Robur nodded. He laid a hand on his companion's arm. "Fear not," he admonished in sympathetic understanding. "Though the maid repel you because of a lack of understanding, yet shall she come to you at length."
"Aye," Croft looked the other man full in the eyes with meaning. "Once more shall I place Azil's sign upon Naia of Aphur's girdle."
Yet to all outward seeming he appeared immersed in his work, and even as the dynamo and the turbines took shape, he sent men into the vast plain that stretched between Himyra and the mountains of Aphur, to a spot of his selection, and bade them build there a huge shed to house his airplane fleet. Still others he set on the fashioning of ribs for the wings of the planes themselves, to building the fuselage bodies out of sheets of copper, and after a consultation with the local caste of weavers, he picked on a fabric for the wings.
And with all his ceaseless activities he still found time in a whimsical mood to inaugurate among his workmen a series of recreation and games lest under the driving of Robur and himself the sweating laborers grow stale. Indeed, he introduced a sort of competitive spirit in the various shops, organizing from the members of each a separate club and matching them one against the other in their sports. And of all the games on which he might have picked, Jason Croft, Mouthpiece of Zitu, and virtual commander of the remaking of a nation, chose baseball!
In this he gave his at times bizarre fancy full rein. The balls were fashioned from well-turned gnuppa hide, about a rubber core, with a covering of string. The bats, were of tough resilient wood, which the new devotees of the pastime swung with might and main.
Then for the first time on Palos were heard the crack of the batsman lining out a clean drive, and the cry of the umpire, Croft himself at first: "Ball four—take a free pass! Strike—one!"
And because even the most serious mind must find relaxation at times, Croft found he enjoyed the matches between teams immensely, while Robur entered with almost animal spirits into the rivalry of the games, and nearly pestered the life out of Jason, trying to master the intricacies and comprehend the casual principles involved in curves, in and outshoots, drops and breaks, after he had seen them first. Indeed Jason had more than one laugh after he discovered Robur in the bathing court of the palace one morning, hurling a ball against a backstop he had arranged, and trying to learn to throw it around a corner, as he somewhat naively explained.
But if Robur did not accomplish his purpose, several of the pitchers eventually did to some extent, and Robur got a laugh of his own, when one of them whom he had secretly had Jason coach in the copper foundry team, was produced. The batter who happened to be up swung sharply at what looked like a slow and easy delivery, and Aphur's governor chuckled for days because the fellow very nearly broke his neck when his bat failed to find the ball where he thought it was.
Croft's main satisfaction, however, in the success of the innovation lay in the fact that from rivalry in the game it was but a step to rivalry between the various corps of laborers in the shops. He took that step and introduced a system of bonuses and holidays for increased production or extra-efficient work. And because the Tamarizians were a pleasure-loving people, the plan was a success from the first. Working three shifts, as he had before the Zollarian war, Croft found his plans progress. Five weeks—the length of a Zitran—after his return from the mountains, found his turbines finished, his dynamo ready to be transported and assembled in its appointed place.