receive it electronically.
U >>
Unknown >> receive it electronically.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19
"The Tree of Life is dead, but before it died the plant
men learned to detach themselves from it and roam the face
of Barsoom with the other children of the First Parent.
"Now their bisexuality permits them to reproduce themselves
after the manner of true plants, but otherwise they have
progressed but little in all the ages of their existence.
Their actions and movements are largely matters of instinct
and not guided to any great extent by reason, since the brain
of a plant man is but a trifle larger than the end of your
smallest finger. They live upon vegetation and the blood of
animals, and their brain is just large enough to direct their
movements in the direction of food, and to translate the food
sensations which are carried to it from their eyes and ears.
They have no sense of self-preservation and so are entirely
without fear in the face of danger. That is why they are such
terrible antagonists in combat."
I wondered why the black man took such pains to discourse
thus at length to enemies upon the genesis of life Barsoomian.
It seemed a strangely inopportune moment for a proud member
of a proud race to unbend in casual conversation with a captor.
Especially in view of the fact that the black still lay securely
bound upon the deck.
It was the faintest straying of his eye beyond me for the
barest fraction of a second that explained his motive for
thus dragging out my interest in his truly absorbing story.
He lay a little forward of where I stood at the levers, and
thus he faced the stern of the vessel as he addressed me. It
was at the end of his description of the plant men that I
caught his eye fixed momentarily upon something behind me.
Nor could I be mistaken in the swift gleam of triumph
that brightened those dark orbs for an instant.
Some time before I had reduced our speed, for we had left the
Valley Dor many miles astern, and I felt comparatively safe.
I turned an apprehensive glance behind me, and the sight
that I saw froze the new-born hope of freedom that had been
springing up within me.
A great battleship, forging silent and unlighted through the
dark night, loomed close astern.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DEPTHS OF OMEAN
Now I realized why the black pirate had kept me engrossed
with his strange tale. For miles he had sensed the approach
of succour, and but for that single tell-tale glance the
battleship would have been directly above us in another moment,
and the boarding party which was doubtless even now swinging
in their harness from the ship's keel, would have swarmed our deck,
placing my rising hope of escape in sudden and total eclipse.
I was too old a hand in aerial warfare to be at a loss
now for the right manoeuvre. Simultaneously I reversed the
engines and dropped the little vessel a sheer hundred feet.
Above my head I could see the dangling forms of the
boarding party as the battleship raced over us. Then I rose at
a sharp angle, throwing my speed lever to its last notch.
Like a bolt from a crossbow my splendid craft shot its
steel prow straight at the whirring propellers of the giant
above us. If I could but touch them the huge bulk would
be disabled for hours and escape once more possible.
At the same instant the sun shot above the horizon,
disclosing a hundred grim, black faces peering over
the stern of the battleship upon us.
At sight of us a shout of rage went up from a hundred throats.
Orders were shouted, but it was too late to save the
giant propellers, and with a crash we rammed them.
Instantly with the shock of impact I reversed my engine,
but my prow was wedged in the hole it had made in the
battleship's stern. Only a second I hung there before tearing
away, but that second was amply long to swarm my deck
with black devils.
There was no fight. In the first place there was no room
to fight. We were simply submerged by numbers. Then as
swords menaced me a command from Xodar stayed the hands
of his fellows.
"Secure them," he said, "but do not injure them."
Several of the pirates already had released Xodar. He now
personally attended to my disarming and saw that I was
properly bound. At least he thought that the binding was
secure. It would have been had I been a Martian, but I had
to smile at the puny strands that confined my wrists. When
the time came I could snap them as they had been cotton
string.
The girl they bound also, and then they fastened us together.
In the meantime they had brought our craft alongside the
disabled battleship, and soon we were transported to the latter's deck.
Fully a thousand black men manned the great engine of destruction.
Her decks were crowded with them as they pressed forward as far as
discipline would permit to get a glimpse of their captives.
The girl's beauty elicited many brutal comments and vulgar jests.
It was evident that these self-thought supermen were far inferior
to the red men of Barsoom in refinement and in chivalry.
My close-cropped black hair and thern complexion were
the subjects of much comment. When Xodar told his fellow
nobles of my fighting ability and strange origin they crowded
about me with numerous questions.
The fact that I wore the harness and metal of a thern who
had been killed by a member of my party convinced them
that I was an enemy of their hereditary foes, and placed
me on a better footing in their estimation.
Without exception the blacks were handsome men, and
well built. The officers were conspicuous through the
wondrous magnificence of their resplendent trappings.
Many harnesses were so encrusted with gold, platinum, silver
and precious stones as to entirely hide the leather beneath.
The harness of the commanding officer was a solid mass
of diamonds. Against the ebony background of his skin they
blazed out with a peculiarly accentuated effulgence. The whole
scene was enchanting. The handsome men; the barbaric splendour
of the accoutrements; the polished skeel wood of the deck; the
gloriously grained sorapus of the cabins, inlaid with priceless
jewels and precious metals in intricate and beautiful design;
the burnished gold of hand rails; the shining metal of the guns.
Phaidor and I were taken below decks, where, still fast bound,
we were thrown into a small compartment which contained a
single port-hole. As our escort left us they barred the
door behind them.
We could hear the men working on the broken propellers,
and from the port-hole we could see that the vessel was
drifting lazily toward the south.
For some time neither of us spoke. Each was occupied
with his own thoughts. For my part I was wondering as to
the fate of Tars Tarkas and the girl, Thuvia.
Even if they succeeded in eluding pursuit they must eventually
fall into the hands of either red men or green, and as fugitives
from the Valley Dor they could look for but little else than a
swift and terrible death.
How I wished that I might have accompanied them. It
seemed to me that I could not fail to impress upon the
intelligent red men of Barsoom the wicked deception that a
cruel and senseless superstition had foisted upon them.
Tardos Mors would believe me. Of that I was positive. And
that he would have the courage of his convictions my knowledge
of his character assured me. Dejah Thoris would believe me.
Not a doubt as to that entered my head. Then there were
a thousand of my red and green warrior friends whom
I knew would face eternal damnation gladly for my sake.
Like Tars Tarkas, where I led they would follow.
My only danger lay in that should I ever escape the black
pirates it might be to fall into the hands of unfriendly red
or green men. Then it would mean short shrift for me.
Well, there seemed little to worry about on that score, for the
likelihood of my ever escaping the blacks was extremely remote.
The girl and I were linked together by a rope which permitted
us to move only about three or four feet from each other.
When we had entered the compartment we had seated ourselves
upon a low bench beneath the porthole. The bench was the
only furniture of the room. It was of sorapus wood.
The floor, ceiling and walls were of carborundum aluminum,
a light, impenetrable composition extensively utilized
in the construction of Martian fighting ships.
As I had sat meditating upon the future my eyes had
been riveted upon the port-hole which was just level with
them as I sat. Suddenly I looked toward Phaidor. She was
regarding me with a strange expression I had not before seen
upon her face. She was very beautiful then.
Instantly her white lids veiled her eyes, and I thought I
discovered a delicate flush tingeing her cheek. Evidently she
was embarrassed at having been detected in the act of staring
at a lesser creature, I thought.
"Do you find the study of the lower orders interesting?"
I asked, laughing.
She looked up again with a nervous but relieved little laugh.
"Oh very," she said, "especially when they have such excellent profiles."
It was my turn to flush, but I did not. I felt that she was
poking fun at me, and I admired a brave heart that could look
for humour on the road to death, and so I laughed with her.
"Do you know where we are going?" she said.
"To solve the mystery of the eternal hereafter, I imagine," I replied.
"I am going to a worse fate than that," she said, with a little shudder.
"What do you mean?"
"I can only guess," she replied, "since no thern damsel of
all the millions that have been stolen away by black pirates
during the ages they have raided our domains has ever returned
to narrate her experiences among them. That they never take a
man prisoner lends strength to the belief that the fate of the
girls they steal is worse than death."
"Is it not a just retribution?" I could not help but ask.
"What do you mean?"
"Do not the therns themselves do likewise with the poor creatures
who take the voluntary pilgrimage down the River of Mystery?
Was not Thuvia for fifteen years a plaything and a slave?
Is it less than just that you should suffer as you have
caused others to suffer?"
"You do not understand," she replied. "We therns are a holy race.
It is an honour to a lesser creature to be a slave among us.
Did we not occasionally save a few of the lower orders that
stupidly float down an unknown river to an unknown end all
would become the prey of the plant men and the apes."
"But do you not by every means encourage the superstition
among those of the outside world?" I argued. "That is the
wickedest of your deeds. Can you tell me why you foster
the cruel deception?"
"All life on Barsoom," she said, "is created solely for the
support of the race of therns. How else could we live did
the outer world not furnish our labour and our food? Think
you that a thern would demean himself by labour?"
"It is true then that you eat human flesh?" I asked in horror.
She looked at me in pitying commiseration for my ignorance.
"Truly we eat the flesh of the lower orders. Do not you also?"
"The flesh of beasts, yes," I replied, "but not the flesh of man."
"As man may eat of the flesh of beasts, so may gods eat of
the flesh of man. The Holy Therns are the gods of Barsoom."
I was disgusted and I imagine that I showed it.
"You are an unbeliever now," she continued gently, "but
should we be fortunate enough to escape the clutches of the
black pirates and come again to the court of Matai Shang I
think that we shall find an argument to convince you of the
error of your ways. And--," she hesitated, "perhaps we shall
find a way to keep you as--as--one of us."
Again her eyes dropped to the floor, and a faint colour
suffused her cheek. I could not understand her meaning; nor
did I for a long time. Dejah Thoris was wont to say that in
some things I was a veritable simpleton, and I guess that
she was right.
"I fear that I would ill requite your father's hospitality,"
I answered, "since the first thing that I should do were I a
thern would be to set an armed guard at the mouth of the
River Iss to escort the poor deluded voyagers back to
the outer world. Also should I devote my life to the
extermination of the hideous plant men and their horrible
companions, the great white apes."
She looked at me really horror struck.
"No, no," she cried, "you must not say such terribly
sacrilegious things--you must not even think them.
Should they ever guess that you entertained such
frightful thoughts, should we chance to regain the
temples of the therns, they would mete out a frightful
death to you. Not even my--my--" Again she flushed,
and started over. "Not even I could save you."
I said no more. Evidently it was useless. She was even more
steeped in superstition than the Martians of the outer world.
They only worshipped a beautiful hope for a life of love
and peace and happiness in the hereafter. The therns
worshipped the hideous plant men and the apes, or at
least they reverenced them as the abodes of the departed
spirits of their own dead.
At this point the door of our prison opened to admit Xodar.
He smiled pleasantly at me, and when he smiled his expression
was kindly--anything but cruel or vindictive.
"Since you cannot escape under any circumstances," he said,
"I cannot see the necessity for keeping you confined below.
I will cut your bonds and you may come on deck. You will
witness something very interesting, and as you never shall
return to the outer world it will do no harm to permit you
to see it. You will see what no other than the First Born
and their slaves know the existence of--the subterranean
entrance to the Holy Land, to the real heaven of Barsoom.
"It will be an excellent lesson for this daughter of the therns,"
he added, "for she shall see the Temple of Issus, and Issus,
perchance, shall embrace her."
Phaidor's head went high.
"What blasphemy is this, dog of a pirate?" she cried.
"Issus would wipe out your entire breed an' you ever
came within sight of her temple."
"You have much to learn, thern," replied Xodar, with an
ugly smile, "nor do I envy you the manner in which you
will learn it."
As we came on deck I saw to my surprise that the vessel
was passing over a great field of snow and ice. As far as the
eye could reach in any direction naught else was visible.
There could be but one solution to the mystery. We were
above the south polar ice cap. Only at the poles of Mars is
there ice or snow upon the planet. No sign of life appeared
below us. Evidently we were too far south even for the great
fur-bearing animals which the Martians so delight in hunting.
Xodar was at my side as I stood looking out over the ship's rail.
"What course?" I asked him.
"A little west of south," he replied. "You will see the Otz
Valley directly. We shall skirt it for a few hundred miles."
"The Otz Valley!" I exclaimed; "but, man, is not there where
lie the domains of the therns from which I but just escaped?"
"Yes," answered Xodar. "You crossed this ice field last
night in the long chase that you led us. The Otz Valley lies
in a mighty depression at the south pole. It is sunk thousands
of feet below the level of the surrounding country, like a
great round bowl. A hundred miles from its northern boundary
rise the Otz Mountains which circle the inner Valley of
Dor, in the exact centre of which lies the Lost Sea of Korus.
On the shore of this sea stands the Golden Temple of Issus
in the Land of the First Born. It is there that we are bound."
As I looked I commenced to realize why it was that in
all the ages only one had escaped from the Valley Dor. My
only wonder was that even the one had been successful. To
cross this frozen, wind-swept waste of bleak ice alone and
on foot would be impossible.
"Only by air boat could the journey be made," I finished aloud.
"It was thus that one did escape the therns in bygone
times; but none has ever escaped the First Born," said Xodar,
with a touch of pride in his voice.
We had now reached the southernmost extremity of the
great ice barrier. It ended abruptly in a sheer wall thousands
of feet high at the base of which stretched a level valley,
broken here and there by low rolling hills and little clumps
of forest, and with tiny rivers formed by the melting of the
ice barrier at its base.
Once we passed far above what seemed to be a deep
canyon-like rift stretching from the ice wall on the north
across the valley as far as the eye could reach. "That is the
bed of the River Iss," said Xodar. "It runs far beneath the
ice field, and below the level of the Valley Otz, but its canyon
is open here."
Presently I descried what I took to be a village, and pointing
it out to Xodar asked him what it might be.
"It is a village of lost souls," he answered, laughing. "This
strip between the ice barrier and the mountains is considered
neutral ground. Some turn off from their voluntary pilgrimage
down the Iss, and, scaling the awful walls of its canyon below
us, stop in the valley. Also a slave now and then escapes
from the therns and makes his way hither.
"They do not attempt to recapture such, since there is no
escape from this outer valley, and as a matter of fact they
fear the patrolling cruisers of the First Born too much to
venture from their own domains.
"The poor creatures of this outer valley are not molested
by us since they have nothing that we desire, nor are they
numerically strong enough to give us an interesting fight--so
we too leave them alone.
"There are several villages of them, but they have increased
in numbers but little in many years since they are always
warring among themselves."
Now we swung a little north of west, leaving the valley of
lost souls, and shortly I discerned over our starboard bow
what appeared to be a black mountain rising from the desolate
waste of ice. It was not high and seemed to have a flat top.
Xodar had left us to attend to some duty on the vessel,
and Phaidor and I stood alone beside the rail. The girl had
not once spoken since we had been brought to the deck.
"Is what he has been telling me true?" I asked her.
"In part, yes," she answered. "That about the outer valley
is true, but what he says of the location of the Temple
of Issus in the centre of his country is false. If it is not
false--" she hesitated. "Oh it cannot be true, it cannot be
true. For if it were true then for countless ages have my
people gone to torture and ignominious death at the hands
of their cruel enemies, instead of to the beautiful Life Eternal
that we have been taught to believe Issus holds for us."
"As the lesser Barsoomians of the outer world have been
lured by you to the terrible Valley Dor, so may it be that the
therns themselves have been lured by the First Born to an
equally horrid fate," I suggested. "It would be a stern and
awful retribution, Phaidor; but a just one."
"I cannot believe it," she said.
"We shall see," I answered, and then we fell silent again for we
were rapidly approaching the black mountains, which in some
indefinable way seemed linked with the answer to our problem.
As we neared the dark, truncated cone the vessel's speed was
diminished until we barely moved. Then we topped the crest
of the mountain and below us I saw yawning the mouth of a
huge circular well, the bottom of which was lost in inky blackness.
The diameter of this enormous pit was fully a thousand feet.
The walls were smooth and appeared to be composed of a
black, basaltic rock.
For a moment the vessel hovered motionless directly above
the centre of the gaping void, then slowly she began to settle
into the black chasm. Lower and lower she sank until as
darkness enveloped us her lights were thrown on and in the
dim halo of her own radiance the monster battleship dropped
on and on down into what seemed to me must be the very
bowels of Barsoom.
For quite half an hour we descended and then the shaft
terminated abruptly in the dome of a mighty subterranean
world. Below us rose and fell the billows of a buried sea. A
phosphorescent radiance illuminated the scene. Thousands of
ships dotted the bosom of the ocean. Little islands rose here
and there to support the strange and colourless vegetation of
this strange world.
Slowly and with majestic grace the battleship dropped until
she rested on the water. Her great propellers had been
drawn and housed during our descent of the shaft and in
their place had been run out the smaller but more powerful
water propellers. As these commenced to revolve the
ship took up its journey once more, riding the new element
as buoyantly and as safely as she had the air.
Phaidor and I were dumbfounded. Neither had either heard or
dreamed that such a world existed beneath the surface of Barsoom.
Nearly all the vessels we saw were war craft. There were
a few lighters and barges, but none of the great merchantmen
such as ply the upper air between the cities of the outer world.
"Here is the harbour of the navy of the First Born,"
said a voice behind us, and turning we saw Xodar watching
us with an amused smile on his lips.
"This sea," he continued, "is larger than Korus. It receives
the waters of the lesser sea above it. To keep it from filling
above a certain level we have four great pumping stations that
force the oversupply back into the reservoirs far north from which
the red men draw the water which irrigates their farm lands."
A new light burst on me with this explanation. The red
men had always considered it a miracle that caused great
columns of water to spurt from the solid rock of their
reservoir sides to increase the supply of the precious
liquid which is so scarce in the outer world of Mars.
Never had their learned men been able to fathom the
secret of the source of this enormous volume of water.
As ages passed they had simply come to accept it as a
matter of course and ceased to question its origin.
We passed several islands on which were strangely shaped
circular buildings, apparently roofless, and pierced midway
between the ground and their tops with small, heavily barred
windows. They bore the earmarks of prisons, which were
further accentuated by the armed guards who squatted on
low benches without, or patrolled the short beach lines.
Few of these islets contained over an acre of ground, but
presently we sighted a much larger one directly ahead. This
proved to be our destination, and the great ship was soon
made fast against the steep shore.
Xodar signalled us to follow him and with a half-dozen
officers and men we left the battleship and approached a
large oval structure a couple of hundred yards from the shore.
"You shall soon see Issus," said Xodar to Phaidor. "The
few prisoners we take are presented to her. Occasionally she
selects slaves from among them to replenish the ranks of her
handmaidens. None serves Issus above a single year," and
there was a grim smile on the black's lips that lent a cruel
and sinister meaning to his simple statement.
Phaidor, though loath to believe that Issus was allied to
such as these, had commenced to entertain doubts and
fears. She clung very closely to me, no longer the proud
daughter of the Master of Life and Death upon Barsoom, but a
young and frightened girl in the power of relentless enemies.
The building which we now entered was entirely roofless.
In its centre was a long tank of water, set below the level of
the floor like the swimming pool of a natatorium. Near one
side of the pool floated an odd-looking black object. Whether
it were some strange monster of these buried waters, or a
queer raft, I could not at once perceive.
We were soon to know, however, for as we reached the
edge of the pool directly above the thing, Xodar cried out a
few words in a strange tongue. Immediately a hatch cover
was raised from the surface of the object, and a black
seaman sprang from the bowels of the strange craft.
Xodar addressed the seaman.
"Transmit to your officer," he said, "the commands of
Dator Xodar. Say to him that Dator Xodar, with officers
and men, escorting two prisoners, would be transported to
the gardens of Issus beside the Golden Temple."
"Blessed be the shell of thy first ancestor, most noble Dator,"
replied the man. "It shall be done even as thou sayest," and
raising both hands, palms backward, above his head after the
manner of salute which is common to all races of Barsoom,
he disappeared once more into the entrails of his ship.
A moment later an officer resplendent in the gorgeous trappings
of his rank appeared on deck and welcomed Xodar to the vessel,
and in the latter's wake we filed aboard and below.
The cabin in which we found ourselves extended entirely
across the ship, having port-holes on either side below the
water line. No sooner were all below than a number of
commands were given, in accordance with which the hatch
was closed and secured, and the vessel commenced to vibrate
to the rhythmic purr of its machinery.
"Where can we be going in such a tiny pool of water?" asked Phaidor.
"Not up," I replied, "for I noticed particularly that while the
building is roofless it is covered with a strong metal grating."
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19