"Zitra." Croft seized my arm in his grasp. Then the creeping galley, the moonlighted flood of the outer ocean, were behind us, the tumbled region of Aphur's hills were beneath us. They too fell away and gave place to the shimmer of the Central Sea. An island appeared in its center—the walls of a mighty city. White they were as milk in the moonlight—white as the foam of the sea. And the city was white when we reached it, all white and purple shadows, with the mighty pyramid of Zitu lifting the pure white temple on its lofty top above the walls.
"Zitra," said Croft again. "I've got to get back in the flesh."
And even as he spoke, I sensed that we were in a room somewhere within the pyramid itself. Bare was its floor of tessellated paving, bare were its walls save for here and there a light in a metal sconce. Bare, too, it seemed of furnishings, save for a chest of metal, a stool and a couch, on which the body of Jason found a place.
The astral Jason seated himself beside it, and fastened me with his eyes. "You heard, Murray. You see what they intend." And then his expression altered. "Saw you ever a more glorious woman than Naia, wife of Jason? Well, I've got to get to work. I've got to save her."
"Just how?" I questioned, baffled, I confess myself, as to how the thing might be accomplished.
"I don't know," he admitted rather slowly. "Beyond the first step, that is. I'll explain things to Jadgor and Lakkon, of course, and I'll have a wireless sent to Robur at Himyra. After that—well—you heard the instructions given Bathos. There's no denying Kalamita has won the first trick by her unexpected attack—or that she'll enter largely into the rest of the affair until it's finished, but—since she's sending me word to meet her, I think I'll fall in so far with her proposal and meet her face to face."
"You mean, you'll go up there north to Cathur in the mountains?" I asked, surprised he should consider the action for a second, and with a feeling that his sense of bereavement, the anxiety of the husband and father to extricate his loved ones from the hands of their captors quickly, were certainly swaying his mind.
He nodded without other answer, his expression one of a frowning consideration.
"And thereby lose the second trick and the game altogether," I rejoined. For it had come to me that Kalamita's suggested meeting was in the nature of nothing more nor less than a trap.
"Eh?" Croft threw up his head. His glance burned into mine.