Croft let every cell of his new body relax and stretched out. He closed his eyes as he heard the nurse return, and gave himself up to thought. It appeared to him that he had made a very good beginning and won an ally in Abbu, into whose astonishment he had woven a thread of the man's own religion to strengthen his belief. Now it remained to gain utter control of the body he possessed--to master it completely, and make it not only responsive to his physical use, but to so impregnate it with his own essence that he might leave it for short times at least in order to return to the earth. And to accomplish that he had just four days. Lying there apparently asleep, he sought to exercise that control he possessed over the body now lying on his library couch. And he failed. Strive as he might, he could not compass success. In something like a panic he desisted after a time and sought to fight back to a balanced mental calm. Was he trapped? he asked himself. Was he a prisoner of the thing he had sought to make his own? Reason told him the question was folly--that already the body was responding in a physical sense. In the end he decided to take a longer time in his endeavors, and so at last fell into a genuine sleep. From that he awakened to the sound of voices, and turned his eyes to behold a woman past middle age, with graying hair, and a man, strongly built, with a well-featured face, in the room. Working swiftly, his mind recalled Abbu's words concerning Jasor's parents. The priest had said they were expected in Scira. This woman, then, must be the Nodhurian's mother. He opened his lips and called her by that word. She ran to him and sank her knees by the couch. "Jasor, my son!" she cried in a voice which quavered, and as the man approached more slowly, turned her face upward to meet his eyes. "He knows me, Sinon--he knows me," she said. "Aye, Mellia, praise be to Zitu. Jasor, my son, dost thou know me also?" the Nodhurian's father said. "Aye, sir," said Croft, marking his parents' names. "But--how come you in Scira?" "Did we not write that we should arrive and take you with us on our return?" Sinon asked. Croft saw it in a flash, and the slip he had made. This explained Abbu's assertion that they were expected. The tablets hurled to the floor by Jasor had been deciphered after his illness, it appeared. "Aye," he admitted somewhat faintly. "But--I have been ill." "And are recovered now," he who was to be his father said. "Aye. Had I my clothing I could rise." "We shall return then at once," Sinon declared. But Mellia, the mother, broke into protests, and Croft became much more cautious, spoke for delay. He did not wish to undertake a trip to Nodhur before he had returned to earth. That was necessary if he was to protect his earth body from Mrs. Goss at the end of the week, since now he knew he must have more time. He determined to make another attempt at escape from his new body, when he would appear merely to be asleep.