by Anthology
Through the hours of the lunar day he explored. Not, in fact, until the sun was dropping swiftly below the rim of the mountains beyond the old sea bed, did he desist. Then lifting he eyes he beheld a luminous crescent, many times larger than the moon appears to us, emitting a soft, green light. He stood and gazed upon it form some moments before he realized fully that he looked upon a sunrise on Earth.
Then as realization came upon him he remembered his body—left on the porch of his home in the chair. Suddenly he felt a longing to return. Fastening his full power upon the endeavor, he willed himself back, and—
He opened his eyes—his physical eyes—and gazed into the early sun of a new day rising over the mountains.
The sound of a caught-in breath fell on his ears. He turned his glance. Mrs. Goss stood beside him.
"Laws, sir, but you was sound asleep!" she exclaimed. "I come to call you to breakfast an' you wasn't in your room, an' when I found you, you was sleepin' like th' dead. You must have got up awful early, Mr. Jason."
"I was here before you were moving," Croft said as he rose. He smiled as he spoke. Indeed, he wanted to laugh, to shout. He had done what no mortal had ever accomplished before. The wonders of the universe were his to explore at will.
Chapter II
And now the Dog Star called. No longer was it an occasional prompting. Rather it was a never-ceasing urge which nagged him night and day.
He yielded at last. But remembering his return from his first experiment, he arranged for the next with due care. In order that Mrs. Goss might not become alarmed by seeing his body entranced, he arranged for her to take a holiday with a married daughter in another part of the state, telling her simply that he himself expected to be absent from his home for an indefinite time and would summon her upon his return.
He knew the woman well enough to be sure she would spread the word of his coming absence, and so felt assured that his body would remain undisturbed.
Having seen the old woman depart, he entered the library, drew down all the blinds, and stretched himself on the couch. Fixing his mind of Sirius to the exclusion of everything else, he threw off the bonds of the flesh.
Here Croft made a well-nigh fatal mistake; Sirius is a sun. As a result, he was floating in the actual nebula surrounding the flaming orb itself.
Directly beneath him, as it appeared, the Dog Star rolled, a mass of electric fire. Not for a moment was there any rest upon that surface toward which he was sinking with incredible speed. Every atom of the monster sun was in motion, ever shifting, ever changing, yet always the same. It quivered and billowed and shook. Flames of every conceivable color radiated from it in waves of awful heat. Vast explosions recurred again and again on the ever-heaving surface.
In this maelstrom of titanic forces Croft found himself caught, buffeted, swirled about and swayed by the irresistible forces which warred around him in a never-ceasing tumult. The force which held him was one beyond his experience or knowledge.
His will power faltered, staggered. For the time being, he lost his ability to choose his course. He had willed himself here, and here he was, but he found himself unable to will himself back, or anywhere else, in fact.
Through eons of time, as it seemed to him, he hung above that blazing orb, surrounded by seething gases which dimmed but did not wholly obscure his vision. Then a change began taking place. A great spot of darkness appeared on the pulsing body of the sun. It widened swiftly. About it the fiery elements of molten mass seemed to center their main endeavor. Vast streamers of flaming gas leaped and darted about its spreading center. It stretched and spread.
To Croft's fascinated vision it showed a mighty, funnel-like chasm, reaching down for thousands of miles into the very heart of their solar mass. And suddenly he was sinking, was being drawn down, between walls of living fire which swirled about him with an inconceivable velocity of revolution. The vapors which closed about him seemed to stifle even his spirit senses. He had lost all control, all conscious power to judge of time or distance. Yet he was able still to see. And so at last he sensed that the fiery walls were coming swiftly together.
For a wild instant he conceived himself engulfed. Then he knew that he was being thrown out and upward again with terrific force, literally crowded forth with the outrushing gases between the collapsing walls, and hurled again into space.
Darkness came down, a darkness so deep it seemed a thousand suns might not pierce it through with their rays. Sirius, the great sun, seemed blotted out. He was seized by a sense of falling through that Stygian shroud. In which direction he knew not, or why or how. He knew only that his ego over which he had lost control was swirling in vast spirals down and down through an endless void to an endless fate.
By degrees, however, he fought back to some measure of control. And by degrees there came to him a sense of not being any longer alone. In the almost palpable darkness it seemed that other shapes and forms, whose warp and woof was darkness also, floated and writhed about him as he fell.
They thrust against him; they gibbered soundlessly at him. They taunted him as he passed. And yet their very presence helped him in the end. He recognized these shapes of terror as those elementals of which occult teaching spoke, things which roamed in the darkness, which had as yet never been able to reach out and gain a soul for themselves.
With understanding came again the power of independent action. Unknowing whither, Croft willed himself to the nearest bit of matter afloat in the universal void. Abruptly he became aware of the near presence of some solid substance, the sense of falling ended, and he new that his will had found expression in fact.
Yet wherever it was he had landed, the region was dead. Like Earth's moon, it was wholly devoid of moisture or atmosphere. The presence of solid matter, however, gave him back a still further sense of control. Exerting his will, he passed over the darkened face and emerged on the other side in the midst of a ghostly light. At once he became conscious of his surroundings, of a valley and encircling lofty mountains. From the sides of the latter came the peculiar light. Examination showed Croft that it was given off by some substance which glowed with a phosphorescence sufficient to cast faint shadows of the rocks which strewed the dead and silent waste.
Not knowing where he was, Croft waited until at length the top of a mountain lighted as if from a rising sun. Inside a few moments the valley was bathed in light; he saw the great sun Sirius wheel up the morning sky.
Peace came into his soul. Close to the line of the horizon, and shining with what was plainly reflected light, he saw the vast outlines of another planet he had failed to note until now.
He understood. This was the major planet, surely one of the Dog Star's pack, and he had alighted on one of its moons. Summoning his will, he made the final step of his journey, and found himself standing on a world not so vastly different from his own.
He stood on the side of a mountain in the midst of an almost tropic vegetation. Giant trees were about him, giant ferns sprouted from the soil. But here, as on Earth, the color of the leaves was green. Through a break in the forest he gazed across a vast, wide-flung plain through which a mighty river made its way. Its waters glinted in the rays of the rising sun. Its banks were lined with patches of what he knew from their appearance were cultivated fields. Beyond them was a dun track, reminding him of the arid stretches of a desert.
He turned his eyes and followed the course of the river. By stages of swift interest he traced it to a point where it disappeared beneath what seemed the dull red walls of a mighty city. They flung across the course of the river, which ran on through the city itself, passed beyond a farther wall, and—beyond that again there was the glint of silver and blue.
The call of a bird brought his attention back. Gay-plumaged creatures, not unlike parrots, were fluttering from tree to tree. The sound of a grunting came toward him. A creature such as he had never seen was coming out of a quivering mass of sturdy fern. It had small, beady eyes and a snout like a pig. Two tusks sprouted fr
om its jaws like the tusks of a boar. But the rest of the body was covered with a long wool-like hair, fine and seemingly almost silken soft. Later, he learned they were called taburs.
Once more he turned to the plain and stood lost in something new. Across the dun reaches of the desert, beyond the green region of the river, was moving a long dark string of figures, headed toward the city he had seen. Swiftly he willed himself toward them and moved along by there side. They were huge beasts, twice the size of an earthly elephant. They moved in a majestic fashion, yet with a surprising speed. Their bodies were covered with a hairless skin, reddish pink in color, wrinkled and warted and plainly extremely thick. It slipped and slid over the muscles beneath it as they swung forward on the four massive legs, each one of which ended in a five-toed foot armed with heavy claws.
But it was the head and neck and tail of the things which gave Croft pause. The head was more that of a sea serpent or a monster lizard than anything else. The neck was long and flexible and curved like that of a camel. The tail was heavy where it joined the main spine, but thinned rapidly to a point. And the crest of head and neck, the back of each creature, so far as he could see, was covered with a sort of heavy scale. Yet he could not see very well, since each Sarpelca, as he was to learn their Palosian name, was loaded heavily with bundles and bales of what might be valuable merchandise.
And on each sat a man. They had heads and arms and legs and a body, and their faces were white. Their features departed in no particular, so far as he could see, from the faces of Earth, save that all were smooth, with no evidence of hair on upper lip or cheek or chin.
They were clad in loose cloak-like garments and a hooded cap or cowl. They sat the Sarpelcas just back of the juncture of the body and neck, and guided the strange-appearing monsters by means of slender reins affixed to two of the fleshy tentacles which sprouted about the beast's almost snakelike mouths.
That this strange cortege was a caravan Croft was now assured. He kept on beside it down the valley, along what he now saw was a well-defined and carefully constructed road. It was like the roads of Ancient Rome, Croft thought with quickened interest. It was in a perfect state of preservation and showed signs of recent mending here and there. While he was feeling a quickened interest in this, the caravan entered the cultivated region along the river, and Croft gave his attention to the fields.
The first thing he noted here was the fact that all growth was due to irrigation, carried out by means of ditches and laterals. Here and there as the caravan passed down the spledid road he found a farmer's hut set in a bower of trees. For the most part they were built of a tan-colored brick, and roofed with a thatching of rushes from the river's bank. He was the natives working in the fields, strong-bodied men, clad in what seemed a single short-skirted tunic reaching to the knees, with the arms and lower limbs bare.
Croft noticed that there faces were intelligent, well featured, and their hair for the most part a sort of rich, almost chestnut brown, worn rather long and wholly uncovered, or else caught about the brows by a cincture which held a bit of woven fabric draped over the head and down the neck.
Travel began to thicken along the road. The natives seemed heading to the city, to sell the produce of their fields. Croft found himself drawing aside in the press as the caravan overtook the others and crowded past.
They had just passed a heavy cart drawn by two odd creatures, resembling a deer save that they were larger and possessed of hoofs like those of horses, and instead of antlers sported two little horns not over six inches long. They were in color almost a creamy white. On the cart itself were high-piled crates of some bird, with the head of a goose, the plumage of a pheasant, and bluish, webbed feet. Past the cart they came upon a band of native women carrying baskets and other burdens, strapped to their shoulders.
The Palosian females were strong limbed and deep breasted. Like the men, they wore but a singly garment, falling just over the bend of the knees and caught together over one shoulder with an embossed metal button, so far as he could tell. The other arm and shoulder were left wholly bare, as were their feet and legs, save that they wore coarse sandals of wood, strapped by leather thongs about ankle and calf. Their baskets were piled with vegetables and fruit, and they chattered and laughed among themselves.
And now as the Sarpelcas shuffled past, the highway grew actually packed. The caravan thrust its way through a drove of wooly hogs such as Croft had seen on the side of the mountain. The hogsherds stalked beside their charges and exchanged heavy banter with the riders of the Sarpelcas.
From behind a sound of shouting reached Croft's ears. He glanced around. Down the highway, splitting the throng of early market people came some sort of conveyance, drawn by four of the deerlike creatures, harnessed abreast. They had nodding plumes fixed to the head bands of their bridles in front of their horns. These plumes were all of a purple color, and from the way the crowds gave way before the advance of the equipage, Croft deemed that it bore someone of note. Even the captain of the Sarpelca train drew his huge beasts to the side of the road and stood up in his seatlike saddle to face inward as it passed.
The vehicle came on. So nearly as he could tell, it was a four-wheeled conveyance something like an old-time chariot in front, where stood the driver of the cream-white steeds, and behind that protected from the sun by an arched over draped on each side with a substance not unlike heavy silk. These draperies, too, were purple in shade, and the body and wheels of the carriage seemed fashioned from something like burnished copper.
Then it was upon them, and Croft could look squarely into the shaded depths beneath the cover he now saw to be supported by upright metal rods, save at the back where the body continued straight up in a curve to form the top.
The curtains were drawn back and Jason gained a view of those who rode. He gave them one glance and mentally caught his breath. There were two passengers in the coach—a woman and a man. The latter was plainly past middle age, well built, with a set face and hair somewhat sprinkled with gray. He was clad in a tunic the like of which Croft had never seen, since it seemed woven of gold, etched and embroidered in what appeared stones or jewels of purple, red, and green. This covered his entire body and ended in half sleeves below which his forearms were bare.
He wore a jeweled cap supporting a single spray of purple feathers. From an inch below his knees his legs were incased in what seemed an open-meshed casing of metal, in color not unlike his tunic, jointed at the ankles to allow of motion when he walked. There were no seats proper in the carriage, but rather a broad padded couch upon which both passengers lay.
So much Croft saw, and then, forsaking the caravan, let himself drift along beside the strange conveyance to inspect the girl. She was younger than the man. Her face was a perfect oval, framed in a wealth of golden hair, which, save for a jeweled cincture, fell unrestrained about her shoulders in a silken flood. Her eyes were blue—the purple blue of the pansy—her skin, seen on face and throat and bared left shoulder and arm, a soft, firm white. For she was dressed like the peasant women, save in a richer fashion. It was broidered with a simple jeweled margin at throat and hem and over the breasts with stones of blue and green.
Her girdle was of gold in color, catching her just above the hips with long ends and fringe which fell down the left side of the knee-length skirt. Sandals of the finest imaginable skin were on the soles of her slender pink-nailed feet, bare save for a jewel-studded toe and instep band, and the lacing cords which were twined about each limb as high as the top of the calf. On her left arm she wore a bracelet, just above the wrist, as a single ornament.
Croft gave her one glance which took in every detail of her presence and attire. He quivered as with a chill. It was as though suddenly he had found something he had lost—as though he had met one known and forgotten and now once more recognized. Without giving the act the slightest thought of consideration, he willed himself into the coach between the fluttering curtains of purple silk, and crouched down on the padded plat
form at her feet.
Croft, in his Earth life, had never looked upon a woman with the longing such as is apt to possess the average healthy male at times. But in his studies of the occult he had more than once come in contact with the doctrine of twin souls—that theory that in the beginning the spirit is dual, and that projecting into material existence the dual entity separates into two halves, a male and a female, and so exists forever until the two halves meet once more and unite.
He knew now why the Dog Star had always drawn him during his student days. This beautiful girl was his twin. He knew her. He had found her, yes; but to what avail? Croft knew himself but a sublimated shape, and nothing more, and it was then he went down into the deepest depths of a mental hell of despair. He could see her, yet he could not reveal his presence of make known his response to her.
The stopping of the gnuppas, as he was to learn the half horse, half deerlike steers were called, brought him back from his introspection after a time. He could hear the driver shouting, and now, quite oddly, he found he could understand the intent, even though the words were strange.
"Way! Way for Prince Lakkon, Counselor to the King of Aphur!"
On the words the girl opened her lips. "There is a wonderful press of travelers this morning, my father."
Croft gloried in the soft, full tones of her voice, even before Prince Lakkon made answer. "Aye, the highway is like to a swarm of insects, Naia, my child."
Naia! The sound was music in Croft's ears. The word beat upon his senses through the shuffle of passing feet.
"I shall tell Chythron to drive directly to our home," Prince Lakkon said.
"You will go on to confer with Uncle Jadgor from there?"
"Aye. You will have most of the day to set the servants about the preparations for the coming of Prince Kyphallos. Spare no expense, Naia, in those preparations. Report hath it he is a hard young man to please."