"Frightened?" Suddenly Croft drew himself up before me. "Naia--Naia of Aphur frightened--" And then abruptly the force of his thought wave, beating upon me softened. "Or if she felt fear, Murray, it was for the child, and not for herself." He turned toward the tiny couch where the infant had been wont to sleep between the twin couches of its parents, and stood brooding down upon it. "Now Zitemku take the scum of life who have made my house empty," he burst forth, and seized my hand. "Come." In a flash we were outside. And as on that night after the christening of Jason, Son of Jason, when Croft and Naia showed me Himyra, we floated upward. Only now there were no lights to fasten the attention, no mighty piles of architecture, no wide embracing walls. There were just the tumbled masses of the mountains, their sides cut and gashed by night-filled ravines and tortuous canyons, and the silvery radiance of the Palosian moons, and the stars. I recalled that once in the past Croft had called Naia of Aphur, still then a maiden, forth from her body and floated thus over Aphur's hills from the house we now were leaving. And then his voice was in my ear. "Look, Murray--they've reached the shore-line, and--they're building a flare." I turned my gaze into the west, where low down on what might or might not be the horizon, but was certainly not the heavens, there winked a point of light, too ruddy, too unsteady, to be a star. We swept toward it. For the first time I saw the Zollarian manhood in the light of the leaping fire they had built upon a beach. Tawny-haired they were, for the most part, stalwart, with muscular arms and heavy limbs, as they stood straining their vision across the water toward the moonlighted shape of a ship--or perhaps galley were a better term, since it seemed to be equipped with banks of oars as well as sails. So much I saw--the ship, the bodies of the men, the glint of the firelight on spearheads, and the short metal scabbards of swords, not unlike the ancient Roman weapons, to judge by their dimensions, and then Croft led me to where Naia and the blue girl of Mazzeria were seated, little way apart. * * * * * Maia was speaking softly as we reached them. "My mistress, you are quite assured then that the Hupor Jason understands?" "Aye." Naia bent her cheek to rest it against the head of the infant. "Be of good courage, Maia, and fear not." "I fear not for myself, but for you and that one against your breast," the blue girl answered. "Had it been my part to do so, I had done as Mitlos and died in your defense." "I know." Naia stretched out a hand and touched the girl upon the shoulder. "May Zilla bear Mitlos as tenderly as my thoughts shall hold him--and did I not name you my sister Maia, after you rendered me aid in preserving my lord--and did you not insist on coming with me, though these men did not desire to take you, saying you were the child's attendant?"