Palos of the Dog Star Pack

By J. U. GIESY

A Complete Novel

Copyright 1918 by The Frank A. Munsey Company

CHAPTER I

OUT OF THE STORM

It was a miserable night which brought me first in touch with Jason Croft. There was a rain and enough wind to send it in gusty dashes against the windows. It was the sort of a night when I always felt glad to cast off coat and shoes, don a robe and slippers, and sit down with the curtains drawn, a lighted pipe, and the soft glow of a lamp falling across the pages of my book. I am, I admit, always strangely susceptible to the shut-in sense of comfort afforded by a pipe, the steady yellow of a light, and the magic of printed lines at a time of elemental turmoil and stress.

It was with a feeling little short of positive annoyance that I heard the door-bell ring. Indeed, I confess, I was tempted to ignore it altogether at first. But as it rang again, and was followed by a rapid tattoo of rapping, as of fists pounded against the door itself, I rose, laid aside my book, and stepped into the hall.

First switching on a porch-light, I opened the outer door, to reveal the figure of an old woman, somewhat stooping, her head covered by a shawl, which sloped wetly from her head to either shoulder, and was caught and held beneath her chin by one bony hand.

"Doctor," she began in a tone of almost frantic excitement. "Dr. Murray—come quick!"

Perhaps I may as well introduce myself here as anywhere else. I am Dr. George Murray, still, as at the time of which I write, in charge of the State Mental Hospital in a Western State. The institution was not then very large, and since taking my position at the head of its staff I had found myself with considerable time for my study along the lines of human psychology and the various powers and aberrations of the mind.

Also, I may as well confess, as a first step toward a better understanding of my part in what followed, that for years before coming to the asylum I had delved more or less deeply into such studies, seeking to learn what I might concerning both the normal and the abnormal manifestations of mental force.

There is good reading and highly entertaining, I assure you, in the various philosophies dealing with life, religion, and the several beliefs regarding the soul of man. I was therefore fairly conversant not only with the Occidental creeds, but with those of the Oriental races as well. And I knew that certain of the Eastern sects had advanced in their knowledge far beyond our Western world. I had even endeavored to make their knowledge mine, so far as I could, in certain lines at least, and had from time to time applied some of that knowledge to the treatment of cases in the institution of which I was the head.

But I was not thinking of anything like that as I looked at the shawl-wrapped face of the little bent woman, wrinkled and wry enough to have been a very part of the storm which beat about her and blew back the skirts of my lounging-robe and chilled my ankles. I lived in a residence detached from the asylum buildings proper, but none the less a part of the institution; and, as a matter of fact, my sole thought was a feeling of surprise that any one should have come here to find me, and despite the woman's manifest state of anxiety and haste, a decided reluctance to go with her quickly or otherwise on such a night.

I rather temporized: "But, my dear woman, surely there are other doctors for you to call. I am really not in general practice. I am connected with the asylum—"

"And that is the very reason I always said I would come for you if anything happened to Mr. Jason," she cut in.

"Whom?" I inquired, interested in spite of myself at this plainly premeditated demand for my service.

"Mr. Jason Croft, sir," she returned. "He's dead maybe—I dunno. But he's been that way for a week."

"Dead?" I exclaimed in almost an involuntary fashion, startled by her words.

"Dead, or asleep. I don't know which."

Clearly there was something here I wasn't getting into fully, and my interest aroused. The whole affair seemed to be taking on an atmosphere of the peculiar, and it was equally clear that the gusty doorway was no place to talk. "Come in," I said. "What is your name?"

"Goss," said she, without making any move to enter. "I'm housekeeper for Mr. Jason, but I'll not be comin' in unless you say you'll go."

"Then come in without any more delay," I replied, making up my mind. I knew Croft in a way—by sight at least. He was a big fellow with light hair and a splendid physique, who had been pointed out to me shortly after my arrival. Once I had even got close enough to the man to look into his eyes. They were gray, and held a peculiar something in their gaze which had arrested my attention at once. Jason Croft had the eyes of a mystic—of a student of those very things I myself had studied more or less.

They were the eyes of one who saw deeper than the mere objective surface of life, and the old woman's words at the last had waked up my interest in no uncertain degree. I had decided I would go with her to Croft's house, which was not very far down the street, and see, if I might, for myself just what had occurred to send her rushing to me through the night.

I gave her a seat, said I would get on my shoes and coat, and went back into the room I had left some moments before. There I dressed quickly for my venture into the storm, adding a raincoat to my other attire, and was back in the hall inside five minutes at most.

We set out at once, emerging into the wind-driven rain, my long raincoat flapping about my legs and the little old woman tottering along at my side. And what with the rain, the wind, and the unexpected summons, I found myself in a rather strange frame of mind. The whole thing seemed more like some story I had read than a happening of real life, particularly so as my companion kept pace with me and uttered no sound save at times a rather rasping sort of breath. The whole thing became an almost eery experience as we hastened down the storm-swept street.

Then we turned in at a gate and went up toward the large house I knew to be Croft's, and the little old woman unlocked a heavy front door and led me into a hall. It was a most unusual hall, too, its walls draped with rare tapestries and rugs, its floor covered with other rugs such as I had never seen outside private collections, lighted by a hammered brass lantern through the pierced sides of which the rays of an electric light shone forth.

Across the hall she scuttered, still in evident haste, and flung open a door to permit me to enter a room which was plainly a study. It was lined with cases of books, furnished richly yet plainly with chairs, a heavy desk, and a broad couch, on which I saw in one swift glance the stretched-out body of Croft himself.

He lay wholly relaxed, like one sunk in heavy sleep, his eyelids closed, his arms and hands dropped limply at his sides, but with no visible sign of respiration animating his deep full chest.

Toward him the little woman gestured with a hand, and stood watching, still with her wet shawl about her head and shoulders, while I approached and bent over the man.

I touched his face and found it cold. My fingers sought his pulse and failed to find it at all. But his body was limp as I lifted an arm and dropped it. There was no rigor, yet there was no evidence of decay, such as must follow once rigor has passed away. I had brought instruments with me as a matter of course. I took them from my pocket and listened for some sound from the heart. I thought I found the barest flutter, but I wasn't sure. I tested the tension of the eyeball under the closed lids and found it firm. I straightened and turned to face the little old woman.

"Dead, sir?" she asked in a sibilant whisper. Her eyes were wide in their sockets. They stared into mine.

I shook my head. "He doesn't appear to be dead," I replied. "See here, Mrs. Goss, what did you mean by saying he ought to have been back three days ago? What do you mean by back?"

She fingered at her lips with one bony hand. "Why—awake, sir," she said at last.

"Then why didn't you say so?" I snapped. "Why use the word back?"

"Because, sir," she faltered, "that's what he says when he wakes up. 'Well, Mary, I'm back.' I—I guess I just said it because he does, doctor. I—was worrit when he didn't come back—when he didn't wake up, tonight, an' it took to rainin', I reckon maybe it was th' storm scared me, sir."

Her words had, however, given me a clue. "He's been like this before, then?"

"Yes, sir. But never more than four days without telling me he would. Th' first time was months ago—but it's been gettin' oftener and oftener, till now all his sleeps are like this. He told me not to be scared—an' to—to never bother about him—to—to just let him alone; but—I guess I was scared tonight, when it begun to storm an' him layin' there like that. It was like havin' a corpse in the house."

I began to gain a fuller appreciation of the situation. I myself had seen people in a cataleptic condition, had even induced the state in subjects myself, and it appeared to me that Jason Croft was in a similar state, no matter how induced.

"What does your employer do?" I asked.

"He studies, sir—just studies things like that." Mrs. Goss gestured at the cases of books. "He don't have to work, you know. His uncle left him rich."

I followed her arm as she swept it about the glass-fronted cases. I brought my glances back to the desk in the center of the room, between the woman and myself as we stood. Upon it I spied another volume lying open. It was unlike any book I had ever seen, yellowed with age; in fact not a book at all, but a series of parchment pages tied together with bits of silken cord.

I took the thing up and found the open pages covered with marginal notes in English, although the original was plainly in Sanskrit, an ancient language I had seen before, but was wholly unable to read. The notations, however, threw some light into my mind, and as I read them I forgot the storm, the little old woman—everything save what I read and the bearing it held on the man behind me on the couch. I felt sure they had been written by his own hand, and they bore on the subject of astral projection—the ability of the soul to separate itself, or be separated, from the physical body and return to its fleshy husk again at will.

I finished the open pages and turned to others. The notations were still present wherever I looked. At last I turned to the very front and found that the manuscript was by Ahmid, an occult adept of Hindustan, who lived somewhere in the second or third century of the Christian era.

With a strange sensation I laid down the silk-bound pages. They were very, very old. Over a thousand years had come and passed since they were written by the dead Ahmid's hand. Yet I had held them tonight, and I felt sure Jason Croft had held them often—read them and understood them, and that the condition in which I found him this night was in some way subtly connected with their store of ancient lore. And suddenly I sensed the storm and the little old woman and the silent body of the man at my back again, with a feeling of something uncanny in the whole affair.

"You can do nothing for him?" the woman broke my introspection.

I looked up and into her eyes, dark and bright and questioning as she stood still clutching her damp shawl.

"I'm not so sure of that," I said. "But—Mr. Croft's condition is rather—peculiar. Whatever I do will require quiet—that I am alone with him for some time. I think if I can be left here with him for possibly an hour, I can bring him back."

I paused abruptly. I had used the woman's former words almost. And I saw she noticed the fact, for a slight smile gathered on her faded lips. She nodded. "You'll bring him back," she said. "Mind you, doctor, th' trouble is with Mr. Jason's head, I've been thinking. 'Twas for that I've been telling myself I would come for you, if he forgot to come back some time, like I've been afraid he would."

"You did quite right," I agreed. "But—the trouble is not with Mr. Croft's mind. In fact, Mrs. Goss, I believe he is a very learned man. How long have you known him, may I ask?"

"Ever since he was a boy, except when he was travelin'," she returned.

"He has traveled?" I took her up.

"Yes, sir, a lot. Me an' my husband kept up th' place while he was gone."

"I see," I said. "And now if you will let me try what I can do."

"Yes, sir. I'll set out in th' hall," she agreed, and turned in her rapid putter from the room.

Left alone, I took a chair, dragged it to the side of the couch, and studied my man.

So far as I could judge, he was at least six feet tall, and correspondingly built. His hair was heavy, almost tawny, and, as I knew, his eyes were gray. The whole contour of his head and features showed what appeared to me remarkable intelligence and strength, the nose finely chiseled, the mouth well formed and firm, the chin unmistakably strong. That Croft was an unusual character I felt more and more as I sat there. His very condition, which, from what I had learned from the little old woman and his own notation on the margins of Ahmid's writings, I believed self-induced, would certainly indicate that.

But my own years of study had taught me no little of hypnosis, suggestion, and the various phases of the subconscious mind. I had developed no little power with various patients, or "subjects," as a hypnotist calls them, who from time to time had submitted themselves to my control. Wherefore I felt that I knew about what to do to waken the sleeping objective mind of the man on the couch. I had asked for an hour, and the time had been granted. It behooved me to get to work.

I began. I concentrated my mind to the exclusion of all else upon my task, sending a mental call to the soul of Jason Croft, wherever it might be, commanding it to return to the body it had temporarily quitted of its own volition, and once more animate it to a conscious life. I forgot the strangeness of the situation, the rattle of the rain against the glass panes of the room. And after a time I began speaking to the form beside which I sat, as to a conscious person, firmly repeating over and over my demand for the presence of Jason Croft—demanding it, nor letting myself doubt for a single instant that the demand would be given heed in time.

It was a nerve-racking task. In the end it came to seem that I sat there and struggled against some intangible, invisible force which resisted all my efforts. I look back now on the time spent there that night as an ordeal such as I never desire to again attempt. But I did not desist. I had asked for an hour, because when I asked I never dreamed the thing I had attempted, the thing which is yet to be related, concerning the weird, yet true narrative, as I fully believe, of Jason Croft.

I had then no conception of how far his venturesome spirit had plumbed the universe. If I thought of him at all, it was merely as some experimenter who might have need of help, rather than as an adept of adepts, who had transcended all human accomplishments in his line of research and thought.

In my own blindness I had fancied that his overlong period in his cataleptic trance might even be due to some inability on his part to reanimate his own body, after leaving it where it lay. I thought of myself as possibly aiding him in the task by what I would do in the time for which I had asked.

But the hour ran away, and another, and still the body over which I worked lay as it had lain at first, nor gave any sign of any effect of my concentrated will. It had been close to ten when I came to the house. It was three in the morning when I gained my first reward.

And when it came, it was so sudden that I actually started back in my chair and sat clutching its carved arms, and staring in something almost like horror, I think, at first at the body which had lifted itself to a sitting posture on the couch.

And I know that when the man said, "So you are the one who called me back?" I actually gasped before I answered:

"Yes."

Croft fastened his eyes upon me in a steady regard. "You are Dr. Murray, from the Mental Hospital, are you not?" he went on.

"Ye-es," I stammered again. Mrs. Goss had said his sleep was like having a corpse about the house. I found myself thinking this was nearly as though a corpse should rise up and speak.

But he nodded, with the barest smile on his lips. "Only one acquainted with the nature of my condition could have roused me," he said. "However, you were engaging in a dangerous undertaking, friend."

"Dangerous for you, you mean," I rejoined. "Do you know you have lain cataleptic for something like a week?"

"Yes." He nodded again. "But I was occupied on a most important mission."

"Occupied!" I exclaimed. "You mean you were engaged in some undertaking while you lay there?" I pointed to the couch where he sat.

"Yes." Once more he smiled.

Well, the man was sane. In fact, it seemed to me in those first few moments that he was far saner than I, far less excited, far less affected by the whole business from the first to last. In fact, he seemed quite calm and a trifle amused, while I was admittedly upset. And my very knowledge gained by years of study told me he was sane, that his was a perfectly balanced brain. There was nothing about him to even hint at anything else, save his extraordinary words. In the end I continued with a question:

"Where?"

"On the planet Palos, one of the Dog Star pack—a star in the system of the sun Sirius," he replied.

"And you mean you have just returned from—there?" I faltered over the last word badly. My brain seemed slightly dazed at the astounding statement he had made—that I—I had called him from a planet beyond the ken of the naked eye, known only to those who studied the heavens with powerful glasses—farther away than any star of our own earthly system of planets. The thing made my senses reel.

And he seemed to sense my emotions, because he went on in a softly modulated tone: "Do not think me in any way similar to those unfortunates under your charge. As an alienist you must know the truth of that, just as you knew that my trancelike sleep was wholly self-induced."

"I gathered that from the volume on your desk," I explained.

He glanced toward Ahmid's work. "You read the Sanskrit?" he inquired.

I shook my head. "No, I read the marginal notes."

"I see. Who called you here?"

I explained.

Croft frowned. "I cannot blame her; she is a faithful soul," he remarked. "I can comprehend her worry. I have explained to her as fully as I dared, but—she does not understand, and I remained away longer than I really intended, to tell the truth. However, now that you can reassure her, I must ask you to excuse me, doctor, for a while. Come to me in about twelve hours and I will be here to meet you and explain in part at least." He stretched himself out once more on the couch.

"Wait!" I cried. "What are you going to do?"

"I am going back to Palos," he told me with a smile.

"But—will your body stand the strain?" I questioned, beginning to doubt his sanity after all.

He met my objection with another smile. "I have studied that well before I began these little excursions of mine. Meet me at, say, four o'clock this afternoon." He appeared to relax, sighed softly, and sank again into his trance.

I sprang up and stood looking down upon him. I hardly knew what to do. I began pacing the floor. Finally I gave my attention to the books in the cases which lined the room. They comprised the most wonderful collection of works on the occult ever gathered within four walls. They helped me to make up my mind in the end. I decided to take Jason Croft at his word and keep the engagement for the coming afternoon.

I went to the study door and set it open. The little old woman sat huddled on a chair. At first I thought she slept, but almost at once I found her bright eyes upon me, and she started to her feet.

"He came back—I—I heard him speaking," she began in a husky whisper. "He—is he all right?"

"All right," I replied. "But he is asleep again now and has promised to see me this afternoon at four. In the mean time do not attempt to disturb him in any way, Mrs. Goss."

She nodded. Suddenly she seemed wholly satisfied. "I won't, sir," she gave her promise. "I was worrit—worrit—that was all."

"You need not worry any more," I sought to reassure her. "I fancy Mr. Croft is able to take care of himself."

And, oddly enough, I found myself believing my own words as I went down the steps and turned toward my own home to get what sleep I could—since, to tell the truth, I felt utterly exhausted after my efforts to call Jason Croft back from—the planet of a distant sun.

CHAPTER II

A COUNTRY IN THE CLOUDS

And yet when I woke in the morning and went about my duties at the asylum, I confess the events of the night before seemed rather unreal. I began to half fancy myself the victim of some sort of hoax. I did not doubt that Croft had been up to some psychic experiment when his old servant, Mrs. Goss, had become alarmed and brought me into the situation. But—I felt inclined to believe that after I had waked him from his self-induced trance he had deliberately turned the conversation into a channel which would give me a mental jolt before he had calmly gone back to sleep.

I knew something of the occult, of course, but I was hardly ready to credit the rather lurid statement he had made. Before noon I was smiling at myself, and determining to keep my appointment with him for the afternoon, and show him from the start that I was not so complete a fool as I had seemed.

Hence it was with a resolve not to be swept off my feet by any unusual fabrication of his devising that I approached his house at about three o'clock and turned in from the street to his porch.

He sat there, in a wicker chair, smoking an excellent cigar. No doubt but he had recovered completely from the state in which I had beheld him first. He rose as I mounted the steps and put out a hand. "Ah, Dr. Murray," he greeted me with a smile. "I have been waiting your coming. Let me offer you a chair and a smoke while we talk."

We shook hands, and then I sat down and lighted the mate of the cigar Croft held between his strong, even teeth. Then, as I threw away the match, I looked straight into his eyes. And, believe me or not, it was as though the man read my thoughts.

He shook his head. "I really told you the truth, Murray, you know," he said.

"About—Palos?" I smiled.

He nodded. "Yes, I was really there, and—I went back after we had our talk."

"Rather quick work," I remarked, and puffed out some smoke. "Have you figured out how long it takes even light to reach the earth from that distant star, Mr. Croft?"

"Light?" He half-knit his brows, then suddenly laughed without sound. "Oh, I see—you refer to the equation of time?"

"Well, yes. The distance is considerable, as you must admit."

He shook his head. "How long does it take you to think of Palos—of Sirius?" he asked.

"Not long," I replied.

He leaned back in his seat. "Murray," he went on, staring straight before him, "time is but the measure of consciousness. Outside the atmospheric envelopes of the planets—outside the limit of, well—say—human thought—time ceases to exist. And—if between the planets there is no time beyond the depths of their surrounding atmosphere—how long will it take to go from here to there?"

I stared. His statement was startling, at least.

"You mean that time is a mental conception?" I managed at last.

"Time is a mental measure of a span of eternity," he said slowly. "Past planetary atmospheres, eternity alone exists. In eternity there is no time. Hence, I cannot use what is not, either in going to or returning from that planet I have named. You admit you can think instantly of Palos. I allege that I can think myself, carry my astral consciousness instantly to Palos. Do you see?"

I saw what he meant, of course, and I indicated as much by a nod. "But," I objected, "you told me you had to return to Palos. Now you tell me you had projected your astral body to that star. What could you do there in the astral state?"

He smiled. "Very little. I know. I have passed through that stage. As a matter of fact, I have a body there now."

"You have what—" As I remember, I came half out of my chair, and then sank back. The thing hit me as nothing else in my whole life had done before. His calm avowal was unbelievable on its face—impossible—a man with a double corporeal existence on two separate planets at one and the same time.

"A body—a living, breathing body," he repeated his declaration. "Oh, man, I know it overthrows all human conceptions of life, but—last night you asked me a question concerning this body of mine—and I told you I knew what I was doing. And I know you must have studied some of the teachings of the higher cult—the esoteric philosophies, if you will. And therefore you must have read of the ability of a spirit to dispossess a body of its original spiritual tenant and occupy its place—"

"Obsession," I interrupted. "You are practicing that—up there?"

"No. I've gone farther than that. I took this body when its original occupant was done with it," he said. "Murray—wait—let me explain. I'm a physician like yourself."

"You?" I exclaimed, none too politely, I fear, in the face of this additional surprise.

Croft's lips twitched. He seemed to understand and yet be slightly amused. "Yes. That's why I was able to assure you I knew how long the body I occupy now could endure a cataleptic condition last night. I am a graduate of Rush, and I fancy, fully qualified to speak concerning the body's needs. And—" He paused a moment, then resumed:

"Frankly, Murray, I find myself confronted by what I think I may call the strangest position a man was ever called upon to face. Last night I recognized in you one who had probably far from a minor understanding of mental and spiritual forces. Your ability to force my return at a time when I was otherwise engaged showed me your understanding. For that very reason I asked you to return to me here today. I would like to talk to you—a brother physician; to tell you a story—my story, provided you would care to hear it. Most men would call me insane. Something tells me you, who devote your time to the care of the insane, will not."

He paused and sat once more staring across the sunlit landscape which, after the storm of the night before, was glowing and fresh. After a time he turned his eyes and looked into mine with something almost an appeal, in his glance. In response, I nodded and settled myself in my chair.

"I'm not going to deny a natural curiosity, Dr. Croft," I said, since, to tell the absolute truth, I was anxious to get at the inward facts underlying the entire peculiar affair.

"Then," he said in an almost eager fashion, "I shall tell you—the whole thing, I think. Murray, when Shakespeare wrote into one of his character's mouth the statement that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of, he told the truth. Mankind in the main is like a crowd storming the doors of a showhouse sold out to capacity and unable to accommodate any one else. Mankind is the crowd in the lobby, shut out from the real sights back of the veiling doors which bar their perception of what goes on within. Mankind stands only on the fringe of life, does not dream of the truth. Only here and there is there one who knows. It was one such who first directed my mind toward the truth.

"Murray"—he paused and once more fastened me with his gaze—"I am going to tell that truth to you.... But first—in order that you may understand, and believe if you can, I shall tell you something of myself."

That telling took a long time; hours, the rest of the afternoon, and most of the following night. It was a strange tale, an unbelievably strange story. And yet, in view of what happened inside that same week, I am not sure, after all, but it was the truth, just as Croft alleged. What, when all is said, do any of us know beyond the round of our own human life? What do we know of those things which may lie outside the scope of our mental vision? There must be things in heaven and earth not dreamt of in the philosophy of Horatio. Here is the tale.

Jason Croft was born in New Jersey, but brought West at an early age by his parents, who had become converts to a certain faith. Right there, it seems to me, may have been laid the foundation of Croft's interest in the occult in later life, since that faith contains possibly a greater number of parallels to occult teachings than any of the Occidental creeds. Of course, in all religions there is the germ of truth. Were it not, they would be dead dogmas rather than living sects. But in this church, which has grown strong in the Western States, I think there is a closer approach to the Eastern theory of soul and spiritual life.

Be that as it may, Croft grew to manhood in the very State and town where I was now employed, and in the home on the porch of which we sat. He elected medicine as a career. He went to Chicago and put in his first three years. The second year his mother died, and a year later his father. He returned on each occasion, and went back to his studies after the obsequies were done. In his fourth year he met a man named Gatua Kahaun, destined, as it seems, to change the entire course of his life.

Gatua Kahaun was a Hindu, a member of an Eastern brotherhood, come to the United States to study the religions of the West. One can see how naturally he took up with Croft, who had been raised in one of those religions.

The two became friends. From what Croft told me, the Hindu was a man of marked attainments, well versed in the Oriental creeds. When Croft came West after his graduation, Gatua Kahaun was his companion and stopped at his home, which had been kept up by Mrs. Goss and her husband, then still alive. The two lived there together for some weeks, and the Hindu taught Croft the rudiments at least of the occult philosophy of life.

Then, with little warning, Croft was assigned on a mission to Australia by his church. He got a letter from "Box B," as he told me, smiling, knowing I would understand. The church of which he was a member has a custom of sending their members about the world as missionaries of their faith, to spread its doctrines and win converts to their ranks. Croft went, though even then he had begun to see the similarity between his own lifelong creed and the scheme of things held before him by Gatua Kahaun.

For over two years he did not see the Hindu, though he kept up his studies of the occult, to which he seemed inclined by a natural bent. Then, just as he was nearly finished with his "mission," what should happen but that, walking the streets of Melbourne, he bumped into Gatua Kahaun.

The two men renewed their acquaintance at once. Gatua Kahaun taught Croft Hindustani and the mysteries of the Sanskrit tongue. When Croft's mission was finished he prevailed upon him to visit India before returning home.

Croft went. Through Gatua's influence he was admitted to the man's own brotherhood. He forgot his former objects and aims in life in the new world of thought which opened up before his mental eyes. He studied and thought. He learned the secrets of the magnetic or enveloping body of the soul, and after a time he became convinced that by constant application to the major purpose the spirit could break the bonds of the material body without going through the change which men call death. He came to believe that beyond the phenomenon of astral projection—the sending of the conscious ego about the earthly sphere—projections might be made beyond the planet, with only the universe to limit the scope of the flight.

At times he lay staring at the starry vault of the heavens with a vague longing within him to put the thing to the test. And always there was one star which seemed to call him, to beckon to him, to draw his spirit toward it as a magnet may draw a fleck of iron. That was the Dog Star, Sirius, known to astronomers as the sun of another planetary system like our own.

Meantime his studies went on. He learned that matter is the reflex of spirit; that no blade of grass, no chemical atom exists save as the envelope of an essence which cannot and does not die. He came to see that nature is no more than a realm of force, comprising light, heat, magnetism, chemical affinity, aura, essence, and all the imponderables which go to produce the various forms of motion as expressions of the ocean of force, so that motion comes to be no more than force refracted through the various forms of existence, from the lowest to the highest, as a ray of light is split into the seven primary colors by a prism, each being different in itself, yet each but an integral part of the original ray.

He came to comprehend that all stages of existence are but stages and nothing more, and that mind, spirit, is the highest form of life force—the true essence—manifesting through material means, yet independent of them in itself. So only, he argued, was life after death a possible thing. And so, he reasoned further, could the mystery be solved, there was no real reason why the spirit could not be set free to roam and return to the body at will. If that were true, it seemed to him that the spirit could return from such excursions, bringing with it a conscious recollection of the place where it had been.

Then once more he was called home by a thing which seems like no more than a further step in the course of what mortals call fate. His father's brother died. He was a bachelor. He left Croft sufficient wealth to provide for his every need. Croft decided to pursue his studies at home. He had gained all India could give him. Indeed, he had rather startled even Gatua Kahaun by some of the theories he had deduced.

He began work at once. He stocked the library where I had found him the night before, with everything on the subject he could find. And the more he studied, the more firmly did he become convinced that ordinary astral projection was but the first step in developing the spirit's power—that it was akin to the first step of an infant learning to walk, and that, if confidence were forthcoming, if the will to dare the experiment were sufficiently strong—then he could accomplish the thing of which he dreamed.

He began to experiment, sending his astral consciousness here and there. He centered on that one phase of his knowledge alone. He roamed the earth at will. He perfected his ability to bring back from such excursions a vivid recollection of all he had seen. So at last he was ready for the great experiment. Yet in the end he made it on impulse rather than at any pre-selected time.

He sat one evening on his porch. Over the eastern mountains which hem in the valley the full moon was rising in a blaze of mellow glory. Its rays caught the sleeping surface of a lake which lies near our little city, touching each rippling wavelet until they seemed made of molten silver. The lights of the town itself were like fireflies twinkling amid the trees. The mountains hazed somewhat in a silvery mist, compounded of the moonrays and distance, seemed to him no more than the figments of a fairy tale or a dream.

Everything was quiet. Mrs. Goss, now a widow, had gone to bed, and Croft had simply been enjoying the soft air and a cigar. Suddenly, as the moon appeared to leap free of the mountains, it suggested a thought of a spirit set free and rising above the material shell of existence to his mind.

He sat watching the golden wheel radiant with reflected light, and after a time he asked himself why he should not try the great adventure without a longer delay. He was the last of his race. No one depended upon him. Should he fail, they would merely find his body in the chair. Should he succeed, he would have won his ambition and placed himself in a position to learn of things which had heretofore baffled man.

He decided to try it there and then. Knocking the ash from his cigar, he took one last, long, possibly farewell whiff, and laid it down on the broad arm of his chair. Then summoning all the potent power of his will, he fixed his whole mind upon his purpose and sank into cataleptic sleep.

The moon is dead. In so much science is right. It is lifeless, without moisture, without an atmosphere. Croft won his great experiment, or its first step at least. His body sank to sleep, but his ego leaped into a fuller, wider life.

There was a sensation of airy lightness, as though his sublimated consciousness had dropped material weight. His body sat beneath him in the chair. He could see it. He could see the city and the lake and the mountains and the yellow disk of the moon. He knew he was rising toward the latter swiftly. Then—space was annihilated in an instant, and he seemed to himself to be standing on the topmost edge of a mighty crater in the full, unobstructed glare of a blinding light.

He sensed that as the sun, which hung like a ball of fire halfway up from the horizon, flinging its rays in a dazzling brilliance against the dead satellite's surface, unprotected by an atmospheric screen. His first sensation was an amazing realization of his own success. Then he gazed about.

To one side was the vast ring of the crater itself, a well of unutterable darkness and unplumbed depth, as yet not opened up to the burning light of the sun. To the other was the downward sweep of the crater's flank, dun, dead, wrinkled, seamed and seared by the stabbing rays which bathed it in pitiless light. And beyond the foot of the crater was a vast irregular plain, lower in the center as though eons past it might have been the bed of some vanished sea. About the plain were the crests of barren mountains, crags, pinnacles, misshapen and weird beyond thought.

Yes, the moon is dead—now. But—there was life upon it once. Croft willed himself down from the lip of the crater to the plain. He moved about it. Indeed it had been a sea. There in the airless blaze, still etched in the lifeless formations, he found an ancient water-line, the mark of the fingers of vanished waters—like a mockery of what had been. And skirting the outline of that long-lost sea, he came to the ruin of a city which had stood upon the shores a myriad years ago. It stood there still—a thing of paved streets, and dead walls, safe in that moistureless world from decay.

Through those dead streets and houses, some of them thrown down by terrific earthquakes which he judged had accompanied the final cooling stages and death of the moon, Croft took his way, pausing now and then to examine some ancient inscriptions cut into the blocks of stone from which the buildings had been reared. In a way they impressed him as similar in many respects to the Asiatic structures of today, most of them being windowless on the first story, but built about an inner court, gardens of beauty in the time when the moon supported life.

So far as he could judge from the buildings themselves and frescoes on the walls, done in pigments which still prevailed, the lunarians had been a tiny people, probably not above an average of four feet in height, but extremely intelligent past any doubt, as shown by the remains of their homes. They had possessed rather large heads in proportion to their slender bodies, as the paintings done on the inside walls led Croft to believe.

From the same source he became convinced that their social life had been highly developed, and that they had been well versed in the arts of manufacture and commerce, and had at the time when lunar seas persisted maintained a merchant marine.

Through the hours of the lunar day he explored. Not, in fact, until the sun was dropping swiftly below the rim of the mountains beyond the old sea-bed, did he desist. Then lifting his eyes he beheld a luminous crescent, many times larger than the moon appears to us, emitting a soft, green light. He stood and gazed upon it for some moment before he realized fully that he looked upon a sun-rise on the earth—that the monster crescent was the earth indeed as seen from her satellite.

Then as realization came upon him he remembered his body—left on the porch of his home in the chair. Suddenly he felt a longing to return, to forsake the forsaken relics of a life which had passed and go back to the full, pulsing tide of life which still flowed on.

Here, then, he was faced by the second step of his experiment. He had consciously reached the moon. Could he return again to the earth? If so, he had proved his theory beyond any further doubt. Fastening his full power upon the endeavor, he willed himself back, and—

He opened his eyes—his physical eyes—and gazed into the early sun of a new day rising over the mountains and turning the world to emerald and gold.

The sound of a caught-in breath fell on his ears. He turned his glance. Mrs. Goss stood beside him.

"Laws, sir, but you was sound asleep!" she exclaimed. "I come to call you to breakfast an' you wasn't in your room, an' when I found you you was sleepin' like th' dead. You must have got up awful early, Mr. Jason."

"I was here before you were moving," Croft said as he rose. He smiled as he spoke. Indeed, he wanted to laugh, to shout. He had done what no mortal had ever accomplished before. The wonders of the universe were his to explore at will. Yet even so he did not dream of what the future held.

CHAPTER III

BEYOND THE MOON

And now the Dog Star called. Croft had proved his ability to project his conscious self beyond earth's attraction and return. And, having proved that, the old lure of the star he had watched when a student in the Indian mountains came back with a double strength. No longer was it an occasional prompting. Rather it was a never-ceasing urge which nagged him night and day.

He yielded at last. But remembering his return from his first experiment, he arranged for the next with due care. In order that Mrs. Goss might not become alarmed by seeing his body entranced, he arranged for her to take a holiday with a married daughter in another part of the State, telling her simply that he himself expected to be absent from his home for an indefinite time and would summon her upon his return.

He knew the woman well enough to be sure she would spread the word of his coming absence, and so felt assured that his body would remain undisturbed during the period of his venture into universal space.

Having seen the old woman depart, he entered the library, drew down all the blinds, and stretched himself on the couch. Fixing his mind on Sirius to the exclusion of everything else, he threw off the bonds of the flesh.

Yet here, as it chanced, even Croft made a well-nigh fatal mistake. It was toward Sirius he had willed himself in his thoughts, and Sirius is a sun. As a result, he realized none too soon that he was floating in the actual nebula surrounding the flaming orb itself.

Directly beneath him, as it appeared, the Dog Star rolled, a mass of electric fire. Mountains of flame ran darting off into space in all directions. Between them the whole surface of the sun boiled and bubbled and seethed like a world-wide caldron. Not for a moment was there any rest upon that surface toward which he was sinking with incredible speed. Every atom of the monster sun was in motion, ever shifting, ever changing yet always the same. It quivered and billowed and shook. Flames of every conceivable color radiated from it in waves of awful heat. Vast explosions recurred again and again on the ever heaving surface. What seemed unthinkable hurricanes rushed into the voids created by the exploding gases.

In this maelstrom of titanic forces Croft found himself caught. Not even the wonderful force his spirit had attained could overcome the sun's power of repulsion. His progress stayed, he hung above the molten globe beneath him, imprisoned, unable to extricate himself from his position, buffeted, swirled about and swayed by the irresistible forces which warred around him in a never-ceasing tumult such as he had never conceived.

Something like a vague question as to his fate rather than any fear assailed him, something like a blind wonder. The force which held him was one beyond his experience or knowledge. He knew that a true spirit, a pure ego, could not wholly perish, yet now he asked himself what would be the effect of close proximity to such an enormous center of elemental activity upon an ego not wholly sublimated, such as his.

His will power actually faltered, staggered. For the time being he lost his ability to chose his course. He had willed himself here, and here he was, but he found himself unable to will himself back or anywhere else, in fact. The sensation crept through his soul that he was a plaything of fate, a mad ego which had ventured too far, dared too much, sought to learn those things possibly forbidden, hence caught in a net of universal law, woven about him by his own mad thirst for knowledge—a spirit doomed by its own daring to an eternity of something closely approaching the orthodox hell.

Through eons of time, as it seemed to him, he hung above that blazing orb, surrounded by seething gases which dimmed but did not wholly obscure his vision. Then a change began taking place. A great spot of darkness appeared on the pulsing body of the sun. It widened swiftly. About it the fiery elements of molten mass seemed to center their main endeavor. Vast streamers of flaming gas leaped and darted about its spreading center. It stretched and spread.

To Croft's fascinated vision it showed a mighty, funnel-like chasm, reaching down for thousands of miles into the very heart of their solar mass. And suddenly he knew that once more he was sinking, was being drawn down, down, to be engulfed in that terrible throat of the terrifying funnel, swept and sucked down like a bit of driftwood into the maw of a whirlpool, powerless to resist.

Down he sank, down, between walls of living fire which swirled about him with an inconceivable velocity of revolution. The vapors which closed about him seemed to stifle even his spirit senses. Down, down, how far he had no conception. He had lost all control, all conscious power to judge of time or distance. Yet he was able still to see. And so at last he sensed that the fiery walls were coming swiftly together.

For a wild instant he conceived himself engulfed. Then he knew that he was being thrown out and upward again with terrific force, literally crowded forth with the outrushing gases between the collapsing walls, and hurled again into space.

Darkness came down, a darkness so deep it seemed a thousand suns might not pierce it through with their rays. Sirius, the great sun, seemed blotted out. He was seized by a sense of falling through that Stygian shroud. In which direction he knew not, or why or how. He knew only that his ego over which he had lost control was swirling in vast spirals down and down through an endless void to an endless fate—that he who had come so confidently forth to explore the universal secrets had become a waif in the uncharted immensity of the eternal universe.

The sensation went on and on. So much he knew. Still he was conscious. The thought came to him that this was his punishment for daring to know. Still conscious, he must be still bound by natural law. Had he broken that law and been cast into utter darkness, to remain forever conscious of his fate? Yet if so, where was he falling, where was he to wander, and for how long? His senses reeled.

By degrees, however, he fought back to some measure of control. His very necessity prompted the attempt. And by degrees there came to him a sense of not being any longer alone. In the almost palpable darkness it seemed that other shapes and forms, whose warp and woof was darkness also, floated and writhed about him as he fell.

They thrust against him; they gibbered soundlessly at him. They taunted him as he passed. And yet their very presence helped him in the end. He called his own knowledge to his assistance. He recognized these shapes of terror as those elementals of which occult teaching spoke, things which roamed in the darkness, which had as yet never been able to reach out and gain a soul for themselves.

With understanding came again the power of independent action. Unknowing whither, Croft willed himself out of their midst to some spot unnamed, where he might gain a spiritual moment of rest—to the nearest bit of matter afloat in the universal void. Abruptly he became aware of the near presence of some solid substance, the sense of falling ended, and he knew that his will had found expression in fact.

Yet wherever it was he had landed, the region was dead. Like the moon, it was wholly devoid of moisture or atmosphere. The presence of solid matter, however, gave him back a still further sense of control. Though he was still enveloped in darkness, he reasoned that if this was a planet and possessed of a sun in its system, its farther side must be bathed in light. Reason also told him that in all probability he was still within the system of Sirius despite the seemingly endless distance he had come.

Exerting his will, he passed over the darkened face and emerged on the other side in the midst of a ghostly light. At once he became conscious of his surroundings, of a valley and encircling lofty mountains. From the sides of the latter came the peculiar light. Examination showed Croft that it was given off by some substance which glowed with a phosphorescence sufficient to cast faint shadows of the rocks which strewed the dead and silent waste.

Not knowing where he was, loath to dare again the void, hardly knowing whether to will himself back to earth or remain and abide the issue of his own adventure, Croft waited, debating the question, until at length the top of a mountain lighted as if from a rising sun. Inside a few moments the valley was bathed in light; he saw the great sun Sirius wheel up the morning sky.

Peace came into his soul. He was still a conscious ego, still a creature in the universe of light. He gazed about. Close to the line of the horizon, and shining with what was plainly reflected light, he saw the vast outlines of another planet he had failed to note until now.

He understood. This was the major planet, surely one of the Dog Star's pack; and he had alighted on one of its moons. All desire to remain there left him. He was tired of dead worlds, of bottomless voids.

As before on the moon itself, he felt a resurgent desire to bathe in an atmosphere of life. By now, fairly himself again, the wish was father to the fact. Summoning his will, he made the final step of his journey, as it was to prove, and found himself standing on a world not so vastly different from his own.

He stood on the side of a mountain in the midst of an almost tropic vegetation. Giant trees were about him, giant ferns sprouted from the soil. But here, as on earth, the color of the leaves was green. Through a break in the forest he gazed across a vast, wide-flung plain through which a mighty river made its way. Its waters glinted in the rays of the rising sun. Its banks were lined with patches of what he knew from their appearance were cultivated fields. Beyond them was a dun track, reminding him of the arid stretches of a desert, reaching out as far as his vision could plumb the distance.

He turned his eyes and followed the course of the river. By stages of swift interest he traced it to a point where it disappeared beneath what seemed the dull red walls of a mighty city. They were huge walls, high and broad, bastioned and towered, flung across the course of the river, which ran on through the city itself, passed beyond a farther wall, and—beyond that again there was the glint of silver and blue in Croft's eyes—the shimmer of a vast body of water—whether lake or ocean he did not know then.

The call of a bird brought his attention back. Life was waking in the mountain forest where he stood. Gay-plumaged creatures, not unlike earthly parrots, were fluttering from tree to tree. The sound of a grunting came toward him. He swung about. His eyes encountered those of other life. A creature such as he had never seen was coming out of a quivering mass of sturdy fern. It had small, beady eyes and a snout like a pig. Two tusks sprouted from its jaws like the tusks of a boar. But the rest of the body, although something like that of a hog, was covered with a long wool-like hair, fine and seemingly almost silken soft.

This, as he was to learn later, was the tabur, an animal still wild on Palos, though domesticated and raised both for its hair, which was woven into fabrics, and for its flesh, which was valued as food. While Croft watched, it began rooting about the foot of a tree on one side of the small glade where he stood. Plainly it was hunting for something to eat.

Once more he turned to the plain and stood lost in something new. Across the dun reaches of the desert, beyond the green region of the river, was moving a long dark string of figures, headed toward the city he had seen. It was like a caravan, Croft thought, in its arrangement, save that the moving objects which he deemed animals of some sort, belonged in no picture of a caravan such as he had ever seen.

Swiftly he willed himself toward them and moved along by their side. Something like amazement filled his being. These beasts were such creatures as might have peopled the earth in the Silurian age. They were huge, twice the size of an earthly elephant. They moved in a majestic fashion, yet with a surprising speed. Their bodies were covered with a hairless skin, reddish pink in color, wrinkled and warted and plainly extremely thick. It slipped and slid over the muscles beneath it as they swung forward on their four massive legs, each one of which ended in a five-toed foot armed with short heavy claws.

But it was the head and neck and tail of the things which gave Croft pause. The head was more that of a sea-serpent or a monster lizard than anything else. The neck was long and flexible and curved like that of a camel. The tail was heavy where it joined the main spine, but thinned rapidly to a point. And the crest of head and neck, the back of each creature, so far as he could see, was covered with a sort of heavy scale, an armor devised by nature for the thing's protection, as it appeared. Yet he could not see very well, since each Sarpelca, as he was to learn their Palosian name, was loaded heavily with bundles and bales of what might be valuable merchandise.

And on each sat a man. Croft hesitated not at all to give them that title, since they were strikingly like the men of earth in so far as he could see. They had heads and arms and legs and a body, and their faces were white. Their features departed in no particular, so far as he could see, from the faces of earth, save that all were smooth, with no evidence of hair on upper lip or cheek or chin.

They were clad in loose cloak-like garments and a hooded cap or cowl. They sat the Sarpelcas just back of the juncture of the body and neck, and guided the strange-appearing monsters by means of slender reins affixed to two of the fleshy tentacles which sprouted about the beast's almost snakelike mouths.

That this strange cortège was a caravan Croft was now assured. He decided to follow it to the city and inspect that as well. Wherefore he kept on beside it down the valley, along what he now saw was a well-defined and carefully constructed road, built of stone, cut to a nice approximation, along which the unwieldy procession made good time. The road showed no small knowledge of engineering. It was like the roads of Ancient Rome, Croft thought with quickened interest. It was in a perfect state of preservation and showed signs of recent mending here and there. While he was feeling a quickened interest in this the caravan entered the cultivated region along the river, and Croft gave his attention to the fields.

The first thing he noted here was the fact that all growth was due to irrigation, carried out by means of ditches and laterals very much as on earth at the present time. Here and there as the caravan passed down the splendid road he found a farmer's hut set in a bower of trees. For the most part they were built of a tan-colored brick, and roofed with a thatching of rushes from the river's bank. He saw the natives working in the fields, strong-bodied men, clad in what seemed a single short-skirted tunic reaching to the knees, with the arms and lower limbs left bare.

One or two stopped work and stood to watch the caravan pass, and Croft noticed that their faces were intelligent, well featured, and their hair for the most part a sort of rich, almost chestnut brown, worn rather long and wholly uncovered or else caught about the brows by a cincture which held a bit of woven fabric draped over the head and down the neck.

Travel began to thicken along the road. The natives seemed heading to the city, to sell the produce of their fields. Croft found himself drawing aside in the press as the caravan overtook the others and crowded past. So real had it become to him that for the time he forgot he was no more than an impalpable, invisible thing these people could not contact or see. Then he remembered and gave his attention to what he might behold once more.

They had just passed a heavy cart drawn by two odd creatures, resembling a deer save that they were larger and possessed of hoofs like those of earth-born horses, and instead of antlers sported two little horns not over six inches long. They were in color almost a creamy white, and he fancied them among the most beautiful forms of animal life he had ever beheld. On the cart itself were high piled crates of some unknown fowl, as he supposed—some edible bird, with the head of a goose, the plumage of a pheasant so far as its brilliant coloring went, long necks and bluish, webbed feet. Past the cart they came upon a band of native women carrying baskets and other burdens, strapped to their shoulders. Croft gave them particular attention, since as yet he had seen only men.

The Palosian females were fit mates, he decided, after he had given them a comprehensive glance. They were strong limbed and deep breasted. These peasant folks at least were simply clad. Like the men, they wore but a single garment, falling just over the bend of the knees and caught together over one shoulder with an embossed metal button, so far as he could tell. The other arm and shoulder were left wholly bare, as were their feet and legs, save that they wore coarse sandals of wood, strapped by leather thongs about ankle and calf. Their baskets were piled with vegetables and fruit, and they chattered and laughed among themselves as they walked.

And now as the Sarpelcas shuffled past, the highway grew actually packed. Also it drew nearer to the river and the city itself. The caravan thrust its way through a drove of the taburs—the woolly hogs such as Croft had seen on the side of the mountain. The hogsherds, rough, powerful, bronzed fellows, clad in hide aprons belted about their waists and nothing else, stalked beside their charges and exchanged heavy banter with the riders of the Sarpelcas as the caravan passed.

From behind a sound of shouting reached Croft's ears. He glanced around. Down the highway, splitting the throng of early market people, came some sort of conveyance, drawn by four of the beautiful creamy deerlike creatures he had seen before. They were harnessed abreast and had nodding plumes fixed to the head bands of their bridles in front of their horns. These plumes were all of a purple color, and from the way the crowds gave way before the advance of the equipage, Croft deemed that it bore some one of note. Even the captain of the Sarpelca train, noting the advance of the gorgeous team, drew his huge beasts to the side of the road and stood up in his seatlike saddle to face inward as it passed.

The vehicle came on. Croft watched intently as it approached. So nearly as he could tell, it was a four-wheeled conveyance something like an old-time chariot in front, where stood the driver of the cream-white steeds, and behind that protected from the sun by an arched cover draped on each side with a substance not unlike heavy silk. These draperies, too, were purple in shade, and the body and wheels of the carriage seemed fashioned from something like burnished copper, as it glistened brightly in advance.

Then it was upon them, and Croft could look squarely into the shaded depths beneath the cover he now saw to be supported by upright metal rods, save at the back where the body continued straight up in a curve to form the top.

The curtains were drawn back since the morning air was still fresh, and Jason gained a view of those who rode. He gave them one glance and mentally caught his breath. There were two passengers in the coach—a woman and a man. The latter was plainly past middle age, well built, with a strongly set face and hair somewhat sprinkled with gray. He was clad in a tunic the like of which Croft had never seen, since it seemed woven of gold, etched and embroidered in what appeared stones or jewels of purple, red, and green. This covered his entire body and ended in half sleeves below which his forearms were bare.

He wore a jeweled cap supporting a single spray of purple feathers. From an inch below his knees his legs were incased in what seemed an open-meshed casing of metal, in color not unlike his tunic, jointed at the ankles to allow of motion when he walked. There were no seats proper in the carriage, but rather a broad padded couch upon which both passengers lay.

So much Croft saw, and then, forsaking the caravan, let himself drift along beside the strange conveyance to inspect the girl. In fact, after the first swift glance at the man, he had no eyes save for his companion in the coach.

She was younger than the man, yet strangely like him in a feminine way—more slender, more graceful as she lay at her ease. Her face was a perfect oval, framed in a wealth of golden hair, which, save for a jeweled cincture, fell unrestrained about her shoulders in a silken flood. Her eyes were blue—the purple blue of the pansy—her skin, seen on face and throat and bared left shoulder and arm, a soft, firm white. For she was dressed like the peasant women, save in a richer fashion. Her single robe was white, lustrous in its sheen. It was broidered with a simple jeweled margin at throat and hem and over the breasts with stones of blue and green.

Her girdle was of gold in color, catching her just above the hips with long ends and fringe which fell down the left side of the knee-length skirt. Sandals of the finest imaginable skin were on the soles of her slender pink-nailed feet, bare save for a jewel-studded toe and instep band, and the lacing cords which were twined about each limb as high as the top of the calf. On her left arm she wore a bracelet, just above the wrist, as a single ornament.

Croft gave her one glance which took in every detail of her presence and attire. He quivered as with a chill. Some change as cataclysmic as his experience of the night before above the Dog Star itself took place in his spiritual being. He felt drawn toward this beautiful girl of Palos as he had never in all his life on earth been drawn toward a woman before.

It was as though suddenly he had found something he had lost—as though he had met one known and forgotten and now once more recognized. Without giving the act the slightest thought of consideration, he willed himself into the coach between the fluttering curtains of purple silk, and crouched down on the padded platform at her feet.

CHAPTER IV

NAIA, PRINCESS OF PALOS

Croft, in his earth life, had never looked on a woman with the longing such as is apt to possess the average healthy male at times. But in his studies of the occult he had more than once come in contact with the doctrine of twin souls—that theory that in the beginning the spirit is dual, and that projecting into material existence the dual entity separates into two halves, a male and a female, and so exists forever until the two halves meet once more and unite.

Sometimes because he had never found a woman to appeal to him as he wished a woman to appeal, he had been half inclined to doubt. But this morning on Palos he no longer doubted. He believed. More than that he knew now why no earth woman had ever reached to the center of his being with her soft attraction. He knew now why the Dog Star had always drawn him during his student days. That longing to span the miles between Sirius and earth was explained. It was because in the economy of the Infinite it had been seen fit, God alone knew why, to send his half of their original spirit to earth, and his female counterpart to this life on another sphere.

This beautiful girl was his twin. He knew her. He had found her. A wonderful elation filled his conscious soul as he sat feasting his eyes upon her every graceful line and feature. But suddenly his contemplation was followed by the bitterest despair.

He had found her, yes; but to what avail? The mere fact that he saw her now and was unseen by either her or her father, as he judged the man with whom she rode to be, was proof that his finding her was in vain. She was a living, breathing woman, every cell of whose glowing body sent a subtle call to his spirit, such as only the true mate can send to its absolute complement.

He felt love, a sense of protection, a desire for possession, spiritual uplift, and physical passion all in a breath. He felt a mad urge to cast himself at her side, there on the padded cushion, and gather her lovely form to his heart close within his arms. And he knew himself but a spirit—invisible to her—imperceptible to her—realized that should he follow his impulse she would not know—or should she know even faintly would not understand.

Croft knew himself but a sublimated shape, and nothing more, and it was then he went down into the deepest depths of a mental hell of despair. The torture of Tantalus was his. He could see her, sense her youth, her beauty, her sweetness, every charm which was hers; experience every potent wave of her appeal, yet he could not reveal his presence or make known his response to her spirit-call. Could he have done so he would have groaned in a crushing anguish too great to be endured. Yet even that expression was denied.

The stopping of the gnuppas, as he was to learn the half horse, half deerlike steers were called, brought him back from his introspection after a time. He could hear the driver shouting, and now quite oddly, these people being human, and thoughts being more or less akin to all thinking minds, he found he could understand the intent, even though the words were strange.

"Way! Way for Prince Lakkon, Counselor to the King of Aphur!"

On the words the girl opened her lips. "There is a wonderful press of travelers this morning, my father."

Croft gloried in the soft, full tones of her voice, even before Prince Lakkon made answer. "Aye, the highway is like to a swarm of insects, Naia, my child."

Naia! The sound was music in Croft's ears. He whispered it over and over to himself as the carriage once more advanced through the throngs of market people, carters, freighters, past a caravan of heavily loaded Sarpelcas outward bound. Naia. The word fitted her—seemed oddly appropriate—was music in his ears. Naia, Naia—the other part of his soul. The word beat upon his senses through the shuffle of passing feet.

"I shall tell Chythron to drive directly to our home," Prince Lakkon said.

"You will go on to confer with Uncle Jadgor from there?"

"Aye. You will have most of the day to set the servants about the preparations for the coming of Prince Kyphallos. Spare no expense, Naia, in those preparations. Report hath it he is a hard young man to please."

"Such reports as I have heard would not confirm yours, my father," Naia retorted with a contemptuous curl of her crimson lips. "What has come to my ears would prove him no better than a beast, far too easy to please, indeed."

Prince Lakkon shook his head. "Child!" he chided in sibilant fashion. "You must not speak such words of a Prince of Tamarizia, Naia."

But the maid replied more calmly: "I speak not of him as a Prince of Tamarizia, but as a man and his attitude toward women."

Croft was rather surprised to see Lakkon frown at his daughter's speech. He himself applauded her attitude toward a man he judged must be a profligate of national reputation. He set the man's facial grimace down to mere distaste for hearing any one of royal blood disrated, and as the prince made no reply, sat waiting what might happen next and watching Naia where she reclined.

"What brings him to Himyra?" she questioned at length.

"He comes on matters of state." Prince Lakkon's reply was almost rudely sharp and short. As he ended his answer he sighed and lifted himself to a cross-legged seat. "Ah, here we are at the gate. Naia, there is nothing finer in all Tamarizia than this. No, not even in Zitra itself."

Whether he uttered the exact truth or not Croft did not then know, but as he gazed from the coach between the curtains of fluttering purple he was inclined to agree.

They had come to a place outside the walls—those monster walls Croft had seen hours ago, shining a dull deep red in the morning sun. Now close by, they towered above him in their mighty mass—still red—a deep, ruddy red with an odd effect of a glaze on the surface of what he could now perceive was some sort of artificial building block laid in cement. So far as he could judge, the wall rose a good hundred feet above the road and stretched away on either side, strengthened and guarded every so far by a jutting tower as far as his eye could reach.

Where they now stood the road came down to the bank of the river on a wide-built approach made of stone masonry laid in cement, protected on the shoreline by a wall or rail, fully six feet wide across its top, which was provided every so far with huge stone urns, blackened about their upper edges as though from fire. Croft recognized their purpose as that of flaming beacons to light the wide stone esplanade before the gate at night.

Beyond the wall was the river—a vast yellow flood, moving slowly along. It was at least a half-mile wide where it met the wall. And the wall crossed it on a series of arches, leaving free way for the boats Croft now saw upon the yellow water, equipped with sails and masts, making slow advance against the current, or driven perhaps by their crews at long sweeplike oars. He noted that each arch was guarded by what seemed gates of metal lattice, and that drawn up above each was a huge metal door which could be let down in case of need to present an unbroken outward front above the surface of the flood.

It was a wonderful sight, river, wall, and wide-paved approach as the gnuppas drew the carriage swiftly toward the gates. Then it all vanished. Croft caught sight of two men dressed something like ancient Roman soldiers, huge, powerful fellows, with metal cuirass, spear and shield, barelegged half up their thighs where a short skirt extended, their shins covered by metal greaves, their heads inside metal casques from the top of which sprouted a tuft of wine-red plumes.

They stood beside the leaves of two huge doors, fashioned from copper, as it seemed to Croft, things solidly molded, carved, graved, and embossed in an intricate design. These doors were open and the carriage darted through, entering a shadowy tunnel in the wall itself.

It was high, wide, and deep, the latter dimension giving the actual width of the wall itself. Croft judged it to be nearly as wide as tall. Then it was passed, and he found himself gazing upon such a scene as had never met mortal eyes perhaps since the days of Babylon.

The great river flowed straight before him for a distance so great that the farther wall was lost in a shimmering haze of heat. It flowed between solid walls of stone, cut and fitted to perfect jointure. From the lowest quay the banks sloped back in gentle terraces, green with grass and studded with trees and blooming masses of flowers and shrubs.

Huge stairways and gradually sloping roadways ran from terrace to terrace, down the river's course. And back of the terraced banks there stretched off and away the splendid piles of house after house, huge, massive, each a palace in itself, until beyond them, seemingly halfway down the wonderful river gardens, there loomed a structure greater, vaster, more wide flung than any of the rest. In the light of the risen sun it shone an almost blinding white. To Croft at that distance it appeared built of an absolutely spotless stone.

As for the other houses, surely as he felt the abodes of the nobles and the rich, they were constructed mainly of red sandstone, red granites and marbles, although here and there was one which glowed white through the surrounding trees, or perhaps a combination of red and white both. Yet, aside from the monster structure in the distance, the majority were red. Indeed, he was to come to know later that the word Himyra meant red in the literal sense; that in the Palosian tongue this was the "red city," just as he was to learn also that the name of the mighty river was Na, because of its yellow colored flood.

But this morning he knew none of that as he gazed down the terraced vista, bathed in the rays of Sirius, now rapidly mounting the sky.

And there was much to see. Across from the vast white building, on the other side of the river Na, he beheld a pyramid. He could call it nothing else in his earthly mind. It, too, was huge, vast—a monster red pile, rising high above all other buildings in the city, until near the top was a final terrace or story of blinding white, capped with a finishing band of red; the whole thing supporting a pure white structure, pillared and porticoed like a temple on its truncated top. Even in the distance it was a monster thing. How large he could not tell. Later he was to know it was two thousand feet square at the base, and three hundred feet in its rise above its foundation, ere the temple of Zitu was reached.

But then it struck him merely as vast. Indeed, the whole vista so impressed him, with its palaces, its mighty river, its terraces and parks, and the great white structure toward which they were rapidly dashing along a road before the massive dwellings each surrounded by its own private park. Far, far ahead he caught the dim outline of the farther city wall. He began to feel somewhat like Gulliver in the land of Brobdingnag save that the city life which he had seen was little larger than that of its kind on earth.

And now between the great white palace and the pyramid a bridge grew into being before his eyes. While he watched span after span swung into place to form the whole. Already he had noted a series of masonry pillars in the stream, but had not comprehended what they meant. Closer examination was to teach him that each supported a metal span, mounted on rollers and worked by the tug of the current itself through a series of bucketlike bits of apparatus, which dragged the sections open or drew them shut; also that at night the sections were opened to permit free passage to boats.

The things like the terraces and the roads showed a good knowledge of engineering as a characteristic of the Palosian peoples. But from the fact that the terraces and the river embankment were studded at intervals with more of the stone fire-urns, Croft decided that they were unacquainted with the use of electricity in any form. Nor did they seem to be possessed of a practical knowledge of the various applications of steam.

None of the boats on the river, of which there were many, some plainly pleasure craft equipped with parti-colored sails and others as plainly freight and commercial barges, but were propelled by sail and oar. Nor was the traffic of the streets other than by foot, or by equipages drawn by gnuppas, such as Prince Lakkon's driver was guiding down the well-paved street.

In fact, the more Croft saw of the city of Himyra, the more did he become convinced that civilization on Palos had risen little above the stage which had marked the Assyrian and Babylonian states on earth in their day.

Prince Lakkon spoke now to Chythron a word of direction and turned to his daughter again. "I shall be with Jadgor the greater part of the day. You, Naia, as head of my household, must see to these preparations, since as counselor to the king I must show a noble from Cathur what courtesy I may, in an official capacity at least. Aphur and Cathur guard the highway to all outer nations. Those who would carry goods must pass through the gate and so up the Na even to the region of Mazzer. Cathur is a mighty state."

"As is Ahpur, which holds the mouth of the Na," the girl returned.

"Aye. Together with Nodhur, whose interests are Aphur's interests, the three could place your Uncle Jadgor on the imperial throne when the term of the Emperor Tamhys shall expire."

Croft pricked his ears, even as he saw a quickened interest wake in Naia's face. Plainly Lakkon spoke of various states of the country, and it was evident that the girl understood the full import of her father's words. "Only Bithur would be against him," she said.

"Hardly all of Bithur. It lies too close to the lost state of Mazhur for that," Lakkon replied. "There were seven states in the Tamarizian Empire, as you know, before the war with the Zollarians took one and gave Zollaria their first seaport on the central ocean, through our loss." His face darkened as he spoke. "Small good it did them, however, since there is still the Na, and our other rivers to which they pay toll, if they wish to sail to Mazzer or the other barbarian tribes. And as long as Cathur and Aphur guard the gate small good will it do them. Zitemque take them and all their spawn!"

"As long as Cathur holds!" Naia exclaimed.

Lakkon nodded. "Aye. Cathur stands cut off from the rest of Tamarizia, as you know, by Mazhur's fall. Jadgor would see to it that Cathur still stands despite that fact or Zollaria's plans, if she has them, as some of us fear. Tamhys is a man of peace. So am I if I may be and Zitu sends it; yet will I fight for my own."

"And Kyphallos comes in regard to this—this—alliance?"

Prince Lakkon nodded. "Aye. List you, Naia. Order Bazka to send runners to the hills to bring back snows on the eighth day from this. Kyphallos likes his wines cooled, and will drink no other. In our own place I have given orders for all fruits and fish and fowls to be made ready at the appointed time. See to it that the house is decked for his coming—that all things are made clean and fit for inspection. As for yourself, you must have a new robe. Spare no expense, my child, spare no expense."

Naia's eyes lighted as he paused. "I should desire it of gold broidered in purple," she flashed back, smiling; "with purple sandals wrought with gold."

And suddenly as the carriage turned into a broad approach leading from the main street to a huge red palace, Lakkon laughingly remarked:

"Have what you will, so long as it becomes thy beauty. Well are you called Naia—maid of gold."

The carriage paused before the double leaves of a molded copper door. Chythron reached out and, seizing a cord which hung down from an arm at one side, tugged sharply upon it to sound a deep-toned gong, which boomed faintly within.

Hardly had the sound died than the two leaves rolled back, sinking into sockets in the walls of the building itself, to reveal a vast interior to the eye, and in the immediate foreground the figure of a man who gave Croft a start of surprise.

He was nude as Adam, save for a narrow cord about the loins, supporting a broad phallary of purple leather. And he was blue! From his shaven scalp which supported a single stiff upstanding tuft of ruddy hair throughout his entire superbly supple length he was blue. And the color was natural to his skin. At first Jason had thought him painted, until a closer glance had proved his mistake. Aside from his surprising complexion he seemed human enough, with dark eyes, high molar prominences, and a strongly bridged nose. He was indeed not unlike an American Indian, Croft thought, or perhaps a Tartar. He remembered now that in times long past the Tartars had worn scalp locks, too.

The blue man bowed from the hips, straightened, and stood waiting.

Lakkon sprang from the coach and assisted Naia to alight.

"Bazka," he spoke in command, "your mistress returns. Give ear to her words and do those things she says until I come again."

He sprang back into the coach, and Chythron swung the equipage about. He cried aloud to the gnuppas, and they dashed away, back toward the road along the Na. Croft found himself standing before the open door of Prince Lakkon's city palace with Naia and the strange blue man.

"Call thy fellow servants," the Palosian princess directed as she passed inside and Bazka closed the doors by means of a golden lever affixed to the inner wall. "I shall see them here and issue my commands."

She walked with the grace of limbs unrestrained toward the center of the wonderful hall.

For wonderful it was. At first Croft had thought it paved, in part at least, with glass of a faultless grade. But as he passed by Naia's side toward the center of the half room, half court in which flowers and shrubs and even small trees grew in beds between the pavement, he saw it was in reality some sort of transparent, colorless crystal, cut and set into an intricate design.

Yet that the Palosians made glass he soon found proof. Casting his eyes aloft, he saw the metal framework of an enclosing roof arching the court above his head. Plainly it was thrown across the width of the court to support shutters made of glass of several colors, some of them in place, others removed or laid back to leave the court open to the air.

The court itself was two stories high, and from either end rose a staircase of some substance like a lemon-yellow onyx, save that it seemed devoid of any mottling of veins. These stairs mounted to the upper gallery, supported above the central grand apartment on a series of pure white pillars, between which gleamed the exquisite forms of sculptured figures and groups.

There was also a group done in some stone of a translucent white, at the foot of each great stair. One, Croft noted, depicted a man and a woman locked in each other's arms. The other showed a winged figure, binding up the broken pinion of a bird. "Love" and "Mercy" he thought. If this were a sample of the ideal of this people, they must be a nation worth while.

So much he saw, and then Naia seated herself on a chair of a wine-red wood, set beside a hedge of some unknown vegetation which enclosed a splendid central space of the crystal floor.

Bazka had disappeared, but now came the sound of voices, and the servants appeared, emerging from a passage beneath one of the stairs. There were several members of both sexes in the group, and, like Bazka himself, one and all wore no more than a purple apron about the thighs. Croft was to learn in the end that the Palosians wore clothing more as a protection against the elements than for any desire to conceal the form; and with that fact he was to find them a highly moral people none the less.

Now, though their apparel, or lack of it, was something of a shock to his sense of conventions, as the men and women of the blue tribe advanced to greet their mistress in her chair, and listen to those directions she gave, he found himself wondering if they were slaves. Indeed he so regarded them until he knew more of the planet to which he had come. Then he knew slavery no longer existed among the Tamarizians, and that the blue men and women were the children of former slaves captured in wars, but now freed, given the rights of citizenship and paid by those whom they served.

In the end Naia turned to one of the women and ordered her to go to a cloth merchant and bid him attend her at once, with fabrics from which to choose her gown. That done, she dismissed each to his or her task, rose, and moved down the court. Croft followed as she went, mounted one of the yellow stairs, and came out on the upper balcony, down which she passed over an inlaid floor, beside walls frescoed with what he took to be scenes of Palosian history and social life.

She paused at a door fashioned from the wine-red wood, set it open, and entered an apartment plainly her own. Its walls were faced with the same yellow stone used in the stairs. Purple draperies broke the color here and there. Purple curtains hung beside two windows which she set open, turning the casings on hinges, to let in the air. In the center of the floor, which was covered with woven rugs and the skins of various beasts, was a circular metal basin holding water in a shallow pool. On one side was a pedestal of gold supporting a pure white miniature of a winged male figure, poised on toes as if about to take flight.

Beside the pool Naia paused as she turned from opening the window. Her figure was reflected from the motionless surface. Croft recognized it as a mirror in purpose, similar in all respects to those the ancient Phoenicians used. For a time she stood gazing at the image of her figure, then turned away to a chest, made of the wine-red wood, heavily bound with burnished copper bands.

Beside the chest, the room held several chairs and stools, and a molded copper couch covered with rich draperies.

Naia rummaged in the chest while Croft watched. She rose and turned with a garment in her hands. Gossamer it was, fine, soft, sheer, a cobweb of texture as she shook it out. It shimmered with an indefinable play of colors, transparent as gauze. She lifted a hand and unfastened the gown she wore from the heavy shoulder boss that held it in place.

CHAPTER V

PALOSIAN DIPLOMACY

Taken wholly by surprise, Croft caught one glimpse of a glowing, pliant figure, cinctured just above the hips by a golden girdle. Then, realizing that the maiden believed herself utterly alone, he turned to the open window and incontinently fled.

Light as a thistle-down in his sublimated self he emerged into the full Palosian day. Yet he quivered in his soul as with a chill. Naia of Aphur, Princess of the Tamarizian nation, was a woman to stir the soul of any man. And she was his—his! The thought blurred his senses as he rushed forth. His? A second thought gave him pause. His indeed, yet no more his now than always since their dual spirit had projected into the material world and had been lost each to the other how many eons ago? His—found now at last, yet unclaimable still! Unclaimable!

The thought was madness. Croft put it away—or tried. To distract himself he wandered over the city of Himyra stretched red in the Sirian ray. And as before he knew it vast. From the river it stretched in its red and white collection of walls both ways. He visited each part, finding it poorer and poorer as he wandered from the river to the walls until inside them, at all parts, save where the main avenue by the river reached the two principal gates, he found the poorest classes of the people dwelling in huts of yellow-red brick.

Yet Himyra was a wonderful place. Croft visited the quays along the Na, farthest from the gate, where he had entered with Prince Lakkon and his daughter hours before. They swarmed with life, were lined with boats, built principally of wood, though some were mere skin-covered coracles, more than anything else. They lay by the stone loading platforms, taking on or discharging the commerce of the Palosian world. Men, white and blue, swarmed about them, tugging, sweating, straining at their tasks, speaking a variety of tongues.

From the loading platforms on the lower levels tunnels ran up beneath the terraces on the surface to reach the warehouses above where the goods were stored. Within them, moving in metal-grooves braced to an equal width by cross-bars fixed to the floors, small flat-topped cars were drawn by whipcord-muscled creatures like giant dogs.

Croft followed one such team to a warehouse and watched the storing of the load by a series of blue-skinned porters, under the captaincy of a white Aphurian who marked each package and bale with a symbol before it was carried away. This captain wore a tunic, metalwork cases on his calves and sandals and a belt, from which depended a short, broad-bladed sword. He had seen his counterpart on the quays as well and was satisfied that Himyra had a very efficient system of officers of the port.

From the warehouse he went toward an adjacent section, evidently the retail mart of the town. Here were shops of every conceivable nature open in front like those of some Oriental bazaar. At this hour of the day business was brisk. More than one Palosian lady had come in a gnuppa-drawn conveyance to see and choose her purchases for herself. A steady current of life, motion and speech, ran through the section. Blue attendants, male or female, as the chance fell out, walked with these matrons of Palos, shielding their heads from the sun with parasols woven of feathers, held above them on long handles, while they examined, selected, and bought. Porters brought baskets of fruit and flowers, bolts of cloth, strings of jewels to the metal-built carriages behind returning women, and bowed their patrons away.

Suddenly the sound of a vast, mellow gong, a series of gongs, like an old-time carillon rang out. The bustle of the market stopped. As by one accord the people turned toward the vast pyramid beyond the river and stood standing, gazing toward it.

It came over Croft that it was here the great chime had sounded—that this midday cessation in the activities of life had something to do with the religion of the nation. Driven by his will, he reached the great structure where the topmost temple shone, dazzling in the noontime light. He found himself on the vast level top of the pyramid itself. Before him was the temple supported on a base, its doors reached by a flight of stairs. It was pillared with monster monoliths, crowned by huge capitals which supported the porticoed roof.

A sound as of chanting came from within. Croft mounted the stairs and passed the doors and paused before the beauty of what he saw.

The temple was roofed with massive slabs of stone save in the exact center, where an opening was left. Through that aperture the light of the midday sun was falling to bathe a wonderful figure in its rays.

The face of the statue was divine—the face of a man, superbly strong, broad-browed, and with purity and strength writ in its every line. The head and face were wrought in purest white as were the bared left shoulder and arm. Below that the figure was portrayed as clad in gold, which was also the material used in modeling the staff crowned by a loop and cross-bar, grasped by the hand of the extended left arm. The man was portrayed as seated on a massive throne. Now as the sun's rays struck full upon it, it seemed that the strong face glowed with an inward fire.

On either side of the statue stood a living man, shaven of head, wearing long white robes which extended to their feet. Each held in his hand a miniature replica of the stave held by the statue—a staff crowned by a golden cross-bar and loop.

Croft started. This was the crux ansata of the ancient Egyptians in all outward form—the symbol of life everlasting, of man's immortality. And he found it here on Palos on the top of a pyramid.

The chant he had heard was growing louder. It held a feminine timbre to his ears. At the rear of the temple a curtain swept aside seemingly of its own volition and a procession appeared. It was formed of young girls—their hair garlanded with flowers, each carrying a flaming blossom in her hand. They advanced, singing as they came, to form a kneeling circle in front of the monster statue on its throne.

They were clad in purest white, unadorned from their rosy shoulders to their dimpled knees save for a cincture of golden tissue which ran about the neck, down between the breasts, back about the body, and around to fasten in front like a sash with pendent ends, which hung in a golden fringe to the edge of the knee-length skirt.

And as they advanced and knelt and rose and cast their offering of flowers before the glowing statue, they continued to chant the harmony which had first reached Croft's ear. In it the word Zitu recurred, again and again. Zitu then was the name of the statue—the name of the god. He listened intently and finally gained the purport of the hymn.

"Zitu, hail Zitu!

Father of all life!

Who through thy angels

Give life and withdraw it,

Into our bodies—out of our bodies;

God—the one god—

Accept our praise."

The chant died and the singer turned back behind the curtain, which swung shut as they passed. Croft left the temple and stood on the top of its broad approach, gazing across the river at the vast white structure which he had first seen at a distance that morning, and which now stretched directly before his eyes. It came to him that this was the capital of Aphur—the palace of that Jadgor—Prince Lakkon had mentioned, brother of Naia's mother, as he was to learn. Bent on seeing the man who aspired to Tamarizia's imperial throne at close quarters, he willed himself toward the far-flung white pile.

It was built of stone he did not know, as he found when he came down to the broad, paved esplanade before it. But the substance seemed to be between a marble and an onyx, so nearly as he could judge. It stretched for the best part of an earth-mile and housed the entire working force of the Aphur government as he came to know in the following days.

Now, however, he gave more attention to his immediate surroundings—the vast towers on either side of the monstrous entrance, heavy and imposing and each flanked by guardian figures of what seemed winged dogs, whose front legs supported webbed membranes from body to paw.

Croft passed between them through the entrance where flowed counter streams of Palosians, on foot or dashing past in gnuppa-drawn chariots, trundling on two wheels, and driven by men clad in cuirasses and belted with short swords.

He entered a vast court, surrounded by colonnades, reached by sloping inclines and stairs and paved with a dull red stone. Here stood more of the chariots before the doors of this or that office of state. Blue porters moved about it, sprinkling the pavement with cooling streams of water from metal tanks strapped to their shoulders and fitted with a curved nozzle and spraying device.

It made a splendid picture as the sun struck down on the red floor, the gaily trapped gnuppas, the metal of the chariots and the flashing armor on the bodies of those who rode them, or the men at arms who stood here and there about the court, armed with sword and spear. This was the heart of Aphur's life, Croft thought, gave it a glance, and set off in quest of Aphur's king.

He passed through vast chambers of audience, of council, or banqueting and reception, as he judged from the furnishing of each place. He passed other courts, marveling always at the blending of grace with strength in the construction of the whole. Also, he marveled at the richness of the draperies with which various rooms and doorways and arches were hung. Much of it seemed to possess a metallic quality in texture. It seemed like thin-spun gold. Yet it was everywhere about the palace as he passed. Finally he paused. He was getting nowhere. He decided there was but one means of attaining his desire. He put it into force. He willed himself into the presence of Jadgor without further search.

Thereafter he was in a room, where, beside a huge wine-red table, two men sat. The one was Prince Lakkon, whom he knew. The other was even a larger man—heavy set, dark of complexion, with grizzled hair, and a mouth held so tightly by habit that it gave the impression of lips consciously compressed. His eyes were dark as those of a bird. His nose high and somewhat bent at the middle of the bridge. The whole face was that of a man of driving purpose, who would brook small hindrance between himself and a predetermined goal.

Aside from that, however, there was little of the king about him since he was clad simply in a loose, white tunic, out of which his neck rose massive, below which his lower limbs showed corded with muscle and strong. Plainly Jadgor was talking state business with his brother-in-law at ease.

As Croft gained the room he struck the table at which he sat with clenched fist. "Cathur must still guard the gateway with Aphur, Prince Lakkon!" he cried. "Let Zollaria plan. Cathur's mountains make her impregnable now as fifty years before. Had Mazhur been other than a low-lying country she would have never fallen victim to Zollaria's greed. But Cathur must be assured in her loyalty to the state."

"Her loyalty?" Prince Lakkon exclaimed. "What does Aphur's king mean?"

"What he says." Jadgor set his lips quite firmly. "Scythys is king—a dotard! Kyphallos is what—a fop—a voluptuary, as you know—as all Tamarizia knows. When he mounts the throne—as he doubtless will since there seems none to oppose him—what will Zollaria do? Cathur, since Mazhur was taken, stands alone—secure in her mountains, it is true, but alone, none the less. And Cathur guards the western gate to the inland sea.

"Fifty years ago Zollaria meant to take Cathur as well, and she failed. The capture of Mazhur, save the territorial addition to her borders, gave her nothing at which she aimed. True, she has now a seaport at Niera, yet to what end? We hold the gate and the mouths to all rivers opening into the sea. Yet has Zollaria ceased to prate of a freedom of the seas? You know she has not. With Kyphallos on Cathur's throne, will she seek to gain by craft what was denied to her arms?"

"But Kyphallos himself?" Lakkon objected as Jadgor paused.

"Kyphallos!" The heavy shoulders of Aphur's monarch shrugged. "List ye Lakkon! Zollaria is strong. Cathur stands alone. Cathur guards the gate. Aphur could not hold it alone. Think you our foemen to the north have ceased of their ambition or to plan or prepare, while Tamarizia wounded by Mazhur's loss, has licked her wounds for fifty years—and what now? Tamhys—Zitu knows I mean no unjust criticism of a nobleman—is one who believes in peace. So, too, do I, if peace can be enjoyed without the sacrifice of the innate right of man to regulate his own ways of life. Yet were I on the throne at Zitra, do you think I would ignore the possible peril to the north? No! I would prepare to meet move by move should the occasion arise."

"And your first step?" Lakkon asked.

"To make sure of Cathur," Jadgor said.

"How?"

Jadgor leaned toward his companion before he replied. "I would take a lesson from Zollaria herself. Lakkon, we have lived—each state too much in itself. Tamarizia is a loosely held collection of states, each ruled by what—a nominal king and a state assembly? And those assemblies in turn elect the central ruler—the emperor of the nation—to serve for ten Palosian cycles.

"Zollaria is what? A nation ruled by one man and a cycle of advisors, whose word is ultimate law. How was that brought about? By intermarriage—by making the governing house of Zollaria one, bound wholly together by a common interest without regard to anything else save that. Hence, let us make the interests of Aphur and Cathur one, and let us not delay."

"By intermarriage?"

"Aye. With the right princess on Cathur's throne Kyphallos might be swayed, and certainly nothing would transpire without our gaining word."

"You have such an one in mind?" Lakkon asked.

"Aye. I plan not so vaguely, Lakkon. I would give him the fairest maid of Aphur to wife. It would require such to hold a man of his type. Do you know that inside the last cycle he has been seen frequently at Niera, mingling with the Zollarian nobles who come to summer there?"

"So I have heard rumored." Prince Lakkon inclined his head. "But this woman?"

"Your daughter Naia," Jadgor declared.

"Naia! Your sister's own child!" Prince Lakkon half rose from his chair.

"Hilka!" Jadgor waved him back. "Stop Lakkon! She is beautiful as Ga, the mother of Azil. It is because of her Kyphallos comes to Himyra now. I, Jadgor of Aphur, sent him the invitation with this in mind for Tamarizia's good. The betrothal must be agreed upon before he returns. Lakkon, I speak as your king."

Prince Lakkon's face seemed to Croft to age, to grow drawn and somewhat pale as he bowed to his king's command. He looked to Croft, indeed, as Jason knew he himself felt. Never had he seen Prince Kyphallos of Cathur, yet he had heard him mentioned that morning in Lakkon's coach. He had heard Naia's soft lips utter sincere disgust of the lecherous young noble.

Now Naia—the woman he himself loved—was planned a sacrifice to policy of state. Every atom of his soul cried out in revolt—"not that—not that." He might not win her himself, as he very well knew. Yet he had seen her—known her, loved her. A sick loathing evoked by Jadgor's plan waked in his soul. The thought of her surrender to the foul embrace of the northern prince roused within him a rebellion so vast that his senses whirled.

Lakkon rose slowly. His features were dull and his voice a monotone of feeling too deep for an accent of expression.

"King of Aphur, I shall inform the maid that she is chosen a sacrifice," he said. "I know her mind. She loathes this Prince of Cathur in her heart."

"Yet other women have sacrificed themselves to their nation in Tamarizia's history," Jadgor replied.

"I shall place the matter before her in that light," Lakkon informed him, and turned to leave the room.

Croft left, too, flitting out of the palace and once more taking up his own purposeless wandering about the town. Naia, Naia, Naia, his soul cried out within him! Naia, mate of his spirit!—sweet, pure maid of gold. Would that he had a body here on the planet of Palos! He would fight this monstrous step, he told himself, to the death! He would seize this golden girl and bear her away—somewhere—anywhere, beyond the reach, the touch of the satyr Prince of Cathur. He would prevent this intended sacrifice of all that was holy in human existence—or die in the attempt!

Here and there he made his way among the life of Himyra, torn by an agony of thought. Dimly he saw where he went—through the stables of the mighty caravans full of the ungainly sarpelcas—through what seemed a market of cattle, where were droves of the long-haired taburs and herds of other creatures like monster sheep save that they had huge pendulous udders, evidently the source of the nation's supply of milk.

He noted these things without being fully aware of the fact at the time. Only later did he recall them as objects beheld before. In a similar fashion he came upon the barracks of troops guarding the various gates in the great wall, entered them, passed through them, found Himyra's weapons no more than strong bows and swords and spears, her soldiery, sturdy looking fellows clad in leathern tunics.

Yet not for one instant did the tumult in his senses cease as he passed from scene to scene. Always was the thought of Naia with him. Always was his spirit hot in revolt against the plan of Aphur's king. And so in the end thoughts of Naia seemed to draw him back in a circuit to Lakkon's palace where was the girl herself.

He reached it and paused outside its doors. They were open. The copper-hued chariot drawn by the four plumed gnuppas stood before them, with Chythron back of the reins.

Bazka, too, stood between the open leaves of the portal, and across the crystal pavement, leading to them, Lakkon was leading Naia toward the coach.

While Jason watched, Aphur's prince and his daughter entered the conveyance and the great doors closed. Chythron spoke to the gnuppas and they sprang into their stride. Quite as he had done that morning Croft entered the carriage and crouched on the padded cushion where Naia already reclined. Where they were going, he did not know. Nor did he care, so long as she lay there before his eyes.

CHAPTER VI

A VIRGIN'S PRAYER

For a time as they turned toward the city gate, which they had entered that morning, silence held between Prince Lakkon and his child.

Lakkon broke it himself at last. "All is arranged as you thought best, my Naia?" he inquired.

"Aye, my father." She turned her eyes. "The messengers have departed to the mountains for the snows; the servants are cleaning. I have ordered the tables set in the crystal court, inside the hedge, and I have arranged for a band of dancers and musicians on the appointed day."

"And the robe. You did not forget the new robe?" Lakkon smiled.

Naia shook her head, her eyes dancing. "I am a woman," she replied. "The makers came at my summons to take my measure. It will be ready on the seventh day from this."

"That is well," Prince Lakkon said. But he sighed.

And suddenly Naia's face lost its light and grew sweetly brooding. She stretched out a rounded arm and touched him on the breast. "You are tired, my father," she spoke in almost crooning fashion, edging nearer to him. "The day with Uncle Jadgor has left you weary."

"Aye, somewhat," Lakkon confessed. With a swift, yet powerful gesture, he reached out and swept her into his arms, drawing her against his massive chest and sinking his cheek to touch her golden hair. "Naia, my daughter, thou knowest that I love you well," he said.

Croft quivered in his being. It seemed to him he was looking into Lakkon's heart and reading there all his lips held back—the fatherly love, the fatherly pain, attendant on that scene in Jadgor's apartment, where he had spent much of the day. It was that, he felt, inspired that sudden, almost hungry clasping of the girl's supple figure to the father's breast—that almost plaintive cry for her assurance of her faith in his love.

But Naia seemed not to sense any deeper reason than the mere love between them expressed. Her red lips parted, and she laughed softly as she lay against him, lifting a hand to his gray-shot hair. "Know that you love me?" she repeated. "Think you I could doubt it? Did you not give me my life? Do we not love what we create—so long as it comes from ourselves?" She nestled her head in the hollow of his corded neck.

Above that gold-crowned head the man's face worked. "We were happy the day of thy birth, thy mother and I," he said.

And now it seemed that at last the woman sensed some trouble unexpressed in the mind of the man. Very gently she released herself and sat up on the padded cushion. Her almost purple eyes looked full into those of her parent. "Concerning what did you speak with Uncle Jadgor today?"

"Concerning thee." Lakkon met the issue fairly now that it confronted him at last.

"Concerning me?" To Croft every line of Naia's figure stiffened.

"Aye." Prince Lakkon sat up. He spoke swiftly, briefly, and paused. Yet ere he paused he had fully outlined all King Jadgor planned.

And while he spoke the eyes of the woman widened swiftly, as the iris stretched to leave her pupils deep wells of horror.

Then as Lakkon finished speaking she cried out: "No!" in swift instinctive protest, and lifted herself upon her pink bent knees to poise so an instant before she flung herself once more upon her father's breast. "No!" she cried again, clinging to him. "No, no! Not that—not that! Father, unsay it! Give me not to that beast!"

"Hush!" Prince Lakkon stayed her. "Chythron will hear your outcry."

"Chythron!" she exclaimed. "Not Chythron but all Aphur—all Tamarizia shall hear my outcry against what Jadgor intends—every woman in the nation shall give thanks to Azil and Ga, that she stands not in my place."

"Naia." Her father spoke in a voice not wholly steady.

"Would you profane a shrine, sully a temple, defile a sacred thing?" she flared. "Is a virgin's body a thing to be bartered and sold in Aphur? Does my uncle regard me as a shameless creature who sells herself for a price? Azil and his holy mother would veil their faces from such marriage rites."

"Think not I wish it," her father said. "Yet can I not deny the truth of Jadgor's words, or that the union of the houses of the two states would work for Tamarizia's great good."

Naia was panting. "Tamarizia's?" she faltered now.

"Aye, did you not comprehend what I said concerning the welfare of our nation?" Lakkon asked.

She shook her head. "I—I think horror must have dulled my understanding," she said. "Explain to me again."

Long since they had left the city gates and were following a well-built road which led off toward those mountains where Croft had first stood and viewed the Palosian landscape in the light of this waning day. As he reached the end of his second exposition of the facts, Prince Lakkon turned and suddenly swept aside the purple curtain which draped the side of the coach. He flung out an arm and pointed straight to where the dull red walls of Himyra still shone in the afternoon rays.

"Behold Himyra, jewel on the breast of Aphur," he cried. "There she lies. Think you I would have given ear to Jadgor's plans save for that? Think you I would send you flesh of my loins to such a union save for the good of unborn souls to come? Think you were it not for Himyra, Aphur, Tamarizia herself, I would have bowed my head to the words of Aphur's king? Nay. If so, you are wrong. But for Tamarizia and that glory and honor which are hers and have been for a thousand cycles of our sun, a true son of the nation must sink all thoughts of self, must live, if by living he can serve, or should it serve better, must—die!"

Despite himself, Croft thrilled at the words, such as only a true patriot might speak in such tones of fire—tones which quivered and pulsed with emotion, one might not deny. In spite of his own sorry rebellion of spirit, echoed, as he now knew, in the soul of the gentle girl before him, some feeling akin to pity for this royal father of hers, crept through his mind. Prince Lakkon was a man torn between parental love and the love of his nation—destined, as it seemed, to suffer, no matter how this thing fell out.

And while he spoke, the girl, his child, flesh of his flesh, crept to his side, to kneel and gaze out at the distant walls of the city she knew as her own. Her expression changed. Some of the indefinable quality of girlhood seemed to fall from her and expose the deeper, firmer woman's nature, as though a veil had been torn aside.

"And I must live for her—with—Kyphallos?" she whispered tensely as Lakkon once more paused.

"If you can win him—hold him—sway him—with Jadgor on the throne at Zitra you will have made Tamarizia strong."

"I—will have made—Tamarizia—strong."

O girl of gold! Croft's heart cried out as he caught her scanning speech. O wonderful woman—so true to womanhood—so true now to the spirit of ultimate woman, ultimate sacrifice through which attribute of woman comes life itself! Unseen, unknown to her or the man who rode beside her, Croft approached and bent above her in that moment of struggle and decision. For, as she turned her eyes back to the interior of the coach, Croft knew she had decided, and that in deciding she had chosen the path which led against every personal impulse of her own clean spirit.

"What am I against Tamarizia?" she said.

"You are my daughter and I love thee," said Lakkon, Aphur's prince.

"I know." Naia crept to him and laid herself in his arms. "I know," she murmured after a time of silence.

Lakkon's arms tightened about her as the coach swung along. Her arm crept up and stole about his neck. Silence came down again save for the patter of the gnuppa's feet on the stone surface of the highway which had now left the plain and begun to scale the mountainside.

Crouched invisible, Croft turned his gaze from the man and woman to stare out between the fluttering curtains.

The road came to an end in a mountain valley, open toward the east and so unveiled a fresh scene of beauty to Jason's eyes.

Here was a country palace, gleaming white above a series of terraced gardens which rose from the shores of a tiny mountain lake. Toward it Chythron guided his steeds along a private drive which branched off from the highway they had traversed thus far.

As though the turning had been a signal, Naia loosened the embrace which held her and sat up, still without speaking, before Chythron brought his team to a stand.

Then, as in the morning, Prince Lakkon helped her to descend and moved beside her up a low, broad flight of steps to reach the portals of their home.

At their heels Croft followed on. His eyes swept the scope of the valley so far as he could mark it from the steps. Groups of the woolly, sheep-like cattle he had seen in Himyra fed in the lush grass of mountain meadows. Cultivated fields stretched out before his eyes. At the top of the steps he turned briefly and looked off to the east. There his eyes caught the glint of distant sun-kissed water—the Central Sea, of which Prince Lakkon had spoken, he now believed.

Then the portals before which Lakkon and Naia stood swung open, and once more a blue native appeared. Beside him was a monster beast, similar in all respects to those Croft had seen harnessed to the tiny trams in the cargo tunnels. It marked the advent of Lakkon and Naia with a slow wagging of its tail, and, suddenly rearing, laid its huge front paws, one on each of the girl's shoulders.

She spoke to the creature softly, and when it dropped back, at her command, she patted its head. Then turning to the man of Mazzer, who stood waiting, she proferred a command: "I am going to my apartments, Miltos; send Maia to me there."

"You will attend me later—over our evening viands?" her father asked.

"Aye, presently," she returned as she moved toward a stair at one end of the entrance court, which, in a smaller way, was not unlike Prince Lakkon's Himyra palace, save that here its pavement was laid in alternate squares of pale yellow and dull red. The treads of the stairway, also, were of yellow and red, as Croft saw while mounting, and the pillars which supported the balcony were yellow, while the balcony itself was red. Here, too, as in the city, a group of white sculpture stood at the foot of the stair. It depicted a very Hercules of a man throttling a creature not far unlike a tiger, while behind him crouched a woman, holding a tiny figure of a child.

All this he saw as Naia ascended without pause, reached a door, guarded by a heavy golden curtain, swept it aside and entered into her own room.

Here, as in Himyra, Croft found couch and chairs, and windows, the mirror basin, the pedestal, and the winged figure poised as though for flight.

Once more the golden curtain was drawn back and a young Mazzer woman appeared.

Naia turned. "Maia, how is the pool?"

"It should be delightful, princess," the blue girl replied. "All this day Zitu warmed it with his light."

Naia tapped with her foot. "Procure fresh raiment and bring it thither," she said. "The ride was tiresome and I will bathe."

Five minutes later, accompanied by Maia, who bore fresh robes, she left the room and led the way to one end of the corridor and through a small door to an outer stair. Descending that she passed through a sort of sunken garden, laid out in odd geometric designs and planted with shrubs and trees and flowers, among which gleamed the white of ornamental urns, fire-urns, and statues toward a low, white wall in which an opening appeared. Passing this, she turned about the angle of a protecting inner stone screen and stood on the margin of an open bath, its water clear as crystal and tinted a delicate amber from the yellow bottom and sides of the peculiar onyxlike stone.

Naia bathed. Refusing to spy upon her, Croft waited without the concealing wall, while twilight fell and the sounds of soft splashings came to his ear. The bath took a long time. Croft fancied the girl found some vague comfort in the soft, warm kiss of the waters tempered all day by the sun—that to lie wrapped in their liquid caress soothed somewhat her spirit, torn by the revelations her recent journey had held. While he waited twilight deepened, and after a time a softer light stole through the garden.

He lifted his gaze to the skies. Three moons hung there, casting their blended light over mountain and valley and plain. Vaguely he wondered which of the three he had visited during the night before—that night with its weird experience, ending on the edge of this day which, after all, had been but little less weird—this day in which he had found and recognized and yielded to the one feminine counterpart of his nature, only to find her destined to another less worthy than himself, and to know himself unable to intervene between her and her fate.

While he sat there brooding the whole strange situation—a man in all save material body—a consciousness, suffering all the pangs of spirit he was unable to physically express, Naia came forth and moved with her accompanying servant, a pure, white figure, through the garden to the house.

Like her shadow, Croft pursued her every step. He stood beside her while she sat waiting for the evening meal. He was behind her when she reclined on the couch beside the table, opposite her father, and ate. He dogged her steps when she once more sought the quiet of her room, and bade Maia leave her for the night.

Hence he witnessed what no other eyes beheld as the flaring oil-lamp, with its guttering wick little better than a candle extinguished, and the apartment flooded only by the light of the Palosian moons, she knelt by the mirror basin, before the winged figure on the wine-red pedestal.

And he heard what no other ears save her own could hear as she lifted her hands to the figure, before which she knelt—the cry of her soul—her womanhood's suppliant prayer.

"O, Azil, Giver of Life, must this be forced upon me? O Ga, Mother of Azil—thou virgin woman, whom Zitu ordained the one to give an angel life, that he might speak to men of Zitu himself and teach them how to live, do thou intercede for me! Thou knowest woman guards the sacred flame, which is life itself; so that it burns clear and never ceasing. Must that flame in me be fouled? Ga the Mother, Azil the Son—Azil the Angel—hear ye my prayer!"

She ceased and knelt on, silent, with hands clasped and lovely head bowed down.

And once more it seemed to Croft that his senses went spinning, eddying, whirling around. Azil the Giver of Life. Ga the mother of Azil the Son. A Virgin and a Child. And Zitu the father—God. She prayed to them.

This was the Palosian religion, at least, in part. Strange analogy to the earth-creed Croft found it—to the creed in which he had been raised. Zitu was the one creative source here as elsewhere, no matter by what name called—the source to which the projected atoms of its thought looked back, to whom they lifted their voices in praise or prayer.

What did it matter whether on earth or Palos, life was then the same, and the source was one place as another, all-embracing, universal, always the same? And Azil the Angel of Life was what? A Messianic spirit, surely, which had come to speak to the human atoms and tell them of the source. What else? And Ga—the medium, through which spirit was translated into matter—the eternal woman, through whom Life came to the incarnated man.

And to these, this maid—this other woman who had pledged herself as a sacrifice for her nation, prayed. Alone here before the pedestal shrine of Azil, Son of Zitu, she knelt and asked that the cup she had promised to drink might be divinely removed from her lips since all human hope of such a removal seemed to have died in so far as she could know.

Should that prayer go unheeded or unheard? Could the pure cry of a clean spirit fail to reach the listening ears of the source?

No! Croft's spirit cried the word to his soul. No, no! A thousand times no! Somehow, some way, he knew not how that prayer must be heard and answered. He tore himself free from the spell of the kneeling figure, and with no definite purpose in his going save to remove himself from a privacy he felt he must no longer intrude, went blindly out of the room.

CHAPTER VII

KYPHALLOS AND KALAMITA

Yet once outside the mountain villa, Croft knew where he wanted to go. It was back to Himyra—back to the palace of Lakkon itself—to be alone with his thoughts. To that point, therefore, he once more willed himself.

The city swam beneath him. The yellow Na sparkled and glinted in the flickering gleams of the fire basins lighted along the embankments as they leaped and flared. Other fires flashed out in various of the public squares. And here the population met for their hours of relaxation. Here groups of wandering musicians played on reed and harp and horn as the gaily decked crowds filed by. Here mountebanks plied their stock of tricks, and acrobats proved their supple agility and strength. Over it all the three moons of Palos poured a silvery light as Croft flitted past.

Then he was at the palace of Lakkon, finding still open, a window of Naia's own room, and so at length the place he sought. The moonlight filtered in. It fell in a broad bank, which struck across the pure white figure of Azil with its outstretched wings.

Through a long moment Croft stood gazing at the statue, bathed in the light of the moons. Then, without removing his eyes, he found the couch and sat down upon it, and thought, still staring at Azil—the material symbol of that spirit to whom the girl, the aura of whose presence pervaded this room, had prayed.

And, after a time, out of all his agony of spirit, his tumult of thought, his rebellion at what was proposed for the girl's fate, the sick knowledge of his own futility to aid her, there came to him a prompting impulse as to his future course. To what end he did not know. In his present state he could do nothing and knew it—had raged at the knowledge ever since he had seen Naia of Aphur on her way to this room, where he now sat.

Yet despite the acknowledged fact of impotency, something seemed to urge him to go on, to learn all he might of Palos and its people, of Tamarizia and its history, its manners and customs, its government and laws, and more particularly the true state of things in Cathur and the truth concerning Kyphallos, son of Cathur's king.

To Cathur then would he go, Croft decided, while he sat there staring at Azil, the Angel of Life. And Cathur, he judged, lay toward the north since Jadgor had spoken of the state of Nodhur as lying beyond Aphur on the Na. Hence he willed his spirit in projection without further delay.

Thereafter followed a week in which Jason Croft, disembodied spirit, learned much concerning the nation and the country to which he had dared venture across millions of miles of space.

He found Cathur, a mountainous state lying to the north of a wide mountain walled strait. He found Scira, its capital city, not unlike Himyra save that it was built of an odd blue stone quarried from the mountains which ribbed the state in all directions. There was white stone, too, used in the governmental palace, and also in a splendid collection of buildings lying on a small plateau above the city proper. This was the National University of Tamarizia, as Jason quickly learned, once he was inside its walls. Endowed as he was with the peculiar ability of reading the words of the people by reason of his sublimated state, he found this school a wonderful means of quickly gaining all knowledge of the nation which he desired to know.

He literally went to school, an unknown scholar who listened to the recitation of classes and the lectures of grave professorial men clad in long robes of spotless white. Geography held his interest mainly at first. He learned that Tamarizia lay upon a continent holding itself completely surrounded save for the narrow strait, a vast central sea, studded here and there with islands, the major of which, Hiranur, some fifty miles long by twenty wide, was the seat of the imperial throne at the city of Zitra, of which Jadgor had made mention before. The Tamarizian states bordered this central ocean—or had done so before the Zollarian war had wrested Mazhur, on the extreme north shore, from the original group of states.

East of Mazhur lay Bithur. South of that was Milidhur, completing the eastern side of the Central Sea. Aphur joined Milidhur on the west—its name literally meaning "the state to the west," and south of Milidhur and Aphur was Nodhur, gaining outlet for its commerce by means of the river Na.

Cathur lay west of Mazhur, north of the strait, to the outer ocean, completing the circle. Its name might be translated as the battle-ground, which, in fact, it was, Zollaria having more than once sought to conquer it and lost because of the nature of its mountainous terrain. Having learned so much, he could readily see wherein the possession of this state would give Zollaria the freedom of the seas, which she desired, and a joint control of the entire Central Sea.

From geography he turned to sociology and science. He found out quickly that the Tamarizians used a metric system, numbering their population by tens and dividing the national census on the basis of thousands and tens of thousands, each thousand unit having a captain and each ten thousand a local governor. Their day was twenty-seven hours long, their year longer than that of earth, but divided into twelve periods or months, each in their belief ruled over by an angel designated by a symbolic sign.

They believed in the immortality of the soul, as he had learned the first day. They believed in the resurrection of the dead. They used a system of social castes, to which the naturalized descendants of the Mazzerian nations belonged, being purely a caste of the lowest or serving type. The trades of fathers descended to sons, instruction in crafts and arts being largely by word of mouth alone. They had a bard or minstrel caste, a caste of dancers wholly female in its circle.

A Palosian year was called a cycle, a day a sun, a month a Zitran—or period set by Zitu, the national God. There was a priesthood and a vestal order of women. Also, there was an order of knighthood, to which belonged men of noble blood or those raised to it by kingly decree for some signal accomplishment in the arts or sciences or some other service to the state.

The royal house of each state was hereditary, but governed jointly with a state assembly elected by the vote of each ten thousand unit of population, each unit selecting a state delegate to the assembly. The imperial throne was filled by the choice of the states, as he had once before heard Jadgor, of Aphur, say.

Agriculture was highly held and greatly specialized. Metal working was a very advanced science, as he had already guessed. Copper was abundant, and the Tamarizians held the secret of tempering the metal, now unknown on earth. Of it they made their weapons and most of their public structural metal, including their carriages and chariots and all conveyances of a finer sort. Gold was plentiful, too. But silver and lead were rare and held in high esteem. Steam and electricity were unknown in their application, as Croft had already seen.

They had reached a high plane in art, sculpture and weaving. He discovered that the golden cloth was actually gold spun into threads and mixed with a vegetable fiber to form warp and wool. There was also a medical caste, somewhat crude, but seemingly efficient, so far as he could learn, and attached to it a female or nursing caste, consisting wholly again of women, who entered it from choice. In fact, women, as he came to see, held a prominent place in the nation. They held the right of suffrage. Their citizenship was coequal with their men. They sat in the class-rooms of the university, as he actually saw, and even took part in public ceremonials and competed in the public games.

All in all, before his week at Scira was past, he had come to understand that Tamarizia was a very democratic nation despite its form of royal rulership, and that the emperor of Zitra was little more than a relic of old-time government, with little more power than a republican president.

And that, like most republics, the nation had grown weak in the pursuit of the profession arms, he had to admit that Jadgor was right. Each city had a sort of civic guard—each unit of ten thousand possessed a military police. There was an imperial guard at Zitra of possibly five hundred men. Civic guards, imperial guards and police, the national maximum force none too well armed or trained would not be judged as aggregating over fifty thousand effective men.

To the north of Tamarizia lay Zollaria, her western shore line that of the great or outer ocean. Like Tamarizia, Zollaria was a nation of whites, differing, however, in their national regime and their physical appearance to no small degree. As Jadgor had said to Lakkon, theirs was a rule of absolutism, first and last, with the governing class distinct from the common people in each detail of their life.

Larger than Tamarizia, Zollaria looked with envy on the position of the country to the south. Fifty years before she had sought to change it and failed. Yet Jadgor was assured she had not laid aside her ambition, and Croft was inclined to agree.

The Zollarians themselves were a light-haired race, to a great extent, heavily built, strong, virile, sturdy, many of them blue-eyed, except in the southern part of the nation, where they approached more nearly to the Tamarizian type.

East of Tamarizia and south of Zollaria, in the hinterland of the continent on which the three nations lived, was the half-savage tribe of Mazzer, the blue men, inhabiting a region consisting mainly of semitropic forests and plains, living largely by hunting and the exporting of skins and dried meats and natural fruits, together with a variety of cheese. In these articles they maintained commerce with Zollaria and Tamarizia, along their adjoining borders, and had done so for years. Commerce was entirely by water in such boats as Croft had seen on the Na, and by means of the sarpelca caravans across stretches of desert to regions not approachable by the streams.

That week in school proved a rather peculiar experience to Croft. He came to feel actually at home in Scira. Without being seen or known he came to know the youths of the various classes.

And to one in particular he gave special note. He was a wonderful man in so far as physique was concerned. He stood a good six feet in height and was built in perfect proportion. In the games and sports he always excelled because of his splendid strength. And there he ceased. Mentally he was not the equal of those with whom he strove.

Nature seemed to have left her task uncompleted so far as Jasor was concerned. That was his name—Jasor, from Nodhur, the state to the south of Aphur as Croft learned by degrees. He was a lovable young man, mild-mannered, friendly and kind. But he was rated in his studies with youths two years his juniors and appeared unable to do more than maintain his standing with them. Watching him, Croft felt both pity and interest develop through the course of the seven days wherein he himself acquired so great an understanding of Palosian life.

It seemed a pity to Croft that one so splendidly endowed with physical perfection should be so mentally weak. He rather followed young Jasor about and discovered to his pleasure that although seemingly well provided with means the youth was naturally of a cleanly life. More than that, through association with him, he came to know that Jasor felt his position acutely, and was brooding over his own mental capacity to an unwise degree.

Throughout his stay in Cathur, however, Croft did not lose sight of his main object in coming to the northern state. He had come to find and judge Kyphallos for himself, and he attended to that, not the first night, as he had intended, but the next night after that. There was a reason for the delay. Kyphallos was not in Scira when Croft came to the capital of Cathur. Jason managed to see Scythys the king. He found him in a splendid room clad in a loose robe of scarlet, a senile husk of a once massive man, with a look of vague trouble in his half-blinded cataract-filmed eyes. But of Kyphallos the son there was no sign.

Only by chance remarks was Croft able to learn the whereabouts of the prince. By such means he finally learned of a second palace maintained on an island in the Central Sea, off the coast of Cathur, not far from the border of the former Tamarizian state of Mazhur. The island was known as Anthra, was a part of the state of Cathur, and a favorite retreat with the crown prince.

To Anthra on the second night Croft went. And on Anthra he plunged into such a scene as he had not met in Tamarizia as yet. Heretofore he had been struck with the mild beauty of Palosian life, with a sort of personal dignity which seemed to pervade the nation, despite the magnificence of their public structures and the undoubted wealth of the state.

Not but what, being human, there was a percentage of criminality in the social life. Such things, as among other races, were known and recognized, but he had found it here regulated to a surprising extent.

On Anthra, he came into an atmosphere the antithesis of this, combined with a degree of voluptuous luxury, cradled in a setting of utter magnificence.

He came upon a saturnalia of pleasure. He could liken it to nothing else. A feast was in progress in the palace Kyphallos had made the scene of his private debauches for years.

Above an artificial harbor as calm as glass, the palace rose an imposing pile. At the quays of the harbor their colored sails picked out by flaming fire-urns, their gilded hulls set asparkle in the flicker of the light-giving flames, lay a number of elaborate pleasure craft more like gold and copper galleys than anything else.

Steps led up from the stone quays to the palace proper, giving on a wide expanse of crystal flagging, under a heavy portico supported by pillars of lemon-yellow stone. And beyond this through wide airy arches was the main court, in the center of which was a pool of limpid water, some fifty feet long, by as many wide.

Like the other Palosian palaces this central court was the main gathering place of the inmates and guests. On Anthra the structure was flagged in a pale-green stone. The pillars supporting the balcony about it were lemon-yellow, and the stairways at either end of a clear translucent blue. Innumerable oil-lamps lighted it this night, and about one corner of the central pool were arranged the tables for the feast.

Here Croft found the man he sought, reclining on a padded divan, his too full red lips slightly parted in a bibulous smile, his long hair curled and anointed and perfumed till he reeked of aromatic scents; his well-formed hands loaded with rings, his body clad in a crimson garment, embroidered in gold.

Beside him, lying outstretched like some splendid creature of the jungle as it came to Croft, was a woman; tawny as a lioness in the tint of her hair and heavy-lidded eyes, lithe as a lioness, too, in every sensuous line of her body, well-nigh unclothed.

Her sandalless feet were stained on the soles with crimson. Anklets gripped her lower limbs, and tinkled tiny golden bells as she moved. Bracelets banded her graceful naked arms. Gem-incrusted cups, fastened by jeweled bands covered in part her breasts. A bit of gold gauze, studded with bright red stones, accentuated rather than veiled the rest of her perfect figure from waist to the bend of her knees. She lay there close to Kyphallos and after a bit she lifted a golden goblet and pressed it to his lips and laughed.

Beyond her was a man, Croft marked at a glance. He was heavy, gross; yet gave an impression of mighty strength in the size of his hairy arms, the pillars of his mighty limbs, the breadth of his shoulder and chest. And he, too, was tawny haired.

And on the other side of Kyphallos was a figure to give Croft pause. A blue warrior sat there; but surely no member of the serving class, Jason thought. This man was never made to serve. His were the features of one who commands, strong, firm-lipped, high-cheeked, with almost a somnolent sneer in the expression of his mouth and the glint of his eyes as he turned them on Kyphallos and the woman by his side. This was some Mazzerian chief—here in the palace of Cathur's prince. Who then were the tawny woman and man, Croft asked himself, and found he was soon to know.

For as the woman laughed Kyphallos spoke. "Your laughter is music better than any I can offer, my Kalamita. Since first I heard it in Niera, the time I met you there with your brother, Bandhor, I have longed to hear it more. Your graciousness in coming to this farewell feast, ere I sail for Aphur, burdens me with debt. Yet were I loath to have sailed without a final sight of you—a parting word. And I have provided such entertainment as I might."

"As you do always, Prince of Aphur," his companion responded. "Is it not true, Bandhor, my brother, that we are honored to be present when Cathur desires?"

"Aye. Wine, food, music, and women. What more can a man desire?" the massive individual at whom she smiled over her rounded shoulder replied. "When Cathur returns, he must come to our house at Niera as he has done before. There are others of Zollaria I desire him to meet, as well as other men of Mazzer, besides the noble Bazd, whom we made bold to bring with us tonight."

As he finished the blue man smiled, and Kyphallos picking up his own goblet of wine passed it to the Mazzerian with a languid grace. "Thy friends are my friends, O Bandhor of Zollaria!" he exclaimed, and bending close to the face of the girl said: "Shall I come when I return from Aphur?"

And as he gazed upon her the heavy lids slowly contracted until her eyes narrowed to slits. Then they shot up, fully open, and she flashed him a smile. "Aye, my Kyphallos, unless you desire me to suffer, come when you return."

Kyphallos took back the cup from which Bazd, the Mazzerian, had drunk and drained it at a gulp. "I shall come," he shouted and clapped his hands. "Let the entertainment begin!"

After that Croft could only watch and marvel at what he beheld. A sound of harps burst forth. Golden and scarlet curtains drew apart at one end of the immense court. He caught a glimpse of moving figures behind them, and then—fifty dancing girls broke forth.

Swaying, posturing, gesturing they moved down the hall toward the tables. At first they were clothed. But as they advanced they dropped veil after veil from their posturing bodies, until they gleamed white and pink swinging figures, caught in the eddies of the dance. Closer and closer they came. They reached the tables themselves. They sprang upon them. They danced among the remnants of the feast. The hands of the guests—other companions of Cathur's prince, reached toward them—sought to capture them and draw them down upon the divans.

And then the music ceased. Crying aloud the dancers leaped from the table into the pool. Like nymphs they swam across it and disappeared behind a curtain of flowers and shrubs at the farther end. Yet in a moment they were back, dragging what looked like a monster shell in which sat the figure of an aged man, carrying yet another shell in his hand, and wearing a long green robe.

This they launched in the pool, and seizing ropes fastened to it they swam back toward the tables towing it along. At the corner of the pool they clustered on each side, while the aged passenger rose and stepped to land.

Kyphallos rose, too. "Hail Kronhor—Ruler of the Seas!" he exclaimed. "I am about to entrust myself to your domain for a journey to the south. What fare may I expect?"

"Good, O Prince of Cathur," the aged one returned. "I shall instruct all handmaids to wait upon you and steer your ship in safety, even as they have brought me into your presence tonight."

Kyphallos filled a goblet with wine and held it out.

He who played Kronhor took it.

"Drink!" the Cathurian cried. "Cathur does honor to Kronhor—thus."

Kalamita sprang to her feet. She filled other goblets, swiftly motioning the others about the tables to do the same. "Drink!" her voice rang out. "Drink to Kronhor. Drink to Kyphallos and the safety of his voyage."

The toast was drunk. Kronhor made his adieus and was towed back to the other side of the pool. Kalamita was leaning with both hands locked over Kyphallos's shoulder. "Tell me," she whispered. "Why does Jadgor of Aphur ask your presence, my friend?"

"I know not," said the Cathurian prince. "Some business of state, no doubt, to which I must attend for my father, who grows feeble with age as you know."

The dancing girls were hauling the shell from the pool. They made what looked like a straining group in pink bisque.

"It was a pretty play," Kalamita murmured. "Did you design it, Kyphallos? I know from the past you are clever."

The man turned and looked once more into her eyes. "I designed it—I planned it to amuse—you."

Croft turned away. He had seen enough. This was the man to whom it was planned to give the woman he—Jason Croft—loved; that sweet, pure Naia of Aphur who had knelt two nights ago in appeal before Azil the Angel of Life. This scented sensualist, caught fast in the charms of a Zollarian woman, of a type Croft could not mistake. Jadgor had hinted at something like this in his talk with Lakkon two days before. And tonight—on the eve of his departure of Aphur, Kyphallos of Cathur sat as the host of the enemies of his land. Surely Jadgor had reason for the fears he had expressed. Surely here was food for serious thought.

CHAPTER VIII

APHUR ACCEPTS

Croft left the court and made his way outside into the calm beauty of the night. Flooded by the moonlight, he stood watching the flicker of the fire-urns on the waters of the tiny harbor, where lay the gilded pleasure craft.

And after a time he turned back attracted by the fact that the inner lights had died. Only for a moment, however, did he remain inside. In the court, flooded now only by the moons, a wild and loathesome orgy was taking place between the dancing girls and the guests, in and about the pool. Cries, shrill laughter, sounds of splashing and fleeting glimpses of flitting shapes told him the full story as to the end of Kyphallos's feast. It sickened him, and once more he fled the spot to spend the night outside.

Naia! The thought came to him. Suddenly he wanted to see her, be near her, away from this scene of brutal carnival where license reigned supreme. He wanted to be in the hills of Aphur, where she had her home. And swiftly he was. There was Lakkon's palace, white under the triple moons—and here was the window of the room where she had knelt and prayed.

Invisible, yet seeing, he crept inside, like a wraith of the night. Only the moon gave him light. But it showed him the woman of his soul. She lay on the metal couch, asleep. Her fair hair shadowed her face as he bent above her. A slender arm was thrown out to one side. Coverings as light as silk betrayed the grace of her form. Her lips were half parted, and as Jason bent down, she sighed.

Croft straightened and stood like a guardian spirit above her. His soul was once more on fire at the thought of what was planned. This was the girl who was to be offered to the lecherous young spawn of royalty, even now disporting himself with the tawny siren from another nation—that Kalamita, whose name, Croft knew, might best be translated into English as Magnet. Kalamita—the magnet—a human magnet—a female magnet to draw men to her by her shameless charms and bind them fast past any chance of escape.

How much he wondered did Jadgor of Aphur really know of what was going on. How fully was he informed of what was coming now to seem, to Croft, as one side of the workings of Zollaria's plot? Surely he must know how much to be willing to sacrifice this fair young sleeper, his sister's child. Little by little Croft was coming to understand the workings of Jadgor's mind—to believe him a patriot really rather than a seeker of selfish power, such as he had fancied he might be for all his brave words at first.

What then? Croft could not answer. Bound as he was—despite his ability to hear and see and know, he could do nothing in himself. All night long he raved in impotent rage, unknowing that by degrees he was solving the problem presented to him.

At morn he went back to Anthra. He witnessed the departure of Kyphallos in a gilded galley, with red sails and red silken cordage rowed by twenty blue men, ten to each bank of oars.

Kalamita's barge, in which rode the Zollarian woman, her brother and Bazd the Mazzerian chief, accompanied the Cathurian for some two hours before it turned north and made off for Niera, as Croft gathered from what conversation passed.

Kyphallos's craft continued south. Croft let him go. He himself went back to Scira and the national school for his lessons of the day. The Cathurian prince was safe for five days while he sailed and rowed to Himyra. Meanwhile Croft was determined to learn all he could. It was after that he first met Jasor and studied him during the few days remaining until the first meeting between Kyphallos and Naia which he had determined to attend. And in so studying the youth, he discovered Jasor's full recognition of his own shortcomings, and that his knowledge of his own backward mental powers was preying upon his mind to produce a melancholic turn in the young man's thoughts.

At night Jasor sat in his quarters brooding, or took long solitary walks. Even in the four days he lost flesh. Croft realized that his introspections were sapping the young Nodhurian's strength—that he was physically as well as mentally sick. He had drawn into himself and no longer took part in the games in which, not only the dares of his classmates, but his very stature, told Croft he had once excelled.

Then came the seventh day, and Croft had willed himself back to Himyra once more, with an eye out for the galley from Anthra along the yellow Na.

He found it a little below the city wall, and followed it as it worked its way up the current with flashing dripping blades which rose and glistened and fell in the brilliant light. Under a scarlet awning, Kyphallos, curled and perfumed, lay on a burnished divan and watched the city slip past until the galley swung into one of the quays in front of the palace, where a chariot accompanied by a part of the royal guard waited as the galley moored. Meanwhile vast crowds lined the terraces along that portion of the Na and trumpets blared a greeting to the northern guest.

The Cathurian came ashore and entered the burnished car. The detachment of the guards fell in on either side. The procession mounted the inclines from terrace to terrace past the gathered throngs, until in the end it passed through the monster entrance of the palace and brought up in the principal court.

There various nobles of the state, Lakkon among them, waited to conduct the visiting noble to Aphur's king. Under their escort Kyphallos moved through the corridors and across courts to where, in an audience-room of huge proportions, Jadgor sat in state.

Here his guard of honor drew aside and left the prince standing alone as Jadgor rose.

"Welcome Cathur, to such poor hospitality as is mine," said Aphur's king.

"Hail Aphur," Kyphallos replied, bowing in the least degree. "Cathur sends greeting through me, his son."

Jadgor descended a step of the dais on which he sat. He put out a hand. "Accept a seat beside me, son of Cathur, whose presence gladdens the eye," he went on.

Kyphallos advanced, clasped palms with the Aphurian king, mounted the steps and seated himself on the gilded divan where Jadgor had sat alone.

The king of Aphur turned to two guards stationed on either side. "Announce that Cathur is Aphur's guest."

"Cathur is the guest of Aphur!" proclaimed the soldier heralds.

This completed the ceremonial of the royal arrival and the nobles withdrew with the exception of Lakkon, who, at a sign from Jadgor, remained and approached the dais.

Jadgor waved away his guards. "I would speak with you on matters of weight, O Cathur," he said when the three were alone.

"I give ear, King of Aphur," Kyphallos replied.

Like the man of purpose he was Jadgor did not waste time in airy persiflage. "Cathur guards the western gate with Aphur, Kyphallos," he began. "To my mind it occurs the guards are bound by a common interest. It occurs to me to strengthen the tie."

"To what end?" A slight frown grew between the younger man's eyes. He seemed like one taken suddenly by surprise and his words came only after a perceptible pause.

"To the end of strengthening our nation," Jadgor shot out his reply. "In one year Tamhys's reign is done, unless he be reelected, as you know. With Cathur's help and that of Nodhur, which is well assured, and support from Milidhur already promised, Aphur can win the day."

"Ah!" Suddenly Kyphallos smiled. And as swiftly his eyelids drew together. "But what," he asked, "if Cathur should look toward Zitra as well?"

Like a stab of light a thought pierced Croft's listening brain. Was that it—was that the bait Zollaria held forth? Kyphallos on the throne of Tamarizia—not for ten years, but for life—Zollaria and Tamarizia practically one if not actually united—Cathur in Zollaria's hands and Kyphallos a noble of a vast empire—a dual monarchy such as Palos had never seen. The conception from the standpoint of royalty at least was no less than magnificent.

Jadgor, too, gave his companion a piercing glance. "Could Cathur win without Aphur?" he asked.

Kyphallos shrugged. "My words were but a question," he evaded the answer direct. "What does Aphur propose?"

"An alliance of their houses," Jadgor said and paused.

And once more Kyphallos frowned without reply. Plainly he was giving this matter consideration.

Jadgor resumed. "It is in our minds to offer you the fairest flower in Aphur's garden of women to this end."

"Hai! A woman! Thou meanest marriage?" Kyphallos cried.

"Aye."

Kyphallos smiled. "And this wonderful woman—who is she?"

"The daughter of Prince Lakkon here," Jadgor declared. "Naia, the child of my sister, more beautiful than any girl in Aphur and pure as the Virgin Ga."

"Naia!" Kyphallos's eyes lighted. "I have heard of her, O Aphur. It would seem you plan to make this alliance strong."

"The guard of the western gate should be strong," Jadgor said.

Kyphallos nodded. "Yet have I never seen her," he remarked in a tone of musing, "though the fame of her beauty has reached Cathur ere this. I have heard she has hair like spun gold and eyes as purple as the twilight in the mountains. Is this true?"

"Cathur shall judge the truth for himself," Jadgor made response. "Prince Lakkon craves the presence of Kyphallos at a feast tomorrow night. The maiden shall be there."

"Good." Once more Kyphallos smiled. Women were his main interest in life. "I have never given serious thought to marriage, yet it can do no harm to see this fairest of Aphur's maids. Say to Prince Lakkon that Cathur shall do himself the pleasure to accept his invitation to a feast. As for the rest—" He shrugged. "A man, O Jadgor, should never marry in haste. I must think upon your words."

There was something in the Cathurian's mind. Croft tried to read the secret thought, and failed. Jadgor, too, seemed to sense some reason beyond the one assigned for the man's hesitation, although an immediate answer was hardly to have been expected to such a proposition as that by which the prince was faced.

And Jadgor did not seek to press the matter further. Instead, he turned to Lakkon with a request to escort the royal guest to the rooms prepared against his coming, and rose from his seat.

Croft sought Prince Lakkon's palace without more delay.

He found it receiving the finishing touches of preparation for the Cathurian's entertainment, and Naia, with her own maid beside her, supervising the hangings of fresh draperies in the huge central court.

His soul quickened at sight of her and then sank as he saw the expression of her face. It was an expression of deliberate endurance, and he recalled how nights before she had sighed in her sleep.

Yet he hovered near her and after hours Lakkon himself arrived and came to her side. Father and daughter sat upon one of the carved and gilded seats with which the court had been set forth.

Naia looked into Lakkon's eyes. "What said the Cathurian to Jadgor's proposal?" she inquired.

"He accepted our invitation for the night after this," Lakkon replied. "He seems a cautious man. He would see you before he decides."

"He would see me!" Naia of Aphur flashed. "He would view me—learn if I please his royal fancy—Zitu! must I submit to this?"

"Nay." Lakkon shook his head. "Cathur's prince was but gaining time to consider all sides of the case. Jadgor's offer took him by surprise."

"Perhaps," said Naia in almost eager fashion, "he does not wish a wife."

Lakkon shook his head again. "Scythys, his father, is old. Kyphallos must marry when he gains the throne at latest. Is everything prepared?"

"Aye—even to—the sacrifice." Naia's tone was bitter. She rose and moved away without more words, mounting the stairs toward her rooms.

Croft's heart was bitter, too, as he left the place and returned by his will to Scira and the apartment of Jasor of Nodhur.

Just why he went there he hardly knew—save that the sympathy he felt for the soul-sick youth seemed to keep the boy in his mind. Yet once in his presence he found the youth sitting before an untouched plate of food. And after a time he hurled this to the floor and buried his head in his hands, to break into muttered speech.

Croft listened and after a time he found the cause. Jasor's father had sent him word to come home. The two leaves of a writing tablet—bits of thin metal covered with hardened wax, in which characters were cut with a metal stylus, lay unbound and spread out on the table where the food had sat. Jasor's father had evidently become convinced that his son was a dullard and was wasting his time in seeking to learn more than he already knew.

Croft remained with him during the night. For a time he whimpered and cursed. Later he destroyed the tablets as he had destroyed his food. After that he flung himself on his couch and for hours he dozed and waked and tossed and muttered. Croft fancied him in a fever from the broken nature of the words he spoke. And in the morning the boy did not rise. The woman of whom he rented his lodgings came to clean and found him muttering and mouthing. He sprang up and drove her from the room. She ran crying downstairs and out to the street and along it for some distance to a house where quite evidently one of the nursing caste lived.

Presently a woman in the uniform of her calling, a short blue-skirted costume, embroidered with a red, heart-shaped symbol came forth and followed her back to her house. Five minutes after her arrival she had sent the old woman for a doctor and was herself bathing Jasor's flushed neck and face.

The doctor came, examined the patient, left some liquid substance to be given in interval doses and went away. Croft remained till evening. Jasor was more quiet by then, and he left. But, physician as he was, he felt that the young Nodhurian's days were numbered, that unless he had the will to recover he would sink slowly and die in the end. And he knew Jasor had not the will to get well.

His own will carried him to Himyra in a flash, and to Lakkon's palace at once. Night had fallen when he reached it and the central court was a blaze of light from a myriad of oil-lamps. In the main expanse of the crystal flooring the tables were set forth, decked with flowers and loaded with viands. Serving men and maidens of the blue Mazzerian race were still at work in the final preparations. Of Naia or Lakkon there was no sign.

The latter came down the stairs at one end after some time, however, and signing to Bazka, the Mazzerian major-domo, took up a place near the massive doors. There he remained until a clatter of hoofs marked the first arriving guests.

They came in a stream thereafter, nobles of Aphur and their daughters and wives; captains of the civic guard, and finally, with a blare of trumpets from riders mounted on gnuppas, Jadgor himself and Kyphallos in a golden coach drawn by eight gnuppas harnessed four abreast.

And still Naia had not appeared. But as the King of Aphur and the Prince of Cathur moved down the crystal pave from the doors toward the tables in the center of the court, she came slowly down the stairs.

Croft stared in delight. She was a thing of purple and gold. The gown she had described that first day wrapped her supple form like a second skin, from right shoulder to hip, and fell from there to the knees. It was a shimmering thing embroidered in purple stones.

Halfway down the stairs she stood and inclined her head, while Jadgor and Kyphallos paused. Then as the men advanced she began again to descend, until near the head of the tables she sank on her left knee and bowed before the king.

Jadgor's own hand helped her to rise. Jadgor made Kyphallos known. Prince and princess touched hands. Lakkon led toward the feast.

At the head sat Jadgor and Kyphallos side by side. Lakkon reclined beside the king. Naia's place was on the Prince of Cathur's left. Blue servants in Lakkon's livery placed the other guests and began their service at once.

For an hour the feast went on. Hidden musicians filled the air with the sound of their harps. That snow-chilled wine, of which Lakkon had spoken, poured from golden pitchers into goblets of silver as serving-maids passed up and down the board to keep all well supplied.

Croft noted Kyphallos more closely than the rest. He had seen the swift lighting of his eyes when Naia appeared on the stairs; the swift instinctive parting of his too full lips, the twitch of his nostrils, accompanying that first glance of the maid suggested for his wife.

Now, as he lay on the divan, he found him watching her with what seemed a steady interest, plying her with gallant conversation, finding excuse to frequently touch her hands, staring into her long-lashed purple eyes. With his resentment for the Cathurian growing by swift leaps and bounds, he realized that Kyphallos was impressed, sensed that before this chaste beauty of his own people, he had forgotten Zollaria's magnet for the time.

Also he thought it had been better had the wine been less nicely chilled, for Kyphallos drank deep and his eyes began to sparkle as time passed with new toasts proposed and drunk about the board. It came to Croft that Cathur's prince was losing his head at a time when he had better have kept it, as his voice became more and more loud.

Intoxication may be very well on Anthra, where it was the accepted thing. In Himyra and the palace of Lakkon, before his proposed bride, it might prove another thing. He was strengthened in his belief by the questioning glance Naia cast at the northern noble from time to time—a glance of something like surprised dismay.

The harps struck up a different measure toward the last. Golden curtains parted under the balcony, near the stairs. A band of dancing girls trooped in. They were things of beauty, laughing faced, their soft hair flowing, clad in what seemed no more than garlands of flowers twined about their slender bodies and halfway down their limbs. Beginning to dance they advanced and as they danced they sang. The scene became one of rhythmic beauty, delightful to the senses. Each girl bore a parti-colored veil of gauze and waved it as she moved. Massed inside the rectangle of the tables on the crystal floor, they seemed to be a very dancing, nodding bed of flowers, amid which twinkled their flying feet and gesturing arms, beating time to the pulse of the harps.

Then it was done. The dancers were drawing back with graceful genuflections, as applause broke forth from the guests. Lakkon tossed a handful of silver pieces among them. Jadgor cast a double handful of jewels into the scarf of a maid who advanced at his sign.

"Divide them among you," he said.

The girl sank to the floor, and rose.

"Hold!" cried Cathur's prince. His face was flushed and his eyes shone with an unholy light. Croft saw his nostrils fairly quiver as he watched the lissom dancer. He lifted himself and struck the table. "Up!" he commanded thickly. "Up beauteous maid."

With a glance at Jadgor, who made no sign whatever, the dancing girl obeyed. She stood on the table before Kyphallos.

"Unveil!" he said.

Again the woman glanced at Aphur's king. But Jadgor did not draw back from the situation invoked by his bibulous guest. Too much hung on the moment as Jadgor saw it to quibble over the uncloaking of a dancer. "Unveil!" he added his command.

The girl lifted her hands. Her garlands fell away. She stood a lithely rounded form, her feet lost in the mass of blossoms she had worn.

Kyphallos laughed. His eyes were blazing. He caught up a goblet of wine and rose. "Hail Adita, goddess of womanly beauty," he exclaimed. "Now, are you perfect as you stand revealed, stripped of the silly trappings which concealed the greater charms beneath. Flowers are things of beauty in their place, but—woman unadorned is the fairest flower of life. Arise, my friends, and drink with me to woman as she is, this new Adita I have found!"

They rose at Jadgor's sign, though Croft caught more than one glance of question passing among the guests.

So much he saw and turned back to Naia who had risen, too, her face a mask of outraged dignity and scorn.

Kyphallos lifted his goblet and set it to his lips.

Naia lifted hers and cast it from her so that its contents spilled and flowed across the table at the dancer's feet.

"Thou beast!" her voice came in tones of sharp displeasure. "Thou sensuous offspring of Cathur! 'Tis thus I drink your toast!"

Silence came down—a breathless pause about the tables.

Kyphallos lowered his cup and turned toward the Princess of Aphur slowly.

And suddenly the Cathurian smiled. He replaced his goblet on the table and sank to one knee before the haughty daughter of his host. "By Zitu!" his voice rang out; "but you are truly royal. You are magnificent, daughter of Aphur. Did I pick me a lesser toy, 'twas but that I knew you for what you are—one fit to be a queen. Naia of Aphur, wilt pledge yourself queen of Cathur's throne?"

The words were out. Croft felt his senses sink. Yet even so he saw the whole psychology of the event. To Cathur, the maiden offered, had seemed but an easy prize—to take at his pleasure, if at all. To Cathur drunk the dancer had appealed. To Cathur still drunk Naia of Aphur, offended, angered, hurling her scorn in his teeth, appeared suddenly not a thing to be taken lightly, but a beautiful consort to be won if taken at all.

On Jadgor's face was a satisfaction unvoiced. He rose and lifted his hands. "My lords and ladies," he announced, "I call you to witness that Cathur asks the hand of Aphur's princess. Let Naia choose."

Kyphallos drew himself up and folded his arms. To Croft it seemed the man was sobered by Jadgor's words. Yet as cries of assent and acclamation rang out through the court, he remained silent before the tense figure of the girl.

And slowly the golden head beneath the curling plume of purple bowed. One bared arm rose and extended its fingers toward the northern prince. "Aphur accepts." Her words came scarcely above a whisper and were drowned in a greeting roar of voices upraised by the waiting guests.

Cathur caught the extended hand and turned to the forward straining faces, the watching eyes.

"A happy consummation to our feast," rang the words of Aphur's king. "Men and women of Aphur this shall be arranged. I, Jadgor, myself shall sponsor the formal betrothal on a day one twelfth of a cycle hence."

The thing was done. A month from tonight would see it ratified. A sick impotency filled Croft's soul as once more cries of approbation greeted the promise of the king. And into the midst of his despair there flashed one ray of blinding thought. Before it he staggered, drew back, shaken in the primal elements of his being. Yet he did not put it aside. He held it. He marveled at it. And suddenly taking it with him, he left the scented atmosphere of Lakkon's palace court and rose up toward the heavens, studded with stars.

To earth! His will gathered, centered, focused by the wonder of the thing he had conceived cast all its driving power into the demand. Palos and all it held sank swiftly away beneath him. He opened the eyes of the form he left on his library couch.

CHAPTER IX

'TWIXT EARTH AND HEAVEN

Nothing had been disturbed. Everything was as he had last seen it, save that a layer of dust had collected, thanks to the absence of Mrs. Goss, and that due to the difference of the length of the Palosian day. Nine terrestrial days had passed since Croft had lain his body on the couch.

Rising slowly, he ignited the flame of a small alcohol-lamp and quickly brewed himself a cup of strong beef-extract, which he drank. The hot beverage and the food put new physical life into his sluggish veins, as he knew it would. Seating himself in a chair, he gave himself over to a consideration of the thought he had brought with him from Palos—a thought more weird than any of which he had ever dreamed.

Briefly, Croft had conceived of a way to acquire a physical life on Palos. That was his unheard-of plan, the possibility of which had wakened in his consciousness as Jadgor announced the formal betrothal of Naia to Kyphallos at the end of the month. It was that that had sent him back here to his study and his books.

And after a bit he rose and drew a volume from a case and brought it back to the desk. It was a work dealing with obsessions—that theory of the occultist that a stronger spirit might displace the weaker tenant of an earthly shell, and occupy and dominate the body it had possessed.

He read over the written page and sat pondering once more while the night dragged past. Even as he had gone a step farther in astral projection, carrying it into spirit projection as a further step, so now he was considering a step beyond mere obsession, and questioning whether or not it were possible for a spirit, potent beyond the average ego of earth, to enter and revivify the body laid down by another soul.

His thoughts were of Jasor as he sat there wrapped in thought. The young Nodhurian was dying, unless Croft's medical knowledge was all at fault. Yet he was dying not from disease in the physical sense. His body was organically healthy. It was his soul which was sick unto death. And—here was the wonderful question: Could Croft's strong spirit enter Jasor's body as Jasor laid it aside and, operating on the still inherent and reasonably sound cell-energy still contained within it, possess it for its own?

It was an amazing thought—a daring thought—yet not so far beyond the spirit which had dared the emptiness of the unknown in the adventure which had brought Croft to his present position, thereby inspiring the thought itself. Day broke, however, before Croft made up his mind.

He realized fully that he must remain on earth for a day or two to provide his present body against another period of trance. He realized also that in the experiment he meant to make he might lose that earthly body and fail in his other attempt at one and the same time. But he made up his mind none the less.

Should he succeed, he would live as an inhabitant of Palos—would be able to physically stand between Naia—the one woman of his soul—and her fate—and, winning, be able perhaps to claim her for himself. Against the possibility of such a consummation to his great adventure no argument of a personal peril held weight.

Croft sent for Mrs. Goss, telegraphing her shortly after it was light. He spent the day waiting her arrival in feeding his body with concentrated foods. He met her when she came, and for a week life went on in the Croft house as it had gone on before. Then Croft summoned the little woman and bade her sit down in one of the library chairs. He told her he was engaged on a wonderful investigation of the forces of life. He made her understand dimly he was doing something never attempted before, which, if it succeeded, would make him very happy. He explained that he was about to take a long sleep—that it would last for three, and possibly four days. He forbade her to disturb his body during that time, or to touch it for a week. Then, if he was not returned and in his sane mind, she might know that he was dead.

With quivering lips and wide eyes and apron-plucking hands, she promised to obey. Croft sensed her anxiety for himself, and tried to be very gentle as he saw her from the room.

But with the door closed behind her, he moved quickly to the couch and stretched himself out. For a moment he lay staring about the familiar room. Then into his mind there came a thought of Naia—and of Jasor—of love for the one and pity for the other. He smiled and fastened his mind on the object of this present attempt. And suddenly his eyelids closed and his body relaxed. Once more time and space suffered annihilation, and he knew himself in Jasor's room.

It was full. The nurse was there, and the physician. And there was another—a young man with a strong, composed face, clad in a tunic of unembroidered brown, whom Croft recognized as a priest.

He stood by the couch on which Jasor lay, pallid as wax, with closed lids, and a barely perceptible respiration. He held a silver basin in his hands, and as Croft watched he sprinkled the face of the dying youth with his fingers dipped in the water it contained. A quiver of emotion shook Croft's spirit. He had returned to Palos none too soon.

The priest drew back. The doctor approached the bed. He lifted the wrist of Jasor and set his fingers to the pulse. In a moment he laid it down, and bowed his head. And as he did so, Jasor sighed once deeply like one very tired.

"He passes," the physician said.

Priest, nurse, and physician all saw it. But Croft saw more than they. He saw the astral form, the soul-body of Jasor, rise from the discarded clay. And swiftly casting aside all other considerations, he willed his own consciousness into the vacant brain.

Thereafter followed an experience, the most terrible he had ever known. He was within Jasor's body, yet he was chained. For what seemed hours he fought to control the physical elements of the fleshy form he had seized. And always he failed. In some indefinable way it seemed to resist the new tenant who had taken the place of the old. Croft describes his own sensations as those of one who presses against and seeks to move an immovable weight.

He suffered—suffered until the very suffering broke down the bonds in a demand for some outward expression. Then, and only then he knew that the chest of the body had once more moved, and that he had drawn air into the lungs. Encouraged, he exerted his staggering will afresh, and—he knew he was looking into the faces above him—through Jasor's physical eyes!

"He lives!"

With Jasor's ears he heard the physician exclaim:

"This passes understanding, man of Zitu. He was dead, yet now he lives again!"

"The ways of Zitu oft pass the understanding, man of healing," said the priest, advancing to the bed. "What is man to understand the things that Zitu plans?"

Croft thrilled. Coordination between his conscious spirit and the body of the man of Palos was established. He had won again—won a visible, material existence on the planet with the woman he loved. The thought brought a sense of absolute satisfaction; he closed the lids above Jasor's eyes, and slept.

For several hours he lay in restful slumber, then awoke refreshed. His deductions had been correct. Jasor's body was healthy, aside from the weakening influences of his spirit. Given a strong spirit to dominate it now, it responded in full tide.

He glanced about. It was night. By the dim light of an oil-lamp he saw two persons in the room. One was the nurse. The other was the priest. They appeared to converse in lowered tones.

"Man of Zitu," Croft spoke for the first time with his new-found tongue.

The priest rose and hurried to him. "My son."

"I am much improved," said Croft. "In the morning I shall be almost wholly well."

"It is a miracle," the priest declared, holding his forearms horizontally before him until he made a perfect cross.

A miracle! Croft considered the words. They carried a sudden meaning to his mind. Truly the priest had spoken rightly. This was little short of a miracle indeed, did the other know the facts. Swiftly Croft formed a plan. "Father, what is your name?" he inquired.

"Abbu, my son."

Croft turned his eyes. "Send the nurse away. I would talk with you alone."

The priest spoke to the woman, who withdrew slowly, her face a mingled mask of emotions, chief among which Croft read a sort of awed wonder.

"Why does she look at me like that?" he asked.

The priest seated himself on a stool beside the couch. "I said your recovery was a miracle, my son," he replied. "I am minded that I told the truth. You have changed, even your face has changed while you slept. You are not the same."

Croft felt his muscles stiffen. He understood. The new spirit was molding the fleshy elements to itself—uniting itself to them, knitting soul and body together. The experiment was a success. He smiled. "That is true, Father Abbu," he replied. "I am not the same as the Jasor who died."

"Died?" The priest drew back. His eyes widened.

"Died," repeated Croft. "Listen, father. These things must be in confidence."

"Aye," Abbu agreed.

Croft told what had occurred.

Abbu heard him out. At the end he was seized by a shaking which caused him to quiver through body and limbs.

"Listen, father," Croft said. "I am not Jasor, though I inhabit his form. Yet I know something of him, and of Tamarizia as well. Jasor had a father."

"And a mother." The priest inclined his head.

Croft had gained information, but he did not make a comment upon it then. "To them I must appear still as Jasor," he returned.

"They are looked for in Scira," Abbu declared. "We hoped for their coming. Why have you done this thing? Are you good or evil?"

"Good, by the grace of Zitu," said Croft. "I come to help Tamarizia. Think you I could have come had not Zitu willed?"

Suddenly the face of the young priest flamed. "Nay!" he cried, and rose to stand by the couch. "Now my eyes are open and I see. This thing is of Zitu, nor could he save by his will. It is as I said, a miracle indeed." Again he lifted his arms in the sign of the cross.

"Then," said Croft, striking quickly while the man was lost in the grip of religious fervor. "Will you help me to do that for which I came—will you help me to help Tamarizia should the need arise?"

"Aye." To his surprise Abbu sank before him on bended knees. "How am I to serve him who comes at the behest of Zitu, in so miraculous a way?"

"Call me Jasor as in the past," decided Croft. The name was near enough to his own to fit easily into both his ears and mouth. "Yet think me not Jasor," he went on. "Jasor was a dullard, weak in his brain. Soon shall I show you things such as you have never dreamed. Think you I am Jasor or another indeed?"

"You are not Jasor," said the priest.

"Nay—by Zitu himself, I swear it," said Croft. "Go now and send back the nurse. Say nothing of what I have told you. Swear silence by Zitu, and come to me every day."

"I swear," Abbu promised, rising, "and—I shall come, O Spirit sent by Zitu." He left the room backward and with bowed head.

Croft let every cell of his new body relax and stretched out. He closed his eyes as he heard the nurse return, and gave himself up to thought. It appeared to him that he had made a very good beginning and won an ally in Abbu, into whose astonishment he had woven a thread of the man's own religion to strengthen his belief. Now it remained to gain utter control of the body he possessed—to master it completely, and make it not only responsive to his physical use, but to so impregnate it with his own essence that he might leave it for short times at least in order to return to the earth.

And to accomplish that he had just four days. Lying there apparently asleep, he sought to exercise that control he possessed over the body now lying on his library couch. And he failed. Strive as he might, he could not compass success. In something like a panic he desisted after a time and sought to fight back to a balanced mental calm.

Was he trapped? he asked himself. Was he a prisoner of the thing he had sought to make his own? Reason told him the question was folly—that already the body was responding in a physical sense. In the end he decided to take a longer time in his endeavors, and so at last fell into a genuine sleep.

From that he awakened to the sound of voices, and turned his eyes to behold a woman past middle age, with graying hair, and a man, strongly built, with a well-featured face, in the room.

Working swiftly, his mind recalled Abbu's words concerning Jasor's parents. The priest had said they were expected in Scira. This woman, then, must be the Nodhurian's mother.

He opened his lips and called her by that word.

She ran to him and sank her knees by the couch. "Jasor, my son!" she cried in a voice which quavered, and as the man approached more slowly, turned her face upward to meet his eyes. "He knows me, Sinon—he knows me," she said.

"Aye, Mellia, praise be to Zitu. Jasor, my son, dost thou know me also?" the Nodhurian's father said.

"Aye, sir," said Croft, marking his parents' names. "But—how come you in Scira?"

"Did we not write that we should arrive and take you with us on our return?" Sinon asked.

Croft saw it in a flash, and the slip he had made. This explained Abbu's assertion that they were expected. The tablets hurled to the floor by Jasor had been deciphered after his illness, it appeared. "Aye," he admitted somewhat faintly. "But—I have been ill."

"And are recovered now," he who was to be his father said.

"Aye. Had I my clothing I could rise."

"We shall return then at once," Sinon declared.

But Mellia, the mother, broke into protests, and Croft became much more cautious, spoke for delay. He did not wish to undertake a trip to Nodhur before he had returned to earth. That was necessary if he was to protect his earth body from Mrs. Goss at the end of the week, since now he knew he must have more time. He determined to make another attempt at escape from his new body, when he would appear merely to be asleep.

And he succeeded late that night, freeing himself and once more rousing on the library couch. He did several things at once. He examined his own body and found it sound. He wrote a note telling his housekeeper he had returned and gone away for at least a month. He knew many a body had been kept entranced for longer periods by the Indian adepts of the East, so did not fear the attempt.

Next he crept up-stairs to his former bedroom and packed a suitcase, carrying it to one of the several spare rooms seldom used and always kept closed. Locking himself into this room, he opened the window slightly to assure a supply of air. He had told Mrs. Goss to remain at the house or go to her daughter's, as she preferred, until his return. He felt assured he would be undisturbed. Laying himself on the bed, he once more satisfied himself that all was as he wished it, and returned to Jasor's room.

CHAPTER X

WHOM ZITU CHANGED

Dawn was breaking on Palos as he opened his eyes. The nurse dozed not far from his couch. He waked her and demanded his clothing. She brought it in some doubt and assisted him to put it on. Ten minutes later he sat on the edge of the couch a Palosian in all physical seeming. Yet the woman regarded him still in a more or less uncertain fashion.

Croft smiled. "Thank you for your kindness, my nurse," he said. "I shall ask my father to remunerate you for it. Now I would eat."

She nodded and hurried from the room, to return with food. Hardly had Croft disposed of the meal with a zest evoked of his physical needs, that Sinon of Nodhur appeared.

Croft rose and stood as the man came in. "We return home today, my father," he declared.

Sinon seemed embarrassed before the words of his son. "Aye, if you wish," he made answer after a pause. "Sit you, my son. We must speak together. Your sickness has wrought changes within you. You are not the Jasor to whom I wrote it were useless to remain in Scira. The glance of your eye, the sound of your voice, even the lines of your face, have changed."

Croft smiled. "That is true," he agreed. "Yet even so it is of small value to remain in Scira, since now I know all and more than the learned men can teach me, were I to linger among them for many more cycles that I have."

"Zitu!" Sinon regarded him oddly. "My son, is this change to make you a braggart instead of a dullard?" he began slowly after a time.

"Not so," Croft returned. "My father, I am as one born anew. I shall prove my words, yet not until I have returned to our home. Let us begin the journey this day."

"It shall be as you wish," Sinon said, and left the room.

Later Abbu came and was admitted. To him Croft explained that he was going south to Nodhur with his father. He went further and questioned the priest concerning Sinon himself, learning that he was a wealthy merchant, residing in Ladhra, capital of the southern state.

The information was a considerable shock to Croft. The merchant caste, while exercising great influence and weight in Tamarizian affairs, were not of noble blood. Hence now, at the very beginning he found himself confronted by a gulf of caste separating him from Naia of Aphur hardly less completely than before he had made Jasor's body his own. For a moment the thought occurred to him that he had chosen that body rather badly. Then his natural determination came to his aid, and he set his lips as he resolved to find a way to win to Naia's side.

Abbu rather drew back before the gleam which crept into his eyes. "Jasor, since I know you by no other name," he cried, "wherein have I given offense?"

Croft laughed. He rose and flexed his arms and stared into Abbu's face. "In nothing; I was but thinking," he made answer. "Abbu, give me tablets to the priesthood at Himyra, stating those things you have seen."

Abbu nodded. "You stop at Himyra?" he said.

"Aye." The first step of winning to the woman of his soul flashed into Croft's brain, even as his plan for winning a body had flashed there days before.

But he kept it to himself, locked safely in his breast, as he set forth for his new home, with his parents, Sinon and Mellia, that afternoon.

That Sinon of Nodhur was wealthy he was assured when he saw the galley in which the homeward journey was to be made. It was a swift craft, gilded and ornate as to hull and masts and spars. Ten rowers furnished power on its two banks of oars, seated on the benches in the waist of the hull. Behind them were the cabin and a deck under an awning of the silklike fabric, a brilliant green in hue. Not only did all this show Croft his supposed father's financial condition, but he learned from Sinon that he was owner of a fleet of merchant craft which plied up and down the Na, and across the Central Sea. In addition, the largess Sinon bestowed on the nurse was evidence of a well-filled purse.

All these things Croft considered in the intervals of conversation with Sinon and Mellia while the galley ran south. In his boyhood Jason had been possessed of a natural aptitude for mechanics. In later manhood he had owned and operated his own automobiles, making most of the repairs upon the cars himself. Learning now of his father's line of business, it occurred to him to revolutionize transportation on Palos as a first step toward making his name a word familiar to every tongue.

To this end he approached Sinon the first evening as he and Mellia reclined on the deck.

"My father," he said, "what if the trip to Ladhra could be shortened by half?"

"Shortened, in what fashion?" Sinon asked, turning a swift glance toward Croft.

"By increasing the speed."

Sinon smiled. "The galley is the best product of our builders," he replied.

"Granted," said Croft. "But were one to place a device upon it, to do the work of the rowers with ten times their strength?"

"Zitu!" Sinon lifted himself on his couch. "What, Jasor, is this? What mean you, my son? What is this device?"

"One I have in mind," Croft told him. "Come. You make your money with ships. Apply some of it to making them more swift of motion. Let me make this device, and they shall mount the Na more swiftly than now they run with the current and the wind."

Sinon turned his eyes to the woman at his side. "And this is our son, who was a dullard!" he exclaimed.

"In whom I always have had faith," Mellia replied with a smile of maternal joy on her face.

"You have faith in this thing he proposes?" Sinon went on.

"Aye. I think Zitu himself spoke to him in his deathlike sleep," the woman said.

"Then, by Zitu—he shall make the attempt!" Sinon roared. "Should he succeed, the king himself would make him a knight for his service to the state."

Croft's heart leaped and ran racing for a minute at the words. Knighthood! That was the answer to the question in his brain—the bridge which should cross the gulf between Naia of Aphur and himself. He crushed back his emotions, however, and faced Sinon again. "Then I may carry out my plan?"

"Aye—to the half of my wealth," Sinon declared. "Jasor, I do not understand the change which has come upon you. But this thing you may do if you can."

"Then we stop at Himyra," Croft announced.

"At Himyra!" Sinon stared.

"Aye. I would see Jadgor of Aphur so quickly as I may."

"See Jadgor? You?" Sinon protested. "Think you Jadgor receives men of our caste without good cause?"

"He will see Jasor of Nodhur," Croft told him with a smile. "Wait, my father, and you shall witness that, and more."

And now all doubt, all foreboding left him, and he planned. That night as he lay in his bunk aboard the galley, he smiled. To him it seemed that any doubt must have been transferred to the minds of Sinon and Mellia. He heard them speaking above the lap of the waters and the squeak of the oars. He realized how much of an enigma he had become to these two who believed themselves his parents—how wonderful to them must be the change in their son.

But his own mind was coolly collected and calm. He would see Jadgor. He would use his knowledge of that monarch's present wishes to interest him in his plans. He would become not a knight of Nodhur, but a knight of Aphur instead. And then—then—Croft smiled and fell asleep.

The next day he questioned Sinon concerning the nature of the oil used in the lamps, and found it a vegetable product, as he had feared. But—he had been given evidence that the wine supply of the country held no small alcoholic content, which could be recovered in pure form with comparative ease. And—he knew enough of motors to know that slight changes would enable them to burn alcohol in lieu of petroleum-gas. Straightway he asked for something on which to draft his plans.

Sinon, eager now in the development of his son's remarkable plan, furnished parchment and brushes with a square of color, something like India ink, and Croft set to work during the remainder of the trip. He had assembled more than one motor in his day, and after deciding upon his type of construction he immediately went to work. At the end of four days, while the galley was mounting the Na toward the gates of Himyra, he finished the first drafting of parts, and was ready for Jadgor the king. Yet he did not go to Jadgor first, when once he has stepped ashore.

"Wait here," he requested Sinon. "After a time I shall return."

"Hold, my son," Sinon objected at once. "What have you in mind?"

"To see the priest of Zitu without delay," Croft replied without evasion. "Shall Jadgor not give ear, if the priest of Zitu asks?"

"And the priest?" Sinon asked.

"I carry a message to him from Abbu of Scira." Croft held up the tablets that Abbu had inscribed.

"My son!" Sinon gave him a glance of admiration. "Go, and Zitu go with you. We shall wait for you here."

Croft nodded and left. He had purposely had the galley moored as near the Palace as he might. Now he rapidly made his way to the bridge across the Na, and along it to the middle span. And there he paused and gazed about him, at the palace, the pyramid, the vista of the terraced stream. This was Himyra—this was the home of Naia. Today he stood here unheralded and unknown. Yet he stood there because of the dominant spirit which was his, which had dared all to stand there, and—it should not be long until all Himyra—all Tamarizia knew of Jasor of Nodhur, as he surely must be known.

He went on across the bridge and approached the pyramid. It lifted its vast pile above him. He found an inclined way and began to mount. After a considerable time he reached the top and entered the temple itself. The huge statue of Zitu sat there as he had seen it in his former state. Now almost without volition he bent his knees before it. After all, it stood for the One Eternal Source. He gave it reverence as such.

A voice spoke to him as he knelt. He rose and confronted a priest.

"Who art thou?" the latter asked, advancing toward him. "How come you here at no hour appointed for prayer?"

Croft smiled and held forth the tablets he had brought.

The priest took them, unbound them, and looked at the salutation. His interest quickened. "Ye come from Scira?" he said.

"Aye. Carrying these tablets from the good Abbu, as you see."

The priest considered. "Come," he said again at last, and led the way back of the statue to the head of a descending stair.

Together they went down, along the worn tread of stone steps, turning here and there, until at length they came into a lofty apartment where sat a man in robes of an azure blue.

Before him Croft's guide bowed. "Thy pardon, Magur, Priest of Zitu," he spoke, still in his stilted formal way. "But one comes carrying tablets inscribed with thy name. Even now he knelt in the Holy Place, so that I questioned—asking what he sought."

Magur, high priest in Himyra, at least as Croft judged, took the tablets and scanned each leaf. As he read, his expression altered, grew at first well-nigh startled, and after that nothing short of amazed.

In the end he waved the lay brother from the room and faced Croft alone. "Thou art called how?" he began.

"Jasor of Nodhur—son of Sinon and Mellia of Nodhur," Croft replied.

"Whom, Abbu writes, Zitu hath changed?"

"Aye."

"Thou comest to Himyra, why?"

"To assist the State—to safeguard Tamarizia from the designs of Zollaria perhaps."

"Hold!" Magur cried. "What know ye of Zollaria's plans?"

"Zollaria desires Cathur and plots the downfall of Tamarizia, Priest of Zitu. Think that I bring no knowledge to my task?"

"Yet, were you Jasor indeed, thou mightest know somewhat of Zollaria's plans to some extent," said the priest.

"And Jasor was a dullard, as the schools of Scira will declare," Croft flashed back. "Let my works show whether I stand a fool or not."

"Thy works?" Magur inquired.

"Aye—those I shall do in Tamarizia's name. The first shall be one which shall span the desert twenty times as quickly as the sarpelca caravan—or drive a boat without sails or oars, or propel a carriage without any gnuppa, and so haul ten times the load."

"Thou canst do this?" Magur laid the tablets on the lap of his robe and sat staring at the man who spoke such words.

"Aye."

"And what do you desire of me?"

"An audience with Jadgor," Croft replied: "Since Aphur's king suspects the things Zollaria plans."

Magur frowned. Croft's knowledge seemed to have swept him somewhat off his feet. For moments he sat without motion or sound. But after a time he raised his head. "To me Abbu seemeth right in this," he said. "In this Zitu's hand is. This thing shall be arranged."

He clapped his hands. A brown-robed priest appeared.

"Prepare my chariot for use," the high priest said.

The other bowed and withdrew.

Thereafter Magur sat through another period of silence ere he rose and, signing to Croft, led him through a passage to a small metal platform which, when Magur pulled on a slender cord, began to descend.

Croft smiled. It was a primitive sort of elevator as he saw while they sank down a narrow shaft. He fancied it not unlike the ancient lifts employed in Nero's palace in Rome. But he made no comment as they reached the bottom of the shaft and emerged past double lines of bowing priests to the waiting chariot.

Magur mounted and took the reins. Croft stepped into a place at his side. The gnuppas leaped forward at a word. They rumbled down the street and out upon the bridge. Croft had crossed it alone and on foot an hour before. Now he rode back in the car of Zitu's priest.

CHAPTER XI

WITH A MOTOR IN PALOS

And in that car he passed the palace gates, where the winged dogs stood guard, and entered the palace court.

Guards in burnished cuirasses leaped to the gnuppas' heads when Magur drew rein.

Inclining his head, Magur stepped from his car and led the way within that wing of the palace where Croft already knew that Jadgor led his private life. The high priest moved as of perfect right, saluted by a sentry here and there in corridor and hall. So at length he came to two guardsmen posted outside a door of molded copper, embossed with the symbol of a setting sun, which Croft sensed at once as Aphur's sign.

And here Magur asked for the king.

Quitting his fellow, one of the guardsmen disappeared through the door, was absent for some few moments, and returned. Leaving the door agape behind him, he signed Magur and Croft to enter the room beyond.

Thus for the third time Croft came upon Jadgor of Aphur. And now, as on the first occasion, he found him in the room where he had conversed with Lakkon concerning a way to counter Zollaria's plans. Yet now for the first time he met Aphur's ruler in the flesh, and faced him man to man.

Magur approached the seat where Jadgor waited his coming. "King of Aphur," he said. "I bring with me Jasor of Nodhur, in whom Zitu himself has worked a miracle, as it seems, so that he who was known a dull wit for cycles at Scira's school, having fallen ill unto death, returns to life with a changed mind, and comes bringing tablets to me from a brother in Scira to the end that I gain him audience with thee."

"With me," Jadgor said, bending a glance at Croft.

"Aye."

Jadgor continued to study Croft. "To what end?" he inquired at length.

"To the end that Himyra and all Aphur may grow strong beyond any Tamarizian dream, and Cathur never mount the throne at Zitra," Croft replied.

Jadgor started. He narrowed his eyes. "What talk is this?" he cried, his strong hand gripping the edge of his seat.

"Jadgor the king knows best in his heart," said Croft, and waited. "I ask but his aid to bring this thing to pass."

"These things have been spoken to Magur?" Jadgor turned his eyes to the face of the priest.

"Aye," Croft said quickly.

Jadgor nodded. "Then speak of them to me."

An hour passed while Croft explained and the two Tamarizians listened or bent above the drawings he unrolled. "And this—how do you name it—" Jadgor began at last.

"Motur." Croft threw the word into the native speech.

"This motur will do these things?" Jadgor asked in a tone of amaze.

"All I have promised, and more."

"And what is required to bring this to pass?"

"Workers in metals—a supply of wine to be used as I shall direct—and a closed mouth that Cathur shall not be advised, nor permitted to view the work until done."

"Those things are granted. I shall see it arranged." Jadgor turned his eyes again in Magur's direction. "Priest of Zitu—Zitu's own hand appears in the plans of Jasor's mind. The designs of Zitu himself have surely entered his soul. I, Jadgor, shall sponsor the carrying out." And once more he addressed Croft. "When shall this work begin?"

"So soon as Aphur wills."

"Good." Jadgor clapped his hands. He was a man of action as Croft knew, quick to see an opportunity and seize it. Now as a guardsman answered the summons, he spoke quickly in direction. "Make search for my son, Prince Robur, and say I desire him here."

The soldier withdrew, and Jadgor plunged into further questions concerning Croft's plans. Croft on his part answered him fully, promising other wonders than the motor in good time, until a faint tinge of color crept into Jadgor's cheeks and his eyes were aglint with a deep and subtle light. Croft would not doubt but that he saw Aphur dominating all the nation, that he dreamed a far-reaching dream.

And at that moment there entered the room a youth to whom Croft's heart went out. Clean-limbed, strong-featured, with a well-shaped jaw, and a mouth not lacking in humor, he advanced with a springing stride and stood before the king.

"Robur, my son," Jadgor began. "Jasor of Nodhur is our guest. In all things shall you aid him, speaking in all such matters as the mouthpiece of the king. See to it that he has metal-workers under his command to do his bidding, also that wine is given into his hands for such use as he sees fit."

Robur put forth a hand, which Croft took in his own. The Prince of Aphur smiled. "My father's word is the law in Aphur," he said. "Welcome, Nodhur. Ask and I obey."

"First, then," said Croft, "I would visit my father's galley at the quays and acquaint them with what has occurred before they continue up the Na."

"Come, then," Robur responded to the natural request.

He led Croft from the room. Five minutes later the two men were driving down the terraced inclines to the quay where Sinon's galley lay. Not only that, but at his own request, Croft held the reins above the four gnuppas and guided them down the sloping roads. He felt for the first time that at last he stood on the threshold of that success for which he had planned.

And thus he began that work on Palos which was to hold him for many months. He presented Sinon and Mellia to Robur, and after an hour spent in explanations, and ending with a promise to visit Ladhra after he had his work in Himyra started, he left them divided between amazement and pride in their son.

"Once what I intend is completed, we will mount these splendid roads without gnuppas, and at many times their speed," he said as Robur and he re-entered the prince's car.

Robur opened his eyes. "Say you so? Is it for that I am to aid you as my father said?"

"Aye."

"Then let us begin at once. I would like to see the thing accomplished," Robur urged.

Croft nodded and briefly described what was required.

"There is a place where the doors of metal and the bodies of the chariots and carriage are molded," Robur said. "Metal is melted and worked into shape, according to designs."

Croft had felt assured that some such industry existed from the molded doors and the type of the other metalwork he had seen. "Take me there, O Robur of Aphur," he said.

Robur laughed. He was an exceedingly companionable man. "Call me not by so lengthy a title," he exclaimed. "I am drawn to you, Jasor. Let us forget questions of caste or rank between ourselves. Speak to me as Rob."

"Gladly will I call you so," said Croft, his heart warming to this proffered friendship of Aphur's heir. "And let us pledge ourselves now to work for the welfare of our nation until it is assured." He thrust out a hand.

Robur's eyes lighted as they held Croft's palm. "This is a day of wonder for all Tamarizia," he said, and turned the gnuppas southward along the river road.

In the end he brought them to a stand before an enormous building, wherein Croft found the flares of fires, and men, well-nigh naked, at work in their glare. Robur led him to the captain in charge of the place, and made him acquainted with Croft's needs. Inside an hour Croft was superintending the makings of certain wooden patterns, to be molded and cast in tempered copper, while Robur looked on, all eyes.

And his eyes were glinting as they left the Palosian foundry and drove toward the royal depots of wines, after Croft had given certain of the metal-workers the designs for a huge copper retort to be made at once.

At the depots, where Croft found unlimited supplies of wine, stored in skin bottles of tabur hide, Jason ordered the building of a brick furnace for the retort when it was done, giving the dimensions and plans of construction to masons hurriedly called. That task arranged for, Robur drove him back to the palace, and led him straight to his own private suite.

A woman rose as they entered. She was sweet-faced, with brown eyes and hair. Robur presented Croft to her as his wife, a princess of Milidhur, and proudly displayed two children, a boy and a girl. Croft found his reception gracious in the extreme, and learned he was to be the guest of Robur and Gaya while engaged in his work. He was to learn also that Gaya was no uncommon name in Tamarizia, and that it fitted the wife of Aphur's prince. She was a cheerful, bright, and sympathetic soul, who listened to Robur's and Croft's description of their plans, and cried out with delight at what they proposed.

Thereafter the days passed quickly, and Croft checked off each as it fled as bringing one day nearer the time set for the formal betrothal of Naia to Kyphallos, whom, he learned, was also a guest of the palace, through meeting him now and again, and questioning the prince, whom, when alone, he now called Rob.

And as the days passed, part after part of the new engine which was to revolutionize transportation on Palos was drafted, molded, and made. Robur's wonder grew, as it seemed, with the making of each new part, and his impatience of the final result became intense. But many hands made rapid work. Croft selected each man who showed any particular aptitude and delegated him to that individual task.

The huge retort was set up and was producing pure alcoholic spirit every day. Inside ten days Croft himself began the assembling of the already finished parts. At his own request, Robur was permitted to assist. More than once Croft smiled to himself as he beheld the crown prince of Aphur soiled, grimy, smudged, and enjoying himself immensely, tugging away at a wrench or wielding a riveting-hammer on the growing work of wonder which they built.

To gain speed, Croft had introduced the unheard-of night-shift in Himyra. Day and night now the work went on, and his first creation advanced apace. Only on the winding of the magneto did he maintain great secrecy. Over that he and Robur worked alone. It was the main, essential part, he explained to the prince. Without it the whole thing would be useless and dead. He even tried to make Robur understand the electric nature of the device and, failing, told him it was the same as the lightning in the clouds.

"Zitu!" cried Robur with a glance of something akin to fright. "Jasor, would you harness Zitu's fire?"

"By Zitu's permission," Croft said.

Aphur's prince studied that. "Aye," he said at length. "My friend, you are a strange and wonderful man. Jadgor believes that Zitu himself had endowed your mind, and Magur says as much in your favor, also."

"Magur speaks the truth," Croft declared, once more sensing a possible means of harmonizing the approaching need for his return to earth, were he to keep the bond unbroken between Palos and his earthly body. "Listen, Rob. Strange things occurred in this body of mine in Scira. At times—when the need occurs—it shall fall asleep; and from each sleep shall it return with new knowledge for the good of Tamarizia's race, and the confounding of Zollaria's plans."

"Zollaria! Hai!" Robur exclaimed. It was the first time Croft had mentioned the northern nation to him.

"To oppose which Jadgor designs to betroth your cousin to Kyphallos of Cathur." Suddenly Croft grew bold.

Robur frowned.

"Rob," Croft went on, "I would ask favor if it may be granted."

"Speak," Robur said.

"I would be present at the betrothal-feast inside the next few days."

"By Zitu, and you shall," Robur declared.

"My caste—" Croft began.

Robur laughed and tapped him on the breast with a wrench. "Rise, Hupor! If this work succeeds, that will be arranged."

Croft felt his pulses quicken. "You mean—" he began again, and once more paused.

Robur nodded. "That Jadgor, my father, will raise you to the first rank beneath the throne."

CHAPTER XII

THE NEW PRINCE, HUPOR JASOR

On the day before the betrothal-feast Croft finished his magneto, tested it out before Robur's eyes, and obtained a good, fat spark. Hastily connecting it with the now assembled motor, for which workmen were building a chassis such as Palos had never seen, he filled a testing-tank with spirit, primed the carburetor, that he had somewhat changed for the use of the different fuel, and then laid hold of the crank.

It was a tense moment, and his voice showed his realization of the fact as he spoke to Robur: "Watch now, Rob—watch!"

He spun the crank around. For the first time on Palos there came a motor's cough. Again Croft whirred the crank, spinning it to generate the life-giving spark. He was answered by a hearty hum. The motor quivered and shook. A staccato sound of steady explosions filled the room in which it stood. Like gunfire its exhaust broke forth. The heavy balance-wheel Croft had arranged for the trial to load it to safety spun swiftly round and round.

A commotion rose in the shop. Captains and subcaptains ran from their work to view the success of that for which they had worked. They stood staring at the throbbing, quivering engine. Croft straightened and stood, pale of face but with blazing eyes, before them. He had won! Won! Robur's face told him he had won! It was a face filled with a mighty wonder and delight.

And suddenly the crown prince spoke: "Back—back to your work. Work as ye have never worked before. Complete the frame for this to ride upon, the wheels. Make all ready, men of Aphur, and spare no effort to the aim. A new day has dawned in Aphur—in Tamarizia. Inside the hour there shall be a new prince. Salute him, Hupor Jasor, who thus has served the state."

They lifted their hands in salute, those captains, and turned away. Croft looked into Robur's eyes. "Rob," he stammered, and put out his hands—"Rob—"

"Aye," Robur said. "Such is the order of Aphur's king did the test we were to make today succeed. He will himself confirm it tomorrow night. In the meantime I am told to bid Jasor to the betrothal-feast of Naia of Aphur to Cathur's prince. What now of caste my friend?"

Croft quivered. He shook in every limb. The gulf was bridged—that gulf of rank between himself and the girl of gold at the shrine of whose sweet presence his own spirit bowed. He opened his lips yet found himself overwhelmed with emotion, unable to speak.

Robur cast an arm about his shoulders as the two men stood. "Jasor, my friend," he once more began. "Means this thing so much to you? Why? What things have you in mind I know not of?

"Speak. Know you not, Jasor, that I love you?"

"Aye," said Croft. "Yet Rob, I may not speak of those things as yet." Nor did he feel that he could at present confess the thing in his heart. "Later you shall know all," he declared. "As for the rest—you are my dearest friend."

"Speak when you will," Robur replied. "Tomorrow at the house of Prince Lakkon, Jadgor shall name you Hupor before the nobles of Aphur. So is it planned. And when this motur of ours is completed, you shall drive it to Ladhra and take with you the noble rank for Sinon, since he has served his state in bringing about your birth."

Tomorrow night at the house of Prince Lakkon! The words rang in Croft's brain. Naia—his beloved should see him exalted, made a noble of Aphur. What more auspicious meeting could he desire than this? It was fate—fate. Suddenly Croft felt his face flush and his eyes took on a flashing light. "Rob," he cried. "This is only the beginning. What we shall do for Tamarizia Zitu only knows."

"Would Zitu had sent you before this then," Robur growled.

Croft noted his change of manner with amaze, and plainly Robur was not unmindful of his regard.

"I question not the wisdom of Jadgor, my father," he went on quickly. "Yet like I not this sacrifice of a virgin maid to the lecherous son of Cathur's king."

"Rob!" Croft cried, as his friend and comrade paused and caught a single lung-filling breath and went on. "Zitu himself must frown upon such a thing."

Robur eyed him with mounting interest, and suddenly Croft raced ahead in eager question. "Rob—how long between the night of betrothal and the marriage itself?"

"Hai!" Robur narrowed his eyes. "A cycle, my friend. By royal custom these things are never matters of haste."

"A cycle!" Croft threw up his head and laughed. "Rob, could we make Tamarizia strong beyond any dream of her wisest men inside that cycle, what then?"

Robur frowned. "A promise is a promise, my friend."

"But," said Croft, "Much may happen in a cycle—and Zollaria plans."

"What mean you?" Robur seized his arm in a grip like iron. "Jasor—you are a strange man. Twice now have you spoken of Zollaria's plans. What do you have in mind?"

"To watch Cathur's prince," said Croft. "Hold, Rob—the priest, Abbu, is my friend. He will help us in this. Magur, too, must give us aid. Let us watch—and work."

Work—yes, work. With a Sirian year in which to work for such a prize what could a man not do? Croft threw up his face and met Robur's questioning gaze. "Aphur shall show the way to the nation," he cried. "Zollaria's plans shall come to naught, my friend."

"Zitu!" Robur gasped. "After tomorrow night we must speak of these things to Aphur's king. Jasor, I am minded that Magur is right. Zitu works through you to his ends."

The motor coughed and died, having used up its fuel. Croft smiled, and called Robur back to work. Through the day they toiled, and by night the engine was bolted to the chassis, wheeled into the assembling-room by the workmen that afternoon. There remained now no more than the assembling of the clutch and the transmission before the body should be affixed to complete the car. And the body was ready and waiting to be bolted fast.

Croft worked throughout the night. Robur offered to assist, but he refused. He wanted to be alone—to think—think—plan the future steps of those things he would do inside the coming year. He had sworn to make Aphur strong. And as he assembled the final portions of this first work of his genius, he considered that.

The answer was plain. Aphur must arm—and Nodhur—and Milidhur from whence came the gentle, sweetly sympathetic Gaya, Robur's wife. And of arms he knew little, but—he could learn. Only he had to return to earth. There, not many miles from his own town, was the home of a man who before now had won fame as a maker of arms. Indeed, as Croft knew he had designed weapons afterward adopted by the royal nations of Europe and made by them on a patent lease from this man, Croft's friend.

It would be easy, then, to learn what he desired; to bring back the plans of those self-same weapons and make them here under the patronage of Aphur's king. Then—well—let Zollaria plan and hold what bait she would before Cathur's eyes. Croft chuckled to himself as he worked, and the captain assisting him in Robur's place thought him pleased with their progress and smiled.

"This motur of thine will surely draw the car in lieu of gnuppas, my lord?" he inquired.

"Aye," said Croft with a nod.

"By Zitu! Never was anything like it dreamed of in Tamarizia before thy coming," the captain rumbled in his throat.

Croft nodded again. "Tomorrow I shall bring you orders to start all men working on those parts they have made for this, in untold numbers," he returned. "And hark you, captain. Each man shall make but the one part—which he makes the best. So shall we make many and build them together at once and produce a vast number of cars, and other motors to drive boats on the Na."

"By Zitu! Then shall Aphur rule the seas indeed."

"Tamarizia shall rule," said Croft with an assurance not to be denied.

The captain gave him a glance. What he read carried conviction to his mind. "My lord," he said. "My lord."

"Lord." They called him that now. Croft chuckled again to himself and went to work. Lord. And tomorrow night—no, the night of this day as it would be on earth—they would call him "lord" before Naia herself. He would meet her—speak to her, perhaps. He called upon the captain for assistance and redoubled his rate of work.

And as the first rays of Sirius began to gild the red walls of Himyra, he finished filling the fuel tank with spirits, told the captain to open wide the doors of the building wherein they had toiled through the night, and seized hold upon the crank of the engine he had built.

The motor roared out. Croft sprang to the driver's seat. He let in his clutch. And slowly—very slowly the car moved toward the open doors.

One glimpse Jason had of the captain's face—a thing wide-eyed, agape with amazed belief, and then he was outside the massive walls of that foundry womb in which the car had been formed. He was out in the streets of Himyra, riding the thing he had made—the first of many things as he had determined during the night.

For a moment visions of marine motors, tractors, airplanes, filled his brain; then as a night guard at the throat of the street caught sight of him, and wavering between fear and duty, yielded swiftly to the former and fled with a yell of terror, he came back to the matter in hand.

He gained the river road and opened the throttle notch by notch. Swiftly and more swiftly the new car moved. The sweet air of morning sang about his ears. The throb of the motor was a paean of praise—a promise of what was to come. He reached the palace entrance and turned in. Straight to the steps of the king's wing he drove and brought the car to a stand.

Like their fellow of the street, the guards shrank back in amazement from this strangest of chariots they had ever seen, until Croft, rising in his seat, ordered them to send word to Robur and Jadgor himself, that he waited their inspection of the car. He himself was thrilling with creative fire, divine. It was in his mind to demonstrate the new creation in the vast court, deserted thus early in the day. He throttled down and sat waiting while a guardsman hurried away.

Then into the midst of his elation broke the voice of Aphur's prince. "Hai, Jasor, my lord, this is a surprise. Now I see that which last night you planned."

Robur had hurried forth with Gaya by his side, and behind him now came Jadgor, between a double row of guards. While Croft rose and gave a hand to Robur and Gaya in turn, and bowed before the king, the latter advanced quite to the side of the new, and to his experience, wonderful machine.

"You came here in the motur itself?" Robur asked.

"Yes," Croft replied. "And well-nigh frightened a night guard out of his wits when he saw me bearing down on him, as well as carrying consternation into the minds of even soldiers here."

Robur laughed. "I can well believe that," he agreed. "Had I known not of it I fear I should have been sadly disturbed myself."

Jadgor smiled. "If it carried fear into the hearts of Aphur's guards, might it not do likewise to an enemy's men as well?" he remarked.

"O king, it is in my mind that it would do even that," Croft returned, sensing the deeper meaning back of the mere words as applying to a specific enemy. He gave Jadgor a meaning glance. "May I show you the motur in action, O King of Aphur?" he asked.

"Yes," Jadgor agreed.

"Wait!" Robur cried, as Croft resumed his seat. "Wait, Jasor, I shall go with you. Gaya will be the first woman of Aphur to ride in such a chariot."

Gaya smiled. Like most of the Tamarizian women, Croft had seen she seemed devoid of any particular fear. She took Robur's hand and stepped into the car. Robur followed with scant dignity in his eagerness to put this new mode of travel to the test.

Then Croft engaged his clutch and the car moved off, rolling without apparent means of propulsion in circles about the great red court while the guards and Jadgor watched. For some five minutes Croft kept up the circling before he brought the machine to a stand before the king, and once more rising, bowed.

"Your words were true, O Jasor," spoke Jadgor then. "In this I see great service to the state. Hail Hupor!" He caught a sword from the nearest soldier, and advancing, struck Croft lightly upon the breast with the flat of the blade. "More of this tonight," he said, stepping back. "In the meantime arrange to build as many of these moturs as you may—also for those which shall propel the boats."

Turning, he withdrew with his guard, disappearing into the palace. Gaya smiled at her husband and Croft. "I, too, shall withdraw now," she began. "I can see you are eager to be alone with this new toy. My thanks, Lord Jasor, for the ride. All my life long I shall remember myself the first of Tamarizian women to mount your wonderful car."

Robur helped her to get out, then sprang back to Croft's side. His face was alight. "Now—go! Let us ride!" he exclaimed. "Let us leave the city along the highway to the south and test the motur for speed."

Nothing loth, Croft once more advanced gas and spark and let in the clutch. Outside the palace entrance he turned south along the Na. Robur, beside him, seemed strangely like a boy. "Approach the gate slowly," he chuckled as they rode. "Let me see for myself what effect we have on the guards."

His wish was granted in a surprisingly short time. As they neared the gate, not yet open to morning traffic, a guardsman appeared. Plainly he was watching, yet he made no move. He seemed practically paralyzed at the sight which met his eyes. In the end, however, he suddenly lifted his spear as though expecting to meet a charge with its point. His face was rigidly set. He appeared one determined to die in the path of duty if die he must.

"Open, fellow!" Robur shouted with a grin.

His voice wrought a change in the man. He caught a deep breath, dropped his spear and flung himself toward the levers which worked the gate. "My lord," he said, as Croft drove past where he now stood at attention with the gate swung wide. "My lord!"

Robur flung him a bit of silver and a laugh. Then they were out of the tunnel through the wall and rushing up the well-built road. "That fellow thought us Zitemque himself, to judge by his expression," he chuckled. "Jasor, my friend—go faster—let—"

"Let her out!" Croft could not resist the expression of earth.

"Aye," said Robur, staring. "Let—her—out. Where got you that form of speech, my friend?"

"I—it was used on the moment to express the idea intended," Croft replied. "It is as though one released the reins and allowed the gnuppas to run free."

Robur nodded. "Yes, I sense it. Let—her—out."

Croft complied. They sped south. Without a speedometer Croft could only estimate their rate of progress, but he judged the new engine made thirty miles an hour at least.

Robur was amazed. So were others after a time. The speeding car met the first of the early market throng and cleared the road of everything it met. Men, women, and live stock bolted as the undreamed engine of locomotion roared past. Their cries blended into an uproar which tore laughter from Robur's throat. Croft himself gave way to more than one smile.

Swiftly they passed the area of cultivation and entered the desert road where Croft had seen the sarpelca caravan on his first Palosian day. On, on they roared along the level surface between dunes of yellow sand and across golden arid flats. The exhilaration of motion was in their veins. Head down above his wheel Croft sent the car ahead, until dashing between two dunes they came to where a second road joined that on which they ran.

Robur cried out. Croft flung up his head. One swift glimpse he had of a team of purple-plumed gnuppas reared on their haunches, their forefeet pawing the air, their nostrils flaring, their eyes maddened with fright, and of a burnished carriage behind them. Then he was past, throttling the engine, seeking to bring the car to a stand. While from behind the sound of a strong man shouting, came hoarsely to his ears.

CHAPTER XIII

HOW NAIA FIRST SAW JASOR

The car slowed down and stood still. Robur sprang to his feet. Croft turned to look back. The carriage was off the road and dashing across a level stretch of sand.

How it came that Prince Lakkon's carriage was here, neither man knew. They were to only learn later that Naia, wearied of her preparations for the coming feast of betrothal, had induced her father to take her to her mountain home on the previous night, and that now she was returning in time to avoid the later heat of the Sirian day. Yet both men had recognized the purple-plumed gnuppas and the conveyance which now swayed and rocked behind their fright-maddened flight.

"Lakkon's!" Croft gasped.

"Aye, by Zitu," Robur gave assent. "And should Chythron fail to hold them soon, death lies in that direction at the bottom of the gorge."

"Sit down. Hold fast!" Even as Robur spoke, Croft sensed his full meaning and planned. Under his touch the engine roared. He let in his clutch with a jerk which shot the car into motion with a leap. Death lay ahead of the careening carriage behind the beasts he had frightened out of their driver's control. Whether Chythron alone, or Lakkon or the prince and his daughter rode in that rocking conveyance it was his place to do what he could. Leaving the road with a lurch which nearly unseated Robur and himself, he swung the car about and increased its speed.

He had told Jadgor he would build an engine to outrun the Tamarizian gnuppa, and here at once was the test. True Croft thought not of that in any such fashion as he drove. His only fear was lest he fail to overhaul the flying beasts in time. His greatest fear was that Naia herself might be in that frantic rush toward death, hurtling to an end invoked at his hands. His soul sank in a sick wave of horror. Yet he set his lips and clenched his jaws and drove. Faster and faster leaped the roaring car behind the leaping things of flesh and blood he sought to overtake.

And he was overtaking them now. He crossed the second road with a nerve-wracking swing and jolt. Unable to procure rubber for his wheels he had faced them with heavy leather some two inches thick, which lacked the resiliency of air. His arms ached from the wrench with which he crossed the road. But that past he gathered speed with every revolution of the wheels.

"Faster! Zitu! Faster!" Robur urged at his side. "Faster, Jasor—the gorge is just ahead!"

Croft made no reply. He was almost abreast of the carriage now. But he himself had seen the break in the surface of the flat across which he drove. He set his teeth till the muscles in his strong jaws bunched and drove toward it at top speed. His one hope was that the thing which had set the gnuppas into flight might be able to turn them back.

And he was past them now! Past them, with the gorge directly ahead. He began to edge in upon them. He would stop them or turn them at any cost to himself. And the margin was scant. Nearer and nearer to the lip of the sheer descent he was forced to turn in order to hold his lead.

"Jump! Save yourself!" His voice rose in a cry of warning to his companion in the car. The gorge was very close. He turned to parallel its course and found it angling off at a slant. And the gnuppas were turning, too—edging away from the thing they feared—edging, edging away. Croft edged with them, turning them more and more. Chythron was sawing on his reins. Suddenly the beasts stopped in a series of ragged lunges and stood quivering and panting. Croft stopped the car.

"By Zitu! Jasor, you are a man!"

He became conscious that Robur was still with him on the seat, and that he himself was aquiver in every limb.

Yet he forgot that as the purple curtains of the carriage were swept back and Prince Lakkon leaped out, gave Robur and him a swift glance, and assisted Naia to alight.

Robur and he leaped down. They advanced toward Lakkon and his daughter. "My uncle and my cousin," Robur began; "we crave your pardon for causing you this inconvenience through no intent of our own. Yet must you give thanks to our brave Lord Jasor here for undoing our work so quickly as he might, and turning back the gnuppas from their course. By Zitu, I am assured, had he not succeeded he would have gone with you into the gorge."

Lakkon bowed. "My Lord Jasor," said he, "it appears that I owe you my safety as well as that of my child. Accept my service at your need. I have heard of you and yonder wonder-carriage you have wrought. After tonight I go to my villa in the mountains. You must be our guest for a time. Naia, my child, extend your thanks to the noble Jasor for your life."

Croft found himself looking into the purple eyes of the woman he loved. He thrilled as she lifted her glance. Then, as her red lips parted, he opened his own. "Nay, not your life, Princess Naia—some bruises had you leaped from the carriage, perhaps."

"My thanks for the service none the less, my lord," she made answer in her own well-remembered voice. "I like not bruises truly, and at least you did save me those."

She extended a slender hand.

Croft took her fingers in his and found his pulses leaping at the contact. What more favorable meeting could have brought him before this girl in the flesh? Prompted by a sudden impulse, he bent and set his lips to the fingers he held, straightened and looked deep into the wells of her eyes.

A swift color mounted into the maiden's cheeks at the unwonted form of homage and the fire in Croft's glance. She dropped her lids and seemed confused for the first time during the course of the whole affair.

Robur broke into the rather tense pause. "What say you, Lakkon; your gnuppas are hardly fit to be trusted more today. Enter this car our Hupor has built, and be the first Prince of Aphur to enter Himyra thus."

Lakkon smiled. He spoke to Chythron, ordering him to drive the gnuppas to the city as best he might. Then, with Croft acting as Naia's guide, turned with Robur toward the car.

Nor was he niggard in his praise as Croft started the engine, and placing the girl beside him, drove back to the road and along it to the city gates. He even laughed with enjoyment at the further consternation their progress caused along the road, and when a team of draft gnuppas bolting, scattered a mass of broken crates full of the strange water-fowl Croft had found the first day, in a squawking confusion, he scattered largess to the owner of team and load and bade Croft proceed.

As for Croft, that ride with the girl of his ultimate desire at his side was a delight such as he had never known. Coupled with the sense that he had saved her from possible injury at least, if not from actual death, and at the same time proved his own daring, was blended the sheer enjoyment of her presence and the sound of her voice as she questioned him concerning the, to her marvelous, conveyance he drove. Those questions he answered freely, knowing her loyal to Tamarizia at heart.

So in the end they passed the city gates and made their way to Lakkon's house, where Croft turned in toward the massive moulded doors.

Naia showed some surprise. "My lord," she said, "you know our dwelling, it would seem."

"I have looked upon it with longing ere this," said Croft, growing bold through the kindness of fate. For fate he felt it was which had brought them together in a fashion such as this.

And Naia gave him a glance and once more veiled her eyes while a tide of responsive color dyed her face. Plainly she caught the meaning of his words.

"Your name is among those of our guests for tonight," she said. "Your welcome will be doubly great after today, and—you will accept our invitation to the mountains?"

"If you add your invitation to your father's, so soon as I may arrange the work on other moturs," Croft agreed.

"Then you will come," she told him softly without lifting her eyes. And Croft thrilled at her manner as much as at her words. He stopped the car, reached up and rang the gong as Chythron had done the first day he came to Aphur, leaped out and assisted Naia to alight.

CHAPTER XIV

THE SLIP 'TWIXT CUP AND LIP

And that night all Himyra was en fête. Under the light of fire, oil lamps, and flaring torches, whose glare lit up the sky above the walls, the Red City of Aphur made holiday. Crowds swarmed the public squares and clustered about the free entertainments, the free refreshment booths erected by order of Jadgor, Aphur's king, to celebrate the coming alliance between Cathur and the state.

Processions of the people moved through the streets, laughing, singing, shouting and making merry in honor of the event. Once before when Robur brought a princess of Milidhur to Himyra the city had flared thus red in the night. Now again Jadgor was making greater his prestige of power and increasing Aphur's political might.

Croft, returning to his quarters in the palace from a day spent in starting intensive work on a hundred engines and a marine adoption of the same, met a surprise.

Upon his copper couch was a noble dress consisting of a golden cuirass embossed in silver, a kilted skirt, gold and silver leg casings, and sandals, a leathern belt, and a tempered copper sword. As he came in a Mazzerian servant rose and bade him to one of the palace baths. Returning from that, Croft donned a sleeveless shirt of silklike tissue and the cuirass over that. Kneeling, the servant adjusted the sandals and rose to buckle on the sword. These things he mentioned were a gift from Jadgor himself, a mark of Croft's service to the state.

Jason had been less than human had he not felt a glow of satisfaction in this sign of royal esteem and friendship. But greater far than that was the knowledge that this night in Lakkon's house he would meet Naia herself as a friend already known, and be lifted to high rank before her eyes. That tonight would see her pledged to Kyphallos, he chose to overlook. A year must follow before she became the Cathurian's wife. Much could happen in a year, as he had said to Robur days ago.

Something he had read came into his mind. "Let him who wins her take and keep Faustine." He thought that was the form of the quotation. At least it was the sense. He nodded to himself. Let him who could win her take and keep Naia of Aphur. He, Croft, had a year in which to win the woman he desired.

Robur came into the room. Gaya had gone to Lakkon's earlier in the day to act as Naia's lady in the ceremonial preparations. He suggested that Croft and he be off. Aphurian etiquette decreed that the principal guest be the last to arrive, in order that the assembled company might do him honor when he came. Jadgor and Kyphallos would follow, said the prince.

Croft assented at once. Lifting a circlet supporting a tuft of orange feathers, he set it upon his head, and Robur and he set out, in the prince's own car, drawn by four beautiful gnuppas, their bridles trimmed with nodding scarlet plumes.

Before Lakkon's house they found themselves in a press of other carriages and chariots from which were descending the best of Aphur's life.

The huge doors of the court stood open, and the court itself blazed with light. A double line of guards stood within the portals as the guests streamed in, and a herald in gold and purple cried the name of each new arrival aloud through a wide-mouthed trumpet held before his lips.

Inside, the tables were spread much as on the former occasion Croft had witnessed, save that now a dais had been constructed at one end, where were the places of Kyphallos and Naia, Jadgor and Lakkon, and as Jason was to learn of Robur, Gaya and himself. Lakkon stood at the end of the double row of guards and welcomed his guests. He gave Croft his hand with a smile which lighted his eyes. "Welcome, Lord Jasor—to mine house—to Himyra's happiness, to the honor of Aphur," he said, and bent his knee to Robur as the two men passed.

It was then Robur led Croft to the dais and mounted the steps as one who knew beforehand his place assigned. Croft hung back, and his companion laughed. "Up," he cried. "Tonight you are honored of Aphur above most men."

Tingling at the knowledge, Croft mounted and seated himself at a wave from Robur's hand. The prince gazed on the brilliant scene with a smile of something like pride. "A goodly company," he said.

Croft, too, gazed around before he replied. Surely Robur had spoken aright he thought as he swept the body of the guests where colors blended in endless harmony of shades, and the white arms and shoulders of matron and maid gleamed in the play of the lights.

Lights! He cast his eyes about the myriad of flaming lamps and suddenly he smiled. "Yet would it be even more brilliant were the oil lamps removed and in their place we were to put small globes of glass which would emit a radiance not due to oil, but to a glowing filament shut within them, so that they would need no filling, but would burn when a small knob were turned."

"Zitu!" Robur gave him a glance. "Are you at it again—with your wonderful dreams?"

"Yes." Once more Croft smiled and grew serious as it recurred to his mind that before long he must again return to earth. "Call them dreams, Rob," he said. "Dreams they may be—yet shall you see them come true. And—listen, my loyal friend; it may be that before long I shall dream again as I dreamed before—that my body shall lie as Jasor's body lay in Scira—shall seem to die."

"What mean you?" Robur cried. "This you have said before."

Croft shook his head. "I may not tell you more; yet I would exact your promise that when the time comes, as I know it will, you shall set a guard about my body and forbid that it be disturbed until I shall again awake with a full knowledge of what more shall be done for Aphur's good."

"You mean this—you do not jest?" Robur's voice had grown little better than a whisper, and his eyes burned the question into Croft's brain.

"Yes. Will you promise, Rob?"

"I will promise, and what I promise I fulfill," said Robur. "Yet—you arouse fancies within me, Jasor. One would think Zitu himself spoke to you in that sleep."

"No—yet what I do, I do by His grace," Croft replied. "And from each sleep I am assured shall come good to the Tamarizian race." And suddenly as trumpets announced the arrival of Kyphallos and the King, he felt light, relieved, free. He had arranged for those periods of unconsciousness for Jasor's body, and need not trouble more about it with the promise he had won from Jadgor's son.