Croft turned to her. "Man is a spirit, Gaya, my friend and wife of my all but brother," he said slowly. "Yet now my spirit is heavy, in that I am a man bereft. Wherefore, ere this thing be finished, I shall work in body and spirit to regain what I have lost." "Enough," Robur prompted. "This is between ourselves. Man thou art, and husband and father. This visit to earth has somewhat to do with a new device?" "Aye--should nothing develop from the meeting after Koryphu's return, if he accepts. Rob, have you stores in plenty of metals, rubber, and cloth?" "Aye, in plenty--and if not, since Koryphu's mission will take the best part of a Zitran to arrange and carry out, it were possible to put double shifts at the forges and send the weavers to their looms." "Then do so," Jason accepted, filling his chest with a heavy inhalation, "for it is in my mind that ere Naia and Jason, Son of Jason, shall see Aphur again strange things shall be seen in the skies." "In the skies!" Robur cried, his dark eyes flashing. "Aye," said the Mouthpiece of Zitu, "in the skies." CHAPTER V IN BERLA Freedom of action, cooperation, a friendly understanding, marked the following days for Croft. That night he visited Naia while his body lay in a room in Robur's part of the palace, covered with a silken tissue, worked over by Gaya's own maids, whom she sent to rub into its stalwart muscles, soft, nourishing, perfumed ointments, such as the Tamarizian nobles used. He found the Zollarian party not far from Berla, confident that the succeeding day would see them inside the city itself. He returned to Himyra for a few hours, spoke with Gaya and Robur, stretched himself out once more, and willed himself back to Naia, and slipped into the conveyance where she rode with Maia and Jason, very much as he had sat and gazed upon her, drunk with the beauty of her, the day he had seen her first outside Himyra's lifted walls. So it was he had promised her the night before he would accompany her into Berla when she arrived. The entry itself was made a spectacle for the crowds. In fact, it was clear to Croft that the thing was staged. Whatever doubts he may have entertained concerning Zollaria's participation in Kalamita's abduction of Naia and Jason as a state, vanished, leaving a cold conviction that the woman had acted less as an individual than in an agent's place. Outside the walls of Berla the party was halted by a patrol. The curtains on Naia's carriage were drawn back, leaving the occupants exposed. Guardsmen approached and placed golden bands joined by a golden chain upon her slender ankles, and on her arms. A chariot such as the Zollarians used in war, save that it was burnished to the last degree, as it advanced behind green-plumed gnuppas harnessed four abreast, emerged from Berla's gate and deposited a massively built warrior, in splendid harness, beside the conveyance in which Kalamita rode.