And yet, though in no way was he glad of this fresh need of armed force on Palos; there was no satisfaction in his soul at the thought of dead men, and women carried captive into the Mazzerian towns. Now and then as he worked, superintending that transshipment of men and munitions, Croft smiled. And his smile was strange as he found himself wondering just how Jadgor would meet this flank attack—this guerrilla warfare hurled against his most poorly prepared state by that beaten nation to the north, which Jadgor seemed inclined to take credit to himself for having defeated in war.
And that night, because there were things he wanted to know, he decided to learn them in the same way he had learned many, many things to his own and Tamarizia's advantage before. He willed himself to Zitra, to the palace and the presence of the man who had boasted to Zitu's Mouthpiece of his strength.
Zitra lay, all crystal and white and silver, under the triple moons. And then he was in a room with Jadgor and Lakkon and another—a stranger, whom he learned from the following conversation was a man of Bithur, Parthys by name.
The latter was speaking as Croft came in.
"By Zitu!" he exclaimed. "These bands are led by men of Zollaria, beyond any question. Some there are who have been killed in the fighting, and—they have stained blue their skins and dyed red their fair hair.
"Beaten in fair fight, she sends her captains to lead these barbarians against us—to outrage our women, and dash out the brains of sucklings and destroy our men. Jadgor, this was planned. Even among the men of Mazzer among us have there been whispers, so that blue men have slain the Bithurians in whose homes they were employed, and information has been transmitted from among us to our foes. This is Zollaria's vengeance she sends another to fulfil. Like a blue swarm of stinging insects, they swarm against us. Ten towns lie in ashes. Medai, our governor, is gathering our people for defense so quickly as may be. Yet, and aid be not sent us quickly, Zitu himself knows what may be endured."
Jadgor's dark face grew darker still at this report. He struck the table by which he sat a characteristic blow with his fist. "By Zitemku, the fiend whose spawn they are, they shall pay double price for what they have undertaken," he declared. "For aid I have sent already to Aphur. By now a swift galley should have arrived at Himyra, bearing my agent to the governor, my son. Once has Jadgor, when of Aphur, saved Tamarizia from Zollaria's designs. Fear not, Parthys of Bithur, that with the same means Helmor was vanquished, we shall punish this blue horde."
"Yet were it not better"—Lakkon put out a hand and touched the corded forearm of his brother-in-law, still tensed as it held his sinewy fingers doubled into an almost hammerlike fist—"were it not wiser, Jadgor, to ask the advice of him to whom much of our success against Zollaria, and the return of Mazhur to the nation, is due?"
"This Mouthpiece of Zitu?" Jadgor turned his eyes. "By Zitemku, Lakkon, where are thy wits? Must Zitu, even through his Mouthpiece, teach us our lessons twice? Have we not the weapons that carried death into Helmor's ranks by the thousands of souls? Know we not how to use them? Know we not that a thousand men so armed are the match for five, yes, for ten thousand equipped with sword and shield? And a thousand of such men I have asked from Robur, with a number of the moturs which ground Helmor's guard in the last battle beneath their crushing wheels. Enough! In four suns I myself shall go to Bithra, with our noble Parthys, to confer with Medai. When the Aphurian galleys arrive I myself shall take the field. Thou, as my agent, shall stay here till I return. Small need to question Zitu's Mouthpiece in a matter such as this."
Parthys nodded. "Your words strengthen the heart, O Jadgor," he resumed. "In four suns we shall depart? That is well. As yet it appears that only Bithur is attacked. Were it not wise to send word into Milidhur, lest along her borders these blue men forget the barter of hides and dried meats and cheese, and turn to war?"
"Aye." Jadgor nodded. "He who is warned is best prepared. Lakkon in the morn see to it. Let Milidhur be watchful for the slightest hostile sign along her borders. Then shall we teach this spawn of Zitemku to pluck Zollaria's vengeance for her; and should we capture some of these seeming men of Mazzer who have dyed themselves to play a part, I swear they shall wear their false tintings ever."
At least it was clear that Jadgor realized the nature of the trouble along the eastern border. How completely he would be able to meet it was a question which time alone would show. On the face of things, he was acting promptly and in a calmly thought out way. Had there been one single thing in his whole course open to objection, it would have been his over-confidence of the final issue which Croft would have criticised. But as he flitted back to Himyra he was fully aware that Jadgor was one of the few men in all Tamarizia versed in the art of war—was a good general in so far as Palosian methods of warfare went. And it appeared that, with Bithur's man-power organized and augmented by the thousand rifles, the six armored moturs from Himyra, Jadgor, even as he himself had declared, was very apt to make short work of Mazzer's naked horde.
Hence, as much because he wished to so believe as for any other reason, it was with the feeling that the affair along the Bithur borders was no more than a tempest in a teapot that he opened the eyes of his body and turned himself on his couch. Let Jadgor handle it in his own fashion, since he felt fully able, as no doubt he was, with the aid he had asked from Aphur, even now going rapidly into the galleys where Himyra's fire-urns flared along the quays, and the little cars trundled down the merchandise tunnels, bearing cartridges and rifles. As for himself, Croft smiled. He had plenty to do in Himyra, and—Naia of Aphur had gleamed like a blade of silver that morning as she cut her slender way through the waters of the pool. Only he had called her a little silver fish, and she had cried out and dived. He rose and lighted an oil sconce, and found the silver medallion, with its embossed figure of Azil and its circle of blood-red stones. Placing it in his palm, he sat staring at this amulet that had once proclaimed her his.
In the weeks that followed, many things transpired. The line of poles stretched its length from the power station to Himyra, and men were stringing wires. Croft made coke, ground it into powder, mixed it with a cohesive substance, and molded it into carbon cores, to serve his growing arcs. Also, he began experimenting in the construction of batteries, both moist and dry cells. He succeeded with the former from the first. And for these experiments he demanded of Robur, and obtained, the use of an unused room in the palace, where he often worked at nights.
Chemistry, as an exact science, was unknown on Palos, but through consultations with the local caste of physicians Croft managed to collect a certain number of crudely refined salts which they commonly used as drugs. The room where Croft delved into the simpler mysteries of nature became an apartment of wonder to Robur, who came to it first himself, and later brought Gaya and Naia.
And on the night of their first coming, Croft explained the laws of chemical affinity as best he could to the three, comparing the force that drew the ions together with love, and caught a comprehending flash from Naia's blue eyes.
Thereafter she came as she willed when he worked, and watched while he struggled with his far from satisfactory equipment, and asked a hundred questions, until he suggested that she assist him, whereupon she accepted with a readiness that filled him with surprise. Night after night thereafter she donned a coarse smock and labored at his side, finding a new world open before her with the wide-eyed interest of a child; beholding for the first time the deliberate manipulation of the hidden forces of nature, beginning at length to understand man's right and power to use them to his advantage, direct them and command, to look upon them not as some supernatural manifestation, but as a wholly natural thing.
Meanwhile in the motur shops, Croft's by now expert force were assembling the first two airplanes. And in the same place, since he could work there as well as anywhere else, and supervise their work at the same time, he and Robur spent a part of each day constructing a resistance coil and a temporary switch on a slab of the marble white stone so much in evidence on Palos, against the day when the new light should be shown to Himyra first.
At the end of two weeks, however, he moved the now finished wings and bodies in which the moturs had been installed to the hangars and installed a force of men with them there to complete the work. Meanwhile at night he kept up his search for a satisfactory dry cell, telling Naia that the success of the flying machine depended upon it; so that when at last he succeeded, and she felt the current tingle through her fingers for the first time, she cried out in delight.
And in those two weeks, as Gaya had planned, as Croft had known must happen, constant association and education had its effect. As they played ball in the mornings, and bathed, and worked, and sought for strange, new results such as the woman had never dreamed in all her existence, they drew closer and closer together in their aims, their every interest, their understanding, than they had ever been. In his own way and by his own methods, Croft was rapidly raising the woman, whom as a woman he worshiped, toward his own mental plane. Thus in the end she came to a realization that those things which had once seemed as much a miracle to her as to any of her people, might very well be manifestation of natural law within the grasp of man.
His dry cells perfected, the success of his engine ignition assured—several arcs nearing the finished stage of their construction, Croft had a new thought. He decided that after his demonstration of the airplanes at Himyra, he might wish to exhibit them at Zitra, and altered his plans somewhat as a result, and equipped each plane with a set of buoyant pontoons, thereby converting them to the type of flying fish more nearly than anything else. He explained his reason for this to Naia, with whom he was now talking everything over fully, and she smiled.
"On the water they will run as well as through the air," she said, when he had finished. "Jason—you must teach me to fly as well as everything else."
And as on the first afternoon of his coming to Himyra from the mountains, Jason frowned. "I like not the thought. There is danger in this flying."
"Danger?" Naia of Aphur arched her brows. "Think you I have any fear?"
"No," he hastened to assure her. "It is Jason who for thee would be afraid."
For an instant she colored and then went a trifle pale. "And what of Naia of Aphur, think you, when Jason dares this danger, my friend?"
"It is a matter of knowledge," Croft said quickly, thrilled by her hinted meaning. "I have driven them before."
"On earth?" Naia's pupils widened swiftly, making almost black pools of her eyes.
"Yes, on earth, where they use them also in the battles of their wars."
"Hai!" cried Naia sharply, with a quiver of her finely chiseled nostrils as she caught the picture his words conveyed. "To rise and wheel and fight—to struggle like great birds in the air. This earth of which you speak must be a wonderful place."
"Yes," said Croft, as he went on and told her many things, describing among others the aviator's dress.
"And what will Jason wear on Palos?" she asked.
Croft laughed. "I had not given it any attention. I must consider the matter. Perhaps a garment fashioned out of gnuppa hide."
Naia nodded. Suddenly her scarlet lips were smiling. "In my mind I see as in a painting these leather-clad men of earth. Leave the matter of your apparel to Naia, and you will, O Jason," she replied.
And Croft assented, filled with both pleasure and surprise.
Then came a night to Aphur very much like that before the first motur was finished—a night when a very few hours would see the first pair of airplanes done. And that night Croft remained at the hangars, examining, tuning, testing and testing again the motur he meant to demonstrate to Robur and the gaping workmen, with the dawn. Over and over he turned on the spark and sent the giant-voiced engine spinning with an ever-steadying hum. Under the flare of oil slushes burning about him, he looked into the face of the captain in charge of the hangar crew and found his bronzed skin pale.
"Thou wilt dare it, Mouthpiece of Zitu?" the fellow said in a tone of awed deference, meeting Croft's glance. "Thou wilt attempt in this device to mount the air? Brave men have there been in Tamarizia, aye and brave women, yet none like to thee before."
"Nonsense!" said Jason, and laughed with a catch in his breath. For indeed he was thrilling with a vast sense of accomplished purpose as the motur roared. "With the sun I shall be a thousand vestrons over your head," he declared, meaning thereby approximately three thousand feet. And he laughed again, more in sheer nervous tension than from any humor as the captain instinctively tipped back his head and stared at the hangar roof.
Satisfied at length that everything was ready, he threw himself on a pallet, from which he rose at dawn. To his rousing cry came the captain and his men. The doors of the hangar were opened, and the first airplane on which Sirius had ever shone was trundled out, rolling on wheels affixed to the bottoms of each pontoon.
And even as it appeared, a motur flashed from the blurring shadow of Himyra's red walls and dashed toward it along the road. It was Robur coming to witness his friend's latest venture, driving in a smother of dust and impatience. Leaning against a vane, Croft watched his progress, and so received a surprise. Robur was not alone.
At first Croft noted the fact with wonder, and then with a leaping heart. Naia was with him—Naia of Aphur. He was to make his first attempt to scale the air of Palos before her purple eyes. He caught a deep breath, and his own eyes flashed as the motur approached, and he went toward it, and Robur sprang out.
"Hail, Jason, Tamarizia's first man-bird!" he exclaimed, glancing from Croft to the huge machine. "Zitu, I can scarce believe that so large a thing can rise and take to wing."
"Bird-man, not man-bird, Rob," said Croft, giving Naia a hand to assist her from the motur, and becoming aware that she carried a package across her knees.
"Thy garment," she explained, extending it to him. "Go into the cote where you house your bird and put it on."
"My thanks for it, and your presence," Croft accepted and helped her from the car. "Hai, Rob—don't fool with the engine, will you, while I don my new attire?" He turned away and disappeared through the hangar doors.
And there he opened the bundle with unsteady hands and lifted what it contained. Trousers, or rather breeches, they seemed of leather as soft as the finest earthly ooze grain—a tunic—a helmet—leg-cases fashioned to strap on. And Naia of Aphur had designed them, had planned them, directed their making, had brought them to him this morning. Croft's hand actually fumbled the buckles as he put them on. Yet in the end the thing was done, and he stepped forth clothed from toe to head in russet brown, save for the front of the helmet, through which shone his face.
"Zitu!" cried Rob, and Naia's eyes were shining as he advanced toward them followed by the hangar's crew, and mounted into his seat.
Over the fuselage edge he looked down directly into their blue depths. And suddenly they lost their glint of pleasure, grew dark and a trifle strained in the white oval of her face. "Take places!"
The hangar crew ran to the stations Croft had already assigned.
"Ready!" Two of the men laid hold of the propeller and sent it around.
With a roar the engine caught on. A cloud of backdriven dust half veiled the men who steadied the huge plane against the drag of the motur holding it, checking it as it strained and quivered like a hound against the leash.
"Let go!"
The men fell back. The plane quivered, moved slowly in advance. Out across that same desert where once Jason had driven the first motur in a mad, reckless dash to save Naia of Aphur's life, he now shot forward in the first quickening dash of Aphur's first airplane. Forward—faster and faster—faster and faster—then up. Obedient to his shifting of the controls, the huge machine tilted, seemed to rear on its haunches, lifting its nose, its wheels, rising, rising—free of the ground at last—free and rising, higher and higher, up! up!
Up, up! A spear-point of the rising sun caught it and set it aglisten as it rose. Up, up, its well-tuned motur roaring out the song of a marvel's birth. Up and up against the pink and blue of morning. Up and up, smaller and smaller to them who watched it from beside the hangar. Then, as they watched, it turned. It turned and flew back above them, five hundred feet in air. It began to spiral, ever rising higher above the ground. And suddenly, though Croft did not know it at the time, and Robur, lost in amazement, did not sense it, Naia of Aphur ran swiftly to the motur and, carrying something crushed to her bosom, from there to the doors of the hangar, and disappeared.
Over the fuselage Croft looked down. The hangar was a little shed beneath him. The cluster of watchers were a group of ants. A vast elation filled his breast. Once more his efforts were crowned with complete success. With no more than some minor changes, he felt that his mastery of the Palosian atmosphere was assured. He altered the inclination of his vanes and began sliding swiftly down, gliding gracefully back to a rolling stop at the end.
"My friend!" cried Robur, running up. He caught Jason's hand as Croft climbed out, and stood clinging to it.
And though an hour before Croft would have been well satisfied with such recognition, he became aware now of hunger for something else. Naia—it was her praise, her congratulations, he wished. He turned his head, seeking her presence, and found it, and gasped.
For Naia of Aphur had changed since he left. No more was she a glowing girl in her fluttering garments, waiting to see him essay human flight with bated breath. Gone were the filmy draperies that had swathed her; and instead, she stood before him, habited like himself, in a smaller suit of brown, which clung to her graceful limbs and supple torso like a loosely fitted skin. Gone even were the masses of her golden hair, veiled under a helmet of brown.
But as he met them, her blue eyes were the same. And they were fired with a light of excited anticipation. "Again!" she cried. "Again—and this time I shall go with you, Jason—I would fly!"
"Naia! My cousin!" Robur started forward a pace in instinctive protest.
"Nay." She wheeled upon him, stamping a small foot incased in the soft, brown leather. "Nay, Robur, I shall be the first woman in all Tamarizia to fly." She stretched out slender, appealing arms. "Jason—is there not place between your wings for me?"
"Yes." There was something almost a veiled suggestion of wider meaning in her words, and Croft caught it as he gave her his hand. The thing was madness—but—it thrilled him—excited his admiration afresh as he realized that the whole thing was no matter of the instant, no impulse, but something she had thought out, planned—for which she had caused her costume to be made at the same time as his own. And he had not the heart to deny her, in the flush of his recent success.
"Come," he said instead as Robur fell back, and caught her under the arms, lifting her lightly up, until her foot gained a supporting hold and she climbed to her place in the pit of the fuselage.
And then, settling himself once more in position, Croft cried to his men, and once more the engine roared. Briefly he glimpsed his companion's face. It was eager, expectant, in the morning light. Her breast rose and fell in a barely quickened rhythm under its covering of brown.
"Let go!"
Once more the plane advanced, jolting, tipping a little, swaying to the slight irregularities of the ground it ran ahead. Croft moved a lever. The obedient monster answered. The desert fell away beneath. Up, up, Jason of earth and Naia of Aphur, daughter of Ga, and child of Palos, swam toward a brightening sky of pink and gold. Up and up. Once more he stole a sidelong glance at his companion's face. It was lifted, tilted a little back—its blue eyes closed.
"Naia!" Croft spoke to her above the motor's roar.
She lifted her lids, met his somewhat anxious regard, and smiled. And from him she let her gaze wander over the whole vast panorama of desert and mountain and the Central Ocean, blue and green and black and gold, with a froth on the nearer waves like a fringe of white to their shadowed flanks as it caught the light, and Himyra—the red city beginning to glow as Sirius shot his shafts against its ruddy walls, and like a dull chain, supporting the red jewel of the city on the breast of Aphur, the yellow Na, outlined as far as the eye could reach by a band of shimmering green.
And suddenly her breast lifted, her lips parted, and she began to sing—to sing as she had once cried to Croft that the birds she envied sang as they rose against the morning—gladly—clearly—freely as a bird itself might sing.
So sang Naia of Aphur, between Himyra and the sun.
After that Croft taught her how to fly. Having once yielded, he could not well again refuse. And Naia had her way with him, as she had meant to do ever since she first was taken with the notion of herself controlling one of the new machines that he had made.
But the promise to teach her she exacted that same morning after they had returned to the palace. Robur ran off to tell Gaya concerning the success of the trial flight, and Naia dared Croft to bathe. Afterward he was half inclined to think she adopted the time and place to a gaining of her point. Woman she would not have been had she not realized her beauty and its appeal. But at the time he gave the matter no thought.
"You will surely teach me to fly?" she said almost as soon as they floated side by side.
"No," he denied in a somewhat uncertain fashion. "This morning I yielded because of your great desire to be the first woman of Palos to take to the air. In that I was not altogether wise. Again I would not dare."
"Yet and you yielded to my desire in the matter of this morning, your excuse should be the same in yielding to me again, no less. Ah, Jason"—her hand crept out and lay upon his arm—"now know I the feeling of a bird when it rises and sings from pure joy, for the first time in my life, and the knowledge thrills me; I would know it again, because—" She broke off with a little, gasping breath.
"Because of what?" Croft turned his head and looked into her pansy-purple eyes.
"Because," said she very slowly, "it is to me as though I was no longer mortal—as though I had in some way left the body—cast off all the weight of the flesh."
"Naia!" Croft stammered. "Thou knowest?" and paused, strangely shaken at the knowledge her words showed.
"Aye—since the last time you called me to you. Come and I shall show you, Jason." She turned and dived.
Croft followed. Down, down, he followed her gleaming form through the clear water. Down, down, until he swam beside it. And then lost, buried deep in its liquid embrace, screened from all observation by the play of the sun upon its surface, she turned still closer to him, and for the first time since old Zud's blunder had brought misunderstanding she offered him her scarlet mouth.
From that kiss man and woman came up gasping almost as to a new birth. Misunderstanding, all barriers of restraint, seemed to have been washed away in the shimmering pool's soft flood. "Ah, Acquor, Acquor," Naia panted, "thou has caught thy little fish at last."
"Fear not, little fish," said Croft in a voice which quivered, "I shall not eat you, but—this time I shall surely hold you fast."
"And you will teach me to fly?" There was witchery in Naia's words and in her smile; witchery, whimsy, almost a conscious knowledge that now—now—she could not be denied.
"Yes," said Croft in open surrender. "And Zitu pity me if aught befall thee."
"Nay, I will be careful," Naia sobered. "And—and—"
"And what—is there something more, beloved?" Croft questioned softly.
"Nay." She lowered her eyes. "I must go fasten my girdle about me lest we be late for the morning's meal." She swam toward the sunken steps.
And suddenly Croft knew—the thought that had stirred her soul, and it set his own soul glowing. In one swift stroke he overtook her. "Beloved, beloved," he whispered to her, "on the day the new light comes to Himyra I shall once more fasten thy girdle with Azil's seal."
"The new light—" The fires in her blue eyes quickened. "Aye, Jason, I would wear it in the new light," she said as, side by side, they clambered from the pool. "Once in these waters I sought the mouth of Zilla, and in them today I found Azil's, beloved, in the touch of yours."
Half an hour later Croft met Gaya, and she stopped him. "Wise man, and one of great wisdom, are you, Jason, as Robur, my husband, tells me, saying, accompanied by Naia, you have conquered the air." She put out her hand.
Croft took it. He bent toward her. "Hark you, Gaya, my sweet friend," he said, speaking softly. "The air is nothing. I have conquered something else."
"What mean you?" Gaya questioned.
"That Naia of Aphur, on the day the new light comes, will wear my seal," Croft told her.
"Zitu," she exclaimed, smiling, "you have spoken, then, at last. Wise man I have confessed you, yet to me you have seemed most blind in this as most men are with women. Glad though am I for you both. But now she was in my chamber, and radiant as Ga. She declared you would teach her to fly, and easily deceived as I was, I thought it that."
After that two causes hastened Croft's arrangements for the celebration of the coming of the light. One was the renewal of his formal betrothal with Naia, of course. The other was of a wholly different sort.
As for Naia, save for the hours he spent in the shops, he was with her the greater part of the time, either teaching her the control of a plane, which she mastered quickly both on land and water, or in the laboratory, or, in the evening, sometimes speaking with her alone, sometimes with Robur and his wife. And in the laboratory, one evening shortly after the day of their first flight together, Croft spoke to her of love as he had spoken once before but with a different meaning. Taking two salts in solution, he poured them together.
"Behold," said he, as he mixed them and formed a substance compounded of their blending which fell slowly to the bottom of the glass, "behold, beloved, the chemistry of love—how each atom draws the other atom to it, until they blend and are no more, but lose themselves each one within the other to form a definite something which was not before!
"Behold—for even so, beloved, it is with the souls of men and women—each drawing the other to it; each blending with the other, until in the will of Zitu, and they are truly mated, they melt into perfect union, and a perfect spirit is born!" It was one way of portraying the doctrine of twin souls, the "marriage of the lamb," the birth into angelhood, dependent on the union of the two original spiritual halves, and Naia nodded with a widening of her eyes.
"Each draws the other to it," she said, coming close beside him. "Ah, Jason, did I draw you to me really from the earth?"
"Aye, by Zitu," he swore, and slipped an arm about her.
"Thy need of me brought you unto Palos, even as thou hast called my spirit from my flesh."
"Aye," Croft said in a voice gone husky with emotion. It was the first time she had mentioned those astral meetings in a fashion so direct.
She eyed the new-formed substance in the glass before them. And suddenly she smiled. Face, eyes and lips, her whole fair being glowed. "They meet and mingle, melt into one another," she went on softly, and lifted his other arm and drew it about her form to meet the other. "Ah, Jason, thou messenger of Azil to me—that first night you lay in the palace, yet came and bade the presence of my spirit, and held me even so as you are holding me now; it was as though I forgot all else and knew thee only; as though I was not, save as a part of thee truly, save that I felt the strong fire of thy mouth."
And, again, on a night when the sky was cloudless and the triple moons had turned all the Palosian world to a dreamland of silvered plain and sea and mountain, Croft spoke to her of love. That night he drove her to the hangars, and they entered a machine. Up, up they whirled through an air aquiver with moonbeams; up, up to a land of dreams. And there between the heavens and the far-flung landscape they swam in a dream world of their own making, while the plane wheeled in wide spun circles, like some huge, dark bat against the skies.
"Behold Palos!" Croft cried to her above the roar of the whirling propeller, heard as it swept them forward, yet not seen. "Is it not lovely, is it not fair—this one of all the millions of stars on which we live? And yet why is it; for what purpose; why was it brought into existence, even as you and I, beloved, and sent spinning through the void from Zitu's hand, save for love; save that a million million men and women might find a spot whereon their spirits, the real they, should be given substance, in order that they should live and meet, and know one another, and—love. Wherefore is the body of man no more than the servant to give to love expression, since this is Zitu's plan: that no man's spirit is complete without the woman's, that no woman's spirit is complete without the man's; so that in his wisdom, each ever seeks the other to make it whole and satisfy its longing. Thus then is love assured, and life inspired."
He shut off the engine and began a long, slanting, coasting down a moonlighted, sloping path.
"Love," said the girl beside him, "love so great that it spans the space between the stars. And did I call you to me, without knowing, yet now it seems to me, beloved, that I should know and find some means to answer, no matter where you were."
In a long sweep Croft brought the plane back to the ground. And then without any verbal reply, he lifted her from her seat and bore her back to the motur in his arms.
As for the other matter which speeded his preparations, it had nothing whatever to do with love—was the exact antithesis of it, dealt wholly with human passion, human strife.
It was now over five weeks since the relief expedition had sailed to Bithur from Himyra, and no word had come from Zitra since.
Mentally, Croft had allowed at least two weeks for the galleys to reach Bithra, the capital of the northeastern state, and unload their moturs and men. Another week, he figured, should bring them well into contact with the Mazzerian forces, if Jadgor moved as quickly as he felt assured he would. And drunk as he was with love, busy as he was with his own endeavors, Croft forgot not entirely affairs of state.
As a result he chose a night some weeks after he felt sure the Bithurian army and its reinforcements should have reached the Bithurian borders, and willed himself to Jadgor's tent.
A strange sight met his eyes. He swam above what at first appeared to him as an enormous grassy plain; and beyond it was a forest, dark in its own shadows beneath the moonlight, and beyond that again was a flare of fires. Toward these he propelled himself without knowing whither exactly he was going, yet arriving to find them the flaring remains of burning houses, spread out on yet another open space beside a river, a mere village, such as the peasant classes were accustomed to inhabit, rather than one of the larger walled towns.
And around it, through it, their bodies picked out by the moonlight and the leaping of the flames, were hundreds—not of Bithur's soldiers, but of leaping, howling, spear-shaking, blood and lust gloated Mazzerian men. And beyond it as he saw now, overcoming his first surprise, lay one of the armored moturs, ringed with intermingled Bithurian and Mazzerian corpses and tipped upon its side.
Disaster! For the first time Croft suspected a Bithurian route. In a flash he returned to his original purpose and once more demanded that Jadgor's position be revealed.
And now a walled town appeared before him, not so large as Himyra, but decidedly greater than Zitra, to judge from the circuit of its walls inside which countless fire-urns flared. And within those walls, as he sped above them, Croft beheld a beaten army's wrack—two of the moturs, parked close inside a gate: weary men showing the marks of conflict, stretched out beside them in a sodden bivouac.
Then into a palace, built of what seemed a brown sandstone, with a huge inner court paved in green, where fire-urns flared and guardsmen stood before a door through which men in armor, with stern, drawn faces passed in and out. Croft followed the progress of the latter and so came at last to the presence of the man he desired.
Jadgor, of Tamarizia—Jadgor, of Aphur—president of a nation, once a haughty king. Jadgor, of Aphur, wounded slightly, with a binding bandage wound about his grizzled head, with his armor dust-stained and smeared with the grime of conflict, Jadgor scowling like some savage creature overborne, driven into a corner, with the sinewy hand of a muscular arm fingering in nervous fashion at his sword.
And about him a cluster of drawn-browed, armored men, one of whom Croft judged to be Medai, governor of Bithur, since his armor was jeweled with the sign of the state, a green medallion halved by a bar of iridescent crystals, to symbolize the mighty river Bith, which crossed it with its flood.
"Mazzer," said Jadgor, "has loosed upon us her whole horde. Armed are they by Zollaria, led by Zollaria's men. By sheer weight of numbers were we overborne—the wings of our army cut so that the center was engulfed. Two of the moturs broke down, and those in charge of them knew not the secret of the one device which causes them to run, because he who constructed them first held the knowledge to himself.
"The men with the rifles within them were cut off when their supply of bullets was gone. Those others so armed, killed so long as their bullets held out, when they also fell back before these blue fiends as well. The fault is not with the weapons, but with the first seeming of the matter. Men of Bithur, we face no barbarian border raiding. This the principal city of your eastern lands shall soon be assailed. Men of Bithur, this is war. For fresh aid I have sent—for more men and weapons. Thrice on as many fields have we met them, and thrice have we been driven back by press of numbers. They swarm like blue vermin, and where one dies two take his place. Yet though crushed, we are not vanquished. Wherefore we fall back on Atla as a strong place for our defense."
"Strong walls has Atla," Medai replied. "And Jadgor speaks strong words from a strong heart. Yet if this be war indeed inspired and sent upon us, not Bithur alone, but all Tamarizia may be affected thereby, if Bithur fall. And since he who made these new weapons knows surely best their use, were it not well also to send one asking him as Zitu's Mouthpiece, to give us aid?"
For a single moment Jadgor winced, and then he inclined his head. "Aye, Medai of Bithur, so have I done. In the mouth of him who departed for Zitra and Himyra, for speech with Zud the high priest, and Robur, my son, have I placed words to that effect. For, as you have said, this matter affects not one man or another, or even yet one state. The peril lies now to our welfare as a nation. Were Jadgor to avail himself not of all means to combat it Jadgor were wrong, and, by Zitu, I swear that above all other things in life, it is Tamarizia that Jadgor loves."
Croft thrilled to those words. Here spoke the old-time Jadgor, patriot again. Even as the first time he had watched the man and listened, as now, to his words, in those days when he sought to strengthen his nation through the sacrifice of Naia, hoping so to block Zollaria's plans, so now thegeneralissimoof Tamarizia's forces seemed thinking of his country first. Wherefore Croft felt shaken in his soul, so that a responsive emotion toward Robur's father waked within him and glowed. And he vowed that such aid as was asked he would give, both as Mouthpiece of Zitu, and as a man to whom Tamarizia's welfare, both present and future, was identical with his.
Swiftly he made calculation. At the best it would take eight days for the messenger Jadgor had despatched to arrive. He willed himself back to his own apartments in a flash and sat up on his couch. Much might be done in a week he thought, and there was much to be done. Jadgor had failed largely because the drivers of the moturs understood not the nature of the magnetos which Croft had kept secret in their making, and the ammunition for the rifles had given out. Well, for the first part, he had dry cells now to insure ignition, aside from the more complicated device. Moturs must be equipped with them without delay and the arsenal Robur and he had equipped many Zitrans before, set working—much ammunition, many cartridges and grenades turned out.
He rose and called a guard and sent him for Robur at once. And when he came to him, his face somewhat puzzled by this summons from his slumbers, he told him all that he had learned, and how.
And from past experience Robur believed without question. "Zitu!" he cried, springing up and standing before Croft with eyes that were flashing. "They are driven back on Atla, shut up inside her walls, two of the moturs destroyed, their bullets well-nigh exhausted. They send for fresh aid. Hai! Mouthpiece of Zitu, how do you advise?"
Croft told him. "Start all men working on more bullets and the bombs we throw by hand. Send men to call the assembly together against the time Jadgor's messenger comes, yet state not why, save that Robur commands. Order all captains of decktarons to hold those men we trained in readiness for a possible call to arms. Give these orders merely; say naught as yet of war."
"Aye," Robur nodded, "it shall be done."
"Speed also," Croft went on, "the completion of the other airplanes. In the morning I begin training men to fly them when they are done. Also"—his eyes narrowed with a sudden thought—"Rob—we shall remove the dynamo, and transport it to Atla, after we have shown Himyra this new light."
"Thou wilt do that still—in the face of this?" Robur stammered.
Croft nodded. Before his mind's eye floated Naia of Aphur's face—Naia who was to pin the seal of Azil on her girdle the day the light he had promised to Himyra was born. Come weal or woe, come war or peace, Croft swore naught should interfere with that occasion.
"Aye," he said, "on the seventh sun from this."
Yet despite Croft's interdiction on the spreading of the word abroad, Naia and Gaya were told—the latter as Robur's wife, the former as Croft's assistant in his work. For from now on she became fully that. Day after day, from the hour of the morning bath until late at night, she toiled in the laboratory he had equipped in the palace, preparing the chemicals for the dry cells, aiding him with a tight-lipped, yet unfaltering purpose while the cells were packed, taking full charge in the daytime while he was engaged elsewhere on other work.
Clad in a coarse smock, acid stained and scorched, her hands soiled by the manipulation of reagents, she yet had never to Jason presented a fairer, braver sight. She worked. She neither complained nor cried out. She gave her service to her country and to him, in the depths of her purple eyes an almost Spartan light. And Gaya helped. Day after day she labored beside her, under her direction, learning in turn from Naia what she had learned from Croft.
"Are you not glad you have taught me to fly?" Naia questioned one night as they worked. "See you not Zitu's hand in this, beloved, since when you are gone to this spawn of Mazzer's undoing I may continue your work?"
"You?" Croft faltered, sickened at the picture of her meaning. "You must not. As I have told you, there is danger."
"Ah, but"—her smile was very gentle—"is there not danger to thee as well? Think not my heart is like a frightened bird, did it speak in place of my mind. Know you not that to me the loss of you blots out the world?"
"No," Croft cried, and swept her into his arms. "Tis a brave, brave heart, beloved!" He caught and held her fingers. "O brave, brave heart!"
For a moment she lay against him. He felt her shake. Then it was over, and she straightened up again. "In three suns," she said, "your seal shall glow again on my girdle. Tell me, beloved, for I hunger for the knowledge, how may this separation of the spirit from the body, which you have thrice brought about within my knowledge, be by oneself attained?"
"By desire," said Croft. "By a focusing of all the yearning of the soul on that one thing—without doubt, without fear—by centering the mind on its attaining and on the object whereat in that state you wish to arrive; for indeed, beloved, it is the desire of the spirit in life that accomplishes all things."
"Desire," she repeated softly, "desire. Aye, now I see. One must forget all, save only it, alone to attain it. It must be so great that nothing else save only it remains—as great as the love you have wakened in me—as your desire for me. Ah, beloved, when first Gaya told me of your seeking me from earth, I thought it madness, though even then the thought itself set me aflame. And then"—she threw out her arms and stood before him glorious in her soul's surrender—"then you come to me, in what at first I called—a dream."
"Naia!" Croft stammered, lost in the glory of her. "Naia, what have you in your mind?"
She came closer. "Am I not your mate, who am about to lose you? Yet were this power mine, perchance I, too, might visit you—in dreams."
And now Croft saw her meaning, and like her quivered as once more he held her in his arms.
Then came to Himyra light! Croft smiled in singular fashion on the day it came. Aphur's red city was in carnival attire. Its pavements swarmed with life. Open refreshment booths did a thriving business, jugglers plied their skill on woven mats stretched out in open squares. Jostling crowds swarmed about them, filling the air with jest and good-natured cries. The whole place hummed with a myriad life.
And yet to Jason the whole scene was unreal—a mask, a carnival domino spread as it was above a grinning skull. To him driving in his motor with Naia in purple and gold, above which her snowy left shoulder and throat made a band of ivory, the whole vast assemblage seemed no more than the shifting fantasmagoria of a dream—a gorgeous play of color through the mind of a sleeper not as yet awake. For Himyra made merry in her ignorance of the catastrophe striking against the national borders to the east. Jadgor's messenger had not as yet arrived.
And though Himyra dreamed a dream of splendor, in which none had a thought of care, though the crowds moved in indolent leisure through street and public square, though copper-bodied motors roared and panted over pavements laid in bitumen as smooth in their surface as a floor; though plumed gnuppas pranced with a clatter of slender feet, and bright-eyed, softly shrouded and perfumed women rode within them to the games of the afternoon—the beginning of the celebration of what all thought a new era in the life of Tamarizia and Aphur, still beneath the surface seeming, because of Croft's knowledge, and the words he had spoken to Robur, and Robur's orders, the inner soul of Himyra and all Aphur prepared on this day for war.
In a way the aspect of the city reminded Jason of the condition of the woman at his side in those past days when the soul of her had been his as always, and only the objective mind had failed as yet to wake.
Today she had come to the game with him alone at his own request. Outside the vast stadium where formerly all public games had been held—a huge thing of red stone, that always reminded Croft of the Colosseum of Rome—he helped her down. Through bowing crowds they gained the entrance giving on what had once been the royal box, now reserved for the governor of Aphur's suite. He led her in through a gilded and frescoed passage, and conducted her to where a scarlet canopy was spread above a tier of seats. She sank down, inclining her head in salutation to a hundred greetings from neighboring boxes, until the purple plume, rising from the cincture in her golden hair, was set a-nodding above her lovely face.
Robur came with Gaya a few moments later. The vast assemblage rose and the games began. First was a chariot race, entered by six chariots drawn each by a team of four plumed gnuppas, driven at top speed. Marthos, a young noble, won handily, amid acclaim from the thousands ranged about the immense amphitheater, and was awarded a metal garland, standing flushed with triumph before Robur's box.
Followed various athletic contests, javelin throwing, foot racing, shooting with bows and arrows at a herd of wild taburs driven into the arena from pens beneath the tiers of seats, wrestling matches and other sports, in which both men and women took part. In a way, as he sat at Naia's side, the scene reminded Croft of a reproduction of a public ceremonial of ancient Greece. For as in Greece and in Tamarizia, for generations untold, the contestants threw off all their clothing as they came to their stations and worked frankly nude until they had ended their exhibition of skill or strength, when once more their garments were donned.
The minor events ended, there came a pause. Then from the far end of the arena suddenly there dashed a chariot drawn by four pure-white gnuppas, orange plumed. Straight for Robur's box they plunged and came to a rearing halt as Marthos, to whom had been awarded this further honor, drew them to a stand.
Croft rose. He descended from the box and entered the car. Clad in brown he was, in the suit Naia had designed and had made for him as once more the gnuppas traversed the arena's length and stopped near to where the men from the hangars had trundled the great plane into sight. In a leap he was aboard. The attendants ran to their places. Two men turned the engine over. It caught!
Above the whispers of the multitude its roar rang out. The great plane trembled. Its attendants released it. It trundled forward over the hard packed floor of yellow sand. Straight as a die it surged toward Robur's box until suddenly Croft changed his vanes. And then it rose. It shot up at what looked like a forty-five degree slant. Up and up and up, until it swam above the vast concourse of back-tilted faces. Like the hum of a giant beetle, the sound of its whirring engine came down from a cloudless sky to a myriad ears. Once, twice, Croft made the circuit of the arena, and then began to settle, finishing with a graceful volplane, which left him within a few feet of his start.
"Hai! Hai! Hail to the Mouthpiece of Zitu! Hail to Jason, teacher of all Tamarizia! Hail to him whose mind Zitu has enlightened above all others!" the cry of the multitude rang out. Croft once more in Marthos's chariot pushed back his leather helmet and bowed. Bowing to right and left, acclaimed as a conqueror might have been, he rode back toward Robur's box, and left the chariot and ascended to his seat, and looked into Naia's face, finding it somewhat white, but smiling, and bowing again before the tempest of acclamation began to subside.
Then came the game of ball, on a diamond arena attendants were beginning already to mark out, between the men from the foundries and the team from the airplane shop. Robur himself rose and, taking a ball from an ornate box extended to him by a guardsman, cast it out. Then, as it was passed snappily to the pitcher of the foundry's team which had won the inning and elected to send the airplane aggregation to bat: "Play ball!" he cried.
And suddenly as the first batter fanned and flung his bat away and walked to the bench, very much like any disgruntled batsman of earth, Croft smiled. It was unbelievable, of course. It was a fantasmagoria of the brain. The thing couldn't be, and yet—there was the pitcher of the founders, in a short-skirted tunic, below which his lean thighs showed above his leg-cases of leather, cradling the ball, and cuddling it in his palm. And there was the catcher, squatted down back of the plate in breast-plate and mask, twiddling the signaling fingers of a huge labor-browned hand, and—whir—snap! There was the ball thudding against his mitt.
"Strike on-n-n-e!" That was the umpire's voice.
Cr-a-a-a-a-a-c-k!That was the sound of a ball met fairly and lined swiftly out. And there it went, a clean drive between first and second base, into the right outfield.
"Run, run—go on—go on!" That was Robur yelling in ungovernorlike excitement.
"Run—go on—run—oh, run—run!" That was the voice of Naia—of the woman by his side.
Croft turned to her and found her leaning forward, straining her slender length from the hips, lips parted, her eager blue eyes wide.
"Hold it!" That was the airplane's captain coaching the runner.
Thud! The right outfield had slammed the ball into the second baseman's glove.
Croft smiled again. It couldn't be a baseball game on Palos, but—it was.
And as it went on the assembled multitude went wild. They cheered, they jeered, they urged and encouraged, and cat-called and howled. They stamped on the tiers of seats with leather and bare and metal-shod feet. They waved hands and arms. State assemblymen already gathered by Robur's orders, and guests of the occasion forgot dignity and joined in the rising roars that greeted the different plays. And Naia of Aphur was beating against Croft's thigh and yelling—yes, yelling, as the founder's first baseman romped home on a far-reaching drive. "Come on—come on," she was urging the runner. "Come on—atta boy—come home!"
Croft prisoned her beating little fist and held it. The runner scored. She looked into Jason's face and smiled. Croft thrilled. She was all woman—-all glorious, lovely woman. He knew it, had seen it proved in the last week when she worked stern-lipped for the good of her nation. But today in this new-found pastime she had forgotten for the moment and become a child.
The game ended for the Founders, three to one, bringing with its termination an intermission, since not until dusk would the lights be turned on.
Blue men of Mazzer with torches began moving about the vast circuit of the arena, lighting hundreds of oil flares. Blue girls with skins of tabur hide on their naked backs and shoulders, and metal cups in their hands, began threading the tiers of seats selling a mild, light wine. Vendors of fruits and conserves for the women, and baked meats and wheaten cakes plied an active trade. In the rear of Robur's box was spread a table, and a meal was served. And before its beginning Magur, high priest of Aphur, arrived. To him Croft and Naia rose side by side and bowed. And suddenly Naia was once more all woman, as she looked into her companion's face and flushed from throat to eyes. Magur's coming meant she was to pledge herself to Croft before all the assembled men and women of Aphur, once the new light came on.
And in such fashion was it done. Two heralds with silver trumpets appeared in scarlet livery, the color of Robur's house. From the front of Robur's box they blew a blast.
And on that signal the arena attendants began running to and fro extinguishing all lights. Over the arena night came down as one by one the oil flares died.
Croft gave a final glance to the woman at his side—to her face, her form, to her dress of purple and gold. He had asked her to put it on. It was the garment she had worn on the first formal occasion in which he had ever seen her take part. And its colors were the same as the auric colors of that astral form of hers which he had seen and found divine. Taking her hand he led her quite to the front of the box. There on either side had been placed one of Tamarizia's first two arcs. And in the back of the box was the controlling switch. And miles away in the mountains men were waiting for the signal of a flare on Himyra's walls to release the power. Already one had gone to see that the flare was lit. And a captain was without to carry word when it shone forth.
Now suddenly he appeared.
Croft closed the switch.
A click—a hiss—the crackling ignition of incandescent carbon—a rising glow in the darkness—then—light—clear, radiant light!
Light that flared up and wavered and steadied and shone on Naia of Aphur, sheathed in purple and gold.
A babble of sound, a cheer of acclaim.
The trumpets of the heralds rang out.
Jason stepped forward and took his place close by Naia's side.
Magur, the high priest, arose, robed in his vestments of azure, accompanied by two temple boys. Each bore a silver goblet on a tray of the same metal that sparkled under the light.
Magur lifted a silver stave crowned with the cross ansata. "Who cries to Magur?" his voice rang out.
"A maid who would pledge herself and her life to the man of her choosing, O Prince of Zitu," Robur replied.
"The man is present?" Magur went on in ritualistic form.
"Aye, he stands beside her," Robur declared.
"Who sponsors this woman?" Magur inquired.
"I, Robur of Aphur, her cousin—child of the sister of her who gave her life."
"Come then in the name of Zitu," Magur said, and advanced to face the arena, back of Naia and Croft.
"Naia of Aphur—thou woman, and being woman, sister of Ga, and hence priestess of that shrine of life which is eternal, the guardian of the fire of life which is eternal—is it thine intent to pledge thyself to this man, who stands now at thy side?"
"Aye," said Naia of Aphur clearly, and looked not at Magur as she answered, but into Jason's eyes.
"And thou, Jason, known as the Mouthpiece of Zitu, whom Zitu has inspired with his wisdom, even as no other man, do thou accept this pledge, and with it the woman herself, to make her in the fulness of time thy bride, to cherish her and cause her to live as a glory to the name of woman, to whom all men may justly give respect?"
"Aye, so I pledge, by Zitu, and Azil, giver of life," said Jason, gazing on the woman as he spoke the words.
"Then take this, maid of Aphur." Magur drew from his robe a looped silver cross and placed it in her hands. "Hold it and guard it, look upon it as a symbol of that life eternal that you shall be kept eternal, and which, taken from the hands of Azil the angel, shall be transmuted within thee into the life of men."
Turning, he took the two goblets from their bearers and poured wine from one to the other and back. One he extended to Naia and one to Croft.
"Drink," he said. "Let these symbolize thy two bodies, the life of which shall be united from this time in purpose. Drink and may Zitu bless thee in that union which comes into existence by his intent."
Jason raised his goblet. "I drink of thee deeply," he spoke to the lovely chalice of mortal life standing there.
Naia set her goblet to her lips. "And I of thee."
Then, and then only, Croft took that medallion of silver ringed with red stones, which Zitra had burned against his breast. And lifting the golden girdle which cinctured Naia's body above the hips he pinned it once more upon it, so that it flashed like a scarlet eye, beneath the newborn light.
Magur lifted his stave. "Azil's seal has he set upon her. Let it speak to all men's sight."
"Hail! Hail! Mouthpiece of Zitu. Hail! Hail! Hail! Naia, maid of Aphur!" From the vast arena a roar of acknowledgment and approbation tore its way upward in the night.
So as it seemed ended Himyra's greatest holiday; so for Croft and Naia began a new phase of life. Yet though she had never seemed nearer, dearer to him, the Mouthpiece of Zitu was vaguely disturbed as they rode back to the palace through the still pleasure-making crowds. Everything seemed very peaceful, very auspicious. But he could not rid his mind of the picture which had troubled him for a week—the picture of a burning village—of blue men leaping in savage exultation of a beaten army's rout.
Hence it was with no pleasure that an hour after their return from the arena, while yet the city flared and rang with the carnival life of the people, a palace guard brought word to him from Robur, asking his presence at once.
Nor when he had followed to the audience chamber of the palace was he surprised to meet a man with drawn face, and eyes a trifle haggard—a man wearing Bithur's green and silver circle, who rose now and saluted him with flat palm forward, and burst into hurried, excited speech.
"Mouthpiece of Zitu, Bithur is sore assailed—her armies beaten, the aid Aphur sent her largely destroyed; wherefore in the name of Bithur and of Tamarizia, Jadgor, president of the nation, now at Atla, sends me to you and to Robur of Aphur, his son, to speak what is in his heart."
Jason went to Bithur. Naia remained behind. In the week before the celebration of their former betrothal they had so planned. Now, with the red and silver seal of Azil once more glowing in her girdle, Naia did not object. She was a woman. Croft knew she suffered. It was in her eyes, the touch of her hand. But—as he had seen her prove once before—she was a Tamarizian first.
In the night Jadgor's messenger arrived, the assembly of Aphur was called together. To it the Bithurian explained. Faces darkened and eyes flashed as the startled statesmen learned that once more the integrity of the nation was threatened. But, as a man, in firm determination they empowered Robur and Croft to respond to Jadgor's plea, and accepted the challenge to war.
At daylight, with the airplane he had flown from the first and a supply of grenades and fuel, together with the additional armored motors aboard a swift galley, Jason left for Bithur and the battle-front, taking Jadgor's messenger along. With him also he took a supply of dry cells to insure the better performance of the motors already on the ground.
To Naia and Robur and the trained captains he left all the rest—the assembling of troops, the lading of galleys with all sorts of supplies, the forwarding of other completed airplanes with the men he started to train in their use, whose training Naia of Aphur declared she would complete.
Only at the last did he hold her in his arms and lower his lips to the low burning flame of her mouth. For Naia of Aphur's lips were pale as they lifted to his farewell caress, and her slender body quivered inside his arms and her purple eyes were dark with her soul's distress.
"Yes," she said, clinging to him briefly, "you will come to me again. Swear it to me by Azil, whose sign you have placed upon me—swear!"
"Yes, by Zitu and Azil, I will return to you, woman of all women," Croft declared, as he held her and once more pressed her lips.
Then gripping the hands of Gaya and Robur, he left the palace, and Naia herself drove him down to the quays.
Seven days later he entered Bithra, the capital of Bithur, and left it inside an hour, heading east along the Bith between banks where a tropic vegetation came down to the water's edge, and the mighty flood of waters swept in a turgid current between banks of trees.
Morning brought him close to Atla, as the pilot taken on at Bithra declared. Also it brought attack of a sort. From the banks as they advanced the galley was suddenly greeted by a flight of slithering shafts. Most of them, thanks to the range, fell into the water, but one or two reached the deck. Croft lined a company of riflemen he had hastily mobilized and brought with him on either side of the galley replied with a crashing volley as the galley advanced. So after that, meeting flights of arrows with bullets, he progressed, reaching a bend from which the gates in the city wall spanned the river's flood and flinging the flag of Aphur into view before the sentries on the walls.
The gates swung open. The galley ran through. The gates were closed again. The galley tied to a quay below the brown palace Croft had visited in his astral presence; he marched off with his men. A procession was debouching from the palace gate. It came toward him quickly. He recognized Jadgor and Medai in the van. He halted his company and waited. The others came on. Five paces before him they halted.
"Hai! Mouthpiece of Zitu," Jadgor spoke in greeting. "Thy coming is welcome. What word from Aphur and my son?"
"Aphur sends men and weapons to Bithur," Jason responded. "As for Robur, son of Jadgor, he remains in Himyra to speed the departure for Bithur of all that may be required."
"It is well," said Jadgor. "Return with us to the palace where all things may be explained. Medai of Bithur greets you in Bithur's name."
Medai bowed deeply. The guards behind him and Jadgor turned. Followed by Croft's company they retraced their steps until the palace was gained.
And there in the room, Croft, Medai and Jadgor sat down. The latter eyed his former adviser and friend. "You are looking wondrous well," he said.
"Yes," Croft nodded. "In all things have my efforts by success been crowned."
"In all things?" Jadgor gave him a piercing glance.
"Yes," Croft again inclined his head. "Thanks largely to Robur, Jadgor's son. But more of that later, Jadgor. Inform me how matters stand."
Jadgor shrugged. "It would appear to go not so well with the things in my hands as with your plans. From the first was the extent of this matter with Mazzer misjudged; and in addition there is a fault in these motors of yours, when not controlled by the builder's mind. Wherefore they failed when most needed at times, and were by sheer force of numbers overborne. As a result the blue flood of Mazzer laps even now against Atla's walls on all sides."
"Yet breaks against them," said Jason.
"Aye as yet," Jadgor replied.
"And shall break utterly," Croft went on. "Of this defect in the motors already I had learned, in the same way in which I have learned other things in the past, as Jadgor knows. Wherefore his messenger came not to Himyra as a surprise, and for seven suns before his coming, Robur, Jadgor's son and I prepared." He broke off and watched the Aphurian closely.
But Jadgor merely nodded as he responded: "Say on."
"Among those things which have been completed since my return to Himyra," Croft resumed, "is one which flies in the air. Riding upon it a man may cast down such bombs as were used at the taking of Niera in the Zollarian war."
And now Jadgor started and narrowed his eyes, and Medai half rising from his seat exclaimed: "Zitu! Is this the truth?"
"Yes," said Croft. "One came with me aboard the galley. Between decks are the bombs. Today shall it be set up and tomorrow shall these blue men meet with a surprise. Also have I brought devices to make the performance of the motors more assured. From the ground and from the air shall we smite the Mazzerians at once."
"Hai!" Medai roared. "Jadgor—to fly above them and rain death on their heads. Never was such a thing heard of. You believe?"
"Aye." Jadgor of Tamarizia rose. "Zitu's Mouthpiece is a man who speaks not in idle fashion, O Medai. He speaks true words. One does well to give credence to his speaking." His hand snapped back and drew his short sword from its scabbard. He presented it hilt forward. "Man whom Zitu has sent to Tamarizia's strengthening, to thee I yield."
"No." Croft waved the sword aside. He looked into Jadgor's face and found it working. "Mouthpiece of Zitu have I been called, in that at times I have been given the power to direct or to advise. In Jadgor's heart and mine must Tamarizia find first place always. Let Jadgor wear the sword."
And suddenly Jadgor's lips set together. He sent the blade back into the sheath with a rasping clash. "You and I together for Tamarizia then," he said with abrupt decision, and thrust out his palm. "Accept Jadgor's hand at least."
The two men gripped and the Aphurian resumed: "Speak, Mouthpiece of Zitu, what do you advise?"
"What men have you at your disposal?"
Jadgor and Medai explained, and Croft decided upon a tour of the walls. The trio set forth. And as they went Jadgor explained further that three times within the past ten days had the Mazzerians attacked them.
Indeed, Croft gained evidence of that when the top of the wall was reached. It came to him first as an almost insufferable stench. Jadgor noted the twitching of his nostrils and burst into a savage exultation.
"Aye, by Zitu! they stink to the skies, these dead litter of an unclean birth. The trenches about Atla's defenses are filled with their corpses. They lie in heaps. They carpet the ground with a blue carpet, even more foul in death than in their life. By the thousands have we slain them, yet by the tens of thousands have their following spawn arrived. Their souls have we hurled to Zitemku and their bodies to the ditch." He swept his arm toward the outer parapet in a wide arc. "Behold!"
Croft looked out of an embrasure and down. An arrow rattled against the stones beside him, and he drew back. But the one glance had been enough. This was grim reality he faced. In heaps and rows the rotting bodies of uncounted dead lay jumbled in dissolution beyond Atla's walls. He began to think it would be no mean undertaking to defeat the men of an army who fought like that.
"Back!" he said. "Back to my galley, Jadgor! Let us put together the flying device I have brought. Tomorrow I swear we shall give them new death from the skies."
And for the rest of that day Croft sweated and worked, assembling the airplane on Atla's broadest street, which, like Himyra's, faced the river—a splendid concourse, above a terrace, offering him a spot for starting, two hundred feet in width. What of the armored motors remained he had also driven up, and under their metal bodies he installed his batteries, wiring them to the ignition system—explaining to their drivers, how, should the former supply of power be thrown out of service, this auxiliary source might be employed.
Toward evening, however, he altered his plans. To his mind it appeared that the more unseen the destruction which came upon them, the greater on superstitious minds the effect might be. And as he knew even from his association with the Mazzerian serving-caste in the nation he had literally adopted, the Mazzerians were superstitious to a degree.
About twilight he loaded the plane with a good supply of bombs. Ascending from the broad thoroughfare, and returning to it, outlined as it would be by the fire-urns, which, as at Himyra, marked the banks of the Bith along the quays, would be no more than child's play. As a result, he decided to make his first bombing expedition beyond the walls so soon as night came down, carry what consternation he could to the Mazzerian forces. This decision he definitely reached after a conference with Jadgor, who announced that for a great distance before the walls the Mazzerian camps were nightly marked by the flares of many fires.
Jadgor, Medai, the major captains of their armies, and many of the citizens of Atla stood to witness Croft's start. Wearing his flying-suit which he had brought for the purpose, Jason climbed aboard. Then at his instruction two frightened-looking soldiers seized the blades of the propeller and turned the engine round. They let go and scampered well out of the way as it roared. The plane quivered, moved. It darted forward along the perfect pavement, tilted and took the air. In a moment it soared high above the walls. Croft shouted once and then forgot all else in the sight beneath his eyes.
As far as he could see before him, and to either side, the night was dotted with fires. In a wide semicircle they blinked and winked and flared. They outlined the main position of the Mazzerian army. His heart leaped into his breast, as a rising stench told him he was passing those rotting bodies stretched out among a mass of broken weapons at the foot of Atla's walls.
Then the walls were passed, and with the breath of a clean night in his nostrils, the roar of the engine in his ears, he swept toward the line of fires.
Far, far out he swung. It was his intention to circuit the back areas of the Mazzerian line—to come upon them not from in front, but from the rear—to make his coming appear that of some huge, undreamed monster of superstitious seeming, to traverse their main body from one end to the other, dropping bombs which, under the conditions, he felt could hardly fail of a telling effect.
Far, far out he swam on the new wings he had built for himself—and for Naia. Naia? He smiled. In Himyra she was perhaps flying by day even as he was flying now—flying as he had taught her to fly in body and soul; teaching others to fly for the strength of her nation, as he was flying for her nation and his, to make it strong and secure. For a moment the thought gripped him, and he flew on in a sort of waking dream, until the flare of a hundred leaping fires directly beneath him brought him back to the matter in hand. He passed the first line of the Mazzerian bivouac and darted above a wood and came above a great savanna—a tree-dotted plain, where the camp-fires were flashing again.