In the body he went to Himyra first. But astrally he willed himself back that morning after I had left him, aboard Kalamita's gilded craft, where rather than the tawny siren, the lure that led him was his wife and child. Naia of Aphur--the love of her, as ever since first he had seen her, was a flame in Jason's breast. Gor he found sleeping within the passage, sprawled barrierlike inside its door. Kalamita, too, lay wrapped in slumber, her scheming brain at rest. Inside one of the curtained apartments Maia slept also on a couch drawn crosswise of the door. Naia of Aphur alone was wakeful, brooding with troubled eyes above the sleeping infant. To Croft, as he saw her, she seemed then the embodiment of all the meaning involved in the wonderful statue of Ga the Eternal Mother he had seen once in the quarters of the Gayana--the Tamarizian vestals brooding above the altar of the sacred fire, with the form of a babe on her knees. Thrilling at sight of her so, he stood before her. "Beloved," he called her. She stiffened to attention, lifting her head. Her lips moved. "I have waited thy coming, Jason," she whispered, her fair face lighting as she responded to his summons. "You heard all, know all?" she questioned as Croft drew her wraithlike form inside his yearning arms. "Aye--golden woman--and marveled at thy spirit," he made answer, ere he told her what he had accomplished and gave her Lakkon's message, mentioning at the end the possible means of rescue I had suggested. "Zitu!" Naia faltered. "It were strange indeed, were it not, if the answer to this riddle be found by our friend of earth?" "Aye, strange," said Jason, "yet not more so than that, despite their knowledge, I stand here now before you." "Yet he is wise," she replied, clinging closer to him, "in that he saw quickly the true meaning of the meeting between you and herself this Zollarian woman saw fit to propose. Myself have I promised throughout the night that, once you had come again to me, I would see you warned." Croft smiled in rueful fashion. "Jadgor, too, was against it. It would seem that all perceived the motive of it, save only Jason alone." "Ah, but"--Naia lifted a hand to lay it against his cheek--"Jason, my beloved, was overwrought." "Aye," he confessed; "and now it appears to him that it was on that Kalamita counted to lead him into a trap." "And will count," said Naia, "not knowing the strange power you have taught me, by which we meet." Croft nodded. "And through which their every move may be watched. To my mind, beloved--this meeting on which she is bent at present must be brought about." "But not by Jason!" The fires of Naia's astral body paled in swift alarm. "Not by you, beloved." "Nay," Croft reassured her, "not by Jason, but another, in a fashion, once I am in Himyra, Robur and I shall devise."