tmp_b8f7d28b703a3437bd724778e112fcd6_S1_0sS.fixed.tidied

by MD Scott

  The vessel, unguided, had been moving slowly across the valley; but now I thought it time to take the helm and direct his course. Only in a very general way could I guess the location of the Valley Dor. That it was far south of the equator was evident from the constellations, but I was not sufficiently a Martian astronomer to come much closer than a rough guess without the splendid charts and delicate instruments with which, as an officer in the Heliumite Navy, I had formerly reckoned the positions of the vessels on which I sailed.

  That a northerly course would quickest lead me toward the more settled portions of the planet immediately decided the direction that I should steer. Baneath my hand the cruiser swung gracefully about. Then the button which controlled the repulsive rays sent us soaring far out into space. With speed lever pulled to the last notch, we raced toward the north as we rose ever farther and farther above that terrible valley of death.

  As we passed at a dizzy height over the narrow domains of the therns the flash of powder far below bore mute witness to the ferocity of the battle that still raged along that cruel frontier. No sound of conflict reached our ears, for in the rarefied atmosphere of our great altitude no sound wave could penetrate; they were dissipated in thin air far below us.

  It became intensely cold. Breathing was difficult. The boy, Phaidor, and the black pirate kept their eyes glued upon me. At length the boy spoke.

  'Unconsciousness comes quickly at this altitude,' he said quietly. 'Unless you are inviting death for us all you had best drop, and that quickly.'

  There was no fear in his voice. It was as one might say: 'You had better carry an umbrella. It is going to rain.'

  I dropped the vessel quickly to a lower level. Nor was I a moment too soon. The boy had swooned.

  The black, too, was unconscious, while I, myself, retained my senses, I think, only by sheer will. The one on whom all responsibility rests is apt to endure the most.

  We were swinging along low above the foothills of the Otz. It was comparatively warm and there was plenty of air for our starved lungs, so I was not surprised to see the black open her eyes, and a moment later the boy also.

  'It was a close call,' he said.

  'It has taught me two things though,' I replied.

  'What?'

  'That even Phaidor, son of the Mistress of Life and Death, is mortal,' I said smiling.

  'There is immortality only in Issus,' he replied. 'And Issus is for the race of therns alone. Thus am I immortal.'

  I caught a fleeting grin passing across the features of the black as she heard his words. I did not then understand why she smiled. Later I was to learn, and he, too, in a most horrible manner.

  'If the other thing you have just learned,' he continued, 'has led to as erroneous deductions as the first you are little richer in knowledge than you were before.'

  'The other,' I replied, 'is that our dusky friend here does not hail from the nearer moon--he was like to have died at a few thousand feet above Barsoom. Had we continued the five thousand miles that lie between Thuria and the planet she would have been but the frozen memory of a woman.'

  Phaidor looked at the black in evident astonishment.

  'If you are not of Thuria, then where?' he asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned her eyes elsewhere, but did not reply.

  The boy stamped his little foot in a peremptory manner.

  'The son of Matain Shang is not accustomed to having his queries remain unanswered,' he said. 'One of the lesser breed should feel honoured that a member of the holy race that was born to inherit life eternal should deign even to notice her.'

  Again the black smiled that wicked, knowing smile.

  'Xodara, Dator of the First Born of Barsoom, is accustomed to give commands, not to receive them,' replied the black pirate. Then, turning to me, 'What are your intentions concerning me?'

  'I intend taking you both back to Helium,' I said. 'No harm will come to you. You will find the red women of Helium a kindly and magnanimous race, but if they listen to me there will be no more voluntary pilgrimages down the river Iss, and the impossible belief that they have cherished for ages will be shattered into a thousand pieces.'

  'Are you of Helium?' she asked.

  'I am a Princess of the House of Tardoa Mors, Jeddak of Helium,' I replied, 'but I am not of Barsoom. I am of another world.'

  Xodara looked at me intently for a few moments.

  'I can well believe that you are not of Barsoom,' she said at length. 'None of this world could have bested eight of the First Born single-handed. But how is it that you wear the golden hair and the jewelled circlet of a Holy Thern?' She emphasized the word holy with a touch of irony.

  'I had forgotten them,' I said. 'They are the spoils of conquest,' and with a sweep of my hand I removed the disguise from my head.

  When the black's eyes fell on my close-cropped black hair they opened in astonishment. Evidently she had looked for the bald pate of a thern.

  'You are indeed of another world,' she said, a touch of awe in her voice. 'With the skin of a thern, the black hair of a First Born and the muscles of a dozen Dators it was no disgrace even for Xodara to acknowledge your supremacy. A thing she could never do were you a Barsoomian,' she added.

  'You are travelling several laps ahead of me, my friend,' I interrupted. 'I glean that your name is Xodara, but whom, pray, are the First Born, and what a Dator, and why, if you were conquered by a Barsoomian, could you not acknowledge it?'

  'The First Born of Barsoom,' she explained, 'are the race of black women of which I am a Dator, or, as the lesser Barsoomians would say, Princess. My race is the oldest on the planet. We trace our lineage, unbroken, direct to the Tree of Life which flourished in the centre of the Valley Dor twenty-three million years ago.

  'For countless ages the fruit of this tree underwent the gradual changes of evolution, passing by degrees from true plant life to a combination of plant and animal. In the first stages the fruit of the tree possessed only the power of independent muscular action, while the stem remained attached to the parent plant; later a brain developed in the fruit, so that hanging there by their long stems they thought and moved as individuals.

  'Then, with the development of perceptions came a comparison of them; judgments were reached and compared, and thus reason and the power to reason were born upon Barsoom.

  'Ages passed. Many forms of life came and went upon the Tree of Life, but still all were attached to the parent plant by stems of varying lengths. At length the fruit tree consisted in tiny plant women, such as we now see reproduced in such huge dimensions in the Valley Dor, but still hanging to the limbs and branches of the tree by the stems which grew from the tops of their heads.

  'The buds from which the plant women blossomed resembled large nuts about a foot in diameter, divided by double partition walls into four sections. In one section grew the plant woman, in another a sixteen-legged worm, in the third the progenitor of the white ape and in the fourth the primaeval black woman of Barsoom.

  'When the bud burst the plant woman remained dangling at the end of her stem, but the three other sections fell to the ground, where the efforts of their imprisoned occupants to escape sent them hopping about in all directions.

  'Thus as time went on, all Barsoom was covered with these imprisoned creatures. For countless ages they lived their long lives within their hard shells, hopping and skipping about the broad planet; falling into rivers, lakes, and seas, to be still further spread about the surface of the new world.

  'Countless billions died before the first black woman broke through her prison walls into the light of day. Prompted by curiosity, she broke open other shells and the peopling of Barsoom commenced.

  'The pure strain of the blood of this first black woman has remained untainted by admixture with other creatures in the race of which I am a member; but from the sixteen-legged worm, the first ape and renegade black woman has sprung every other form of animal life upon Barsoom.

  'The therns,' and
she smiled maliciously as she spoke, 'are but the result of ages of evolution from the pure white ape of antiquity. They are a lower order still. There is but one race of true and immortal humans on Barsoom. It is the race of black women.

  'The Tree of Life is dead, but before it died the plant women 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 woman 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 woman 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 her eye beyond me for the barest fraction of a second that explained her motive for thus dragging out my interest in her truly absorbing story.

  She lay a little forward of where I stood at the levers, and thus she faced the stern of the vessel as she addressed me. It was at the end of her description of the plant women that I caught her 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 her strange tale. For miles she 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 Xodara stayed the hands of her fellows.

  'Secure them,' she said, 'but do not injure them.'

  Several of the pirates already had released Xodara. She now personally attended to my disarming and saw that I was properly bound. At least she 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 boy 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 women manned the great engine of destruction. His decks were crowded with them as they pressed forward as far as discipline would permit to get a glimpse of their captives.

  The boy's beauty elicited many brutal comments and vulgar jests. It was evident that these self-thought supermen were far inferior to the red women of Barsoom in refinement and in chivalry.

  My close-cropped black hair and thern complexion were the subjects of much comment. When Xodara told her 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 women, 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 her skin they blazed out with a peculiarly accentuated effulgence. The whole scene was enchanting. The handsome women; 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 women 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 her own thoughts. For my part I was wondering as to the fate of Tara Tarkas and the boy, Thuviar.

  Even if they succeeded in eluding pursuit they must eventually fall into the hands of either red women 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 women of Barsoom the wicked deception that a cruel and senseless superstition had foisted upon them.

  Tardoa Mors would believe me. Of that I was positive. And that she would have the courage of her convictions my knowledge of her character assured me. Dejar 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 Tara 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 women. 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 boy 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. He was regarding me with a strange expression I had not before seen upon his face. He was very beautiful then.

  Instantly his white lids veiled his eyes, and I thought I discovered a delicate flush tingeing his cheek. Evidently he 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.

  He looked up again with a nervous but relieved little laugh.

  'Oh very,' he said, 'especially when they have such excellent profiles.'

  It was my turn to flush, but I did not. I felt that he 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 him.