The firelight glinted on him as he left the plane and sprang lightly to the ground. It shone on his burnished harness, it struck upon his azure plumes. It pricked out the design of the Cross Ansata and the widespread wings of Azil on his cuirass. And suddenly the captain lowered the point of his weapon in a startled recognition. "Thou?" he stammered. "Aye," said Jason gruffly. "I, Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu--to hold speech with Helmor, as thou hast already heard. I Jason of Tamarizia--the one man who may save Berla from destruction--by whose order what remains once that fire has burned itself to embers--may be spared. Go say as much to Helmor, and say also that I wait a meeting with him--here." Followed a tense moment, in which quite plainly the Zollarian debated his course, turning his glance from Croft to the slowly swinging menace of the moonlighted blimps above him--those glinting shapes so remote, so detached in their cold, almost frost-rimmed seeming--and yet as the man before him said the cause of the ravening flames in whose light that man appeared. And as though sensing his thought, Tamarizia's Mouthpiece spoke again: "Think not that save by my order any part of Berla will be spared--neither thou, nor Helmor, nor any of her people. That ye behold done here may be done elsewhere, Zollarian captain." "By Bel--" The captain sheathed his sword. Seemingly the situation was too much for him to handle unaided. "Restrain the people," he directed a lieutenant. "Hold him securely and in safety until I have seen this carried to Helmor's ears." The lieutenant saluted. Turning, the captain ran flashing up the stairs. His subordinates growled a command. The guardsmen advanced, split, moved off right and left, formed a cordon about the plane and Jason, facing outward toward the crowds in the square with leveled spears. Time passed. Jason of Tamarizia stood motionless with folded arms. The people of Berla pressed up to the very spear points, shrieking and mouthing. The conflagration roared. And then the palace doors opened. Helmor and Helmon appeared. Slowly and without any sign of undue haste they descended the steps until nearly at the foot they paused. The Zollarian monarch and Tamarizia's strong man stared into one another's eyes, and Helmor caught a body-filling breath. "So," he said, "it is thou. Word I had of thy presence, yet hardly it seemed thou hadst dared."