Palos of the Dog Star Pack

                            By J. U. GIESY

                          _A Complete Novel_

            _Copyright 1918 by The Frank A. Munsey Company_

                               CHAPTER I

                           OUT OF THE STORM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What does your employer do?" I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He has traveled?" I took her up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes." Once more he smiled.

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

"Where?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I see. Who called you here?"

I explained.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                              CHAPTER II

                        A COUNTRY IN THE CLOUDS

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

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

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

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

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

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

"About--Palos?" I smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

"Not long," I replied.

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

I stared. His statement was startling, at least.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                            BEYOND THE MOON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                              CHAPTER IV

                        NAIA, PRINCESS OF PALOS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"As long as Cathur holds!" Naia exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lakkon sprang from the coach and assisted Naia to alight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                               CHAPTER V

                          PALOSIAN DIPLOMACY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    "Zitu, hail Zitu!
    Father of all life!
    Who through thy angels
    Give life and withdraw it,
    Into our bodies--out of our bodies;
    God--the one god--
    Accept our praise."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And your first step?" Lakkon asked.

"To make sure of Cathur," Jadgor said.

"How?"

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

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

"By intermarriage?"

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

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

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

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

"Your daughter Naia," Jadgor declared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                              CHAPTER VI

                           A VIRGIN'S PRAYER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I--will have made--Tamarizia--strong."

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

"What am I against Tamarizia?" she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                              CHAPTER VII

                        KYPHALLOS AND KALAMITA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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