Naia, telling her of the progress he was making, and how Robur was stoking the furnaces of Himyra toward the creation of yet another marvel, in the eyes of the population, until they flared red above the red walls of the city in the night.

In the morning he sent Robur a message announcing his departure, said farewell to Mutlos and was driven to the quays and Jadgor's galley. Going aboard he gave the order for sailing. The sea-doors were opened. He passed through them, and turned the prow of the craft at his disposal swiftly into the south.

CHAPTER VII

PTAR, PRIEST OF BEL

Koryphu of Cathur, under the banner of Tamarizia—with seven red and white stripes and a blue field with seven stars—a thing designed by Croft himself after the republic was established, fared north in a gnuppa drawn conveyance with his escort of Cathurian guards.

Kalamita and Zollaria came down from the north in a similar fashion, but with a vastly heavier escort—strong enough as Croft had suggested to Robur to avoid any chance of surprise. Croft sailed south, but watched their progress each night, when he let his consciousness steal forth. The airplanes sailed north and found themselves a landing place as best they might, to which, after each day spent above the mountains north of Cathur's border, they returned.

Three days brought Jason to Himyra. Jadgor's galley was swift, indeed. Each day he spent in the shops sometimes with Robur, sometimes without him, when matters of state interfered, drafting designs with ruler and calipers and stylus, supervising the makings of patterns, holding consultations with his captains over the production of each part he desired, calling for speed and more speed.

It was the thing that obsessed him now that Koryphu was going north and Kalamita was coming south—speed in the production of the only thing that seemed to his straining mind fitted to meet his desperate need. And a part of each night he spent in the laboratory he had fitted up in Robur's own part of the palace, experimenting in the blending of reagents, the making of the liquid fire.

In Zitra, in Cathur and in Aphur, Tamarizia roared, and by degrees the other states of the nation had the word of the last Zollarian outrage and added their voices to the chorus of resentment and demand for some retaliatory move. Croft had their sympathy and support in his plans of rescue, unequivocally expressed.

Meanwhile Robur took what steps he advised to safeguard the secret of how that rescue was to be made. Guardsmen established a patrol on the banks of the Na, with a port of search at its mouth, where all ascending vessels were compelled to stop by watchful motur craft. Other guards once more went aboard each ship at Himyra's gates, both north and south. For the time being the red city came to be an armed camp, as closely guarded from entry by unvouched for outsiders, as though in a state of siege.

And his labors ended, each night Croft stretched himself out on his couch and closed his physical eyes and maintained weird observation of events taking place in the north.

Three days after his return to Himyra, Kalamita arrived at her hunting lodge. Rather the thing was a small palace, built of native stone from the mountains and massive beams of wood—its central court fur-lined, its walls and floors covered with trophies of the chase—skins of the woolly tabur, which ran wild as well as in domesticated herds. There were skins of the ferocious tigerlike beast, such at the sculptured group in Jason's mountain home portrayed as attacking the man who sought to keep its ravening jaws from the body of a kneeling woman.

And there the Zollarian magnet set herself down with her escort camped about her to await the coming of the man she hoped would be drawn to her out of the south.

She sent her guards farther in that direction to meet and escort him. Koryphu at the time was still distant some half-day's journey, and Jason was assured it would be noon of the next day before the Cathurian appeared.

Wherefore he spent the succeeding morning in the shops and returned at midday to the palace, retiring to his rooms after explaining to Robur that he intended being present in the spirit at the meeting between Kalamita and the Tamarizian agent, even if not in the flesh as the woman desired.

Robur nodded. "Zitu—that such things can be. Not that I doubt you, Jason, but the matter never ceases to excite my wonder. Yet shall I wait with impatience word of what occurs when she beholds Koryphu, brother of Kyphallos, in your place."

"She is apt to show displeasure," Jason told him, and he was thinking as much—that the beautiful Zollarian was very apt to show marked displeasure, covered perhaps as best it might be by a haughty bearing—as he stretched himself out and closed his eyes.

To the mountains north of Cathur. The Central Sea a-sparkle in the sunlight fled away beneath him. Scira was passed and the many weary stretches of winding road over which Koryphu had passed until he found him, advancing with the Cathurian footmen ringed about him, the Tamarizian flag a glorious standard above him, led by the Zollarian guards.

Swiftly then Jason willed himself into the hunting lodge where sat Kalamita, dressed or undressed as one might prefer to express it, for the occasion, in a huge chair draped with the black and tanhide of some savage creature; Gor, her giant attendant by her side.

Fire—the fire of delayed purpose burned in her tawny eyes—there was the suppressed litheness of the predatory creature already scenting the kill in her every movement, the tremor of suppressed emotion in her words.

"Thou understandest, Gor, that when this one comes before me, I shall demand that we speak together alone. And I have given word to the guardsmen that his men shall be surrounded and at a word from me, after my purpose is accomplished, all save one be put to the sword. After a time as we speak together I shall simulate anger at some word of his, to the speaking of which I shall lead him by taunting speech, and then fling thyself upon him and bind him. This is clear?"

"Aye, mistress, Gor hears and obeys," said Gor, curling back his heavy lips.

Kalamita's breast rose and fell in a deep-caught breath. "See to it, then. Let there be no mistake."

"Nay, mistress—when has Gor failed thee—or to do thy bidding?"

"None fail me save once," said Kalamita. "Enough."

Outside, a trumpet blew a ruffling blast. There followed a pause, and then Cathur tricked out in his bravest armor, with the twin mountain peaks of Cathur on it done in blue stones, appeared in the doorway of the lodge between two Zollarian captains, and paused.

"Cathur for Tamarizia seeks audience with Kalamita," the senior captain announced.

For a moment the face of the woman twitched with some sudden emotion and then she replied, gripping the arm of her chair till her knuckles whitened. "Let Cathur approach."

The captains fell back and disappeared. Koryphu advanced. A single pace before her he halted.

"These tablets bring I from Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu to Tamarizia, to Kalamita," he said, and placed Croft's message in her hand.

She held them for a single instant, ere she hurled them to the floor. Her lips twitched, hardened, her tawny eyes glared.

Once more, as in Berla, she was faced by an unexpected element in her plans. The thing on which she had counted to win her country's ends at least—to glut her own thirst for revenge in a measure, was here in the person of the man before her, withheld from her outstretched hand. Inwardly she raged as any vengeful person may rage when the object of their hatred escapes their vengeance—and doubly because, despite her assurance, Helmor had foretold some such ending to the meeting she had planned.

But outwardly she strove for calm. "How are you called, man of Cathur, who come to listen to my demands and carry them to this strong man, who exerts not himself to come before me?"

"Koryphu, brother of Kyphallos, woman of Zollaria," Koryphu replied in a somewhat husky voice.

Kalamita recoiled. Her body shrank back as from a blow, and then she stiffened.

"Koryphu!" she repeated, staring at him out of widened lids. "Now, in Bel's name, what trickery is this that sends before me the weakling student brother, at whom Kyphallos laughed?"

"No trickery, Zollaria, lies in it, but rather purpose," Koryphu returned, still more thickly, "in that Jason chose for his messenger one who had sufficient knowledge of thee to assure his remaining unmoved by your charms, no matter how shamelessly employed—one who would hearken to your demands as regarding Naia of Aphur and Jason, Son of Jason, yet give no ear to other words."

Mentally Croft applauded even while physically Kalamita, the magnet, gasped.

"The Mouthpiece were a shrewd man," she said after a moment, "yet might he have felt doubly assured in thy choice, had he considered thy presence. Kalamita wastes not her wiles on aught less than a man. Did he send also to guard thee, the things that fly over the mountains the past two days?"

"Nay," said Koryphu as one who considered his answer. "They but seek a place of hiding, since Kalamita said her whose terms of ransom I come to bear to him, would lie hidden in the mountains until such terms were arranged."

Kalamita smiled in crafty fashion, with a vulpine widening of the crimson slit of her mouth. One would have said she was pleased by this information.

"As he wills," she said more lightly. "I might forbid it, but it disturbs me not. He will not find the place, and endangers the terms himself, since a part of my demands were gained already if one of his devices falls. Even now my guardsmen lie in wait for such a happening in the hills, since I had conceived his purpose, and foreseen wherein it might be turned to my advantage."

"Nay." Koryphu appeared unmoved by the information. "Let your guards beware, since if one of them falls it will be destroyed. Does Kalamita desire the secret of them for Zollaria or herself?"

His lips relaxed slightly in an almost taunting fashion as he regarded the woman before him out of steady, unwavering eyes.

And again Croft applauded his choice of the man who was unveiling the true state of affairs behind the present meeting, and yet leaving Zollaria's agent at least in part deceived. For his words appeared to flick her and she answered quickly:

"Were it not the same, Kalamita being Zollarian, man of Cathur?"

"Aye, perhaps," Koryphu assented. "If perchance the interests be the same. It would seem then that as well as Kalamita's price to Jason, I return to Tamarizia with Zollaria's demands."

"And thy shoulders can support so vast a burden, Cathur—these terms I warn you are not light."

"I await them," Koryphu replied.

"Then hear Kalamita's price for the pale-faced one and her suckling." The woman leaned a trifle forward as she named them. "Mazhur must be returned—the Gateway must be opened without let or hindrance. There must be no tax exacted over Zollarian traffic on the Central Sea. There must be surrendered with men to explain them the secrets of your moturs and your air machines, and of all other devices born of the Mouthpiece of Zitu's brain—the fire weapons, the balls that burst when thrown amidst an enemy's forces. Name these things as the price of ransom to your Mouthpiece when you return."

"These seem heavy terms, indeed." Koryphu threw out his hands in a helpless gesture. His face was pale, even though Croft in their conversations had foreshadowed some such thing. "Were it not wiser for Zollaria to ask less with a chance of obtaining somewhat than to overshoot the mark by asking everything?"

"Nay." Kalamita leaned back well pleased as it seemed by the man's quite natural confusion on being given a message that spelled little less than his country's ruin.

"Nay, by Bel, Cathur—once there was a time when thy brother's plans and mine went down in confusion when Tamarizia demanded and Zollaria yielded. Now Zollaria speaks, and should Tamarizia not accept, or make any move to resist her demands by force of arms, Naia of Aphur goes to the mines with the blue men who labor in them and her puny offspring into Bel's mighty arms a paltry sacrifice. So much herself the woman understands—wherefore she sends this ring to Jason to plead as her own voice that he hearken to Kalamita's words."

Stripping a signet from her finger, she extended it upon her palm.

Koryphu's features were strained as he took the ring. "These things I shall carry to Jason's ears. Does Kalamita await his answer?"

"Nay—let Jason arrange the next meeting," said Kalamita. "I go to a place he knows not of, despite his man-made birds and their spying. Yet will a messenger on the highway north from Mazhur be met, and his message accepted. So I shall arrange. Perhaps if he feel need, he may employ one of these self-same flying devices."

She broke off sharply as a commotion arose outside the lodge, then turned to Gor.

"Go learn the cause of this disturbance—"

Gor stalked to the door, and paused.

"Mistress, they come," he declared, and drew back as a group of Zollarian guardsmen in charge of a captain entered, a man in leathern jacket and helmet held captive in their midst.

With a start Croft recognized one of his own fliers. Disaster—already one of the planes had fallen, he thought, and heard the captain confirm his fears.

The man saluted with upflung arm. "Behold, princess, one whom we bring before you—a Tamarizian dog—who fell with the device he rode like an arrow-pierced bird from the skies."

Kalamita's smile was coldly gloating as she regarded the captive, young, slender, grimed by the smirching of his fall and the struggle attending his capture, his leathern flying-suit torn, and gashed where some Zollarian, overardent, had slit it with a spearhead. For a moment she turned her regard on Koryphu as if to say here was her prediction already verified, and back again to the man.

"Well, Tamarizian, found you the hiding place you flew in search of?" she sneered.

"Nay." The youth stiffened. "'Tis not always easy, Zollarian, to discover the hiding places of Zitemku's agents. Nor have we searched over long."

Kalamita's features hardened. She gave her attention to the captain. "What of the machine?"

"The machine, princess, was by this one destroyed ere we could prevent it. It lies burst and ruined by flames."

"So?" Rage lighted the woman's tawny eyes—once more she was baffled in a purpose. "For that he dies."

Under his grime and sweat, inside the circle of his helmet, the aviator's face went pale, but he maintained his poise of body even as Koryphu spoke quickly—"Princess of Zollaria, unsay those words."