The Chessmen of Mars
interest those Earth readers who care for chess, and will not be lost
upon those who pursue this narrative to its conclusion, since before
they are done they will find that a knowledge of jetan will add to the
interest and the thrills that are in store for them.
The men are placed upon the board as in chess upon the first two rows
next the players. In order from left to right on the line of squares
nearest the players, the jetan pieces are Warrior, Padwar, Dwar, Flier,
Chief, Princess, Flier, Dwar, Padwar, Warrior. In the next line all are
Panthans except the end pieces, which are called Thoats, and represent
mounted warriors.
The Panthans, which are represented as warriors with one feather, may
move one space in any direction except backward; the Thoats, mounted
warriors with three feathers, may move one straight and one diagonal,
and may jump intervening pieces; Warriors, foot soldiers with two
feathers, straight in any direction, or diagonally, two spaces;
Padwars, lieutenants wearing two feathers, two diagonal in any
direction, or combination; Dwars, captains wearing three feathers,
three spaces straight in any direction, or combination; Fliers,
represented by a propellor with three blades, three spaces in any
direction, or combination, diagonally, and may jump intervening pieces;
the Chief, indicated by a diadem with ten jewels, three spaces in any
direction, straight, or diagonal; Princess, diadem with a single jewel,
same as Chief, and can jump intervening pieces.
The game is won when a player places any of his pieces on the same
square with his opponent's Princess, or when a Chief takes a Chief. It
is drawn when a Chief is taken by any opposing piece other than the
opposing Chief; or when both sides have been reduced to three pieces,
or less, of equal value, and the game is not terminated in the
following ten moves, five apiece. This is but a general outline of the
game, briefly stated.
It was this game that Dejah Thoris and John Carter were playing when
Tara of Helium bid them good night, retiring to her own quarters and
her sleeping silks and furs. "Until morning, my beloved," she called
back to them as she passed from the apartment, nor little did she
guess, nor her parents, that this might indeed be the last time that
they would ever set eyes upon her.
The morning broke dull and gray. Ominous clouds billowed restlessly and
low. Beneath them torn fragments scudded toward the northwest. From her
window Tara of Helium looked out upon this unusual scene. Dense clouds
seldom overcast the Barsoomian sky. At this hour of the day it was her
custom to ride one of those small thoats that are the saddle animals of
the red Martians, but the sight of the billowing clouds lured her to a
new adventure. Uthia still slept and the girl did not disturb her.
Instead, she dressed quietly and went to the hangar upon the roof of
the palace directly above her quarters where her own swift flier was
housed. She had never driven through the clouds. It was an adventure
that always she had longed to experience. The wind was strong and it
was with difficulty that she maneuvered the craft from the hangar
without accident, but once away it raced swiftly out above the twin
cities. The buffeting winds caught and tossed it, and the girl laughed
aloud in sheer joy of the resultant thrills. She handled the little
ship like a veteran, though few veterans would have faced the menace of
such a storm in so light a craft. Swiftly she rose toward the clouds,
racing with the scudding streamers of the storm-swept fragments, and a
moment later she was swallowed by the dense masses billowing above.
Here was a new world, a world of chaos unpeopled except for herself;
but it was a cold, damp, lonely world and she found it depressing after
the novelty of it had been dissipated, by an overpowering sense of the
magnitude of the forces surging about her. Suddenly she felt very
lonely and very cold and very little. Hurriedly, therefore, she rose
until presently her craft broke through into the glorious sunlight that
transformed the upper surface of the somber element into rolling masses
of burnished silver. Here it was still cold, but without the dampness
of the clouds, and in the eye of the brilliant sun her spirits rose
with the mounting needle of her altimeter. Gazing at the clouds, now
far beneath, the girl experienced the sensation of hanging stationary
in mid-heaven; but the whirring of her propellor, the wind beating upon
her, the high figures that rose and fell beneath the glass of her
speedometer, these told her that her speed was terrific. It was then
that she determined to turn back.
The first attempt she made above the clouds, but it was unsuccessful.
To her surprise she discovered that she could not even turn against the
high wind, which rocked and buffeted the frail craft. Then she dropped
swiftly to the dark and wind-swept zone between the hurtling clouds and
the gloomy surface of the shadowed ground. Here she tried again to
force the nose of the flier back toward Helium, but the tempest seized
the frail thing and hurled it remorselessly about, rolling it over and
over and tossing it as it were a cork in a cataract. At last the girl
succeeded in righting the flier, perilously close to the ground. Never
before had she been so close to death, yet she was not terrified. Her
coolness had saved her, that and the strength of the deck lashings that
held her. Traveling with the storm she was safe, but where was it
bearing her? She pictured the apprehension of her father and mother
when she failed to appear at the morning meal. They would find her
flier missing and they would guess that somewhere in the path of the
storm it lay a wrecked and tangled mass upon her dead body, and then
brave men would go out in search of her, risking their lives; and that
lives would be lost in the search, she knew, for she realized now that
never in her life-time had such a tempest raged upon Barsoom.
She must turn back! She must reach Helium before her mad lust for
thrills had cost the sacrifice of a single courageous life! She
determined that greater safety and likelihood of success lay above the
clouds, and once again she rose through the chilling, wind-tossed
vapor. Her speed again was terrific, for the wind seemed to have
increased rather than to have lessened. She sought gradually to check
the swift flight of her craft, but though she finally succeeded in
reversing her motor the wind but carried her on as it would. Then it
was that Tara of Helium lost her temper. Had her world not always bowed
in acquiescence to her every wish? What were these elements that they
dared to thwart her? She would demonstrate to them that the daughter of
The Warlord was not to be denied! They would learn that Tara of Helium
might not be ruled even by the forces of nature!
And so she drove her motor forward again and then with her firm, white
teeth set in grim determination she drove the steering lever far down
to port with the intention of forcing the nose of her craft straight
into the teeth of the wind, and the wind seized the frail thing and
toppled it over upon its back, and twisted and turned it and hurled it
over and over; the propellor raced for an instant in an air pocket and
then the tempest seized it again and twisted it from its shaft, leaving
the girl helpless upon an unmanageable atom that rose and fell, and
rolled and tumbled--the sport of the elements she had defied. Tara of
Helium's first sensation was one of surprise--that she had failed to
have her own way. Then she commenced to feel concern--not for her own
safety but for the anxiety of her parents and the dangers that the
inevitable searchers must face. She reproached herself for the
thoughtless selfishness that had jeopardized the peace and safety of
others. She realized her own grave danger, too; but she was still
unterrified, as befitted the daughter of Dejah Thoris and John Carter.
She knew that her buoyancy tanks might keep her afloat indefinitely,
but she had neither food nor water, and she was being borne toward the
least-known area of Barsoom. Perhaps it would be better to land
immediately and await the coming of the searchers, rather than to allow
herself to be carried still further from Helium, thus greatly reducing
the chances of early discovery; but when she dropped toward the ground
she discovered that the violence of the wind rendered an attempt to
land tantamount to destruction and she rose again, rapidly.
Carried along a few hundred feet above the ground she was better able
to appreciate the Titanic proportions of the storm than when she had
flown in the comparative serenity of the zone above the clouds, for now
she could distinctly see the effect of the wind upon the surface of
Barsoom. The air was filled with dust and flying bits of vegetation and
when the storm carried her across an irrigated area of farm land she
saw great trees and stone walls and buildings lifted high in air and
scattered broadcast over the devastated country; and then she was
carried swiftly on to other sights that forced in upon her
consciousness a rapidly growing conviction that after all Tara of
Helium was a very small and insignificant and helpless person. It was
quite a shock to her self-pride while it lasted, and toward evening she
was ready to believe that it was going to last forever. There had been
no abatement in the ferocity of the tempest, nor was there indication
of any. She could only guess at the distance she had been carried for
she could not believe in the correctness of the high figures that had
been piled upon the record of her odometer. They seemed unbelievable
and yet, had she known it, they were quite true--in twelve hours she
had flown and been carried by the storm full seven thousand haads. Just
before dark she was carried over one of the deserted cities of ancient
Mars. It was Torquas, but she did not know it. Had she, she might
readily have been forgiven for abandoning the last vestige of hope, for
to the people of Helium Torquas seems as remote as do the South Sea
Islands to us. And still the tempest, its fury unabated, bore her on.
All that night she hurtled through the dark beneath the clouds, or rose
to race through the moonlit void beneath the glory of Barsoom's two
satellites. She was cold and hungry and altogether miserable, but her
brave little spirit refused to admit that her plight was hopeless even
though reason proclaimed the truth. Her reply to reason, sometime
spoken aloud in sudden defiance, recalled the Spartan stubbornness of
her sire in the face of certain annihilation: "I still live!"
That morning there had been an early visitor at the palace of The
Warlord. It was Gahan, Jed of Gathol. He had arrived shortly after the
absence of Tara of Helium had been noted, and in the excitement he had
remained unannounced until John Carter had happened upon him in the
great reception corridor of the palace as The Warlord was hurrying out
to arrange for the dispatch of ships in search of his daughter.
Gahan read the concern upon the face of The Warlord. "Forgive me if I
intrude, John Carter," he said. "I but came to ask the indulgence of
another day since it would be fool-hardy to attempt to navigate a ship
in such a storm."
"Remain, Gahan, a welcome guest until you choose to leave us," replied
The Warlord; "but you must forgive any seeming inattention upon the
part of Helium until my daughter is restored to us."
"You daughter! Restored! What do you mean?" exclaimed the Gatholian. "I
do not understand."
"She is gone, together with her light flier. That is all we know. We
can only assume that she decided to fly before the morning meal and was
caught in the clutches of the tempest. You will pardon me, Gahan, if I