“Then Edam must yet be in Vlama,” said I, “if he were able to tell ye.  Canst bring him to me?  I would know him.”

And so it came about that, on the eve of that same day, Maka brought Edam to my house.  I remember it well; for ’twas the same day that the emperor, in gratitude of my little service in the anteroom, had relieved me from my post in the armory and made me captain of the palace guard.  I was thus become the youngest captain, also the biggest and strongest; and, as will soon appear, by far the longest-headed.

I was in high good humor, and had decided to celebrate with a feast.  So when my two callers arrived, I sat them down before a meal such as cost a tenth [Footnote:  Since Mercury had no moon, its people never coined a word to correspond with our “month,” and for the same reason they never had a week.  Their time was reckoned only in days, years, and fractions of the two.] of my year’s salary.

I served not only the usual products of the field, variously prepared, but as a special gift from the emperor’s own stock, a piece of mulikka meat, frozen, which had been found in the northland by some geologists a few years aback.  It had been kept in the palace icing-room all this time, and was in prime condition.  Maka and I enjoyed it overmuch, but Edam would touch it not.

He was a slightly built lad, not at all the sturdy man that I am, but of less than half the weight.  His head, too, was unlike mine; his forehead was wide as well as tall, and his eyes were mild as a slave’s.

“Ye are very young to be a prophet,” I said to him, after we were filled, and the slaves had cleared away our litter.  “Tell me:  hast foretold anything else that has come to pass?”

“Aye,” he replied, not at all boldly, but what some call modestly.  “I prophesied the armistice which now stands between our empire and Klow’s.”

“Is this true?” I demanded of Maka.  The old man bowed his head gravely and looked upon the young man with far more respect than I felt.  He added: 

“Tell Strokor the dream thou hadst two nights ago, Edam.  It were a right strange thing, whether true or no.”

The stripling shifted his weight on his stool, and moved the bowl closer.  Then he thrust his pipe deep into it, and let the liquid flow slowly out his nostrils. [Footnote:  A curious custom among the Mercurians, who had no tobacco.  There is no other way to explain some of the carvings.  Doubtless the liquid was sweet-smelling, and perhaps slightly narcotic.]

“I saw this,” he began, “immediately before rising, and after a very light supper; so I know that it was a vision from Jon, and not of my own making.

“I was standing upon the summit of a mountain, and gazing down upon a very large, fertile valley.  It was heavily wooded, dark green and inviting.  But what first drew my attention was a great number of animals moving about in the air.  They were passing strange affairs, some large, some small, variously colored, and all covered with the same sort of fur, quite unlike any hair I have ever seen.”