Meanwhile Robur took what steps he advised to safeguard the secret of how that rescue was to be made. Guardsmen established a patrol on the banks of the Na, with a port of search at its mouth, where all ascending vessels were compelled to stop by watchful motur craft. Other guards once more went aboard each ship at Himyra's gates, both north and south. For the time being the red city came to be an armed camp, as closely guarded from entry by unvouched for outsiders, as though in a state of siege. And his labors ended, each night Croft stretched himself out on his couch and closed his physical eyes and maintained weird observation of events taking place in the north. Three days after his return to Himyra, Kalamita arrived at her hunting lodge. Rather the thing was a small palace, built of native stone from the mountains and massive beams of wood--its central court fur-lined, its walls and floors covered with trophies of the chase--skins of the woolly tabur, which ran wild as well as in domesticated herds. There were skins of the ferocious tigerlike beast, such at the sculptured group in Jason's mountain home portrayed as attacking the man who sought to keep its ravening jaws from the body of a kneeling woman. And there the Zollarian magnet set herself down with her escort camped about her to await the coming of the man she hoped would be drawn to her out of the south. She sent her guards farther in that direction to meet and escort him. Koryphu at the time was still distant some half-day's journey, and Jason was assured it would be noon of the next day before the Cathurian appeared. Wherefore he spent the succeeding morning in the shops and returned at midday to the palace, retiring to his rooms after explaining to Robur that he intended being present in the spirit at the meeting between Kalamita and the Tamarizian agent, even if not in the flesh as the woman desired. Robur nodded. "Zitu--that such things can be. Not that I doubt you, Jason, but the matter never ceases to excite my wonder. Yet shall I wait with impatience word of what occurs when she beholds Koryphu, brother of Kyphallos, in your place." "She is apt to show displeasure," Jason told him, and he was thinking as much--that the beautiful Zollarian was very apt to show marked displeasure, covered perhaps as best it might be by a haughty bearing--as he stretched himself out and closed his eyes. To the mountains north of Cathur. The Central Sea a-sparkle in the sunlight fled away beneath him. Scira was passed and the many weary stretches of winding road over which Koryphu had passed until he found him, advancing with the Cathurian footmen ringed about him, the Tamarizian flag a glorious standard above him, led by the Zollarian guards.