Then, and then only, for the first time he reached down and took up a bomb, and sailing high above that plain where the camp-fires looked like a myriad of fireflies far beneath him, he let it fall.
A flash, a ruddy, great mushroom of golden, raying light—a splash of rending destruction in the night. The explosion came up to him long after he saw it, on the lagging vibrations of sound. Again and again he hurled a second and third as he swam from left to right.
Faint, far away, oddly detached, he thought he heard a distant shouting, though it was hard to be sure above the motor's roar. But the light of other fires showed him the silhouette of many figures running, of arms uplifted, as though those who swarmed like a hill of angry ants driven into panic were pointing into the air. Where that cluster of pointing forms seemed thickest he soared on swift, sure wings and let go another bomb. It fell beyond his vision. It burst. The blur of bodies into which it descended was no more.
And now a strange mood seized Croft in its grip. It was unlike anything he had ever known. It was in reality a sort of air intoxication one may suppose. But suddenly it was as though he were a superman indeed, above all things mundane, so far above the puny mortals who crawled on the ground beneath him, who writhed under the force of his bombs, that he moved in a world detached from them, or any one, or anything save himself.
It was as though he rode on destiny's wings rather than upborne by those of the roaring airplane. He tilted his vanes from no sane purpose, with nothing to gain. Up, up he shot; up, up, until he could see the whole night-wrapped region about him, the forest, the fire-studded camp of Mazzer's army—Atla, a ruddy glow behind her walls, where shortly he must return.
But not yet—not yet. For a time it was enough to chase this new found exultation, to swim here in the void between earth and heaven, alone with the thing he had made, on which he rode; alone with it, with his spirit, and his thoughts of Naia of Aphur, of the time when these blue spawn, driven back to their lairs in the hinterland of Palos, he should return to claim her. It was enough to ride thus the winds of eternity, as it were, sweeping on and on in the wheel of a mighty circle beneath the stars.
A sputter, a cough from the motor. Croft came back from his dreams to the present in a flash. The engine was missing. Apprehension touched him with a breath-arresting recognition of the fact. And hardly had he taken it into account when the motor missed again. And having coughed for the second time, it died.
He was falling—falling! The bombs! Oddly enough he thought of them rather than of being dashed to death. He reached down and found the remaining four he had brought. He hurled them over the side of the fuselage, tossing them wide. Then he began a frantic effort to once more start the engine—in vain.
Below him four ruddy flashes told him the bombs had struck. In a rushing whirlwind the air of night was driving past the plane. Doomed as it seemed, still the will to live, to struggle, to overcome danger and death itself remained within him. He began an effort to straighten out the dead plane's course, to catch and use to his own advantage that wind that was whistling past him now. To catch it, to ride once more upon it, if only as a kite may sink back to the earth, and so alight, little damaged rather than broken, splintered by a giddy fall.
So in the end he did straighten out at last and slid swiftly, where before he had eddied and whirled.
"Zitu!" he breathed a prayer of thanksgiving. "God!" For an instant the face of Naia swam before his mental vision, so clear, so bright, so seemingly herself, that it was almost as though he beheld her in the flesh.
Then—the fire-dotted plain was very close. And the airplane was shooting down toward it, even though no longer falling, and there was little chance to choose a course. With a crash the pontoons beneath it struck through the top of a tree, and the whole machine swerved. In mid air it staggered, checked, lunged ahead again like a restive living creature, tipped, slid off sidewise, and crashed down on a crumpling wing.
Unable to maintain himself in his shaken condition, Croft gave vent to an inarticulate cry of anguish. The entire bulk of Palos seemed to rise and hit him, as catapulted from the fuselage by the ruinous landing, he struck and lay in a dark and senseless huddle on the ground.
Hours afterward, as it seemed, Croft opened his eyes, and blinked at a flare of light and closed his lids again, while he sought to collect his shaken senses.
He remembered by degrees.
The plane had fallen. There was nothing after that. But he had fallen upon a night-wrapped plain, studded with the fires of a camp. Now, instead of stars above him, there was what looked like the bellied top of a tent. Slowly he spread the fringes of his lashes and sought to verify the impression he had gained.
He was correct. He lay in a tent, seemingly of skins joined to form the sloping top and walls. The interior was lighted dimly by a couple of flaring torches. But the light was sufficient to show Croft piles of military gear, rugs of native skin, on one of the latter of which he seemed to be lying, and some crude stools scattered about.
He lay with head half turned as he had been thrown down, and now he became aware of other life in the tent as his senses more fully returned. There was a sound of voices. He opened his eyes widely and stared about. And inwardly at least he gasped.
This was the headquarters of the army he had sought to bomb, past any doubt. Blue men—a dozen, a score were clustered about a huge chair to one side, in which another blue man sat. And yet—in the latter Croft detected something familiar in a flash, and immediately after he understood. He had heard it alleged that certain Zollarian captains had stained their bodies and shaved their heads and dyed the remaining scalp lock of their light hair to match the Mazzerian red.
And—and—this was Bandhor of Zollaria—brother of Kalamita—that tawny female magnet with which the northern nation had sought to bind the profligate Prince of Cathur to her cause. This was Bandhor, his massive body stained blue in its every ungainly line, seated upon this chair before which the other blue men stood. And inspecting the latter more closely, marking their features well in the murky light, Croft decided that most of them were men of Zollaria tinted and shaved and dyed like Bandhor himself.
Here then was proof of Zollaria's hand in the Mazzerian invasion, proof that Croft lay in the spot which was the brain center of the Mazzerian army in the field. Croft's head was splitting, but he sought to focus his attention on what was being said.
"Sayest thou that this man fell out of the skies?" Bandhor roared, turning his eyes toward where Croft lay on the farther side of the tent.
"Aye," said one of the captains, whom Jason felt positive was a Zollarian for all his naked blue length. "Aye, Bandhor, he fell from a device like to a pair of wings. Before that had strange weapons fallen upon my men from the skies in a rain of death. Then suddenly came this man."
"Tamarizian devil," Bandhor swore with savage force. "This newest method of their fighting would seem to be like their last, when they struck Zollaria's army with a blast of fire. Go see if still he breathes."
Two of the men turned and approached Croft. They bent above him. He stared straight into their faces.
"Aye, Bandhor of Zollaria," reported one. "He has opened his eyes."
"Bring him here."
Croft rose. Without waiting the touch of a captor's hand he staggered up and faced Bandhor's chair. "Stand back," he hissed to men beside him. "I would walk alone." He took a step forward, swaying; whereupon the others seized him and hurried him to Bandhor's place.
"Spawn of Tamarizia," Bandhor began, "what is thy name?"
"Thou hast said it, Bandhor," Croft retorted, determined to give no information.
"Came you from Atla?" Bandhor roared.
"Yes."
"How many men inside her walls can Jadgor and Medai claim?"
"Enough," said Croft. "Enough blue-dyed men of Zollaria to pile other thousands of your naked dupes before them. There are not men enough in all Mazzer to scale at Zollaria's command Atla of Bithur's walls."
"Hai! By Bel of Zollaria thy fall has not broken thy tongue at least!" Bandhor exclaimed. "But thy man-made wings are broken, and thy insolent spirit may be broken also. Hai—bring a brazier and a spear head. Since this Tamarizian fights with fire we shall give him a taste of it himself, and learn perchance what within Atla transpires."
"Hold!" Suddenly the wall of the tent behind Bandhor's chair swept back, revealing a small private tent beyond it, and a tawny woman appeared.
White she was in the murky light as a ray of moonlight in the dusk—white, and splendidly formed in every supple line of sensuous body and limb. Jeweled cups covered her breasts, and a scarf of shimmering tissue was twisted about her sinuous loins and fell half down her thighs. With the grace of a stalking panther she advanced, accompanied by another blue-stained Zollarian captain, and took her stand beside her brother. In the flare of the torches she gleamed among those blue-tinted bodies like a silver wand.
"Bethink you my brother," she continued as Croft recognized in her that Kalamita, that feminine magnet of flesh, who had tempted Cathur's Prince Kyphallos through the spell of her unclean charms, her unhallowed embrace, "would destroy or even mar the weapon in your hand?"
"Hai, by Bel," began Bandhor.
"Aye," his sister went on. "Where are Bandhor's eyes? Call on Bel and you will, yet have you not sacrificed to him enough of blood to glut his heart, without adding this? See you not this is a man of importance—and one to me before this described? Mark you not the closeness of the hair upon his head, his stature? Know you not that before you stands the Mouthpiece of Zitu of whom Tamarizia boasts—him to whom Zollaria must mark the score of her defeat, her loss of Mazhur? Rather than for gaining information can Bandhor not think of a better way in which such a one may be used?"
"Hai—you mean a ransom, Kalamita my sister?" Bandhor burst out as she paused.
"Aye." The eyes of a tigress looked into Croft's as she answered, studied his every expression, marked the effects of her words. "Aye, Bandhor, and you and other captains—and the ransom—should be—large. Much should Tamarizia be asked in payment for her Mouthpiece of Zitu, who tumbles from the skies."
And suddenly she smiled as she broke off her flippant taunt—smiled and looked steadily into Croft's staring eyes.
"By Bel!" once more Bandhor roared. "The words of Kalamita are of wisdom. Go—Mamai. Take portions of the device from which he fell. See they are carried to Atla. Say that this man fell among us with them. Demand a parley, at which terms for his return shall be named."
"Aye, Bandhor!" One of the captains saluted and left the tent.
Inwardly Croft writhed. Here was a pretty pickle, indeed, since by his own blunder he had become to Tamarizia a weakness rather than a strength—since because of it, Tamarizia would seem to be confronted with the choice of leaving him to fate or paying Mazzer's and Zollaria's price. And—he had caught all the meaning in the tawny depths of the Zollarian courtezan's eyes. That price would indeed be large.
And now she bent and whispered into Bandhor's ear and he nodded. "Bind him," he said, and pointed to Croft. "Lift him and bear him into my sister's tent. Place a guard about us when it is finished. That is all, my captains. We wait for word from Atla. Go!"
To resist was useless. Croft did not try. He stood passively while his hands and feet were trussed. Even then he was trying to think, to scheme some way out of the mess into which he had brought himself. And—a vague question roused as to Kalamita's object in having him carried into her own tent. Object he was sure there was, but it baffled him for the moment. Then he was lifted and borne beyond the flapping door through which she had entered, and laid on a pallet of skins beside a copper couch.
The woman followed, remained standing until his bearers had left, then approached and reclined on the couch from whence she could watch his eyes.
"Mouthpiece of Zitu," she began after a moment of contemplation, "Mouthpiece of Zitu, who tumbles from the skies."
Croft made no answer, and suddenly she left the couch and knelt beside him. "You are a handsome man, Mouthpiece of Zitu; am I not beautiful myself?"
"Yes," said Croft, since in a purely physical way she was no less than a creature to drive most men mad, and he knew that she knew it, and because of the knowledge, left none of her charms concealed.
"And"—she bent above him, closer, closer, until her reddened mouth seemed about to touch him, until her breath played softly against his cheek—"wisdom and beauty may accomplish much together, Mouthpiece of Zitu, think you not?"
So that was it—wisdom and beauty together. A sudden loathing—an impulse to put more space between that gleaming body, that blood-red mouth so very close above him, gripped Croft and shook him. But he kept it out of his voice and out of his eyes as he replied. "What mean you, Kalamita of Zollaria, you magnet of the flesh?"
She laughed—laughed with a note of exultation in the sound as though his words were a tribute to the power she knew was her own. "Why think you Kalamita saved you from the fire?"
Croft quibbled. "Said she not the reason in words?"
The woman frowned. "Think you Jadgor of Tamarizia will pay the price for you that Mazzer will ask?"
Croft knew that his heart leaped. He had been afraid—afraid—yet now he recalled Jadgor as he knew him—Jadgor who had bowed his haughty crest on the day just passed for Tamarizia, but never for himself. Turning the thought in his brain he forget to answer.
"You know he will not." Almost Kalamita hissed. "And if not, is death preferable to life, power—love? Wouldst prefer to lie in the ground, wise man of Tamarizia, or in Kalamita's arms? Wouldst prefer to give of your strength to Zollaria and her, or to the worms?"
More and more Croft sickened at her words. For this he had been brought into her private tent. There alone with this shameless woman he was to be intrigued, turned traitor, in spirit and body seduced. Almost instinctively he turned away his eyes. Her beauty had become a deadly menace—the perfume of her tinted flesh had become a stench. To him she was offering what to Cathur's prince had been given, which had made of the man's name a synonym for treason in his nation. And now once more she was speaking.
"Behold, we are alone. I can unbind you, and—Kalamita's couch is—wide."
"Aye, too wide, by Zitu!" suddenly Croft roared. "The need was too patent in its making to have foreseen the fact that width would be required. Sister of Bandhor, beautiful as the dream of a soul in the realms of Zitemku you may be, but—Jason of Tamarizia barters not the welfare of his nation for a moment's lust."
"So!" Kalamita rose and stood above him. Cruel was her red lips' smile, and cruel was the light that flashed from her oval, tawny eyes. "So, then, we know your name at last. Hark ye, Jason—for Kalamita's favor prouder heads than thine have bended down in the dust. Nor is her favor a thing to be lightly brushed aside. Wherefore and Jadgor pays not the price we ask, then the Mouthpiece of Zitu dies."
A space of time dragged past and Croft had not replied.
Suddenly Kalamita was again beside him. "Or, perhaps," she said in a softer fashion, "it is because of that maid of Aphur, of whom one has told me—that Jason turns aside. If so, forget her—and remember only that Kalamita also is a woman."
"Nay—by Zitu, and Azil and Ga, the pure woman," Croft flamed. "Jason forgets not the virgin to whom he is plighted for one who has lain in Kyphallos of Cathur's or another's arms."
"By Bel." Once more Kalamita rose. A tremor shook her tightened figure and quivered in her tones. "By Bel, who delights in slaughter, you shall die by torture. Tested by fire shall you be, and staked out for the insects to devour. The carrion birds of Mazzer shall pluck out your beauty-blinded eyes. The beasts of the forest shall tear thy entrails from thee for thy words to me." She turned and went swiftly toward the flaplike door and flung it open. "Bandhor, O ay Bandhor!" she cried.
Her blue-stained brother appeared. They conferred together. Bandhor turned away.
But only for a moment longer were Croft and the woman alone. Then came Mazzerian soldiers, and lifting the trussed figure, bore it swiftly into the night through Bandhor's tent and to another, smaller, unlighted as to its interior, with naught for a floor save the grass-grown ground. And there they flung him down.
But Jason smiled. That quiet dark, the sweet, pure kiss of the grass beneath him was better than the atmosphere he had left. He stretched out his limbs so far as his bonds would let him and breathed a sigh of relief.
And after a long time, as it seemed to his troubled senses, all his planning focused on Zud and Naia—dwindled down to those two words. Lying here, bound, practically doomed to die, he could yet communicate with them in the astral state. To Zud, whom he had taught to recognize his coming, he could go then, and even though thereby he made his own death practically certain, he would still serve best the Tamarizian states. And Naia—-he quivered at the thought. Naia—as he knew her, would like himself, consider him unworthy if he did less than that. Therefore he took a deep breath; he would go to Zud.
And swiftly as the thing was always accomplished when he so desired it, he was bending over the high priest's body, asleep in the Zitran pyramid.
"Zud," his spirit was calling. "The Mouthpiece of Zitu commands you. Come forth."
And Zud appeared. "Aye, Jason of Zitu," he quavered. "Zud is here."
"List ye, Priest of Zitu," Croft replied, and told him what had occurred. "Wherefore give ear further to my words. Go to Lakkon, and bid him, in Zitu's name, to send to Jadgor at Atla, advising him to hold out and seek for delay until the aid from Himyra arrives. Let it be said to him that Zollaria inspires all things which Mazzer requires. Let him know that through the power of the spirit which is mine, I shall inspire Naia of Aphur to cause Robur, his son, to come swiftly to Atla in person, to direct the use of the weapons that together with myself he understands, and that through you and Naia of Aphur, I shall keep him informed of all that transpires while yet my body survives."
"And thou—thou?" Zud faltered in distraught fashion, clasping his shadowy hands.
"I? I know not," said Jason. "My fortune is in Zitu's hands. To you I give this mission. Say that you understand."
"Zud hears, and Zud obeys."
Croft left him. His work was finished. He sought Himyra and Robur's palace, and Naia—-his other self. And this part of his plan he felt would be the hardest, since in order to make her comprehend fully he must tell a painful truth—must confess that through his own daring was Jason at last undone—that his body lay prisoner to Mazzer, condemned if what he meant to attempt were accomplished, to what seemed inevitable death.
And suddenly, as he gained her chamber, Croft had the odd sensation that he stood before a tomb. Why it was he did not know at the moment, but it was as though he faced a ravished or an empty shrine. So strongly had he willed himself to this spot that the very concentration of his purpose had blotted out all else, and only now, when he reached it, did there come upon him the feeling that his coming here was vain.
Yet he crept inside. He moved swiftly toward her couch. In the dusk her form lay stretched upon it. But—it was motionless, with no stirring of the coverlet stretched above it, no evidence of breath. Pale as a lovely image it lay before him, in the semblance of what might be death.
Fear—sheer, stark fear gripped Croft and held him through the span of a startled instant. And then he knew the truth. Because as he stood there it seemed to him that Naia of Aphur was calling—not from the form on the couch, but from somewhere else. "Jason—Jason—O Jason, my beloved!" that subtle cry rang out.
And it drew him. It compelled him. It was the voice of love—the voice of the affinity of the ages, soundless, as the spinning of the planets down the grooveless tracks of time—a blind thing, a mad thing, beyond all thinking in its sweetness—the voice of atom to atom—of the soft wind to the pollen—the voice of the bird to its mate—of the maiden to her lover—the ceaseless song of creation—the voice of God to man.
"Jason—O my beloved!"
It filled Croft's being. It engulfed him. It caught him up and carried him he cared not whither on the tide of a swift irresistible flood. It made of his astral substance no more than a straw swept up and off and about in an eddy of compelling force. It was more like that ceaseless urge which had drawn him from the Dog Star always while yet he dwelt on earth.
It carried Croft out of the palace and across the Central Sea. It swept him across Bithur, with its plains and night-wrapped woods. It drew him above the camp of the Mazzerian army, and inside that tent where his body lay stretched out upon the ground.
And then Croft understood—that Naia had accomplished for herself, what heretofore had been by him induced—that her spirit's love—her desire for knowledge, had enabled her soul to break the body's bonds. That as she suggested she might, in a former conversation, she had found the way to visit him in dreams.
Yes, Croft knew all this in a blinding flash of comprehension. Because—there in the little tent, its auric fires paling and glowing, its soft arms twined about his unconscious body, lay Naia's astral form.
She had come to find him. Suddenly it seemed to Croft that he might have known. And all at once he was glad, with a great unreasoning gladness that when she came, she had found him here alone, like this rather than in Kalamita's tent.
Then very softly, "Beloved," he let steal forth the soul call.
She heard. She lifted her head from where it had lain upon his breast. She turned its wide eyes toward him, and saw him and rose swiftly toward him, and into his embrace.
"Jason—I came to Atla, and could not find you. And I sought you—sought you. What is the meaning of this?"
"The plane fell. I told you always there was danger," he explained briefly. "I was taken prisoner by the Zollarian masters of the men of Mazzer. I am held to ransom for a price."
"Zitu!" Naia panted. "And what else?"
"I went in the spirit to converse with Zud, and send him on a mission to thy father," Jason told her, loath to answer her questions with a mere avowal of the numbing truth—that truth which as it seemed must blast their own hopes for the future, unless in some blind way he could contrive escape. "Through him I shall send word to Jadgor that the price must be refused."
"Refused?" Naia drew back slightly. Those quivering fires of her life force faltered, grew dim and uncertain, died down like a flame well nigh blown out by a deadening wind of fear. "But Jason—thy body—which I found lying—here?"
"Belongs to thee, while yet it survives," Croft answered slowly, and went on before she could find a reply. "Then went I to Himyra, and finding your form stretched on its couch, seemed to hear you calling, and returned to find you here. Listen, Naia, my beloved, you must find Robur and speak to him for me. To Jadgor you must send him, explaining what has befallen, telling him from me as the one Lakkon sent will tell him, that when Robur shall arrive to take charge of the motors and the riflemen of Aphur, they must strike, strike, strike until Bithur shall be freed. Also to Robur you must say he shall call on Nodhur and Milidhur to arm so quickly as they may, and send their men to reenforce and support Aphur. So shall Tamarizia vanquish Mazzer and once more defeat those things Zollaria plans."
"And—you ask me—to do this?" Naia faltered.
"Aye—for Tamarizia I ask it," Croft replied.
"But—you—you?" She glanced toward the tight-bound body.
Croft sought to stay her questions. "Look not there, beloved. I am here."
"But—unless this price of Mazzer you mentioned—be paid?" She would not be refused.
Croft drew her to him. His position was perhaps rather more peculiar than that of any living man. The answer to what she had asked was death, and he knew it. Once he had snapped the astral cord that bound him to a body, but only after control of another had been gained. And that second body, the one he had made his own on Palos when he forsook earth because of the woman whose vital substance now glowed and paled against him, was the one which lay bound beside them on the ground. There was no other—the loss of it meant to him what the loss of physical life must mean to all men—nothing else. "If the price is not paid, it is easy enough to snap the cord that binds my life within it, at the proper time," he said at length.
"And," said Naia in a tone of horror, "you would ask me in taking your message to Robur, in sending him to Jadgor, to consign our love to death?"
"The price," said Croft in justification, "is very great. Much will Mazzer ask—more than by Tamarizia can be paid for one man's life."
Swiftly the auric fires leaped up in Naia's slender figure. "Is there no escape?"
"I know not," Croft made answer. "It is as Zitu wills. These Zollarians with the men of Mazzer have stained themselves blue. Yet whom have I to stain my body, were the stain within my grasp, or shave my hair and dye it red in time to make the venture? This tent is under guard, and will be, and the hands of my body are bound."
Naia considered. "And the price Mazzer will ask," she spoke slowly after a time, "is large?"
"Aye, as large, I fear, as though the Zollarian war had been lost by Tamarizia and Mazhur not regained."
"And if not paid—your body—dies—and mine."
"Thine?" Croft tightened the grip of his arms upon her. "What mean you, maid of Aphur, by such words?"
"Aphur means what Aphur says," she returned, and looked him in the eyes. For a moment her own were steady, and then they wavered. She clung to him in an almost frantic agony of what seemed a momentary panic of more than mortal grief. Then that, too, had passed, giving way to an almost passionate mood. "Think you that when life has left your body, Naia of Aphur, too, shall not lie dead; that to her the body has no longer any meaning, save as it delights you, save as through it she knows the touch of yours? Did you not swear to me by Zitu and Azil to return and claim me? And if that promise remains unfulfilled, think you that Naia of Aphur will live?"
"Yet," Croft stammered, shaken by this breath of passion, dazzled by the flashing of her being's fire, "if the welfare of Tamarizia demands the failure of that promise—if not with honor can I return to Himyra in the body. If your words, beloved, make doubly hard my purpose, when you shall have left me and returned to carry my message to your cousin—"
"By Zitu—and by Zitu," Naia fired into desperate protest, "it shall not be. Azil, giver of life! Shall these foul spawn of Zitemku keep you from me? Nay, as I am a daughter of Ga, with your seal upon me, now Ga speaks to me!" She broke off and lifted her hands to her breast. Her very eyes were fired.
So for a moment she stood before she went on. "Hark you, Jason, whom I love more than my own soul. This tent is guarded as you have said, and a price is laid on Tamarizia for your returning. Yet am I not woman whom you have wakened for nothing, and my love is not in vain. What price for a man who is dead?"
"By Zitu!" Croft caught her meaning. His glance turned toward the body on the ground beside their feet.
And Naia nodded. "Aye—Gaya told me in speaking of those things you told to Robur and to Zud, and now I know for myself that when the spirit is without it, the body lies as dead. Wherefore were it possible for you to remain as now you are for a space sufficient to deceive these men of Mazzer into thinking that injured in your fall you perchance had died—think you they would keep your body under guard or even near them, lest it foul the air even like those rotting corpses which tainted it with horror as I passed this night by Atla's walls?"
"No by Zitu—they would cast it forth in some other place," Croft answered quickly. "Naia—Ga—priestess of life, you have said it. Together we shall beat them yet."
"Aye, we shall beat them. Listen further," Naia said. "For a few suns you shall appear to be alive, yet faint and not recovered from injury. To Himyra shall I return and carry your message to Rob. When seven suns beginning with the next are passed, then must you seem to die. Thus shall they carry you forth. But the seven days shall be to gain time for what you direct to be done. Hai, I am not daughter of Ga for nothing. Beloved—give me your mouth. I must be gone."
Life! Life and this woman! There was a chance. Her wits had found it where his had milled around. Daughter of Ga was she as she said—and perhaps Ga—the eternal woman,hadspoken to her through the elements which went into forming her nature first. Croft took her once more closely into his arms.
"Seek not to leave your body for one moment between now and the end of the seventh sun," she cautioned, "lest one should note it and so at the proper time entertain a doubt of your real death."
Croft marveled. To him she seemed to think of each infinitesimal detail. "No," he gave his promise. "I shall be merely as one who from one sun to another fails."
Naia lifted her lips. And as once before in similar fashion, she yielded them to him. For an instant it was as though their two beings blended, intermingled, and then she had torn herself from him, divinely glowing. "Zitu keep you, beloved," she whispered, and vanished from before his eyes.
For the succeeding seven days Croft endured—simply endured discomfort—the trussing up of his arms and feet at night in none too gentle fashion, the scant irregularity of poorly furnished meals, the absence of aught save trampled grass to sleep upon, renewed attempts on the part of Bandhor to force from him some intimation of Tamarizia's plans—the haughty, venomous hate that glared out of Kalamita's tawny eyes—that fury of a woman of the purely physical type, whose allurement has been scorned—of an adventuress, a schemer, whose scheme has failed.
But on the seventh day, as he lay brooding in his tent, close by the huge skin headquarters tent of Bandhor, which reminded him more of some Tatar chieftain's domicile than anything else, with its hide walls, its semibarbaric trappings, its red-and-green standard floating on a pole before its door, the door of his own tent was drawn slightly to one side and a face appeared to send his heart leaping into his breast.
Maia, Naia's own maid, was looking shrewdly into his starting eyes. And as lost in a maze he lay staring at her, filled with a vast wonder at her presence here in the heart of the Mazzerian camp, yet afraid to speak—torn between a desire to learn the meaning of her presence and a fear lest any sign of recognition should destroy whatever purpose that presence might portend, she flung the flap entirely back and darted inside.
"Thou canor of Tamarizia!" she cried in the voice of a termagant—a shrew—and struck him with her right hand a smart blow. "Thou foul offspring of Zitu fallen to the ground—thou devil who sent fire against my people, whose own people have cast him off, die—like the canor thou art!" And all the time she was shrieking she continued to buffet him with blows, striking him with her bare hand, kicking him with her feet. "Die, thou pale-faced fiend, whom Bel—greater than thy Zitu struck down and hurled among us—die—die now!"
But Croft, under the storm of her words, her buffetings, made no movement of resistance, lay limp and unresisting on the grass. Because even as she struck him, even as she lashed him with her tongue, calling him fiend and devil and canor—the name of the great beasts such as Naia's pet and protector, Hupor, which was the nearest approach in Palos to a dog; yet as her one hand rose and fell above him, her other drew from the narrow apron about her blue loins a little looped silver cross, and showed it to him briefly and thrust it back, and between the anathema of her lips they moved in almost soundless speaking. "Hupor—give ear to my berating of thee closely. I come from one who loves thee greatly—to show you the cross."
The cross ansata—the looped symbol of life—the little sign Zud had placed in Naia's hands at their betrothal—the sign of immortal life which came to men through women—Naia of Aphur was sending it by this servant of hers, who loved her, to him! He closed his eyes and nodded slightly in understanding as Maia continued to rave. Only now his brain was whirling, seething; was a caldron of troubled questions he dared not voice—questions as to why Maia had been sent to aid in his escape, as he felt sure now she had. Yet to question the girl was impossible under the present conditions, and what was she screaming?
"Die—thou canor—die as Bandhor has decreed thou must, since Jadgor has refused thy ransom! Die now—thou Tamarizian dog!"
And she had told him to listen closely to her vituperations. Croft gained the message she intended. Jadgor had done as he advised, and Bandhor's captive had lost value. Wherefore he kept his eyes closed, and seemingly died.
Footsteps! Croft's guard burst through the door. He seized Maia and flung her to one side, and stooped above the body with a face of terror. And then he straightened and turned upon her. "By Bel, you have killed him!" he stammered. "He has been ailing ever since he fell among us. Fool that I was to listen to your plea to view him. May Bel send you our commander's rage."
"That rage," Maia said, panting as it seemed from her exertions and emotions, "seeing that he is of value no longer, should not be so intense."
"Come!" The guard seized her by an arm and led her toward Bandhor's tent.
Croft went along, trailing the man and woman's steps. And once inside the huge shelter of skins, the guard saluted sharply and hurled Maia before the Zollarian noble, so that she sprawled her length on the ground.
"Behold, O Bandhor"—he made his report in a gruff bluster designed to cover his own face as well as he could—"this woman who made her way by stealth into Jason of Tamarizia's tent and struck him so that he died!"
"Hai!" Bandhor half rose, and sank back and narrowed his eyes. He regarded Maia, who groveled before him, her body caught and held, half-raised, on stretching arms, her head lifted, gazing into his startled face with watchful eyes.
"How are you called?" he inquired.
"Maia," stammered the woman. "Child am I of a father and mother who have lived among his people. All my life have I served them until Bel sent Bandhor and my father's people to bring liberation. Then I slipped away and made my way to thy army, with which I have stayed the past sun. Wherefore, hearing that Bandhor had condemned this one to death, I desired to see him and, seeing him, rage overcame me, and I threw myself upon him. Mercy, O Bandhor, mighty commander of my people, for this which I have done."
"Hai!" said Bandhor again, his lids contracting still further. "After all, it is a small matter, though my sister will be annoyed. She had planned a more lingering death for this insolent man. Yet to death was he condemned, and it is finished. Say you that from the bondage of his people you have come?"
"Aye, from Atla, lord."
"Atla! Now, by Bel!" Bandhor roared. "And what inside the penned-up city do these white spawn plan?"
"They speak of resistance," Maia made answer, "as Bandhor knows. But perchance he knows not that many men from Aphur have arrived, armed with the chariots they call moturs, which run by fire, and breathe it forth as death, and with the sticks that throw death unseen with noise and smoke, unlike the flight of an arrow or spear. Ten thousand have reached Bithra, and are advancing to the relief of Atla even now. More are said to be journeying from Aphur across the Central Sea, and yet others from Nodhur and Milidhur are to come."
"Hai!" For the third time Bandhor said it with a heavy frown. "This is of importance. For the information your words contain, I give you pardon—were those other of thy father's children in Tamarizia as loyal—much might be wrought of ill among them were their caste of servants to rise and kill and burn. Go!" He turned to the guard, whose face had lightened. "Take men and bear forth this body, and cast it beyond the camp. Or hold! I will view him myself." For the third time his eyelids narrowed, and he rose.
Followed by Maia and the guard, he entered Croft's tent and bent over the body on the ground. "Aye—his spirit has left him," he said as he straightened from the inspection and swung about on his heel.
"Mighty Bandhor," Maia stayed him. "I may remain for a time in the camp."
Bandhor eyed her. "Oh, aye," he said in careless fashion. "You are a comely girl of your people; you should have small trouble in finding some man to take you to his tent."
He turned away, and a moment later a brazen trumpet began sounding a summoning blast. As Croft learned, this was a signal to Bandhor's captains and advisers to assemble for a council with their chief.
Maia stole out with the arm of the guard about her, walking coyly at his side. Quite plainly the fellow was inclined to take Bandhor's suggestion about her to himself. Croft watched them vanish, and remained beside his own body, still huddled on the grass.
And in the end he followed it—followed his own body when it was borne outside the limits of the encampment and cast into a thicket of bushes, where its disposition was watched by Maia, who accompanied the now openly amorous guard and lingered beside the thicket with him after the other soldiers had cast down their burden and gone.
"Let us remove its clothing," she suggested. "To waste it were a loss."
The guard assented.
Five minutes later, more than a little aghast, Croft found his material tenement stretched stark upon the ground. Maia and her lover were moving off. In her arms the girl bore his suit of soft, brown leather.
In a way now Croft became more and more disturbed. Vague fancies filled his mind. At the first he had trusted her wholly, but this last move he did not understand. He recalled the story Parthys had told of the blue servants rising against their employers during the present trouble, and he marked the manner in which she accepted the blue man's advances.
After all, she was a Mazzerian herself, he thought, and there was no reason save her possible affection for Naia to insure her worthiness of trust. Still—she had shown him the tiny cross from the apron about her waist, and she had told him to die, as Naia had advised he should. After all, she might have some definite reason beyond his present knowledge for divesting his body of clothes. And he could do nothing until nightfall. That being the case, and the night being several hours removed, there was nothing to do but wait. Dead it might be in seeming, yet Croft knew that lying thus in the open his body needed protection. In the middle of the thicket he settled down beside it. It was rather odd, he found himself thinking, to be sitting there keeping an invisible watch of his own form.
Now and then, as the afternoon passed, he stole a glance at the camp. There was bustle there, a moving and shifting of men. It came to him that Bandhor, after his council, was preparing for another attack of Atla, urged thereto by Maia's report concerning the approaching reinforcements of weapons and men. Well, let them attack, he thought with a grim satisfaction. Jadgor would hold out through yet one more attack surely, and by then Bandhor would have lost his chance, once Robur and his forces had arrived.
Night came at last. Purposely Croft waited until late before making his venture at escape. And while he waited, there stole into the thicket a dim shape, which approached his body and sank beside it on the ground.
It was Maia. More than a little surprised, Croft watched her. She carried a bundle. She undid it. She moved higher beside his body and raised his head, supporting it on her thighs. Then swiftly she began to shave it, turning it to reach the back, and working rapidly on the sides. That done, while comprehension flashed into Croft's mind, and with it renewed confidence in this girl, as he recalled his words to Naia concerning some such thing as this, she took a small box from her bundle and began rubbing the scalp-lock she had left upon his poll with a substance it contained. After that she lifted a flask and removed a stopper. Working rapidly, she began smearing the body with some dark fluid, spreading it thinly upon the skin, rubbing it to as even a coating as she might with rapid hands. And as she worked Croft's body lost its ivory whiteness and became a dark-hued thing like her own. At the end she took a small cloth from the articles she had brought with her and twisted it deftly about his loins.
And as she finished and straightened herself from her labors, Croft, sensing it time for his reviving, opened the eyes of the body over which she had worked and spoke.
"Hai," said Maia, without any particular evidence of consternation. "It is even so she said it would happen when I had finished. She said that when I had shaved you, lord, and reddened your hair, and stained your body, and put the loin-cloth upon it, you would reappear."
"She?" Croft questioned her quickly. "You mean Naia of Aphur, Maia?"
"Aye. Who else, Hupor Jason?" She rose and picked up her bundle. "Naia, my mistress. These are your garments. Come, Hupor, till I lead you to her. She lies near."
She lies near! Croft's senses reeled and then steadied into the blinding truth—the sweetness of it, the full meaning of it—and yet the possible peril to her whom it concerned.
Naia of Aphur lay near him—had come to his rescue.
Then—then—seven days before she had not told him all the plan she had in mind. She had told him only the essential portion which most closely concerned himself—and the rest—this thing—the part which dealt with her aid and assistance when the time for it should arrive, she had left unspoken, knowing no doubt he would forbid her risking her own integrity in an effort to succor him.
For an instant he thrilled with blended feeling, and then he spoke to Maia. "You mean?"
"That she lies hid some distance beyond the camp of thy enemies, Hupor. Come."
"But—" Croft found himself confused by the manner of Naia's presence. Barely seven days had passed since she must have wakened in Himyra after their astral conversation in the tent where he lay bound. The time was not sufficient to brand Maia's words as truth. And yet Croft knew that he believed them. How, then, had Naia come?
Almost with impatience Maia interrupted. "Seven suns from now she waked from her slumber, Hupor, in a most strange mood. For the Hupor Robur she sent me, and for long they spoke together, and after that she spoke with me again. Bidding me place her in the garment she wears when she dares to rise in the air, she took me with her to the great house where the thing she rides is kept, and compelled me to enter it with her, so that my spirit turned as weak as water when, with a great roaring, we leaped into space."
"Zitu—you mean she flew to Bithur?" Croft's stained chest rose sharply. His eyes began to flash.
"Aye, Hupor—partly in the air like a bird, and partly on the water like a boat—which, praise to Zitu, was calm, and with wonderful speed."
"But fuel—what is burned in the motor?" Jason questioned.
Maia shrugged. "Her lips, not mine, should tell you how, like a bird to its mate, she came to seek thee, Hupor," she admonished. "Yet—were not the great galleys already seeking to reach Bithur with men and weapons by the Hupor Robur's orders? And though he swore by Zitu and Azil she should not undertake this madness, he did not refuse to his cousin that which would spell her death. On the waves we rode beside the galleys when the thing that makes the motor turn was required."
"My God!" Croft spoke not as a man of Tamarizia, but of earth. Naia had solved all difficulties, driven by the desire of saving him from the results of his own misfortune. She had overcome all obstacles in her desire to reach him. And this was love—the flight of Naia of Aphur, as the blue girl had phrased it, like that of a bird to its mate.
"On the night of the sun before this we came down in an open place in the forest," Maia explained further. "There the great wings we rode on lie hid. And some distance farther in this direction she awaits thee, Hupor. Come."
"Aye," said Croft, and caught a great, a wondrous breath of realization. "Aye, come." And now as he moved off, where he had delayed before he seemed fired by an all-compelling haste.
To reach her—to meet her—to greet her and gather her into his arms! To hold her, sense the strength, the softness, the ripened glory of her; to hold her, and know that no matter how beautiful she was in body, the beauty and strength of her spirit was no less. To hold her and know, realize, feel that the beauty, the strength, the glory of both soul and body were his. He started out of the thicket at a pace that made Maia gasp:
"Walk not so quickly, Hupor, and permit that I walk at thy side. Seen we may be of many, and though thou are stained to the seeming of a man of Mazzer, yet were it best that you seem also not as one in haste, but as a man who strolls through the camp with a woman at his side."
"Aye." Croft nodded in understanding and slackened his stride. "Aye—Maia—yet lead me to her as quickly as you can."
Their course led them after a time into the depths of the gloomy forest, where the moons were blotted out or their light filtered in streaming tatters through the trees. And there Croft spoke again to his companion.
"I failed to understand when you put it into the mind of the guard to make way with my clothes."
Maia made a clicking sound suggestive of an almost impish amusement as she answered. "But—since I was to paint your body, Hupor, it was easier for me to bring the pigments wrapped inside them, when I slipped away from him after he had drunk wine into which I had dropped a substance to induce heavy slumber I had brought with me inside my girdle band. Indeed, we three appear now no more than as other children of Mazzer. My mistress, when we come upon her, will seem no other than myself."
"You mean you have stained her?" Jason questioned.
"Aye, lord, from the roots of her golden hair to her graceful heels. For two suns, as I have told you, has it been needful for her to lie in the open while I made my way to the camp and performed my mission, and had any come upon her—"
She turned aside and swept back a screen of branches. She plunged through and came into a break in the forest close to the banks of a tiny stream across a little glade. And there she pursed her lips and sent quivering through the moonlight what seemed a nightbird's call.
It was answered. Maia repeated, and paused, and whistled again. Then touching Croft on the arm, she urged him forth from the shadow until he stood revealed in the rays of the Palosian moons.
And from the shadows beyond him another shape appeared. Slight it was and slender, graceful as a faun, as it came swiftly toward him on flying feet, graceful as a dryad of the forest in its every supple, sweeping line save for where it was girdled by a band of white.
So much Croft saw, and advanced to meet it, and found it Naia, veiled as she stood before him from head to waist in the heavy cloud of her auburn-tinted hair.
And then she lay against him—his arms were straining her to his breast, and that cloud of ruddy hair was like the kiss of satin against his naked chest. And her hands were clinging to him, her arms were holding him fast.
"Jason, beloved," she panted, "you are safe—uninjured, alive!"
"Yes—thanks to you, beloved, and to Maia," Croft replied, and kissed her.
"Thou"—Naia of Aphur flung up her head and turned to the girl of Mazzer—"thou who this night have brought me more than life or anything besides—thou shall never leave me—thou shall remain always with me—and with him. My children you shall cradle in your arms—and if love comes to you as to me and offspring, I swear it—to me they shall be as mine."
"My mistress," Maia faltered, bending her head before Naia.
"Nay—you are my sister," said Naia, smiling, and took her by the hand. And after that she spoke again to Croft. "Yet—I am forgetting. Not yet are we free from danger. Thrice today have men roamed through the forest while I hid me beneath the leaves. But thy huge bird waits to bear us high above them. Come, beloved, come."
For an hour after that, his arm about her, or walking hand in hand—as though now they were once more together they sought the assurance of the fact through every thrilling sense—they hurried on. And then once more the moonlight filled all the bowl of a tree-ringed opening in the forest, and struck dull gleams from the copper body of the waiting airplane. Huge, impotent, in seeming, it squatted there, waiting their touch to wake it; its interlacing struts and trusses making a spider-webbed pattern in shadow on the ground.
Naia drew her ruddy tresses about her as they stepped into the forest meadow.
"Put on your flying garments now, beloved," she prompted, "while Maia and I find ours and put them on."
Five minutes later Croft lifted both women to their seats. Then as Naia, save for her strained face and changed hair, very much herself in her brown flying garments, took her place at the control, he seized the blades of the propeller and sent the engine round.
The plane swung with them like some monster bat beneath the skies. It turned. It rushed off under Naia's guiding, its vanes all silvered now like the top of the forest in the moonlight, bearing its burden of renewed life and love.
Far, far away on the plain where Croft had lain captive, still winked the light of fires. They came closer, closer, as the airplane ate through the trackless distance—were beneath it—were left behind.
Around, in a monster circle—a descending spiral. Once more around. Again and again in a vast, wide turning, sinking lower and lower down. The lights on the Bith were closer. Closer the fire-urns burned. Below was the wide-flung reach of the street along the river, and straight above it the airplane swung. The hum of the motor died, and the night wind sang in a sinking whisper past it. It slipped down a long hill of air and sped along the ground.
And as it stopped, as Croft lifted Naia from her seat, from the entrance of Atla's palace there dashed a chariot drawn by gnuppas, their plumes tossing, bearing down on the plane with flying feet. Straight as though driven in a race, it approached and paused, with the gnuppas on their haunches. Robur of Aphur flung aside its silklike curtains and sprung down.
"By Zitu—and by Zitu, my friend—my brother—and thou, Naia, my cousin, thou chosen of all Zitu's children!" he cried, all poise or thought of dignity vanishing as he caught them in his arms.
They entered the carriage and reclined upon the padded cushions, the princess commanding Maia to take a place at her side. They were driven to the palace, and there Croft was led to a room. And there attendants labored until the last of the blue pigment vanished, and his skin merged from beneath it a most surprising pink from the necessary force they used. As for the ruddy scalp-lock, he had it shaved off as the simplest way of settling the matter regarding his hair. He was glowing, both literally and with the thoughts induced by the manner of his escape and return when Robur appeared.
Bidding the servants fetch his customary garments, leg-cases, tunic, helmet, and metal cuirass, he dismissed them and proceeded to clothe himself.
"Hai!" Robur eyed him. "As once before I remarked, thou art 'a sight.' And a sight thou art for more than the eyes of a maid, Jason, my friend. In Zitu's name, what chanced to the airplane that thy plans went wrong? In Atla there was well-nigh a panic when you failed of your return."
Croft explained, and Robur nodded.
"Aye, it was the same with the motors when they 'stalled,' and they knew not how to start them; and as you have explained to me, there is small time to work upon a motor in the air. My father, however, swore it was a judgment of Zitu against him for his stand of the past few Zitrans toward thee. Then came Zud and Lakkon with your message, and word that fresh men and weapons were assured to lighten his cares."
"And the dynamo, Rob?" Croft questioned, buckling his cuirass straps and standing once more appareled in silver and gold, with the wings and cross in blue upon his breast.
"Lies on a galley even now beside the quays," Robur replied. "What of it, Jason? You have a plan?"
"Yes," Croft nodded as he laid a hand on his sword. "A plan to show that its wires as well as light, may build a cordon about Atla's walls, to touch which shall mean death. Then let Mazzer's Zollarian-commanded horde attack."
"Aye—say you so." Robur gained his feet. "Two thousand riflemen are with me; four times their number come from Bithra, and should arrive tomorrow. Nodhur and Milidhur will send us others. Also, there are the motors—twelve, all numbered—and the remaining airplanes, with men who know how to fly them to some extent. Aye, let Mazzer and her Zollarian leaders attack. But if you are ready, come. I was sent to bid you to a feast."
"A feast?" Croft eyed him sharply.
And Robur smiled. "Aye, a feast in quality, my friend, if not in numbers," he replied. "Come along, you favored one of Zitu. Naia of Aphur acts hostess tonight to her lord."
Yet even so, Croft did not understand as he followed his friend to a small apartment where a table was spread, and found Medai of Bithur, Jadgor, Lakkon, Zud, and Naia, already reclining on the couches ranged about the board. Nor did he consider greatly, after he had gripped the hand of each man present and looked into old Zud's eyes with a glance of mutual understanding, and taken the place at Naia's side she indicated by a gesture of her hand.
She was in white—all save the golden fabric of her girdle where against the glistening background the seal of Azil blazed. Save only for that spot of color, white as the robe of a vestal, her garment showed. White even were the sandals and leg-cases on her feet and tapering calves—of white leather as thin and soft as kid. White, too, were the stately plumes above her hair, once more a shimmer of gold. And her lips were scarlet as a poppy, and her eyes twin lakes of pansy purple, and softly pink, as the blush of innocence itself, her warm skin glowed.
Wherefore Croft was content to put by all consideration to eat; to drink of the wine before him with his lips, of Naia with his eyes; listen to the congratulations of the others stretched about the tables, while the harps of musicians hidden somewhere out of sight were softly played.
Nor did he dream that anything beyond the celebration of their safe return was toward, until old Zud, rising, signaled them to rise.
So that, all uncomprehending, he obeyed and rose, and giving Naia his hand, assisted her to her feet, and stood in silence waiting for the priest to speak; becoming aware as he did so that the others had also risen and were standing with their eyes on Naia and himself.
"Children of Zitu, I give ye to one another. May he send his blessings upon you, as I, his priest give—mine."
So spake Zud of Zitra, high priest of all Tamarizia, than whose words was no higher priestly voice.
And Naia, reaching down, unpinned the seal of Azil, and placed the gleaming jewel in his palm.
"O Jason, Jason," she stayed his halting question, "think you not that in our case custom may be set aside? See you not that so I compelled Zud to promise—before I flew above Atla's walls to find you—that if we returned together, it should be so—tonight?"
And then Croft comprehended all the sweetness of her planning. And drew her into his arms and held her—held her until it seemed that all else faded away and there was naught in the world save their two selves.
"My bride," he said; "my—bride."
This is the story told me by the lips of the sorry wreck on the bed, the spirit that looked out of its eyes—Croft's spirit, as I have every reason to believe, since he so frankly admitted what he had done, and because every detail of the narrative itself showed complete familiarity with the events embraced in the story Croft in his own earthly body had told me before.
"And that's all—or practically all—Murray," he said at last with a sigh and laid his cigar aside. "I've done a lot of things since then, and Tamarizia bids fair to develop into a very up-to-date nation; only I needed information concerning a lot of things in regard to which I was lacking. It was to gain this information I reversed my first experiment in changing bodies. Will you help me to what I need?"
"I'll help you, of course," I told him; "but what about the Mazzerian invasion?"
He gave me a glance, and the light in his eye was quietly amused.
"Lord, man, I was forgetting. To me it seemed that the moment in which I knew Naia mine was the logical ending. But we beat them. Hadn't I gained what I went to Palos to attain? Small chance that Zollaria's blue rabble could accomplish the revenge for which she schemed.
"Rob and I went to work the next day. We put about a thousand riflemen on the walls. And then we went outside and set up a lot of posts about twenty feet from the base of the walls. Ugh!—it was nasty work—with all those rotting corpses under foot. But we got them up while the riflemen kept the blue men back out of arrow range, and then we hitched one end of our wire to an armed motor and pulled it about the walls. In the meantime, however, we had to repulse an attack. On the second day Bandhor sent about ten thousand Mazzerians against our defenses, and we rolled them back considerably less in numbers than when they started, though I must say they fought like devils, and for a while it was pretty warm work.
"We had quite a time getting the wire strung, too, because they used to slip in and cut it down at night, so that finally, while I was rigging up a motor to run the dynamo and generate the current I meant to charge the wire, we gave it up. Then, when the motor was properly harnessed, we took a couple of cars and ran half-way around the walls each way between daylight and dark, and hooked the two ends up. And that night, you can take my word for it, the Mazzerians found trouble when they came up to undo our work. All you had to do was to stand on top of the wall and watch the flashes when those blue men hit the wire. Robur thought it was about the best piece of work I had accomplished yet.
"By that time, however, the eight thousand from Bithra had come up, and we began to get ready to stage our own attack. Murray, the present war was just started when I went to Palos first. But at the time I defeated Helmor, of Zollaria, these tanks I've been reading about in the papers the past few days hadn't been thought of, let alone used, on earth. That's one instance in which Tamarizia beat this more advanced planet."
"It was a man of earth who did it," I pointed out.
"Well—possibly, yes." Croft laughed. "What I started to say, however, was that I seem to have in a measure duplicated their performance and manner of offensive use myself. We used them to break the first resistance of the opposing line and pave the way for the infantry attack. You will recall the success of their work against Helmor's army in the Zollarian campaign. Well, they made good again.
"We sortied from Atla, with the motors in advance. Under a screen of rifle fire from the walls, we moved them out of the gates and placed them back of the wire, and filled them with men and grenades. And I picked two men Naia had trained in flying better than I could have done it myself. I suppose, Murray, fliers, like other men with some special aptitude, are born as much as made. My wife is a born aviatrix—nothing less. She'll do things with a plane I daren't attempt, and she'd licked two of the hangar crowd into mighty decent shape. I took them, and we used three planes and about a ton of bombs. Naia wanted to go along, but I wouldn't let her, but I know she went up on the walls with Lakkon and watched.
"Rob led the motor squadron and I the planes. We gave Bandhor's army everything at once. Jadgor had charge of the foot forces. And when everything was ready the sortie began.
"The motors advanced straight over the wire in which the power was turned off. I took my planes over the walls from the concourse along the Bith, and hit the blue army first with a shower of bombs. That upset them more or less. I honestly think the sight of the planes themselves shook them as much as anything else.
"And, of course, Robur made contact with his armored cars before they had steadied themselves. They fought—oh, yes, they fought, but they were beaten from the first. They tried to stall the motors and overturn them as they had when Jadgor used them against their army first. But this time they didn't stall, or not for long at a time—and what of the enemy weren't shot by the men inside them either ran away or were crushed. One did get stuck in the timber, and was in a pretty bad way until Robur himself got to it and drove the Mazzerians about it off. On the whole, however, they did splendidly, and tore some awful gaps in Bandhor's line.
"The infantry, coming up to the attack behind them, finished the work. Inside thirty minutes there wasn't any real army before us so much as the fragments of an army fighting where they fought at all, in small, disorganized bands. Thousands ran away in bodies. Hundreds hid in the woods. The riflemen mopped them up in droves. In a surprisingly short time Rob broke clear through the line with three of the motors, and got out of the fringe of forest between Atla and that great plain where Bandhor had his tent. And as luck would have it, he was just in time. Bandhor was about to leave. Rob"—the eyes of the man on the bed twinkled—"suggested in a somewhat urgent fashion that he remain—and his sister with him. I mustn't forget Kalamita at the last. He stuck both of them into one of the motors under guard and sent them straight back inside Atla's walls, and after that, what with the planes above them and the two remaining motors—Rob's own and the other—the Mazzerian army met a warm reception when it streamed out of the forest upon that plain. The end came right there. Mazzer's organized force broke up. It quit cold and ran. For a week we were hazing them in small bands out of Bithur, but they never stiffened up enough to offer a real fight again."
"And what about Bandhor and his sister?" I inquired.
Croft smiled. "I have every reason to think they were surprised to find me alive. I know Bandhor swore when we met the first time, and Kalamita turned a bit whiter that I had ever seen her before. We held them, Murray. Zollaria found out two could play at the same ransom game. Only Zollaria paid—a million sesterons, which, you may appreciate, is equivalent to about a million pounds. I hardly think she'll care to try conclusions with Tamarizia very soon again."
"And since then you've gone on introducing innovations, I suppose?" I said.
He nodded. "Yes. Naia and I went to Lakkon's mountain house. He gave it to us for our own. There were a lot of associations about it, and I was glad to accept it for a dwelling. As I told you, Tamarizia bids fair to come up to date. We're printing papers in Himyra and Zitra now, my friend. We've established a system of free schools. Now I'm after more rapid means of communications mainly—we've a sort of telephone—short-distance lines which I want to improve, and I want to establish telegraph and wireless. Astral communication may do between harmonized minds, but it's too much to expect to educate a people into anything like that.
"Also, I want to improve the medical caste. Oh, I've done a lot, but I want to do a million things yet. So I talked it over with Naia, and we decided that I should come back—reverse the experiment. We've been back in the astral condition, of course, more than once. I've brought her with me—shown her earth. She understands—and she's waiting for my success in this matter even now, up there in the mountains where I told her I loved her first. And see here—it may be that some attendant will tell you I'm pretty sound asleep almost any night. If I take the notion I'm apt to slip up to tell her how things are going along. So—if that happens, don't let it fuss you—though, with your understanding, I don't suppose it would. Anyway, I'll promise you now to give you warning when the work I came back for is done."
"And you're happy?" I questioned.
"Happy?" He gave me a strange glance. "Man, the word's inadequate. I've found the complement of my nature—speaking in that sense, I'm satisfied. And—as though that wasn't enough—it's five Zitrans now—six months about, as you estimate time, since Naia told me—that, in the quiet of the night, she had heard the whisper of Azil's wings. I—I don't know, Murray, both she and I hope it will be a boy—but whether it is or not—boy or girl, it is ours—the final proof of our love—of the blending of my life and hers."
I helped him. Of course I helped him. I did everything within my power to furnish him with the information he required. A month went by, and two, and nearly every night of that time we spent at least an hour in confidential talk.
And then, one night, he caught me by the hand and looked into my eyes and gripped my fingers hard. "I'm going, Murray," he said, smiling. "I've got what I came for, I fancy—so don't be surprised. And see here—Naia knows all about you. I've told her; and when I speak to her first in the flesh on Palos, I'm going to tell her how much you've contributed to the success of this undertaking. And if ever you give us a thought, you can feel that there's a woman—a wife and mother—up here on another star whose heart holds a warm spot for you—the one man on earth who knows our story—big enough—broad enough to refuse to balk at the truth."
I returned his gripping pressure, more than a little affected by his words. "Naia of Aphur is as real to me as I am myself," I replied. "And hang it, man—I—I wish I was up there with you. I'd like to be your physician. I'd consider it a privilege to watch the light in her eyes when they first see Jason Croft's son."
"Man," he said, "man, I could love you for that," and wrung my hand again.
It was midnight when the night superintendent called and told me No. 27 had died.
The last story in this trilogy will be "Jason, Son of Jason."