The end of the month following the election found Croft beginning to carry out his material plans. Robur coming to Zitra for the inauguration of Jadgor, bringing Gaya and Naia with him—the latter at Lakkon's request—found time to insist that Jason return to Himyra at once, and institute the work they had before discussed.
Nor to tell the truth was Croft in any way loath. Indeed work was what he craved, rather than a life such as for the past two weeks he had found himself compelled to live in the Zitran pyramid. In addition he felt that the atmosphere of Zitra would be subtly changed once Jadgor was upon the ground, while in Aphur with Robur, his friend and collaborator in his endeavors, the course of his plans would be cleared. Then, too, he was thrilled by the thought of contriving a material meeting with Naia, even more than by anything else. That thought it was which set him to work on the development of electric power first.
Before that, however, he took Zud and journeyed to Scira in a galley, its hull gilded, its sails of azure-blue, with a blue canopy above its after deck, driven by a motor, rather than the oars which had formerly projected from its waist. And at Scira he interviewed Koryphu, the head of the university, regarding the establishment of schools. It was arranged that he should induce Mutlos to take the matter up with Jadgor, and Croft and the high priest sailed south to the mouth of the Na and up its yellow flood.
Then once more Himyra's forges flared as they had flared for the greater part of that strange year before. Robur, democratic despite his royal birth, went with Croft to the shops. In them was posted a notice printed from Jason's original alphabetical blocks, announcing that past the command of the Mouthpiece of Zitu there was no further word. In all things pertaining to the development of the things he had planned Croft found himself supreme. He directed and designed, while at the same time he cultivated the friendship of his superintending captains and their men.
One of his first steps was to set about developing the vein of coal he had discovered. He organized a band of miners and a motor transport train. It was a strange sight when the latter for the first time rolled forth. Robur and he went with it, and saw to the starting of the work. Save for his faith in Jason the new governor of Aphur would have doubted. Laughing, Croft gave him and the staring bands of miners and captains a demonstration, and allayed their doubts. On the second day, after the strippers were uncovering the vein and others of the men were erecting cabins to house the workers, Robur and he drove back.
Copper wire and rubber, or a substitute, were what he next required. The first was easily gained. For generations the Tamarizians had worked in metal, as shown by their couches, their molded doors, their carriages and chariots and their tempered swords and spears. Croft set hundreds of the workers to the task of making wire. The second requirement was far less readily gained. But he did not despair. Aphur's climate was tropical in the main. He believed he might find some vegetable product such as he needed for the insulation of his wires and set about an extensive questioning of the city's learned men. So in the end he learned of a tree which exuded a milk-like sap, in the forests south along the Na. Thither he and Robur went straightway in a motor-driven galley, and the thing was done in theory at least, depending for its practical working out on the efforts of an army of local natives, whom the two set to gathering sap.
Back again in Himyra, save at night, Croft gave himself little rest. And even at night since, on Robur's insistence, he had taken up residence at the palace rather than in the Himyran pyramid, Robur and he discussed their plans, unless the governor was called by his duties somewhere else. Occasionally when this happened, Croft talked with Gaya instead.
In this way he succeeded in winning her sympathetic understanding of his position, even as concerning his love for Naia he had won it once before. And Gaya, whose nature was characterized by a sweet simplicity, questioned him frankly concerning the episode of Naia's attempted suicide in the pool:
"Robur swore by Zitu, he believed you present, in the same guise in which you have told me, you move when your body sleeps."
"Yes, Robur was right," Croft told her and described step by step what had occurred.
The princess nodded. "Now that Lakkon remains with Jadgor at Zitra, the maid grows lonely," she declared. "She has asked me to visit her. May I speak with her concerning these things if she mentions to me her dreams?"
Croft smiled. On Palos, or on earth, woman he thought was the same. And Gaya, happy beyond question in the arms of the man of her choice, stood ready to lead or drive Naia, a sister-woman to a mating if she could. And, smiling, he nodded assent, but added a caution. "Yet speak not of it save as of a dream—wife of my true friend. For the growth of the soul must be as the growth of a flower, which the light of truth expands."
His wire being made, his rubber gathered, Croft turned next to the harnessing of the mountain stream. He chose copper for his penstocks instead of wood, furnishing specifications to the molders for the sections of the pipe and designing the model of the turbines to be mounted in the pits.
In all things Robur rendered him such assistance as he could, while he never ceased to marvel at the very things he planned. "Mouthpiece of Zitu you are indeed!" he exclaimed again and again, with flashing eyes as some new detail was unfolded to his mind. "Let Jadgor be president at his leisure. Thou and I, my Jason, shall take Tamarizia yet and make it a new world."
And with such a lieutenant Croft found his work advance. Wire was being made in miles, rubber was being delivered in enormous chunks from the commercial galleys down the Na, loaded onto trucks along the quays, drawn by the dog-like creatures harnessed to them through the merchandise tunnels beneath the streets and stored in the huge warehouses against future use. Indeed all Himyra, all Aphur hummed at the end of the month, and the founders were beginning to turn out the sections of the giant penstock pipes.
Thereupon Croft collected another train of motors and, organizing a party of road-builders and masons, made his way into the hills to select the site of his power station on the mountain stream.
At the camp he established beside the mountain torrent he lost no time. Long since he had cast aside Zud's choice of temple dress, for the metal leg-cases, the short-skirted tunic of a military captain, falling half-way down the thighs, and belted at the waist—a costume affording the utmost freedom of movement while he directed the beginning of each task. Habited thus he sat one day on the hillside, watching his laborers digging trenches for the mighty penstocks, preparing the pits for the turbines when, with a crash, through some near-by bushes was thrust a huge animal face.
Open it was, gaping, with a lolling red tongue, and yellow fang-like teeth. For a moment it stared at him panting and then with a bound the whole lithe creature advanced, and flung itself against him as he scrambled to his feet.
"Hai, Hupor!" he cried, recognizing the huge houndlike beast which had fawned upon him once before in Lakkon's mountain house, and excited Naia's comment by the act.
Then as the creature dropped down beside him and turned its eyes, he followed their direction with his own, and found his heart begin a gladdened leaping. A trifle further up the hillside, Naia of Aphur stood between two trees.
Soft climbing sandals of gnuppa hide were on her feet and embraced her tapering calves to just below the knees. Brown was her garment above them, embroidered simply in green. And on her golden hair was a band of brown, supporting a shimmering drape against the heat of the afternoon, and a curling plume green as the leaves above it. In that first glance it seemed to Croft that seen so, she was more beautiful than she had ever been.
He went toward her, his pulses hammering in his ears, the giant beast trailing at his heels.
"Greeting, maid of Aphur!" he said when he stood before her, and bowed deeply from the hips, in formal fashion.
"Hail, Mouthpiece of Zitu!" Naia inclined her head. "Did Hupor break upon your meditations or distract your attention from the work in hand?"
"Hupor and I," said Croft with a glance at the beast, "are friends. Nor is my work a thing requiring such haste, that I may not spare time to admire the fairest work of Zitu's hands."
A swift color mounted into Naia's cheeks. Her glance shifted. "I walk frequently with Hupor," she began a somewhat confused explanation. "The temptation came upon me to inspect the work which I have watched from my father's home for the past three suns, since it began. Hupor, I think, was more surprised to see you than was I."
"You expected to find me?" Croft caught her words up quickly.
"Why not?" she rejoined with an upward flash of her eyes. "Is not the work of Zitu's Mouthpiece under his direction?" Her manner changed, became charged with covert meaning. "And more I dreamed."
"Dreamed?" Croft repeated, striving to still a rising tumult in his breast, at what seemed a challenging of his spirit by hers.
"Nay, I know not," she said almost faintly, while her white lids quivered above each purple iris. "But it was as though one told me this stream was to be used to bring new light to Himyra—that such was a part of your plans."
"Yes," he said, "it is—to Himyra, and to Lakkon, thy father's house, if so you desire, and to all of Aphur, all of Tamarizia in time. If so you saw it, it would appear as a vision rather than a dream, maid of Aphur. Come and I will show you its beginning and explain."
For an hour after that she wandered with him, and watching her now and then, Croft surprised a puzzled expression on her face. Yet he said no definite word, since he knew that the leaven of his past acts was working in her, was slowly rising up until at last it should wake her fully to the truth.
"It were hardly fitting, were Lakkon's daughter not to offer to Zitu's mouthpiece the freedom of Lakkon's house," she said at the last, when Croft had escorted her back to the mountain valley wherein the palace was placed. And her tone was vaguely wistful—there was something in her eyes that cried out to him, wholly unlike that blue fire of scorn they had held, when she flung the betrothal seal of Azil against his breast.
"Jason, the Mouthpiece, shall do himself the honor of Lakkon's house, when Lakkon is within it," he replied with meaning, as he bowed and turned and left her, and heard her catch her breath.
Yet he took with him a song in his heart because of the invitation which had faltered from her lips; because as he knew now the cry of spirit to spirit was beginning to actuate the flesh. And he walked more as a god indeed than a man as he made his way back to his workmen, threading his way on springing feet, glorying in the strength of his free-limbed stride on the wooded slopes, holding in his heart the knowledge that it was because she had felt he would be present—because of an urge to be near him, to speak with him as man and woman, that she had come to view the new work.
But he did not attempt to approach her again in the astral condition during the week longer that he remained at the site of the power-plant. Nor did Naia venture to it any more. And so soon as he was satisfied that his subordinates understood the exact scope of their duties, he returned to set about the actual construction of the dynamo that, water driven, should light Himyra with a myriad of glowing lamps.
But that night, after he had received Robur's report of progress, and they had talked over the dynamo plans, he sought his own apartment and stretched himself upon his couch. And then he went seeking the two women who in all his life he had known the best, because he thought that it would be on this first night, with Gaya, that Naia would unburden herself.
Failing to find them in the palace, he sought and found them in the garden, seated on a carved bench of stone, inside the vine-grown walls of the pool. Naia's eyes were fixed upon its surface, silvered by the light of Palos's moons. Very wide and dark they seemed beneath the shadow of her hair. Her lips moved.
"Whether these be dreams, induced by those things of which you told me, or whether too much thinking has tired my mind until it makes of vain imaginings the seeming of other thought, I know not," she said in a musing voice. "Yet even as you said, he had told my cousin Robur that he left his body, so has it seemed to me that I left my flesh, when he called me to him—that hand in hand we wandered forth together, to Himyra—over the mountains, and once that we leaped all space, as he says his spirit leaped from earth to Palos and stood upon the larger of the moons up yonder, whose light sparkles here on the pool."
"Zitu!" Gaya's tones were a trifle unsteady—filled with a certain awe, as Croft waited her answer. "But—Naia, sweet maid, may not dreams embody truth?"
"If dreams they be, I think it may be so," her companion rejoined. "For on that time we went to Himyra as it seemed, I saw my father asleep, and he whispered my name, and the next time he came to me he spoke to me about it; said that he saw me standing beside him and had called me.
"And,"—abruptly her soft voice took on the speaking semblance of a child—"Gaya—the night was the same—on which I had my dream. And again on an afternoon when it seemed he called me, and we wandered over hill and valley, where flowers bloomed, and up to the everlasting snows, it seemed also that on returning Maia thought that I had died, and he bade me back into my body, promising to come to me again. And when I woke, Maia and Mitlos stood beside me, in tears and terror, thinking my spirit flown. Gaya—how explain such things as these?"
"I may not tell you," Gaya faltered. "In these days since Zitu's mouthpiece came among us, Aphur and all Tamarizia have witnessed wondrous sights, have dreamed of undreamed truths."
"Mouthpiece of Zitu," Naia repeated, turning to face her companion. "I like not the name. Jason, he calls himself to me in my dreams, and as Jason I prefer to think of him—as Jason, a man, and—and—my lover. Ah, Gaya, should I blush for such a thought?"
"Nay—thou art a woman, ripe for loving," Gaya reassured her quickly. "And to women, be they fit, I think that Ga herself sends dreams."
"Dreams!" Abruptly Naia clenched a fist and struck the tapered outline of her thigh. "Dreams—aye, dreams they must be, Gaya—for to me he came no more again. Only when I thought not of his coming did it happen, and since, when I have called him, sought once more to sleep and find him, it is vain. Yet if I be shameless, let me speak the same. Greater happiness have I never known since I tore the seal of Azil from my girdle, than when in my sleep he called me to him, and I answered and saw him standing before me in my chamber, fair as Azil himself, with his form shot through by the soft light of the moon. Or, when I slept and Maia fanned me, and he came and led me into the outer world, where we wandered in far places, he and I alone."
"You saw him while he was in the mountains?" Gaya asked as her companion paused, causing Croft to smile as he saw her intent to learn what he himself had not told.
"Yes—what am I saying? Gaya, I forget myself, even as that day I forgot myself and bade him to my father's house." Suddenly she broke off to throw her arms about Gaya's neck and bury her face, gone white in the silver moonlight, against her breast.
"And—" the arms of the older woman crept about her.
"He replied he would enter it when Lakkon was within it," Naia told her in a smothered voice.
"As he would were he careful of your honor." Gaya held her close. "Child, when my visit is ended, you must return with me to Himyra, nor longer spend your time in dreams and thoughts."
"But—" Naia sat up abruptly. Her question came with a sweetly feminine inconsistency. "Would he not think I sought his presence, were I to accompany you to the palace?"
"Are you not Robur's cousin?" Gaya answered. "Can he expect you to remain forever in your father's house?"
Croft's smile was very tender as he turned away. Time and those "dreams" of hers were fighting his battle for him in Naia's soul. And had he need of other assistance in winning the one woman he desired in a million worlds or years, Gaya was his lieutenant. He blessed her as he returned to Himyra, for that propinquity of Naia and himself in the future, that feminine endeavor at match-making, for which he now knew that she schemed.
That Zitran, too, ran past. During it word came from Zitra that Jadgor had approved and recommended for acceptance by the national assembly that scheme for a chain of schools among the masses, Mutlos of Cathur had introduced. Thereupon Croft and Jadgor selected several expert metal molders and set them to work at making type, and Jason choosing some of the skilled workmen whom he had trained to exact methods in making the motors, months before, directed them now in the building of a rather simple set of presses in which the type should be used.
Also looking to the future he commanded others of the motor mechanics to begin the construction of a half dozen engines of a somewhat different design. Questioned by Robur as to his purpose, he explained that these were destined to finish the lifting power for the first Tamarizian airplanes.
"Zitu! Zitu!" exclaimed the governor of Aphur, flashing his perfect teeth; "I doubt you not, Jason, but my wonder does not cease. Recall you the morning when you drove the first motor through the streets of Himyra and well-nigh frightened the civic guards to death?" He smiled, and Jason laughed. And then he sobered.
"Yes," he replied. "And I recall also how the same morning, Chythron, Lakkon's driver, lost control of the gnuppas and they bolted, and I spoke with Naia, thy fair cousin, first."
Robur nodded. He laid a hand on his companion's arm. "Fear not," he admonished in sympathetic understanding. "Though the maid repel you because of a lack of understanding, yet shall she come to you at length."
"Aye," Croft looked the other man full in the eyes with meaning. "Once more shall I place Azil's sign upon Naia of Aphur's girdle."
Yet to all outward seeming he appeared immersed in his work, and even as the dynamo and the turbines took shape, he sent men into the vast plain that stretched between Himyra and the mountains of Aphur, to a spot of his selection, and bade them build there a huge shed to house his airplane fleet. Still others he set on the fashioning of ribs for the wings of the planes themselves, to building the fuselage bodies out of sheets of copper, and after a consultation with the local caste of weavers, he picked on a fabric for the wings.
And with all his ceaseless activities he still found time in a whimsical mood to inaugurate among his workmen a series of recreation and games lest under the driving of Robur and himself the sweating laborers grow stale. Indeed, he introduced a sort of competitive spirit in the various shops, organizing from the members of each a separate club and matching them one against the other in their sports. And of all the games on which he might have picked, Jason Croft, Mouthpiece of Zitu, and virtual commander of the remaking of a nation, chose baseball!
In this he gave his at times bizarre fancy full rein. The balls were fashioned from well-turned gnuppa hide, about a rubber core, with a covering of string. The bats, were of tough resilient wood, which the new devotees of the pastime swung with might and main.
Then for the first time on Palos were heard the crack of the batsman lining out a clean drive, and the cry of the umpire, Croft himself at first: "Ball four—take a free pass! Strike—one!"
And because even the most serious mind must find relaxation at times, Croft found he enjoyed the matches between teams immensely, while Robur entered with almost animal spirits into the rivalry of the games, and nearly pestered the life out of Jason, trying to master the intricacies and comprehend the casual principles involved in curves, in and outshoots, drops and breaks, after he had seen them first. Indeed Jason had more than one laugh after he discovered Robur in the bathing court of the palace one morning, hurling a ball against a backstop he had arranged, and trying to learn to throw it around a corner, as he somewhat naively explained.
But if Robur did not accomplish his purpose, several of the pitchers eventually did to some extent, and Robur got a laugh of his own, when one of them whom he had secretly had Jason coach in the copper foundry team, was produced. The batter who happened to be up swung sharply at what looked like a slow and easy delivery, and Aphur's governor chuckled for days because the fellow very nearly broke his neck when his bat failed to find the ball where he thought it was.
Croft's main satisfaction, however, in the success of the innovation lay in the fact that from rivalry in the game it was but a step to rivalry between the various corps of laborers in the shops. He took that step and introduced a system of bonuses and holidays for increased production or extra-efficient work. And because the Tamarizians were a pleasure-loving people, the plan was a success from the first. Working three shifts, as he had before the Zollarian war, Croft found his plans progress. Five weeks—the length of a Zitran—after his return from the mountains, found his turbines finished, his dynamo ready to be transported and assembled in its appointed place.
That place was ready to receive it as Croft knew from several trips he had taken to it, in one of his swiftest motors. A stone power-house had been erected, the penstocks were in place. Diverting gates were prepared to turn the stream into them at the proper moment, and send it roaring through the turbines in the pits. Telling Robur to send men into the mountains to cut poles, and giving him a model of insulators to be made of glass, Jason loaded the sections of his dynamo upon his fleet of transports and set forth again on his journey to the hills.
Thereafter for two weeks he toiled and sweated, thankful at least for the fact that in Tamarizia labor was plentiful, and regulated by government control in regard to wages, carefully estimated on a living scale, so that the dissatisfaction and continual strikes of earth were unknown. The condition enabled him to command what workmen needed, and rest assured of a steady advance in the projects he undertook.
More than once in that long, hot fourteen suns, Robur drove out to inspect the progress made and marvel, and report the insulators being turned out in satisfactory shape, and the poles coming down from the hills on creaking motor trucks. Croft gave him drawings to guide him in setting up a line of power poles across the desert from Himyra toward the mountains, and at night, when his weary workmen were sleeping, plunged into the task of devising Tamarizia's first electric lights. At first he confined his plans to small-sized arcs, intending to give public demonstration before he went on with the attempt to devise incandescents for inside use.
Coal was coming down from the vein he had discovered by now in quantity sufficient to use in the copper smelters, and he decided to gain his carbons, from this, converted into coke. After several nights of intensive working, he pushed aside his finished plans and drew a long breath of relief. The thing was done.
Croft's eyes flashed. This enlightenment of a people and a nation was becoming well-nigh an obsessing delight in his brain. It partook almost of the nature of creation despite the fact that he knew those things he was producing were but crude copies of familiar things he had formerly known as concomitants of life. For, as he had said to Robur, and to Zud, and to Naia herself, he was a man—was human in all his impulses and feelings regardless of the marvelous control of the spirit he had learned, and he thrilled with a personal satisfaction in the success of each new endeavor, the wonder each new product of his scheming excited in other brains.
From Robur he learned that Gaya had returned to the palace, bringing Naia with her for an indefinite stay. That, indeed, was in accordance with his plans. For so soon as he had realized that Gaya meant to throw the girl and himself into a closer association, as he did after the conversation he had heard between the two women, he had purposely meant to be absent from Himyra himself when the woman he loved arrived.
Croft would not have been either where or what he was had he been devoid of a vast psychological knowledge. And deep as were his own emotions, strong as was his own impulse to indulge a desire for Naia's closer presence, yet in all he did at that time he followed a deliberately mapped-out course for the accomplishment of his purpose.
During those days, as her words to Gaya had shown him very clearly, Naia of Aphur's mental condition was one of vague unrest. And the principle cause of that unrest was, as Croft knew, himself.
The new estrangement between them, her act in returning his betrothal jewel in so dramatic a manner, those subsequent excursions into the unknown world of the astral plane which he had brought about, and which she was as yet unable to consider other than as vagaries of a sleeping brain, had induced within her a state of introspection which, even more than his immediate presence, he felt sure must serve his purpose best.
She had cried out in a sympathy seeking confusion to the wife of his friend, that she had sought him that day in the mountains, as a sort of test—a means of convincing herself if her visioning were false or real. She had admitted that, even despite her former reluctance to consider a possible mundane love between Croft in his present body and herself, he had appealed to her that day in his physical form and strength. And she had complained that he had not kept the promise given by his astral form to hers, to return to her so again; had confessed that she had sought for a renewal of those two former meetings, had tried to repeat her "dreams."
Jason Croft, erecting his dynamo, harnessing it to his turbines with heavy beltings of gnuppa hide, felt that the very desire he had wakened in Naia's soul, would do its work better while it remained unsatisfied, would gain in strength as the days passed into weeks, would receive an added poignancy when she arrived at Himyra and found him gone again to the hills, engaged without any seeming distraction attributable to herself, on his work.
For Croft knew very, very well that one of the great laws of all mating consists in this—that until mating itself is accomplished, one element retreats, while the other as constantly seeks, before desire itself in the one awakens desire in the other, and thereby bringing both elements together, strikes out of them life's fire.
Yet, night after night, his work finished, stretched on a rough couch, Croft yearned for this woman of all the worlds to his soul. Night after night he lay picturing her as he had known her, revealing their every association together, from his first sight of her in her father's carriage, to those two weird astral meetings which had occurred. He Pictured her beauty of face and form—the supple strength of the latter, its litheness, its wonderful grace. He saw it in his mind's eye as he had seen it time and again in life.
And there were times when he quivered, and stretched out his arms which throbbed with a strange, numb aching, remembering as it seemed in their very substance, the soft, warm pressure of her flesh, the glory of her former surrender to the caress of their embrace. There were times when his lips writhed as he recalled their first meeting with her mouth—that quick, spontaneous giving and taking of a kiss, before she had cried out that now—now—he must win her, or else by the customs of her country, she stood a maid disgraced—had cried it, and yet before she left him on that same occasion, had crept to him, inviting a second kiss.
And though at such things Croft thrilled as may any man thrill, at the thought of the one woman who can drive him to madness as a man, yet unlike the ordinary mortal he thrilled still more at the beauty of her soul. For unlike the customary lover, Croft had seen it—and because of his knowledge of such matters, because he knew the meanings in a spiritual sense of certain vibrations—because he could interpret the meaning involved in auric colors—he knew that only a chastely pure spirit possessed an aura of blue and gold. Wherefore great as was his glory in his recollections of her physical beauty and charm, greater still was his exaltation recalling how even like her golden hair and purple eyes, that glorious image of her being he had twice called from it, glowed.
Glorious was she in body, beautiful in soul. And Croft lying while the night wrapped the mountain, and the stream, plunging over the rocks in its bed, sent its murmur to his ears, renewed once more his purpose, and swore by all the highest forces in his conception, that ere this thing was finished, that glory and beauty should be his. But in his own way—the true way—the way in which two chemical atoms might come together—gladly—almost unconsciously because of compelling force, affinity, desire—let the word used be what it might since in the great law of Zitu or God, they were the same. And it was so Croft meant to claim that woman, body and soul, whom he felt was his true twin—that glorious complement of his entire nature—that lode star of his being who had drawn him to her—across the empty void between the stars.
On the fourteenth day Robur came up from Himyra at Croft's request. Jason met him as he descended from his motor and led him into the newly constructed power-house. There, on a masonry and copper base, insulated by a heavy plate of glass, stood what was as yet Tamarizia's most wonderful device. Bolted and belted to the driving-gear of the turbine it stood, waiting but the driving force of the waters through a penstock to wake it into life.
Croft's eyes blazed with something of excitement as he gestured toward it. "Behold, Rob," he said, "with this shall we harness the lightnings and bid them do our will. With this shall we light the streets of Himyra and the fire-urns along the Na, and the palace, the houses of all men in Himyra first, in all Aphur at the last. With this shall we ere we are done, drive the wheels in many shops, which now are turned by men and beasts in treadmills or upon the windlass bars. So shall it come at last that by the mere pressure of a hand upon a lever those wheels shall move. These things I promise you, Rob—behold." He waved a hand to a captain standing by the door of the house. And he in turn signaled to a workman not far off. And he, who had been waiting, lifted a trumpet to his lips and blew a blast. It was the sign on which Croft had agreed for the men high up on the mountain to open a penstock gate.
Yet for a moment there was nothing to mark the effect, until with a whisper, rising to a roar, the huge pipe filled and discharged its plunging contents against the waiting wheel. Then, as the wheel turned and the belt of gnuppa hide revolved, there crept through the new rock house a strange and droning hum. Louder and louder it rose, as faster and faster the shining armature which Croft and Robur watched spun round. Faster and faster, louder and louder—blue sparks began to shine and quiver under the copper brushes. And suddenly, with a blinding scintillation, a hissing crash, a giant spark leaped the gap between the terminals of two wires Croft had arranged to test the ascending charge.
"Zitu!" Above the crackling discharge the captain in the door cried out: "Fly—we are undone, man of Zitu—fly!" He staggered back and paused and stood staring, vaguely reassured at the smile of triumph on Croft's face.
"Fear not," Jason told him quickly, as he struck up a lever, released the tension of the belt, and caused the first dynamo on Palos to sink from a dizzy whirling toward rest. "This moment speaks success for all our toil of weeks. Go tell the men on the pipes to close the gates."
Robur's face, too, was pale, well-nigh as that of the captain's, though he had held his place. His lips were close pressed, however, and his nostrils slightly pinched. Then, as Croft so easily chained the fiery breathing of the monster he had produced, his eyes began to flash.
"By Zitu, and by Zitu!" he swore the Tamarizian oath of wonder. "Jason, you have indeed harnessed His own lightning, as you have said. For a moment I feared that His wrath were excited by your daring, and He had sent a bolt of His fire to destroy us, with the house." He broke off with an almost shamefaced laugh.
"Yet now it gentles like a wild gnuppa under its master's hand," he went on again as the dynamo stopped and naught remained save the dwindling rush of the waters through the waste pipes from the turbine beneath their feet. "Zitu, my friend, but all men shall marvel yet as I do now at this! What plan you next?"
"Light!" said Croft. "Light, first, and after that to make use in all the ways I mentioned of this force—to turn the wheels in shops, to run the presses I have made to print from type and so supply the schools Jadgor has favored with the means of broadening men's minds—to print for them and their children, and so to spread the truth."
"Thou wilt build a city here to do these things?" Robur questioned, as yet unable to fully sense quite all Croft's words embraced.
"No," Jason told him. "This power shall flow from here to Himyra, Rob, across the line of poles your men are building, along the wires."
"Zitu!" The governor of Aphur stared.
Croft smiled. "Tomorrow," he went on, "I return to Himyra to arrange for the making of lights, and a demonstration of their working when the time is ripe." And suddenly his whole face lighted at an inward thought. "Naia—Rob. Tell me of her." For suddenly at the mention of his return her picture had leaped before him; the certainty had come upon him that in Himyra he should meet her, speak to her, dwell beneath the roof of the same house. And the accomplishment at which Robur, of Himyra, was staring in awestruck wonder—the great dynamo, successful in its primary test, and all it stood for—sank into nothingness before the thought. Naia of Aphur's face, the hinted perfume of her presence, blotted it out.
"Thou wilt see her," said Robur—"of course." It was as though he read Croft's thought. "And could you see her now as each sun I see her, perchance you would feel as do I, that she will be glad of your coming now at last. Like one without purpose she moves, Jason, my strange friend, whom I love as no other man, yet do not understand. There is the look of one who waits for one who comes not in her eyes. In their purple depths they hold a question ever that makes them doubly dark. Yet if at times I say I am driving forth to meet you, I have seen her lay a white hand over Ga's snowy fountain beneath her robe. I have seen her lips part as though to speak or question concerning thee, and having returned, I have known that her ears were like thirsty lips to drink in what reports I made regarding the progress of your work. Yet in such mood is she sweeter, more desirable as it seems to me, than ever in her life."
Croft nodded. "Not more desirable to me," he said, "than the first sun whereon I saw her. Today I place a guard and send the workmen back to Himyra. Tomorrow I shall come."
Naia of Aphur—Naia! He was now to meet her again in the flesh. The thought held Croft as he drove toward Himyra the next day. He was to meet her, as at Zitra, not as in the mountains beside the stream he had harnessed to his and Tamarizia's purpose, but in Robur's palace, where, like himself, she was a guest—under conditions where the conventions of social life, not so far unlike those of earth, since human nature is, after all, very much the same, would compel a certain courtesy in their association at least.
Toward that meeting he went more like an ardent lover than anything else. Once in the palace, he sent for a barber and had his hair carefully trimmed. For an hour after that he lay while a Mazzerian masseur rubbed softening oils into his skin. And then he dressed in a costume he had ordered made when he returned from Zitra first, unlike old Zud's robes, and of his own designing—a costume of golden leg cases studded with sapphire-hued stones—an undervest of gossamer tissue—a short skirt of a heavier material, white in color, with a silken sheen, and a cuirass of gold and silver, with the wings of Azil and the cross ansata, inlaid on the breast-plate in more of the sapphire-like gems. Of gold and silver was his helmet topped with a crest of azure plumes. Robur came in upon him, having barely returned from the shops, as he put it on.
"Zitu!" he exclaimed, pausing to stare at his friend, and went on: "Jason, thou art a sight—"
"A sight, yes—" Croft cut him short with a heightened color. He laughed. "Rob—there are times when your tongue reminds me of speech on earth. Were I there at this moment, they would name me asightindeed."
A smile twitched Robur's lip as he caught the unaccustomed meaning. "And at times I find a strange application of meaning in thy words, Jason," he replied. "It is so in the manner of speech you use concerning the games of baseball when the contest waxes warm. 'Tear its hide off! Lay on that pill! Lean on it! Lean on it!'—the word 'charley-horse' which you sometimes employ, and the naming of an arm a 'wing.' None the less thou art a sight to gladden a maiden's eyes, my friend, and even now a maid and a matron await thee beside the bathing pool. So—get thee gone! Thou art beautiful enough."
With another laugh Croft took him at his word, descending to the court where the swimming pool sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight, and advancing in a considerable blaze of material glory to where, on couches beneath a shimmering awning, Gaya and Naia reclined.
"Hai, Jason!" Robur's wife exclaimed, extending a hand as she saw him. "Welcome, thou tamer of the lightning, as my lord has said thou art. Wilt pardon a matron's indolence, or should I greet thee on my feet?"
"Nay." Croft took her hand and bent above it. "I like thee less, wife of Robur, in the formal mood. Retain the charm of thy ease." Then deliberately he turned his eyes and met those of Naia. "Greeting to thee, maid of Aphur," he said.
"And to thee, Mouthpiece of Zitu," she returned with her pansy-purple eyes fixed on the flashing symbol on his breast.
Croft noted the glance, the slight tensing of the lines about her mouth as he sat down. He had meant from the first to note its effect. Indeed, he had worn it to this meeting of a purpose. It was his intent that, in spite of it, and all it stood for, or had stood for at one time in her mind, her surrender should be gained.
"As to the harnessing of Zitu's fire, 'tis no more than a following out of Zitu's law when understood," he turned to Gaya to explain. "The generation of 'elektricity,' as it is called, is no more in this case than the changing of one force into another, a transfer of energy from—-"
"Ah, Ga, I am a woman, unversed in such matters!" Gaya exclaimed with a dancing in her eyes. "I fear I am too old to learn. Naia is of a younger generation, her mind of softer substance; grave thy meaning on its tablet with the stylus of thy tongue. I would see Robur before the evening meal. It were time he had returned."
"Aye," said Croft, smiling and rising to assist her to her feet. "Even now he is within the palace. We spoke before I came forth."
He watched while she hurried importantly away, still smiling inwardly at her palpable subterfuge for leaving Naia and him alone; then turned to where Lakkon's daughter still reclined, and resumed his seat.
"You have heard from Zitra?" he inquired.
"Aye," she said, and went on with the information: "Lakkon, my father, and Jadgor are blessed by Zitu with good health. My cousin's wife informs me Jadgor has given sanction to thy plans for schools."
"My plans?" Jason countered the indirect accusation. "Was not the matter presented by Mutlos of Cathur?"
"Aye." The pansy-purple eyes grew somewhat narrow. "Mutlos—a man of the people, who writes not his own name upon the tablets, suggests that the people be taught to read the characters heretofore known to few save the nobles and the priests. And Koryphu of Scira joins hands with Mutlos to support the project. Thus inside a few Zitrans after a thousand cycles in Tamarizia—" The ivory shoulder above her left breast twitched in something like a shrug of her own words of rejection. "Thus, on its face, the thing appears. Also, Robur last night came with a marvelous tale of your latest success. Zitu—one succeeds where another only dreams."
"Success," said Croft, looking directly at her, "consists very largely, Princess Naia, in refusing to be denied."
For a moment she endured his steady contemplation, and then her lids drooped, she picked at a fold of her garment. "And you succeed? You refuse to be—denied?"
"Yes, by Zitu!" her companion told her quickly. "I refuse to question the possibility of aught which Zitu permits or ordains."
And suddenly Naia of Aphur threw up her head in an almost haughty gesture. "As were fitting, being Mouthpiece of Zitu," she made answer, "speak further. Tell me of your plans."
Womanlike, she had touched him on a soft spot. Croft blazoned forth. And though now in all things mortal he was Tamarizian indeed—still he was a man—and because of the peculiar circumstances leading up to his present position, he still clung to many of the habits in thought of earth. Furthermore he had planned at some length the night before concerning the manner of his demonstration of electricity to Himyra. And in those plans he had put all his eggs in one basket, more or less. He had planned to make it what on earth he might have called "some time."
Hence he ignored Naia's evasion of what had been growing into more or less a tense situation, fell in with her suggestion, and began a delineation of his designs. And despite herself, as he went on, Naia, being a typical Aphurian and, like her people, one of a pleasure-loving race, found her interest quicken, her somewhat formal pose forgotten, her brain filled with pictures never beheld before; so that long before he had finished her eyes began to shine.
"Himyra shall see sights such as she has never witnessed," Croft declared. "I shall make lights. Already for them the plans are drawn. Lamps they shall be of glass and metal, which, when the new force shall pass through them, shall glow, yet without emitting any smoke or flame. These first I shall show at a public celebration, in small numbers. Later they shall flare from one end of Aphur to the other. Yet before I present them to the people, I shall have completed yet another device which shall be for a part of the celebration—a machine which, like the motors across the desert, shall fly through the air."
He went on, lost in the joy of portraying his intentions to her, and described the airplane, drawing in graphic words a verbal outline of each part, from the metal fuselage to the wings.
It was then for the first time that Naia interrupted. And not as an interruption, but in their nature her words were surprising in a way. Gradually as Croft described the airplane he meant to build, her whole expression had changed, had grown wide-eyed and parted of lip, a thing of rapt attention, until as he paused, with the promise of himself riding the air at the coming celebration, she exclaimed:
"Thou wouldst be as a bird in thy daring, and the birds I have often yearned to follow! To rise like them, singing in broad circles against the sun, or with beating wings to breast some cloudy storm. Zitu permitting"—she lifted herself on her couch, and her whole form seemed to expand with the thrill of the conception—"I myself would delight to fly with these thy wings."
"Thou?" Croft found that her wish both upset and thrilled him. The spontaneous flare of daring it mirrored forth, the flash of the lovely eyes that accompanied its expression, the light of its thought on her face, all woke a quick admiration. But—the following consideration of her glorious life exposed to the perils of the undertaking roused something like consternation in him.
And as the thought clouded his face and he stammered forth his interrogatory exclamation, Naia relaxed the tension of her figure, reclining again on the couch. "Nay," she said, "if it fills you with displeasure, forget my overquick speech. There shall be new light in Himyra, and Zitu's Mouthpiece shall ride above all men's heads, on the wings of his devising, that they may behold him and wonder at his wisdom. What else?"
Mentally, Croft winced at the subtle turn of her words. Almost it seemed to him that she purposely misunderstood his hesitation, seeking thereby to mask the temporary loss of her own pose, the well-nigh forward interest she had displayed. But, aside from an inward emotion, he gave no sign that he noted the personal bias of her rejoinder.
"In the afternoon there will be a ball game," he said. "Robur and I will select the teams."
"Base-ball?" Suddenly Naia laughed. Her arms rose, and she clasped her hands behind her head. Her whole figure, clad in white, embroidered over the breasts and about the hem in scarlet, blue, and green, with small gems to produce something like a Persian effect, stretched its supple length in an almost indolent fashion. She began toying with the ends of its fringed girdle. "Robur tells me 'tis a game you brought with you from—earth."
Abruptly Croft became aware of the scrutiny of her eyes, for the space of a heartbeat, then they were again inspecting her girdle's fringe.
"Yes," he answered, sensing that once more she was groping for some sign in his words or manner. "Have you witnessed a game?"
Naia nodded, without looking up. "Robur insisted, after he had contrived to throw a ball through my chamber window and drop it into the mirror pool with a most surprising splash, to say nothing of waking me with the water in my face."
Croft smiled. He suspected Rob had been continuing his experiments with the intricacies of curves.
"Since then," Naia went on, "I have been seeking to aid him in the mornings with something he desires to learn. It seems that he declares a ball may be thrown so that it changes its direction in the air, and I confess that, watching one of the team pitchers whom he pointed out at a game, it appeared that it was done. We have risen and worked for several mornings together; but, besides breaking two windows and some flower urns, we have little to show for our pains. Gaya declares he will destroy the palace unless you teach him the trick on your return."
"I shall join you in the morning," said Jason, laughing, as her red lips smiled.
Naia regarded the arches of her pink feet, bared save for sandals of scarlet gnuppa leather, caught about her slender ankles by silver bands, to which were linked chains of silver running up on either side of the heel and between the toes. "Then," said she, "shall I let you take the ball when he throws it. I confess it burns my hands. As to this new light—what does it burn, since it neither smokes nor flames?"
"A substance," said Croft, "made from koal." And now as he spoke he watched his companion in turn. And suddenly he met her eyes in a glance that thrilled—a glance that spoke of recollection, that seemed for an instant to flash him a voiceless question, yet one whose meaning to him was plain. And for a moment it seemed that an actual question trembled on the lips of the perfect mouth he watched, before Naia spoke in an almost breathless fashion.
"Koal—the strange, black stone you have set men to digging in the region to the west? Jason—how knew you where to find what, before your coming, in all Aphur was unknown?"
Croft's heart leaped, both at what he felt was the animus back of the query, and the fact that now, for the first time to him in the unity of soul and body, she had used his name. And suddenly daring the issue, he let his eyes sweep from her golden head to pink-nailed toes, in a glance that was subtly like a caress, before he answered slowly: "I came upon its locality on a day when my body lay sleeping and my spirit wandered as you have heard that it does. Some might say that Zitu showed it to me—in a dream."
Naia of Aphur went pale. Her color faded. One of her hands crept up and lay above her heart. For a moment she plainly struggled for control, and then she faltered. "A dream, say you—a dream?"
Croft nodded. "Yes. Did you not speak to me yourself of one such, in which you had learned of my intent concerning the use of water to bring new light to Himyra? Said you not as much the afternoon of that sun on which you and Hupor came upon me by the stream?"
"Oh, aye—oh, aye, indeed." Naia's tone was listless, weary. "Yet am I not Mouthpiece of Zitu. Who am I to dream?"
And suddenly Jason Croft caught a breath deep into his lungs. Close to the borderland between spirit and body were they in that moment, and he knew it—close, very close. A little more thought, a little more pondering and questioning of itself, and this girl's spirit must spread the wings of the soul in conscious understanding of the truth. His eyes lighted at the recognition of that fact. His nostrils tensed a trifle about the angle at thought of all it must mean.
"No, Mouthpiece of Zitu are you not called," he said. "Nor is there any mouthpiece of Zitu, save through the soul of man. Yet are you daughter of Ga, and a woman, through whom man's soul must pass before man be man indeed. Thou art the door between man and Zitu, and in so much nearer than man to him."
Then for a moment he paused and sat with a fear beginning to stir within him lest he had dared too much. For she said nothing, nor moved. Nor did she look at him, or, as he fancied, at any objective thing. She lay reclining, her body rising and falling to a long, slow rhythm of breathing, her gaze directed off across the shimmering ripple of the pool. But as he watched, her expression softened, became rapt—as though the purple eyes beneath her long-fringed lashes were beholding what save to herself was an invisible thing. Her lips moved without sound. But Croft, reading their motion, knew that they framed two of his own words: "The Door."
"Yes—the door—above which Azil spreads his wings," Croft repeated softly.
Once more he broke off and sat waiting. Because his words had been almost an allusion to the betrothal gift of Tamarizian men to their women—that seal of Azil she had torn from her girdle and returned in scorn to him. And that she would understand it, considering how largely symbolism entered into Tamarizian speech, he felt assured.
Nor was he kept long in suspense. Naia's steady breathing broke its rhythm. With a lithe movement she first sat up on the couch, then lifted herself to her feet. Her eyes turned toward him. The introspective light was gone from their blue depths. They blazed with a purple fire. "Enough!" she panted as she faced him. "Friend thou art of my cousin, and friend art thou to his wife. Mouthpiece of Zitu art thou to my nation, and as such I yield you my respect. Yet speak not any more to me such words as these, and let us have understanding. Daughter of Ga am I, and a woman as thou knowest; but one for whom not—any more does Azil spread his wings."
She paused and stood before him, head back-tilted on the round, white pillar of her throat, arms straightened beside her a trifle extended, drawn a trifle back, tense as a tightened cord in all her slender length; staring wide-eyed into his eyes, until abruptly she lifted a hand and struck herself sharply on the breast and turned from him, crossing the court to disappear from sight.
Beside the pool Croft remained more than a little disturbed by the feeling that, urged on by the propinquity for which he had thirsted through weeks, he had on this first meeting risked too much. Nor was his mood lightened by the fact that Naia failed to appear at the evening meal, and the questioning expression in Gaya's glance, which she turned upon him from time to time. As a matter of fact, the girl's close presence had gone to his head, and he had literally sought to gain from her some sign—to speak not so much to her physical mind as to her soul. But as he sought his chamber that night, it appeared that, instead of rousing an answering flash from her spirit, he had struck a note which in some way disharmonized.
And because of that he sought her out, safe once again in the undertaking, since should he call her to him in the astral body now, she might well think that she dreamed once more—a dream inspired by his presence in Robur's house.
He willed himself to her. Long practice had made it easy. With him now, such things occurred in a flash. It was his intent to summon her forth, speak to her such things as he dared not speak yet in the flesh. But once in that yellow-draped room of Robur's dwelling where he had thought to find her stretched on the amber-jeweled copper couch, he paused—paused and stood waiting and watching, because—
Naia knelt, a slender white shape in the dusk of her apartment, before the figure of Azil, beside the mirror pool. And as once before, when she had cried out to this same Angel of Life against the barter of her body to a profligate traitor, for the saving of her nation, so now once more Croft bent his head while she prayed:
"Oh, Azil, who carry life from Zitu to all the daughters of Ga, by his command—thou whose sign I have torn from my girdle and flung at the feet of him who gave it, have pity upon me. For truly am I a daughter of Ga. And though thy sign I hurled against him, even against the symbol of thy widespread wings, yet was my action prompted by an agony of spirit, rather than by any wish or intent to show disrespect to thee. And were I wrong, set me aright.
"Spread over me again thy shadow wings—let me once more be altogether daughter of Ga, thy mother—not barren, but a fruitful thing. Or were my impious act too great to be forgotten—if against me thy wings are folded—if woman's birthright I may not hold, nor mirror the life of him, as this pool mirrors thy form within it—if I may not be that Door of Life he called me—have pity, Azil; Zitu have pity; have pity Ga, and teach me a new strength."
She rose. Her arms lifted. For a moment she stood so before the carved figure. Then her lips moved. "Jason," they faltered. Her breath caught in a sob. She turned and threw herself upon her couch.
"Beloved!" Croft let the cry of his thrilling soul steal forth. "Beloved you have called me. Beloved, I am here."
Naia of Aphur stiffened in every soft line and curve. She lifted her head as one who listens. She lifted her slender body on her rounded arms. Then slowly, in a wide-eyed wondering fashion, since Croft had not waited for sleep to claim her on this night of nights when he had heard the confession of her love in the sacred shrine of her night-wrapped chamber, she sat up.
And now the borderland between objective and sub-conscious knowledge was narrow—very, very narrow indeed—the consciousness of soul and body was divided by no more than a breath, a hair. Croft felt that it quivered as the woman sat there, rapt of expression.
"Jason," she whispered again at last.
"Beloved—come forth!" Close by the form of Azil, Croft took his station, moved by the sudden impulse that for this girl who prayed to be made once more all woman he was as Azil himself.
The form of Naia swayed. It bent. Slowly it sagged down and lay relaxed upon the couch. And between it and Croft where he waited, there appeared the diaphanous, swaying, scintillating outline of her astral shape.
"Jason!" And now for the third time she cried it gladly with her quivering, flaming lips. "Jason—Azil!" She stretched out yearning hands. "Thou hast come to me again."
"Yes," said Croft, opening his own embrace and drawing her inside its circle. "Yes, I have come—to tell you your prayer is answered—to tell you that of all laws of Zitu, the greatest of all is love—that love in which Ga brought Azil forth before he came to Palos to teach men the way of life. Wherefore for Azil himself I speak when I say, as I have said before, that for me—for me, and for me alone, you guard the shrine of life—that some day, once more I shall place upon thy girdle that sign that in Zitra you flung against my breast."
"Thou hast it?" The contained fire of her substance glowed.
"Yes." Croft smiled. "And some day the fleshly hands of Jason shall pin it fast."
"I was mad, mad!" his companion panted. "Much thinking, the shock of learning thee other than I had thought, had made my heart sick, my mind unsettled—too much I thought of the man, and not enough of the spirit—the real you that is here with me now, as with you the real me is here. Ah, Jason, Jason—one time in Lakkon's palace we stood thus together in the body, and I—I yielded you—my mouth."
"As once more you yield it." Croft lowered his lips to the strange, lambent outline of hers beneath them. He kissed her in a strange kiss such as he had never dreamed of—a thing all inexpressible softness, seeming to hold in its contact a something that tingled like fire. And as though that fire were a strange, cosmic solvent, for an instant as short as a breath, as long as eternity, it was as though their two individualities dissolved and flowed together, blended into one.
Croft tore away his mouth. The thing had been too real. It left a weird, staggering sensation quivering through him, and the form within his strong arms quivered. Its auric fires of white and gold and purple were more radiant than they had ever been. Naia's hands clung to him. Her eyes were uplifted. "Go—go!" she panted. "Send me back to my body. Yet wait not so long to come to me again."
"In the morning I shall see you with Robur," said Croft as he released her. For now he felt assured that she was very, very close to a conscious understanding of the nature of their love—its wonder—its glory—its truth.
And that she stood very near indeed to the threshold of understanding, the weeks that followed their third astral meeting showed.
It showed in a changed demeanor of their meeting the next day. Croft waked with the sound of her voice in his ears, and lay for an instant startled in the half world between waking and slumber before he realized that it drifted from the bathing court of the palace.
Instantly he sprang up, recalling her words of the day before concerning Robur's daily practice at throwing curves with a baseball. He glanced out. Already Naia and her cousin were at work. Croft had overslept, as it seemed, but now his pulses quickened at the picture Naia made.
As he reached the window Robur threw the ball, and the princess ran to retrieve it. All in white she was—a single fluttering garment, its skirt tucked up and caught together for greater freedom of movement, revealing a flashing play of speeding limbs. Bare on the tiles of the tessellated pavement were her pink-arched flying feet, and bare her outstretched reaching arms. And her hair, free, was a cloud of flying gold about her face. An old-time story flashed into Jason's mind. So he thought might Atalanta have appeared, free-limbed, glorious, and unrestrained, as she ran her race. He turned away, tearing his eyes from her youth and grace and beauty, and hastened to dress.
As he came forth five minutes later, she flung the ball with a truly feminine overhead gesture to where her cousin stood. "Zitu, my cousin!" she teased with a flash of milk-white teeth between the twin crimson portals of her mouth. "You throw wider of the mark, and still more wide. To me it seems that you lack that which you speak of in Jason's words as 'control.' Thy ambition to be a pitcher stands in sorry case."
And then she caught sight of Jason himself and broke off, while across her lovely face there stole a flush as soft as the dawning Sirian light—a flush as beautiful as that on the bosom of rising Aurora, Croft thought. She was panting somewhat, perhaps from her exertions, perhaps from an inward emotion as she turned toward him and held out a tapering hand. "Hai, Jason!" Her red lips changed the object of their speaking, and her blue eyes met his fully. "It is morning—and—I see you again."
"And I thee," said Croft as he touched her fingers—"fairer, more beautiful and altogether lovelier than the dawn itself. Thy voice awaked me and told me I was late for our play with the ball."
But his blood was singing, his pulses pounding. The thrust of his heart was a visible beating at the base of his stalwart throat. For her words had been but a paraphrase of that promise he had spoken to the soul of her he had held the past night in his arms. And more than any others she might have spoken, they told him that at last, as a waking woman, she began to understand.
Yet he gave no further sign, and Naia herself seemed contented with that one brief interchange. "Aye, teach him, instruct him, and thou canst. He is willing, but he accomplishes little with a vast amount of work to himself and my feet and hands."
And Jason laughed with a wonderful exultation coursing through him as he took the ball from Robur, who had approached.
Thereafter for a half-hour he instructed, and Naia retrieved the Aphurian's wild heaves and pitches, until by degrees Robur gained the partial mastery of a simple inward curve; and Naia, her face dewed with a fine moisture from her part of the practice, protested against any more that morning, declaring instead for a bath, and moving toward the pool, loosening her garment on the shoulder as she walked.
It fell from her, leaving her in the Tamarizian costume employed by her sex when both men and women bathed—a sort of harness about the back and shoulders—thin, glinting chains of metal supporting gem-incrusted shields above the breast—a girdle at the waist to fasten about her hips, a gold and purple covering, not unlike a pair of trunks. Croft was acquainted with the fashion, but never before had he seen Naia so revealed. He caught his breath with an audible inhalation, and became aware that Robur smiled.
"Go," he suggested as he moved to join Naia in the sun-kissed water. "Tell Bela to ask Gaya for a garment, and join us in the pool."
Croft nodded. He hastened away. He found Gaya's maid, and once with the trunklike article she produced, lost no time in putting it on and returning to the court where Naia and Robur were now contesting in the water, with choking word and laugh. In a clean dive, he cut its surface, shot across the full width of the pool, and came up at Naia's side.
Her hand crept out and lay against him. Almost it seemed to him that she sought the contact. "You are strong, O Jason. You should be at home in the water, even as an Acquor," she said with a quick-drawn breath.
There was a hint of witchery in her smile, however, as Croft knew. The Acquor was a gaudy aquatic creature, colored something like a pheasant, with the head of a goose, red legs, and blue, webbed feet. Consequently he laughed as he replied: "Work in the mountains has reddened my skin, it is true, O little fish of gold and purple and silver—yet have a care, since the Acquor eats little fish that it catches in the water."
"Zitu!" Naia exclaimed, as very much like a silver fish, indeed, she dived.
Thereafter Croft forgot all else save her new mood and her presence, until Robur announced that it was growing late, and that he had many things that he must discuss with Croft.
In such fashion, however, did he enter upon the multitudinous energies that marked the following Himyran days. He plunged into them and their endeavors with a song in his heart. Indeed, it was as though the absence which until now he had actually courted had worked its effect on them both—as though that propinquity which followed brought now a sort of reflex attitude into their bearing toward one another, swung them from one extreme to the other more than anything else.
That first day Croft started work on the ovens to produce his coke. With Robur he talked over all his plans. He drove out to the site of his hangars and inspected the rising sheds. He returned to the shops of the carpenter caste, and set in motion the work of assembling the airplane wings. He inspected the bodies, found fault and made corrections, looked into the motor plant, and ordered the captains there to speed up their work. He drove to the glass plant from there, and gave orders for the making of his arc-lamp bodies. He seemed inspired with a ceaseless energy, which finally drove Robur into comment:
"Zitu—Jason, my friend, where is the need for such haste?"
Then, and then only, did he realize with what a restless energy, what a tireless thrill of driving force, he had moved from place to place.
"None, Rob," he said with a quick-caught inhalation; "save that today the fire of life burns high within me, and my spirit seeks action, not rest." He broke off and lifted his own hand to the spot where Naia's fingers had lain that morning on his flesh.
And, as so often, Robur seemed in a measure to catch his thought. "Is she not beautiful as a shaft of Zitu's own light?" he inquired, and looked into Jason's eyes. "Gaya is beautiful, too, and I love her; yet I think thy belief that she is the other half of thy soul is true. For Mouthpiece of Zitu are ye, and wiser than all other men of Palos, and Naia of Aphur, my cousin, is divine."
"Thou hast said it. Her beauty drives me as the whip against the gnuppa's flank. It quickens my endeavor, forces me to fresh effort—" Croft began, and broke off as a captain, followed by a servant from the palace, appeared in the door of the room wherein they stood.
"Hai, Robur!" the captain exclaimed, advancing with uplifted hand. "Here is one who seeks thee, as he says it, by command."
"Speak," said Robur, turning to the other—one of a number of Mazzerian runners who as messengers were kept always at hand.
The blue man saluted in formal fashion. "One from Zitra awaits thee at the palace. Even now others seek you from place to place."
"Go. Say that I come." Robur dismissed him and turned to Croft. A pucker of thought lay between his eyes. "This may be from my father. I know not the nature of his message, but—my friend, accompany me in this."
Jason nodded. His heart warmed again, as so often, to this man. No matter what word Jadgor might have sent, Robur, the son of Jadgor, was his friend. David and Jonathan—the comparison flashed in his mind as they left the glass-blowers' shop and entered the motor to drive swiftly back to the palace at once. David and Jonathan! It had been something like that between them from the first. He sensed the subtle way in which, in the present instance, the Aphurian was giving demonstration, that whatever stand Jadgor might have taken toward Croft, his son would follow the dictates of love and honor in his stand.
In the huge, red-paved court they left the motor and, passing between the portal guards, made their way swiftly, side by side, to the audience-hall where once Croft had seen Kyphallos of Cathur received by Jadgor, Aphur's king. A man with the circle and cross on his breast—Jadgor's emissary—was waiting there for their coming now. As the two friends appeared, he rose.
"Greeting to Robur, governor of Aphur and son of Jadgor, who sends me to him," he began, producing a ring that Croft himself had often seen on Jadgor's finger and pressed it into Robur's hand.
Robur glanced at it and nodded. "Say on," he replied.
"On Bithur, Mazzer makes war."
"Zitu!" Robur started and turned his eyes to Croft.
Croft nodded. Beyond a narrowing of his eyes, he gave no sign of the quiver of surprise that shook him. "Let us sit down and hear the rest of it," he advised.
Robur waved his father's emissary to a seat and found one of his own. "And now thy story, and quickly," he urged, while Croft found a place by his side.
"As thou knowest who led an army into Bithur when Zollaria made war," the Zitran resumed; "there was promised to Mazzer, for her help of the children of Zitemku to the north—whom Zilla take to himself—certain of the expected spoils. And as thou knowest, in all that was contemplated, both Zollaria and Mazzer failed. Yet was Mazzer promised a free highway down Bithur's principal river to the Central Sea. Mazzer, encouraged thereto as thy father thinks by Zollaria perchance, now presses this demand. Bithur, being not as Aphur and Nodhur and even Milidhur, supplied with the new weapons they used against Helmor's armies, is weak. Already have there been clashes between the blue men, better armed than ever before, and the men of Bithur along the border.
"Towns have been burned—fields laid waste—women carried into the forests, and men and children slain. Wherefore Jadgor commands you this. Send to Bithur the armored moturs, and a thousand men with the new weapon that shoots metal and fire with the death-dealing bolts of metal they discharge. For since all Tamarizia is one nation, it is fitting and just that the weak should cry for aid in their need to the strong, and that the strong should hear. Jadgor, who sits on Hiranur's throne as head of Tamarizia, has spoken. Let Robur of Aphur give ear to his words and obey."
"Aphur hears." Robur inclined his head. "Say to Hiranur that Aphur obeys. The moturs, the men, and the weapons go to Bithur at once. Man of Zitra, you will refresh yourself ere your return."
"Nay." Already the other was on his feet. "This matter gives no rest. I return so soon as Aphur's obedience is assured. Zitu speed the fulfilment of your promise." As Croft and Robur rose he bowed and left the room.
Robur turned toward Croft. "Revenge," he said. "A war of revenge, my friend. Zollaria, cheated of her foul designs, would harass Bithur's borders. Hai!" His eyes flashed. "So be it. We shirk not what Zitu sends. Jason, go with me. Help me to send what is needed forth."
"Yes," Croft nodded, and for the rest of that long day the drive of energy within him found full vent. Runners were despatched to notify the captains of the civic guard, and a sufficient number of the veterans of Croft's riflemen in the Zollarian war. Cases of cartridges were loaded into the motor galleys along the quays. Six of the armored motors Croft had designed and used against Helmor's legions went roaring through the streets and snorted their ungainly way aboard the waiting ships. What Aphur had been called upon to furnish, she set about providing without delay.