Arrested by his sudden words and manner, they complied, and in an instant for them the room faded, gave place to another scene. A straw covered dungeon appeared--a dungeon with every detail of which Croft was familiar in his spirit--a woman, a blue girl of Mazzer--a child. Briefly Robur of Aphur and Gaya his wife beheld that picture and knew it for the room beneath Helmor's palace--and then the whole thing faded and once more they were gazing at a tiny vial in the Mouthpiece of Zitu's hands. It was no more than an example of mass hypnotism as practised for ages by the Hindu fakers, a trick learned by Croft while still as a man of earth he had lived and studied in India for several years, but to the two Tamarizians it was altogether strange. "Zitu! Zitu!" Robur gasped, while his wife sat staring no longer at the vial but into Jason's eyes. "Think you that you have been to Berla?" he questioned, smiling slightly. "Nay, my good friends, the thing was but a changing of the rhythm of your minds into sympathy with mine; but a picture never absent from my thought, which I excited in your brains. Think you now that I may make Helmor behold a vision?" "Aye." Robur's tone was thick. "Aye, Jason, thou man unlike any other." "Aye, Helmor shall dream," Gaya echoed his assurance. She smiled, and her smile was strange. Yet no more strange than the hour passed by Jason, Mouthpiece of Zitu, before he stretched his body on its couch of copper, in the formulation of a dream--the careful marshaling of the various thought forms he meant of deliberate purpose to instil into Helmor's brain. Only when their sequence was wholly to his satisfaction did he relax his body, his physical mind, will his astral form swiftly to Helmor's palace and into Helmor's room. A vast apartment it was, draped in saffron hangings, lighted by small lamps to a dusky twilight, in which blue maids, slaves of the palace kept up a ceaseless waving of noiseless fans above the silver couch on which the emperor slept. Unseen, unnoted any more than the trailing smoke of one of the low-burning lamps he drifted to Helmor's luxurious bed and began hurling his thought force upon him, seeking thereby to awaken a sympathetic vibration inside his heavy head. Over and over he drew the mental pictures he had formed, concentrating all his power on them--Helmor defeated in every purpose--Kalamita and Ptah as co-plotters--Helmor about to be dethroned--the child sacrificed to Bel--and Tamarizia resorting for vengeance to the sword--the Zollarian armies once more beaten into a bleeding rabble--fleeing--leaving their own defenseless monarch to face the future alone--Kalamita haughty and sneering--her mask of meekness cast aside--showing at last as the one by whom these things had been brought to pass.