Up, up! A spear-point of the rising sun caught it and set it aglisten as it rose. Up, up, its well-tuned motur roaring out the song of a marvel's birth. Up and up against the pink and blue of morning. Up and up, smaller and smaller to them who watched it from beside the hangar. Then, as they watched, it turned. It turned and flew back above them, five hundred feet in air. It began to spiral, ever rising higher above the ground. And suddenly, though Croft did not know it at the time, and Robur, lost in amazement, did not sense it, Naia of Aphur ran swiftly to the motur and, carrying something crushed to her bosom, from there to the doors of the hangar, and disappeared.
Over the fuselage Croft looked down. The hangar was a little shed beneath him. The cluster of watchers were a group of ants. A vast elation filled his breast. Once more his efforts were crowned with complete success. With no more than some minor changes, he felt that his mastery of the Palosian atmosphere was assured. He altered the inclination of his vanes and began sliding swiftly down, gliding gracefully back to a rolling stop at the end.
"My friend!" cried Robur, running up. He caught Jason's hand as Croft climbed out, and stood clinging to it.
And though an hour before Croft would have been well satisfied with such recognition, he became aware now of hunger for something else. Naia—it was her praise, her congratulations, he wished. He turned his head, seeking her presence, and found it, and gasped.
For Naia of Aphur had changed since he left. No more was she a glowing girl in her fluttering garments, waiting to see him essay human flight with bated breath. Gone were the filmy draperies that had swathed her; and instead, she stood before him, habited like himself, in a smaller suit of brown, which clung to her graceful limbs and supple torso like a loosely fitted skin. Gone even were the masses of her golden hair, veiled under a helmet of brown.
But as he met them, her blue eyes were the same. And they were fired with a light of excited anticipation. "Again!" she cried. "Again—and this time I shall go with you, Jason—I would fly!"
"Naia! My cousin!" Robur started forward a pace in instinctive protest.
"Nay." She wheeled upon him, stamping a small foot incased in the soft, brown leather. "Nay, Robur, I shall be the first woman in all Tamarizia to fly." She stretched out slender, appealing arms. "Jason—is there not place between your wings for me?"
"Yes." There was something almost a veiled suggestion of wider meaning in her words, and Croft caught it as he gave her his hand. The thing was madness—but—it thrilled him—excited his admiration afresh as he realized that the whole thing was no matter of the instant, no impulse, but something she had thought out, planned—for which she had caused her costume to be made at the same time as his own. And he had not the heart to deny her, in the flush of his recent success.
"Come," he said instead as Robur fell back, and caught her under the arms, lifting her lightly up, until her foot gained a supporting hold and she climbed to her place in the pit of the fuselage.