Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 16, 1921 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JASON, SON OF JASON. 2 scribing his act in a scientific way that counseled belief even while staggering the mind. Over that body the obtained absolute con- trol, exactly as he had gained the same ability with his own. Fora time thereafter he led a sort of dual existence, sometimes on Palos, sometimes on earth, until ‘he had fully shaped his plans, Then, and then only, did he voluntarily forsake the mun- dane life to enter that other and fuller existence the felt that Naia of Aphur could make complete. I questioned him closely. I was faced by a most amazing thing. I took up first the question of time required in passing from earth to Palos. He smiled and replied that outside the mental atmosphere of man time ceased to.exist; that it was man’s meas- ure of a portion of eternity, and nothing more, and that he could not use what was non-existent, hence reached Palos as quick- ly in the astral condition as I could span the gulf between that member of the Dog Star’s Pack and earth in thought. er points I raised he met. Even so it was a good deal of ‘a shock to find my new pa- tient speaking to me with Croft’s evident understanding, looking at me out of what seemed oddly like Croft’s eyes. But in the end I was convinced, The man knew too much. He was too utterly conversant with Croft’s accomplishments, his aims and ambitions and hopes, to be any one but Croft himself. And, too, he naively explained that it was a poor rule that would not work two ways, and that he had therefore repeated his experiment in gaining a Palosian body when he felt the pressing need of a return to earth, This night, earlier in the evening, he had bidden me good-by—told me he was going back to Naia, the woman he ‘had dared so much to win, his mate who ere long was to bear him, Jason Croft of Earth, a child. And now—well, now as before, it would seem ‘the had kept his word. Jason Croft was dead again. almost amused desire to smile? Dead! Why, Croft, in so far as I knew him, could practically laugh at death—he was a man who had actually demonstrated, if one be- All oth-, lieved his narrative, of course, the truth of the saying that the spirit is the life. He was a man who, because of the needs of his spirit, had deliberately switched his existence from one to the other of two spheres. 7 I gave what directions were needed for the disposal of. No. 27’s body, returned to my bed, and stretched myself out, But I didn’t sleep all that morning, I buried my- self in thought. Both the narratives to which -I had lis- tened—first from the man I knew to be Jason Croft really, secondly from the pitia- ble wreck he had employed on his return, that worn-out husk which had just died— had produced on me a somewhat odd effect. So clearly had he portrayed the events and emotions which had swayed him in his al- most undreamed courtship of the Aphurian princess that I had come to accept the char- acters he mentioned as actually existent persons, acquaintances almost, just as, in spite of all established precedent, I still regarded Croft himself as alive. Naia of Aphur—many a time as J lis- tened to his account of their association I had thrilled to the picture of that supple girl with her crown of golden hair, her crimson. lips, her violet-purple eyes. So real she had come to seem that I had felt I would know her had I seen her with my physical rather than my mental vision. So real indeed was her mental picture that when he told me she was about to become a mother I had cried out, on impulse, that I wished as a medical man I might attend her—would be glad to see the light in ther eyes when they first beheld his, Jason’s, child. : : And Croft had replied, “ Man, I could ‘love you for that,” and had flashed me an understanding smile. So now that he was gone back to her— I lay on my bed unsleeping, and let all he had told me unroll in a sort of mental panorama, dealing wholly with the Pa- _tosian world. — Is it any wonder that I felt that strange, Tamarizia! It was into the empire Croft blundered blindly when he went to Palos first—a series of principalities surrounding the shore of a vast inland sea, with the ex- ception of a central state—the seat of the COnllCclooo S C@