JASON, SON OF JASON

By J. U. Gíesy

CHAPTER I

THE GATEWAY OF LIFE

It was midnight when the night superintendent called and told me No. 27 had died. I rose. The thing was no surprise. I had known it was going to happen. No. 27 had told me so himself. None the less, I went to his room. Routine in the mental hospital had nothing to do with that strange secret held in common between myself and the man—that strange state of affairs which had enabled him to predicate his own death so accurately.

And yet as I mounted the stairs to the room where his body now lay as a worn-out husk I had none of the feeling which so customarily assails the average mortal in such an hour. To me it was not as though he had died. To my mind in those moments it was no more than the casting aside by the activating spirit of that instrument which for its own ends it had used. The body then was a husk indeed—an emaciated, worn-out thing which, because of our mutual secret, I knew had been kept alive by the sheer force of the spiritual tenant, now removed.

I stood looking down upon it, with very much the same sensations one might have in viewing the tool once plied by the hand of a friend. It was nothing more than that really. Jason Croft had used it while he had need of its manipulation, and when his need was accomplished he had simply laid it down.

Jason Croft. Dead? I felt an impulse to smile in most improper fashion. Not at all. The man was not only not dead, but I knew—as positively as I knew I was presently going to leave the room where his dead shell lay on a hospital bed and return to my own quarters—exactly where he had gone.

The statement sounds a bit as though I were better qualified as an inmate than the superintendent of an institution for the care of the insane. And I don't suppose it will help any for me to add that I had seen Jason Croft die before—or that he had informed me on the former occasion, though in less specific fashion, of his approaching end.

That was after he had told me a most remarkable tale, which, in spite of its almost incredible nature, I found myself strongly inclined to believe. It had concerned Croft's adventures on another planet—Palos—one of the spheres in the universe of the Dog Star Sirius, to which he had traveled first by astral projection, but on which he had found means to establish an actual existence in the flesh.

"Unbelievable—can a man be dead and yet live again?" you will say. Well, yes, but—Croft's earth body died just as he had told me it would, and was buried, and time passed, and this patient No. 27 was committed to the institution of which I was the head; and when I went to examine and inspect him, he asked me to dismiss the attendants, and then he spoke to me in the voice of Jason Croft.

More than that, he took up the story of his adventures where he had left off in the previous instance, admitted freely that he had reversed the experiment by which he had gained material existence on Palos, and, driven by the necessity of gaining knowledge for use in his new estate, had deliberately returned to earth. Unbelievable, you will say again. And again I answer:

"Yes—but wait."

Croft was a physician, even as am I. He was a scientific man. In addition he was a student of the occult—the science of the mind, the spirit, and its control of the physical forces of life.

He was an earth-born man. The home in which I first met him contained the greatest private collection of works on the subject I have ever seen. In dying he left them to me—I have them all about me. They are mine. According to his statements and his notations on margins, he had gone so far in his investigations that he could project the astral consciousness anywhere at will. And when I say anywhere, I mean it in the literal sense.

Many men have mastered the astral control on the earthly plane. Croft had carried it to an ultimate degree. He shook off the envelope of the earth atmosphere, led thereto, as he frankly confessed in our conversations, by the attraction of a feminine spirit, though he did not know it at the time, and recognized it only when he first viewed Naia—Princess of Tamarizia—on a distant star.

I had dabbled in the occult to some extent myself. Hence when he spoke of the doctrine of twin souls he had no further need to explain. He alleged that since a child the Dog Star had called him subtly through the years in a way he could not explain. Once having come into her presence, however, he knew that it was Naia—the feminine counterpart of his nature—whose existence on the other planet had called across the void to him. Or so he claimed. And certainly his portrayal of the events on Palos were characterized by a detail that made the atmosphere of his alleged other existence most vividly plain.

To an accomplishment of his marrying her, Croft declared that he had done a weirdly wonderful thing. Discovering a Palosian dying of a mental rather than a physical ailment, he had waited until his death occurred, then appropriated the still physically viable body to himself, as he most comprehensively explained, describing his act in a scientific way that counseled belief while staggering the mind.

Over that body he obtained absolute control, exactly as he had gained the same ability with his own. For a time thereafter he led a sort of dual existence, sometimes on Palos, sometimes on earth, until he had fully shaped his plans. Then, and then only, did he voluntarily forsake the mundane life to enter that other and fuller existence he felt that Naia of Aphur could make complete.

I questioned him closely. I was faced by a most amazing thing. I took up first the question of time required in passing from earth to Palos. He smiled and replied that outside the mental atmosphere a man's time ceased to exist; that it was man's measure of a portion of eternity, and nothing more, and that he could not use what was non-existent, hence reached Palos as quickly in the astral condition as I could span the gulf between that member of the Dog Star's Pack and earth in thought. All other points I raised he met. Even so it was a good deal of a shock to find my new patient speaking to me with Croft's evident understanding, looking at me out of what seemed oddly like Croft's eyes.

But in the end I was convinced. The man knew too much. He was too utterly conversant with Croft's accomplishments, his aims and ambitions and hopes, to be anyone but Croft himself. And, too, he naïvely explained that it was a poor rule that would not work two ways, and that he had therefore repeated his experiment in gaining a Palosian body when he felt the pressing need of a return to earth.

This night, earlier in the evening, he had bidden me goodbye—told me he was going back to Naia, the woman he had dared so much to win, his mate who ere long was to bear him, Jason Croft of Earth, a child. And now—well, now as before, it would seem he had kept his word. Jason Croft was dead again.

Is it any wonder that I felt that strange, almost amused desire to smile? Dead! Why, Croft, in so far as I knew him, could practically laugh at death—he was a man who had actually demonstrated, if one believed his narrative, of course, the truth of the saying that the spirit is the life. He was a man, who, because of the needs of his spirit, had deliberately switched his existence from one to the other of two spheres.

I gave what directions were needed for the disposal of No. 27's body, returned to my bed, and stretched myself out. But I didn't sleep all that morning. I buried myself in thought.

Both the narratives to which I had listened—first from the man I knew to be Jason Croft really, secondly from the pitiable wreck he had employed on his return, that worn-out husk which had just died—had produced on me a somewhat odd effect. So clearly had he portrayed the events and emotions which had swayed him in his almost undreamed courtship of the Aphurian princess that I had come to accept the characters he mentioned as actually existent persons, acquaintances almost, just as, in spite of all established precedent, I still regarded Croft himself as alive.

Naia of Aphur—many a time as I listened to his account of their association I had thrilled to the picture of that supple girl with her crown of golden hair, her crimson lips, her violet-purple eyes. So real she had come to seem that I had felt I would know her had I seen her with my physical rather than my mental vision. So real indeed was her mental picture that when he told me she was about to become a mother I had cried out, on impulse, that I wished as a medical man I might attend her—would be glad to see the light in her eyes when they first beheld his, Jason's, child.

And Croft had replied, "Man, I could love you for that," and he flashed me an understanding smile.

So now that he was gone back to her—I lay on my bed unsleeping, and let all he had told me unroll in a sort of mental panorama, dealing wholy with the Palosian world.

Tamarizia! It was into the empire Croft blundered blindly when he went to Palos first—a series of principalities surrounding the shore of a vast inland sea, with the exception of a central state—the seat of the imperial capital, embracing the island of Hiranur located in the sea itself, and Nodhur to the west and south. From the central sea a narrow strait led into an outer ocean to the west.

This was known as the Gateway. To the north was Cathur, a rugged, mountainous state, the seat of national learning, in its university at the capital city of Scira, and east of Cathur was Mazhur, known as the Lost State at the time of Croft's first arrival, because it had been wrested from the empire some fifty years before, in a war with Zollaria, a hostile nation to the north.

Croft, after gaining physical life on Palos, succeeded in winning it back, and in gaining thereby the consent of Naia's father, Prince Lakkon, and her uncle, Jadgor, King of Aphur, to their marriage. It was at this point his narrative had ended first.

East of Mazhur, still hugging the sea and extending into the hinterland of the continent was Bithur. And Milidhur joined Bithur to the south. West of Milidhur, completing the circle, was Aphur—the name meaning literally "the land to the west" or "toward the sun." Aphur was the southern pillar of the Gateway, ending at the western strait. Nodhur lay south of Aphur, gaining access to the sea by the navigable river Na, on whose yellow flood moved a steady stream of commerce driven by sail and oar until Croft revolutionized transportation by producing alcohol-driven motors. And—if I were to believe his second account—since then he had actually electrified the nation, harnessing mountain streams to generate the force.

Except for the waterways, traffic prior to Croft's innovations was by conveyances drawn by the gnuppa—a creature half deer, half horse, in appearance—or by means of caravans of the enormous beast called sarpelca, resembling some huge Silurian lizard, twice the size of an elephant, with a pointed tail, scale-armored back, camel-like neck, and the head of a marine serpent tentacle-fringed about the mouth.

They were driven by reins affixed to these fleshy appendages, and streamed across the Palosian deserts, bearing huge merchandise cargoes upon their massive backs.

Indeed, it was a wonderful world into which Croft had projected himself. Babylonian in seeming he had described it to me at first.

North of Tamarizia was Zollaria, inhabited by a far more warlike race. Its despotic government had long cast a covetous eye on the Central Sea, through which, and the rivers emptying into its expanse, most of the profitable trade lanes were reached. Tamarizia, controlling the western Gateway, had remained master even after the fall of Mazhur, collecting toll from the Zollarian craft on her rivers despite the foothold gained on her northern coast.

East of Tamarizia, beyond Bithur and Milidhur, lay Mazzeria, peopled by a race little above the aborigine in their social life. Tatar-like, the Mazzerians shaved their heads of all save a single tuft of hair, with a most remarkable effect, since the race was blue of complexion and the prevailing color of their hair was red.

Mazzeria, at the time of Croft's incursion into the planet's affairs, was the acknowledged ally of Zollaria, although at peace with Tamarizia. In earlier times, however, numbers of them had been taken captive in border wars and brought to both nations as slaves. These, in so far as Tamarizia was concerned, had later been freed and given citizenship of a degree constituting in their ranks the lowest or serving caste.

Each state was governed by a king, by hereditary succession, in conjunction with a national assembly consisting of a delegate elected by each ten thousand or deckerton of civil population. The occupant of the imperial throne was elected for a period of ten years by vote of the several states.

On Croft's advent, Scythys—a dotard—had been king of Cathur, with his son Kyphallos, the crown prince, a profligate of the worst type, sunk under the charms of Kalamita, a Zollarian adventuress of great beauty, with whom he had plotted the surrender of Cathur to her nation in return for the Tamarizian throne with Kalamita by his side.

Jadgor of Aphur, scenting the danger, had sought to bind the northern prince to Tamarizian fealty through a marriage with Naia, his sister's child. To win Naia and overthrow Zollaria's scheme had been Jason's task. The introduction of both the motor and firearms enabled him to overthrow the flower of Zollaria's hosts on a couple of bloody fields. Victory gained and Zollaria forced to cede Mazhur after fifty years of occupation, Croft prevailed upon the nation to accept a democratic form of government, it being at the end of Emperor Tamhys's term. This was accomplished without too much difficulty.

As to the Tamarizians themselves, they were a white and well-formed race. Their women held equal place with men. They believed in the spirit and a future life. They had made no small progress in the sciences and arts. They worked metal, gold being as common as iron on Palos.

They tempered copper also and used it in innumerable ways. They wove fabrics of great beauty, one being a blend of vegetable fiber and spun gold. They cut and polished jewels. They had a system of judiciaries and courts and a medical and surgical knowledge of sorts.

They were a fairly moral and naturally modest people. Their clothing was worn for protection and ornamentation, rather than for any other purpose. It was donned and doffed as the occasion required, without comment being aroused. In women it consisted, rich and poor, of a single garment falling to the knee or just below it, cinctured about the body and caught over one shoulder by a jeweled or metal boss, leaving the other shoulder, arm, and upper chest exposed. To this was added sandals of leather, metal, or wood, held to the foot by a toe and instep band and lacings running well up the calves.

Men of wealth and soldiers generally wore metal casings, jointed to the sandal to permit of motion and extending upward to the knees. Men of caste wore also a soft shirt or chemise beneath a metal cuirass or embroidered tunic. Save on formal occasions the serving classes wore a narrow cincture about the loins.

Agriculture was highly developed, and they had advanced far in architecture, painting and sculpture. They lavished much time and expense in beautifying their homes. They had well-constructed caravan roads. As Croft had pointed out, he found them an intelligent race waiting, ready to be trained to a wider craft.

And among them, in Naia of Aphur, he believed he had found his twin soul. And he had set about winning her in a fashion such as no other man, I frankly believe, would have dared.

He had won her according to his belief and returned to earth, for the last time, ere he should return and make her his bride. He had told me about it, and he had cast off his earthly body, severing the last tie that held him from his life in Palos. He had died.

He had gone back and found his plans disarranged through the actions of Zud, the high priest of Zitra, the capital city of Hiranur, where he had left Naia waiting his return in the Temple of Ga, the Eternal Mother—the Eternal Woman, in the Zitran pyramid. Zud, moved by Croft's works and by a story told him by Abbu, a priest who knew Jason's story, had proclaimed him Mouthpiece of Zitu, thereby raising an insurmountable barrier, as it seemed, between him and Naia, since celibacy was one of the tenets of the Tamarizian priests. And yet Croft had won to her, overcoming all obstacles, even winning a second war, with all Mazzeria egged on, her armies officered by Zollarians in disguise this time, ere he gained the goal of his desire.

These things had been told me inside the last few weeks by No. 27—the man who had been committed to the institution for a dissociation of personality, at which he quietly laughed after he had obtained my ear; because he wished to gain contact with me, who knew his former story, and win my aid toward the fulfillment of his mission.

Only he wasn't dead, and I knew it as I lay there with the names of men and women of the Palosian world buzzing in my head. He had gone back to them, now that his work was ended—to Naia, his golden-haired, purple-eyed mate—to Lakkon, her father; to Jadgor, her uncle, and Robur his son, governor now of Aphur in the palace where his father, president of the Tamarizian republic, had been king; to Robur, who, like a second Jonathan, had ever been Croft's loyal assistant and friend, and Gaya his sweet and matronly wife; to Magur, high priest of Himyra, the ruling red city of Aphur, by whom Croft and Naia were bethrothed to Zud himself, to whom he had taught the truth of astral control. And I found myself portraying them as Croft had described them, predicating their thoughts and feelings, as I might have done those of any man or woman I knew on earth.

Actually I was projecting my intellect, if not my consciousness, to Palos. The thought came to me. In spirit, if not in perception, I was there for the moment with my friend. In spirit at least I was bridging with little effort billions of actual miles. Thought and spirit and soul. They are strange things. Croft, if I was any judge, had gone back to Naia—and there was I lying, picturing the scene, where she waited for his coming in their home high in the western mountains of Aphur, given to them by Lakkon, a wedding gift, after the war with Mazzeria was won. Croft had gone back to Palos, and here was I picturing the thing in my spirit, certainly as plainly as any earth scene I had ever known.

His body would be lying there, covered with soft fabrics, waiting for its tenant on a couch of wine-red wood such as the Tamarizians used—or perhaps of molded copper. And Naia—the woman who had given him her life, would be watching, watching for the first stir of his returning.

Only—I smiled—Croft had told me he could gain Palos as quickly in the consciousness as I could project myself there in my mind—so, by now, that stirring of her strong man's limbs, beneath the eyes of the fair watcher, had occurred, and once more those two were together.

I smiled again.

The picture of that reunion appealed. There was nothing else to it at the instant. For even in my wildest imaginings I did not in the least suspect what its nearness, its clearness, the vividness of its seeming, might portend.

No, even though I myself had delved more or less deeply into occult lore, with a resulting knowledge of the subject that had brought about the sympathetic understanding of all Croft had told me from first to last, I had little or no conception that night of the inward meaning of the distinctness with which I could conjure up the scene of his return to Naia, or to where the ability might lead. Rather, I felt merely that through his narrative of her wooing he had built up within my mental cells a picture of the fair girl now his bride, so clear, so positive in seeming, that to me she appeared no more than a charming personality—a feminine acquaintance, such as one might on occasion meet. She was no more removed, so far as my feeling of familiarity with her was concerned, than had her residence been not on Palos, but simply across the street. It is so easy to bridge distance in the mind.

I slept after a time, as one will, drifting from continued thought upon one subject into slumber. And I woke with the thought of Croft's weird homecoming still in mind. It stayed with me more or less, too, in the succeeding days.

Naia of Aphur! Oddly I dwelt upon her. Jason himself had told me that she knew me—had actually seen me—that he had brought her to earth more than once in the astral body—had pointed me out to her as the one earth man who knew and believed his story—that she looked upon me as a friend.

The thing seemed some way to establish a sort of personal bond, just as the secret Croft and I had kept between us made me feel toward him as I have never felt toward any other man.

Jason Croft and Naia of Aphur—the interplanetary lovers. It was certainly odd. I knew her, even though I had never seen her; save through the instrumentality of his description of her, and the resultant picture printed on my mind. Yet I could close my eyes at will and see her, slender, golden-haired, with her lips of flaming scarlet, and her violet-purple eyes.

And I knew her home. I could lift it into my conscious perception as a familiar scene. I could imagine her moving about it, young, vibrant, happy, alone or with Croft by her side. I could fancy her bathing in the sun-warmed waters of the private bath in the garden—the gleam of her form against the clear yellow stone of which it was constructed—until she seemed the little silver fish Croft had called her, disporting in a bowl of gold, behind the white, screening, vine-clad walls. Or I could dream of her walking about the grounds, with the giant Canor—the huge, doglike creature she called Hupor, who was at once her pet, her companion, and guard. Distant? Why, she seemed no more distant to me in the days after Croft had gone back to be with her when her child would be born than some fair maid of earth waiting for the coming of her lover across a dividing wall in an adjacent yard.

And yet so blind is the objective mind, that even then I did not suspect I had established a sympathetic chain of interest between the atmosphere of her existence and myself, capable of stretching out to a most peculiar climax in the end. Then, one night something over a month after No. 27 had died and been laid away, I dreamed.

I don't say I thought of it as a dream at the time. Then it was all too seriously, too grippingly, real to seem other than the actual thing. It was only after it was over that I thought of it as a dream—perhaps because, despite the occurrence and all Croft had told me, I was still not fully convinced.

Later—well, that's the story. I'll let it unfold itself.

I went to bed that night and fell asleep. How long I slept I do not know. But a voice disturbed my slumbers after a time. At least it disturbed the restful unconsciousness of my spirit. To this day I am not sure whether or not my body moved.

"Murray—Murray." I heard it, dimly at first, but insistent. It kept repeating itself over and over. Beyond doubt someone was demanding my attention. I sought to rouse.

"Murray—in the name of Zitu—and Azil—"

I stiffened my attention. It was nothing short of startling to hear those words spoken.

Zitu was God in the Tamarizian language, as I knew, and Azil was the Angel of Life—as Ga was the Virgin Mother. Ga and Azil—the mother and the life-bringer—they were the ones to whom the Tamarizian women most frequently prayed. I gave over my endeavor to waken my sleeping body and lay straining the ears of my spirit to the voice.

It came again. Whoever the speaker was, he seemed to know he had stirred my conscious perception.

"Murray—I need your advice—your council. Naia needs you. It's life and death, Murray. You told me you would gladly render her assistance as a physician. Murray—will you come?"

My spirit staggered. It was most amazing. For now I knew that the speaker was Jason Croft.

I knew that he was appealing to me in the name of Zitu and Azil—in the name of motherhood—that he was calling on me as a brother physician, by the oath of my profession—in the name of all that was highest and holiest in life.

I knew that Naia's hour was upon her—and I knew it as clearly as if the thing were taking place somewhere within a neighboring home on earth. I lay and let the knowledge beat in upon me. I recalled in a flash all he had told me concerning medical knowledge on Palos. If some complication in the birth of their child impended, there would be none on that far planet to whom he could turn for aid. He knew more than all the physicians of Palos put together, but—

"Murray!" the voice repeated. "Murray, in the name of God!"

There was a desperate urge—a desperate plaint about it. I reached a decision. I had never married. There was no one dependent upon me. With a strange thrill I realized the fact. If I failed to return from this strangest of calls to which a medical man was ever bidden, if the body of me were not to be revived, I would be little missed.

So what did it matter? A man—or most men—surely could die but once; and how better than in performing the duty of a physician, in an endeavor to save other life? I recall now that such thoughts flitted swiftly through my brain, and left me ready to dare the venture suggested by Croft's voice, if thereby I might render an intimate service to him and Naia of Aphur, in spirit if not in the flesh.

"Murray!"

Again the agony of a strong man's appeal for all he held dearest in existence.

I think the lips of my sleeping material being must have moved at last. Be that as it may, I know I answered:

"Yes."

And I know Croft sensed my acquiescence, for his response was beating into my consciousness in a flash.

"Then—fix your mind on our home in the western mountains, visualize it, Murray, as I have described it to you. Will your conscious presence within it. I shall be waiting for you. Call up the scene and demand that our will be granted. Think of nothing else."

Save for the directions for reaching to him, the thing was as real as a telephone message, and the assurance that the husband of your patient would be waiting your arrival at his house. But there was about Croft's promise to await my coming a definite note of conviction in my ability to encompass our mutual purpose that aided me most materially in what followed, as I now confess.

He was so seemingly sure that I would not fail them—that what assistance I could render would be granted—that for the time being it overthrew all doubt of success. Too, I had grown so accustomed to thinking of Naia of Aphur as a woman—a palpitant creature of radiant flesh and blood—that the very reality of her seeming robbed somewhat of its weirdness, its eery quality, the fact that I was about to respond in the astral body to an urgent medical call. Consciously then I sought to follow Croft's directions.

I fastened my thought on his Aphurian home.

I strove to exclude everything else from my mind. I brought up the picture of it as a thing at the end of a distant vista, down which I must pass to attain it, and—all at once that picture moved!

I say it moved, because that is how it at first appeared. At all events, it seemed to come toward me with amazing swiftness.

For an instant my comprehension faltered, and then I knew. I knew I had gained my purpose—that I was astrally out of my body, even though I had not known the instant when I had left it; that I was speeding with incredible rapidity toward the scene into which I had wished to be projected; that darkness was all about me, like an impenetrable wall; that I was like one in an infinite, an interminable tunnel, with the lighted picture I had conjured up at the end.

Then that too faded, dissolved, lost its comprehensive quality, and gave place to more finite detail, and—I was in a room. But it was not strange. I knew it—recognized it instantly, thanks to Croft's previous words.

Its walls were hung with purple hangings shot through with threads of gold. There was a shallow pool of water in its center edged round with white and golden tiles. Beside it on a pedestal of wine-red wood there stood a figure—the form of a man straining upward as if for flight, with outstretched arms and uplifted wings, translucent—formed of a substance not unlike alabaster—the shape of Azil.

That too I recognized in a flash, and I seemed to catch my breath. At last I was on Palos! This was Azil, the Angel of Life, before me—poised by the mirror pool in the chamber of Naia of Aphur—ablaze now with the light of many incandescent bulbs in copper sconces against the walls. All this I saw, and became conscious that, as well as light, the chamber was now full of life.

Naia of Aphur! She lay before me on a copper-moulded couch—and I turned my eyes upon her, her body beneath coverings of silklike fabric.

A woman, of whom two were in attendance, wearing the blue garment embroidered with a scarlet heart above the left breast—the badge of the nursing craft, as Jason had told me—spoke to Naia in soothing accents the words of which I could not understand.

"Murray!"

Whirling, I beheld Jason Croft. Rather, I seemed to see two Jason Crofts, instead of one. One sat in a chair of the same wine-red wood of which the pedestal supporting Azil was formed, in the posture of a man in more than mortal slumber. One floated toward me, ghostlike—a shimmering, shifting, vaporlike semblance of the other as to physical shape.

And it was this second Croft that seemed to speak.

I say seemed, because as I recall the episode now I know that communication was in reality by thought transference, although it appeared then to reach the understanding in the form of spoken words. It came over me instantly that Jason had purposely assumed the astral condition to welcome me on my arrival here.

I had been too much occupied with my surroundings until then to give thought to my own possible appearance. But as I put out a hand in answer to his single word of greeting, I found it no more than a thin diaphanous cloud. I was even as he was—a nebulous something. Still, that was to be expected. I put it aside and considered the man before me. The features of his astral presence were actually haggard, marked by a suffering plainly mental, yet akin in its way to the lines that contorted Naia of Aphur's face in her present mortal woe.

"Croft, in God's name what is the trouble?" I asked as once more a low sound of smothered anguish came from the couch behind me.

Nor do I think I overshot the mark in declaring what followed to have been the most remarkable medical consultation mortal man might know. He lost no time in explaining the situation. It wasn't his way.

He gave me at once an exact and scientific understanding of her condition, ending his narration simply:

"Murray, you know how I love her. I faced the thing as long as I could have alone. And then—knowing all that depended on me—I became unnerved, and called for you. There was no one else—and you'd said you'd be glad to attend her. Can you blame me, my friend, now that you see her?"

I shook my head in negation, turning it for an instant toward the glorious woman shape on the copper bed. "Can she see me? Does she know I am here? Can I speak with her?" I questioned.

"She will sense your presence at least," Croft said. "I shall revivify my body and draw the chair in which it is sitting close beside the couch. You will sit there, Murray, and I shall tell her you are present, watching, nerving me to my task, before I set to work. She knows I called you, Murray, and now you must help us both. Your brain must use my hands to save her. Come—what do you advise me to do, Murray?"

I told him as soon as he had brought his almost panting response to an end. His exposition of the problem we faced had made it dreadfully plain.

He heard me out and then nodded with set lips.

"I—I'll do it, Murray," he said. "I—I felt it was the thing, but—without counsel—simply on my own judgment, I could not do it. And—you must coach me. I'll work in a purely subjective condition. That way, even in the body, I'll be able to sense the guiding impulse of your brain. God, man, how I need you! Come!"

The form beside me vanished. The body in the chair flung up its head and rose. It pushed the chair it had occupied quite to the side of the copper couch, and bent to speak to the woman who lay upon it.

I followed. I sank into the seat provided. Croft straightened. Naia turned her head directly toward me.

I looked for the first time into her violet-purple eyes.

They were clear, steadfast, flawless as a perfect amethyst, though darkened by the ordeal through which she was passing—the eyes of a true woman, high-spirited, brave, loyal, and pure. They strained toward me. And suddenly she threw out a perfectly rounded arm, a slender hand, as one who asks for succor. Her lips parted, and once more she smiled, a smile so wistfully yearning that my whole heart answered its appeal.

This was Naia of Aphur—wife of my friend Jason Croft. In that instant I felt she was worth all that he had dared to win her. This was Naia, the woman who months ago had told him that in the silence of the night she had heard the beating of the wings of Azil, the bringer of new life, because of which I was here now beside her in that holiest of moments in a medical man's existence, when with hand and brain he waits to welcome a new life's birth.

Her lips moved. Distinctly I heard her speak:

"Dr. Murray—good friend of my beloved, who tells me of your presence in response to his appeal for your assistance to us—I bid you welcome to our home. Thrice welcome are you, upon whose coming depends, as he tells me also, our future happiness together, as well as the life of our child."

She addressed me most surprisingly in English, until I bethought me that Croft had doubtless taught her the tongue, exactly as he had taught her so much else; to fly the first airplane in Palos, the control of the astral body itself. Her words moved me oddly. I rose to answer:

"I am more than happy to be here, Princess Naia, and to bid you be of good cheer, remembering that even now Azil stands close by the gateway of life, in charge of a newborn soul."

And then I sank back, confused. I had spoken wholly on impulse, voicing the inmost emotions of my heart, forgetting my nebulous condition entirely for the instant, in the spell of what seemed so real. With a feeling akin to acute annoyance at my inability to speak thus to her directly I resumed my chair.

But even so, it seemed that I had reached her—that in some way akin to that in which Croft had assured me he would be able to follow my mental direction while working, she had sensed my meaning and intention. Women are intuitive by nature, more susceptible to the waves of a personal or thought vibration. Her lips moved again as I ceased speaking.

"Azil," she whispered. "But—that new soul is so long in passing, my friend."

I turned to Croft.

"Come," I hurled my thought force toward him. "Let us spare her more bodily anguish than must be endured. Let us make an end."

Of what followed I shall say no word. Suffice it to state that Jason Croft labored, grim of lips and pallid of feature; that I sat in that weirdest position of assistance capable of conception; that the lights burned on in that room where the pale form of Azil spread his wings on the pedestal of wine-red wood; that the eyes of Naia of Aphur widened until they were two dark pools no more than fringed by the purple iris; that the two female attendants waited, intent on naught save the catching, the rendering of obedience to each of Croft's intense though low-pitched words.

And then suddenly the man turned to me a face transfigured past anything I had ever pictured—a thread of sound—a wailing, trailing vibration—the first note of waking vocal strings, pulsed through the room—and Jason Croft the physician, the father, was kneeling beside that couch of copper, no longer the iron-nerved worker, the laborer for unborn life, but the husband, the lover, clasping the slender body of Naia of Aphur in his arms, and shaken by a strong man's sobs. I turned away my eyes.

And then his voice boomed out, strangely exalted and triumphant:

"Murray—we win—win, man—thanks to you and—God!"

I turned back. Croft spoke to one of the attendants. She crossed to a curtained doorway and lifted the purple drapings. There stole into the room a girl of Mazzeria—a graceful creature, for all the odd blue color of her skin. Twin braids of ruddy hair fell from her head to her waist. Her figure held all the untrammeled litheness of a panther as she advanced. Across her outstretched arms she bore a pure white cloth.

Upon it, the child of Jason Croft and Naia of Aphur was placed.

She wrapped the fabric about it, cradling it against her breast. She turned to Naia, smiling, sinking down beside her on her supple rounded thighs.

And then—for one brief instant I saw the light of the Madonna flame in those wonderful eyes—the light with which Naia the mother looked first on Jason's—son.

Croft addressed me.

"Maia," he said softly. "I've described her to you before if you remember, Murray. She asked that you might be permitted to attend the—the little one."

His voice broke. His face was weary, overstrained, worn. I understood. The graceful girl was Naia's personal attendant—the Mazzerian woman, who had aided her mistress in saving Croft's life at a time when he was taken captive during the Mazzerian war. I nodded my comprehension. He bent again as though by irresistible attraction above the couch where the blue girl still was kneeling, and Naia seemed waiting his undivided attention. Once more I turned my head. It was the holy moment—the hour of realization between man and woman.

Through the half-drawn curtains of a window, light stole into the room. It shamed the incandescents in their sconces. A finger of golden glory touched the tips of the upflung wings of Azil. With a start, I realized that the night of anguish was ended—that new life had come into the house of Jason—with the dawn.

CHAPTER II

THE CHRISTENING

I went toward the curtains and stood looking out between them, removing so far as I could even my invisible presence from the tableau behind me.

The attendants were moving about. I heard the soft pad of their gnuppa-hide sandaled feet, the softened tones of their voices. I heard Naia speaking and Croft's deeply quivering answer, and once more the wail of the child.

"Murray," Jason was speaking to me. I sensed his touch on my arm. Again he was in astral form. "Come, while the women perform their task."

My glance shot beyond him to where his physical body was seemingly lost in a lethargy of exhaustion, once more in the red wood chair. It did more. It fell on Naia. The ray of sunlight had lowered as Sirius had mounted above the eastern horizon. It made her golden tresses seem more than ever an aureole about her face on the pillow—a face grown exquisitely tender, lighted not merely with the sun of morning, but by the inner, the newly ignited glow of motherhood. I turned from it and followed Croft through the curtained doorway of the chamber, onto the balcony, along which one approached the room.

He had described it minutely to me, but even so I marveled at it as we stood together, sensing its proportions, its brilliant yet not offensive blendings of yellow and white and red. White was the balcony rail about it, red and yellow the alternating tiles that paved its floors. Red and yellow, too, were the steps of the stairs that mounted to the balcony from either end of the court, and red the carven pillars that supported the balcony on a series of arches, between which pure white examples of Palosian sculpture showed. Golden were the plates of glass in the roof above us—open mainly now to the air of heaven, that the flowers and plants and shrubs which dotted the unpaved portions of the court beneath us might breathe.

And then I think I must have started very much as Croft himself had done the first time he beheld such a sight, as I became conscious of a man, blue as the blue girl of Mazzeria in the room behind me, wearing upon his shaven poll a single flaming tuft of red. He was a stalwart man, and he bore a skin equipped with a sprinkling-nozzle upon his back while he sprayed the beds of growing vegetation—accompanied in his occupation by a slow-stalking beast remarkably like a hound.

Croft noted the direction of my glance and manner. "Mitlos—our majordomo, and Hupor," he said and smiled. "Zitu man, when I told you about them, the last thing I dreamed was that some day you should see them."

"And now?" I returned with a strange inclination to chuckle as I thought that Jason was no longer alone in being the first mortal to reach Palos in the astral presence, even though his potent will had helped me to my present position.

"And now"—he laughed in a tone of exultation—"you see not only them, but me, husband of Tamarizia's most beautiful woman, and thanks to you—the father of her child."

"Nonsense," I exclaimed, doubly abashed by his praise and my thoughts of a moment before, "I did nothing—what can a ghost accomplish?"

He turned fully toward me. His eyes burned with the strong fire of his spirit.

"I came here even as you are, Murray, and"—he waved a hand in a comprehensive gesture—"I have accomplished this, and other things besides—yet not so much that this morning—the most wonderful of all my span of existence, I have either words or deeds in which the assistance your presence within the last few hours gave me, may be repaid."

And no matter how he voiced it, I knew he meant it. The sincerity of his feeling forced itself upon me.

"Let us not speak of payment," I said—and I confess I felt embarrassed by the value he seemed to place upon what was no more than my agreement with his own valuation of a now favorably passed condition. "As it happens, Croft, my presence here was no more than the granting of an expressed wish."

He nodded. "The thought is father to the deed—isn't it, Murray? I thought of that last night. Come—I'll show you about the place."

Turning he led the way along the balcony to one end. We went down the red and yellow stairs.

At their foot was a group of sculptures—the figure of a man straining to defend a crouching woman from the fangs of a rending beast. It was of heroic size and wonderfully perfect in detail. I recalled it from Croft's description of it, and how once he had told Naia that so he would defend her were his right to do so granted. Well—last night I had seen him do it. I had seen him strain body and soul to guard her from the yawning jaws of death. I said as much.

He gave me a glance. "You're an odd sort, Murray. You've a lot of the symbolism, the mysticism of life in your make-up. Come along. Let's get a breath of the morning air outside."

Once more I followed his lead across the red and yellow court where unknown plants bloomed about us on every side. Mitlos, intent on his duties, knew not of our passing, but Hupor sensed us, I think, and turned his huge head toward us, and stood looking at us out of amber eyes. Then we were outside the arch of a doorway at the head of a flight of pure white steps, on a far-reaching esplanade.

On every hand there were mountains, wooded on their sides. The house stood on one side of a natural mountain valley, in the emerald cup of which was a tiny lake, its waters gilded now by the rays of the Dog Star. And winding past it, and off along the flank of the hills in a series of perfect tangents was a wonderfully metaled road. I followed its turnings until I lost them, and my vision found itself baffled by a further reach of the landscape, blanketed as it seemed beneath a singular dun-colored haze.

In its way the scene was not unlike that of a morning on earth. I turned my eyes back to the dim shape of Croft beside me. He lifted an arm. "Over there is Himyra," he said, pointing, "but a ground fog is hiding the desert. If you'll look across it, however, you'll see a silver sort of shimmer. That's the Central Sea."

Himyra—the capital of Aphur—the Central Sea. And this was Palos. The weirdness of the whole adventure came upon me. It was hard to realize. And the sun up there was Sirius and not the sun to which I was accustomed.

Abruptly Jason chuckled. "Murray—do you remember the night my housekeeper thought I had died, and routed you out in a storm, and you came to my house and compelled me to return from Palos by the infernal insistence of your will? Well, tit for tat, old man. That night I did your bidding, but last night I called you here."

"Quite so," I assented, smiling. In a way his remark seemed to lighten the atmosphere between us. I caught sight of a rapidly moving object. "Look there, Croft—that's one of your motors or some or sort of speedy contraption coming up the road."

He glanced down the course of what I could not but agree he had done well at first to compare to the ancient highways of the Romans because of its permanent type of construction.

"Lakkon, by Zitu!" he exclaimed. "I telephoned him last night, but—I'd forgotten all about him. He said he'd drive out the first thing in the morning, and he seems to be burning the wind. See here—I'll have to leave you, Murray, long enough to welcome grandpa, if you don't mind."

I nodded. Lakkon was Naia's father. And it was no more than natural surely that he should be hastening to her, especially as she was the old noble's only child.

"Run along," I said. "There's plenty to look at. I'll amuse myself." Then, as an afterthought, I added, "Only don't spend too much time with him. I've got to be getting out of here, Croft, or someone's likely to fancy Dr. Murray is dead."

It had just occurred to me that it was morning also on earth and that unless I returned to my body, I couldn't tell what might happen in the institution of which I was the head.

Croft understood my meaning.

"You're right. I'll be as brief as possible," he agreed and vanished, leaving me quite to my own devices.

I smiled. If one considered it was rather odd to be telling a man to go get back inside his own body in order to welcome his father-in-law in the flesh—or to contemplate a return flight across billions of ethereal miles to accomplish a reunion between my material body and myself. Myself. I took a deep breath of the mountain air—at least, I went through the conscious effort with all the satisfaction of fulfillment. I was myself, really. I felt it, knew it—and I felt a buoyancy, a lightness, such as I had never known before now that the weight, the restraint of the body was removed.

I stood and watched Lakkon's motor arrive. I saw Croft's material form stalk forth to meet him at the head of the stairs. I saw Lakkon descend from his car and hurry upward, the strong figure of a man with graying hair, an expectant light in his beardless face. I marked his dress.

It consisted of a tunic of purple, embroidered with an intricate design in small green stones, skirted, falling to just above the knees, and the metal, ankle-jointed combination of greaves and sandals Croft had described, plainly fashioned of gold, and reaching above the bulge of his muscular calves.

He met Croft and crashed his flat palm upon his shoulder with an exultant gesture. Croft extended his arm and laid his hand on Lakkon's shoulder. The two men passed inside.

I turned away. There was something vastly formal, vastly ancient, about that greeting—an old world atmosphere—that spoke of age-long custom, despite the throbbing motor in which the noble had reached the house of his daughter. There was almost something Biblical about it, the thought came to me. They had met and laid their hands on each other's shoulders—two strong men, and looked into one another's eyes. I knew it the Tamarizian greeting of unfaltering friendship, no more a greeting than a pledge.

Well, then, Lakkon had gone to see his daughter. I gave a glance to the driver of his motor—a chap dressed plainly in blue unembroidered tunic, and copper leg-casings, with a fillet supporting a sun screening drape of purple fabric, about his head. Then I turned and made my way into the garden. It had occurred to me to examine the private bath.

I found it, screened behind vine-clad walls, and slipped inside it, past a staggered entrance wall that screened its gate. It lay before me, a limpid pool in a basin of lemon stone like onyx save that it was neither mottled nor veined. It shimmered in the Sirian ray, an oblong of water as brilliant as a bit of polished silver, inside the expanse of the enclosure, paved with alternating squares of rock-crystal and pure white stone. I stood gazing upon it, recalling that it was here Croft had once met Naia of Aphur—the first time when in defiance of all social custom on Palos, she had yielded him her lips.

Then I went back to the front of the house, and seated myself on a carven stone bench. I lifted my eyes to the light-filled heavens. This was Palos—and up there somewhere or down or sidewise—or however you chose to call it—was earth. It was like Omar as to direction when he says:

"For Is and Is not though with rule and line

And Up and Down without, I can define—"

Anyway, out there somewhere in the void there floated the mundane sphere, where the body of me might even now be exciting consternation among the staff of the hospital, where it had been moved and held a little prestige in its work. And here was I. Suddenly there stole over me the sensation that the whole thing was a dream excited by Jason's stories—a feeling that I ought to rouse myself and get about my business. I rose. I felt all at once restless, vaguely disturbed. I turned and found Jason beside me.

"I was longer than I meant to be, Murray," he said. "And, see here—I know you'll understand me when I tell you it's past ten o'clock on earth."

I nodded. It was no time for misunderstanding or niceties of speech. More and more I was finding myself filled with a vital urge—to be away from here and about my own affairs.

"To tell the truth, with all respect to your feelings and those of Naia, I was getting impatient of your coming," I replied.

"She sends you her deepest thanks, and the blessings of Zitu and Ga the Mother," he responded quickly. "I know you know how I feel, old fellow. Now fix your mind on your body—and try to open its eyes."

I was ready. I put out a hand and laid it on his shoulder. He did the same. We looked into one another's faces.

"Some time—you'll come again," Croft told me. "And—now that we've established the astral power, I'll come to you, Murray—and when I speak you will answer. Don't forget it. Man—mayhap we'll build Tamarizia up together—at least, I can come to you like this from now on for knowledge—conversation. Can you see where the thing may lead to?"

"Yes," I said. "It's big, Croft—big. But if I don't get out of here now it may lead a very important part of me to the grave. Make my adieus to Naia. I'd envy you, man, if you weren't my friend. Now—do what you can to help me, for I'm going to try a pretty broad jump, as such things are considered."

I closed my eyes.

A sound like splintering wood assailed my ears. A blended sound of voices beat upon them.

"Murray—Murray—doctor!"

There was no doubt about it. A very human voice was calling to me—a hand laid hold upon my shoulder—only it wasn't the hand Jason Croft had laid upon it in farewell. The thing bit into the flesh. It seemed trying to shake me.

With an effort I lifted my lids and stared up into the face of a hospital orderly, strained and anxious. I was back on earth, there wasn't any doubt about it. I was on earth, in my room in the mental hospital and in bed.

"Yes," I said; "yes."

The man's breath actually hissed as he let it out. He stammered. "You'll excuse us, doctor, but you didn't show up and you didn't answer when we rapped—and—well—we broke in the door at last. It seemed best."

His use of the pronoun arrested my attention. I made another effort and sat up. The orderly had fallen back from my bedside as he spoke, and beyond him I saw a nurse—a woman—not blue-robed like those I had seen in Naia of Aphur's apartments, but crisply gowned in white—and back of her the door of my own chamber, sagging open with a broken lock.

"It's all right, Hansen," I made answer. "I must have been pretty sound asleep." There wasn't anything else to say, any use to attempt fuller explanation. "What time is it?" I asked.

"Ten thirty," said the nurse, consulting a watch on her wrist. "You're sure you feel all right, doctor?"

"Perfectly," I nodded. "If you'll withdraw, I'll get up."

She left the room and Hansen followed. I rose and began to dress. Outside a brilliant sunlight was visible through my windows. It showed me familiar objects. The Palosian landscape had faded. It had been after ten when Jason had come to me, to, as it were, speed a parting guest, and now it was half after ten, and I was back on earth. Well, he had told me the gulf could be bridged by the spirit in a flash.

Or had he? I fumbled my way into my garments in a somewhat clumsy fashion. I felt odd. Just what had happened, I asked myself. And it was then that the thing began to seem like a dream to me, really, no matter how vividly real it had seemed while it occurred. Save only for that vividness I think I would have considered it no more than a dream indeed.

But dream or not, it continued to go with me through all the familiar routine of the succeeding days. It kept bobbing up, in all its colorful details. I kept recalling that gorgeous chamber in which I had seen, or seemed to see, Naia of Aphur. I could even recall the soft thud of Lakkon's metal sandals as he mounted toward Jason, waiting to welcome him at the top of a flight of pure white stairs. And I could see again that light I had seen in the purple eyes of Naia—that exquisite look of the Madonna, I had seen in the faces of other new-made mothers, and in their eyes. Yes, if it had been a dream instead of an actual occurrence, it had been very, very real.

For the life of me, I couldn't decide. The mind of me balked no matter what the spirit decreed. As an actual fact, I wanted to believe I was in a somewhat similar position to men I have known, who tried to accept a religion, feeling their salvation depended upon it, and yet could not quite compass full acceptance in the end.

At the last I settled down to a sort of compromise with myself, based on my recollection of Croft's assertion that he would come to me some time for an astral conversation, similar to those meetings with Naia he had employed to sway her decision, before he finally won her and that I myself should visit Palos some time again. If those things happened I felt I could give credence without reservation. I did a lot of reading in Croft's books and waited. But he did not come.

A month passed and a little more, approximately such a span of time as they called a Zitran on Palos, where the year was a trifle longer than ours, though divided in similar fashion into twelve periods. I had about settled back into acceptance of a completely corporeal routine, and then—once more I had word of Jason's son.

"Murray—Murray," a voice whispered to me in my slumber.

It roused me. I sat up, distinctly conscious of an intelligent presence in my room.

"Murray—get out of that cloud, and let's talk," what seemed a whisper prompted.

Something happened. Suddenly I was intensely awake, and I saw—the nebulous form of Jason, seated against the metal rail at the foot of my bed.

"That's better. How would you like to take another trip to Palos?" he inquired.

He smiled as he said it, and I answered in similar fashion. "If I can make the round trip a little quicker I wouldn't mind it. What's wrong up there now?"

"Nothing's wrong up there. Everything's all right."

His expression quickened. "But what happened?"

I told him, and he nodded. "Well, this will be different as you'll get back before morning. Murray, both Naia and I want very much that you should be present in so far as you can, two nights from now, at the christening of our son."

The christening of his son. The thing thrilled me. It was real then, and not a dream after all. I had really gone to Palos that night over a month ago, and now—Croft had kept his promise. He was here asking me to essay the venture again.

"Of course," he said as I delayed my answer in the grip of full realization, "you'll see without being seen, but—after it's over—Naia wants to meet you astrally at least. Will you come?"

Naia wanted to meet me. After the thing was over and the others were gone, we three would meet as Croft and I were meeting now and establish a personal relation.

"Will I?" I exclaimed. "Well, rather."

Croft smiled. "It will be a somewhat brilliant spectacle. You'll enjoy it."

We talked for an hour after that, before he vanished, and I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed, staring into the darkness and filled with the firm conviction that on the second night from this I would witness the christening of Jason's son.

That conviction went with me during the two succeeding days and it was with the positive expectation of its fulfillment that I locked myself in my room and stretched myself out on my bed the second night.

I lay there and fixed my mind on the home of Lakkon in Himyra—the great red city of Aphur, where Croft had said the ceremony would occur. I pictured it even as I had pictured Jason's home in the mountains, its splendid court paved with the purest of rock-crystal—he had fancied it was glass when first he saw it—its circling balcony reached at either end of the court by yellow onyxlike stairs.

I focused every vestige of my will on reaching to it, and—suddenly—it seemed that I heard Croft calling me just as he had said he would do; the sense of lightness, of untrammeled freedom I had experienced on the other occasion came upon me—and—I was there.

Light, color. They were all around me. The flawless crystal of the floor caught the radiance from the lights above them in a million facets, broke it into a myriad flashing pin-points of refraction until the whole, vast court seemed paved with a shimmering iridescent carpet. White was the balcony about it, and the pillars on which it was supported, and the gleaming bits of sculpture between. And the shrubs, the banks and hedges of vegetation, in the unpaved beds of the court were green, save that they were blooming, loaded down with colorful flowers everywhere.

Tables a-glitter with gold and glass stretched down the central portion of the sparkling pavement in the form of three sides of a rectangle, with a purple-draped dais at the closed end. Guests thronged the vast apartment, seated on chairs of wine-red wood or reclining on couches interspersed among the beds of flowering vegetation. Nodding plumes of every hue and shade graced the heads of the women. Of every grade of richness were their jewel-embroidered robes. Nor were their men-folk any whit behind them in the lavish ornamentation their tunics or metal cuirasses displayed.

Men and women, they were like birds of brilliant plumage, and as the lights struck down upon them, save for the gleam of the bared arms and shoulders of the women, the glint of their fair limbs through the intricate slashings of their leg-casings and sandals of softest leathers, the rose tint of their knees, they blazed. A babble of voices—the rhythm of music from concealed harps, was in the room. I indulged in a single comprehensive glance and looked about for my hosts.

But I did not find them anywhere among their guests. Nor did Jason appear to greet me, though that I did not expect. We had arranged between us that he should summon me just before the ceremony occurred, and that we would meet only after the departure of the guests. Hence, failing to sight either Croft or Naia or even Lakkon, I made shift for myself.

A trumpet blared with a softened tongue. I became aware of a page in purple garments, standing with the instrument at his lips, on the topmost tread of one of the flights of yellow stairs.

The thrum of the hidden harps quickened. The assembled company rose. They stood and faced the stairway where, now, something in the nature of a ceremonial procession showed.

Naia and Croft came first, Naia in white from the tips of her slender sandals to the feathers that nodded from a fillet of shimmering diamondlike jewels in the masses of her golden hair. Croft led her downward. He was in all his formal harness, golden cuirass, on the breast of which glowed the cross ansata and the wings of Azil in azure stones—golden greaves and sandals gem-incrusted, golden helmet supporting azure plumes.

And after them came Maia, the blue girl of Mazzeria, bearing on a purple cushion, the child.

Lakkon followed, walking side by side with a man, stalwart, grizzled, strong-faced, clad in a cuirass of silver, rarest of all Tamarizian metals, wearing the circle and cross of Zitra, the capital city of the nation, done in more of the diamondlike stones upon his armor.

Jadgor, I thought; Jadgor, president of the Tamarizian republic, recognizing him from Croft's former descriptions and the quality of his dress.

Behind them, azure-clad—the cross ansata on his breast, a flame of vivid scarlet gems—stalked a man, white-haired and most benign of appearance in company with a second, more stalwart, also in azure robes. They carried staves tipped with the looped cross and were followed by a boy supporting a tray of silver, on which were two silver flasks and a tiny, blazing lamp.

A man with a cuirass, on which showed a rayed sun, and wearing plumes of scarlet, and a woman, scarlet-robed, with the same ruddy feathers above her soft brown hair brought up the rear.

Zud and Magur, and a temple boy, Robur and Gaya, his wife—high priest of Zitra and his deputy of Himyra, governor of Aphur and his consort, I named them to myself.

While the company kept silent and the harps filled all the air with a sort of triumphant paean, the little procession advanced. It reached the foot of the stairs and crossed to the dais, mounted its steps. It formed itself in a shimmering semi-circle, Croft and Naia—and Maia kneeling before them in the center—the others on either side, and before them the boy of the temple and the two priests.

Him I named Zud, because of his bearing and his mane of snowy hair, raised his stave. The music died. Silence came down for a moment, and then the voice of Magur rose:

"Hail Zitu, giver of life, and Ga, through whom life is given, and Azil, bringer of life, we are met together that a name may be given unto this new soul thou hast seen fit to assign to the flesh.

"Greetings to you, Naia, daughter of Ga, and to you, Jason, Hupor, named Mouthpiece of Zitu among men through whose union Zitu and Ga have expressed their will that life shall remain eternal, renewing its fire from generation unto generation, in the name of love. Is it your will that a name be given this, thy child?"

"Aye, priest of Zitu." Naia and Jason inclined their heads.

"And how call you it between yourselves?"

"Jason, son of Jason," came Croft's voice.

"Then present him unto Zud, high priest of Zitu, that he may receive Zitu's blessing at his hands," Magur said.

The girl of Mazzeria raised the cushion of her arms with the child upon it. The temple boy advanced his silver tray, and knelt. Zud uncorked the silver flasks.

"Jason, son of Jason, in the name of Zitu, the father, and Ga, the mother, and Azil, the son, I baptize thee with wine and with water and light," he began. Moistening his fingers from one of the two flasks, he went on, "With wine I baptize thee, which like the blood, invigorates the body, and strengthens the heart and makes quick the brain." Bending, he touched the child on the forehead, poured water from the other flask into his palm and continued, "I baptize you with water which nourisheth all life, purifies all with which it comes in contact, makes all things clean."

He paused and sprinkled the glowing little body before him, took up the light and a tiny bit of silver I had not noted before and threw into the little face a golden reflected beam. "With light I baptize thee Jason, Son of Jason, since by the will of Zitu it is the light of the spirit which fills the chambers of the brain. May that light be with thee ever and forever, nor be absent from thee again."

Of course I didn't understand it. It was only afterward when Croft had translated it to me that its inward meaning was plain, but the solemnity of the ritual, the rhythm of well-balanced words, the quiet attention of the assembled guests and the reverent voice of the priest affected me, who stood unseen with the company on the dais, as he baptized Jason's son.

And then he took the cushion from the kneeling girl of Mazzeria, lifted it, turning to face the brilliant assemblage.

"Jason, Son of Jason," he cried, holding the infant toward them.

"Hail, Jason, Son of Jason," the guests responded like a well-drilled chorus, and the thing was done.

Followed a feast, similar I fancied in every detail to those Croft had told me he had witnessed at first and been privileged to attend. Men and women reclined at the tables on padded divans. Blue servitors moved about, filling the golden and crystal goblets with wine, loading the golden plates with food. Once more the harps broke forth. And suddenly from under the farther yellow stairway there broke a band of maidens, clad in garlands of woven flowers, and danced to the music of the harps, with a waving of slender arms, a bending of supple, unrestrained bodies, a flashing of whitely rounded limbs. With dances and music the feast ran to an end.

The guests departed, last of them, according to Tamarizian custom, Jadgor, president of the Republic, the guest of honor, and with him Gaya and her husband Robur, governor of Aphur and Jadgor's son. Naia took the child into her arms from the hands of its Mazzerian attendant. She and Jason moved toward the stairs. I knew that the hour I had waited had come.

I followed up the stairway and along the balcony and to a room—hung here in golden tissues, furnished with wine-red woods and twin couches of molded copper—with the mirror pool in its center and once more the figure of Azil close beside it as in Jason's home.

Naia placed the child on a tiny couch and covered its sleeping form with a bit of silken fabric. She turned to Jason, her blue eyes shining. He drew her into his arms and held her, smiling.

"There is yet one guest, beloved," he said in English.

"Aye," she responded softly; "but—one who understands the heart both of the wife, and the mother of Jason's son."

"And awaits a welcome from her," said Jason. "Come, beloved." He led her to one of the copper couches and sat down with an arm about her white-sheathed form.

From it there crept a lovely thing—an exact replica of it—the very essence of it, as indeed it was and seemed, as the lights in the chamber flooded down upon it. And that shape stretched out its slender hands. It swayed toward me, with Croft's astral presence close behind it.

"At last," said Naia of Aphur, "I may welcome you, Dr. Murray, as mine and Jason's friend."

"At last, I may converse with Naia of Aphur, and thrill with the glory of her—a thing I have long desired," I replied, and took her shadowy hand and raised it to my none less shadowy lips, yet with a distinct sensation of the contact none the less.

She smiled, and glanced at Jason. "Beloved, are all the men of earth so courtly? It was even so if you remember that you met me first in the flesh."

Croft chuckled.

"Life is much the same on earth or Palos," he made answer. "Well, Murray, what do you think of Palosian life?"

"Babylonian," I said. "You were right in the simile beyond question. I was thinking tonight when I watched it that it was almost a pity in one way you should be changing it all with your innovations."

He nodded. "In a way I've thought as much myself. I get your meaning. But I'm going to try and preserve it at least in part."

"Babylonian?" said Naia in a tone of question.

Jason and I explained, and she heard us out.

"Oh, but—things must change, must they not, Dr. Murray?—and the common people will be so much happier for the knowledge Jason brings to Palos. And even I—think where I and my child would be now save for the knowledge possessed by a man of earth. It is to you and Jason that we owe our lives. Think you not that I carry your name to Ga and Azil in my prayers—that I have wished to meet you in order to express my thanks myself?"

Her words gave me a feeling of something like exaltation, even while in a way they embarrassed. "I, too," I faltered, "am very glad of the meeting, to be able to assure you that it was my happiness to serve you, and to wish you and Jason the happiness of each other, and your son a long and useful life."

She glanced toward the tiny couch and back again, smiling. "Life," she said softly. "It is so wonderful to hold him—to realize that his life is but the blending of Jason's and mine. Sometimes I even think that I understand in a measure what Ga must feel as she guards the eternal fire."

And what is one going to say to a wife and mother when she talks like that? I know I mumbled something to the effect that what Ga probably felt was an all compelling compassion and love. And then I asked Croft to translate the words of the baptismal ceremony as voiced by Magur and Zud the high priest.

He complied and I questioned him of Jadgor and Gaya and Robur, confirming my recognition of Naia's relatives and his friends. Conversation became general for something like an hour, and then Jason prompted. "Beloved, shall we accompany Murray somewhat—show him Himyra in passing when he returns?"

"Aye, as you like," she assented. "And he must come to us again. Now that our need has rendered possible such communion it will not be necessary for you to seek earth in the flesh when you need additional knowledge, or leave me overly long again."

Croft nodded. "Yes, Murray is going to have his hand in Tamarizian affairs from now on, and the boy there will know more than any man ever born on Palos in the end. Well, Murray, want to see Himyra?"

"I've always wanted to see it since you told me about it first," I assented.

"Then come along."

"But," I added as he led the way with Naia through one of the open windows of the chamber. "I never expected to see it exactly like this."

Naia turned her eyes and smiled as we floated free of the house and upward under Croft's guiding will. "Dear friend," she said, "you know so much of us that to me it does not seem strange to find you one of us at last."

"Behold Himyra," said Croft, and flung out a shadowy arm.

The city lay beneath us. I saw the double row of lights that fringed the flood of the Na, the mighty pyramid of Zitu, up-reared against the skyline, black now instead of red, save where the lights threw ruddy splashes upon it, banded with white at the apex with the pure white temple of Zitu upon its truncated top—the long line of the houses of the nobles of the old regime, fronting a wide street at the top of the river embankment in an amazing vista, set down each in its private grounds among night-darkened shrubs and trees, the wide-flung palace of the governor of Aphur, once the palace of Jadgor, Aphur's king. The thing swam a shimmering vision before me under the light of the Palosian moons. I strained my eyes and saw the mighty sweep of Himyra's shadowy walls.

It moved me oddly. Already I knew so much of the city's history as involved in Croft's romance. I turned my eyes.

"Himyra," I said, "I shall not forget it—nor Naia of Aphur, nor Jason, mouthpiece of Zitu, nor Jason, Jason's son. Zitu guard you, my friends. I must be going."

"Zitu guard thee," Naia answered.

And suddenly I was back in my own room, remembering her parting smile.

These things have I narrated in order to show how there was built up between Croft and Naia of Aphur, his mate, and myself, a subtly intimate relation that must, as I hope, make what followed plain.

Life went on pretty much with me after that for some further eight months, however, before the events I intend to relate occurred. Now and then during the interval Jason Croft came to me in the astral presence, and on several occasions I succeeded by my own endeavors in visiting him and Naia in their home.

Between them they taught me somewhat of the Tamarizian tongue, Croft explaining that as all life was the same in reality, and the thought back of the word similar in intent even though the word itself might vary in sound, all languages were really one in thought and purpose. With that as a key, I soon discovered that the spoken words of those about me were not difficult for one in the astral condition to understand—that the vibrations of their thought affected the astral shell in a manner that made their meaning plain.

I suggested to Croft that it was because of that very thing he had so readily apprehended the speech of Tamarizia when he first projected himself to Palos and came down outside Himyra's walls, rather than because of the similarity of their speech to the Sanscrit, now nearly a forgotten tongue on earth, and he nodded and smiled.

"Exactly, Murray," he agreed, "but then I didn't realize it altogether, and—" He broke off and glanced at his wife.