The Chessmen of Mars
leave you abruptly--I am arranging to send ships in search of her;" but
Gahan, Jed of Gathol, was already speeding in the direction of the
palace gate. There he leaped upon a waiting thoat and followed by two
warriors in the metal of Gathol, he dashed through the avenues of
Helium toward the palace that had been set aside for his entertainment.
CHAPTER III
THE HEADLESS HUMANS
Above the roof of the palace that housed the Jed of Gathol and his
entourage, the cruiser Vanator tore at her stout moorings. The groaning
tackle bespoke the mad fury of the gale, while the worried faces of
those members of the crew whose duties demanded their presence on the
straining craft gave corroborative evidence of the gravity of the
situation. Only stout lashings prevented these men from being swept
from the deck, while those upon the roof below were constantly
compelled to cling to rails and stanchions to save themselves from
being carried away by each new burst of meteoric fury. Upon the prow of
the Vanator was painted the device of Gathol, but no pennants were
displayed in the upper works since the storm had carried away several
in rapid succession, just as it seemed to the watching men that it must
carry away the ship itself. They could not believe that any tackle
could withstand for long this Titanic force. To each of the twelve
lashings clung a brawny warrior with drawn short-sword. Had but a
single mooring given to the power of the tempest eleven short-swords
would have cut the others; since, partially moored, the ship was
doomed, while free in the tempest it stood at least some slight chance
for life.
"By the blood of Issus, I believe they will hold!" screamed one warrior
to another.
"And if they do not hold may the spirits of our ancestors reward the
brave warriors upon the Vanator," replied another of those upon the
roof of the palace, "for it will not be long from the moment her cables
part before her crew dons the leather of the dead; but yet, Tanus, I
believe they will hold. Give thanks at least that we did not sail
before the tempest fell, since now each of us has a chance to live."
"Yes," replied Tanus, "I should hate to be abroad today upon the
stoutest ship that sails the Barsoomian sky."
It was then that Gahan the Jed appeared upon the roof. With him were
the balance of his own party and a dozen warriors of Helium. The young
chief turned to his followers.
"I sail at once upon the Vanator," he said, "in search of Tara of
Helium who is thought to have been carried away upon a one-man flier by
the storm. I do not need to explain to you the slender chances the
Vanator has to withstand the fury of the tempest, nor will I order you
to your deaths. Let those who wish remain behind without dishonor. The
others will follow me," and he leaped for the rope ladder that lashed
wildly in the gale.
The first man to follow him was Tanus and when the last reached the
deck of the cruiser there remained upon the palace roof only the twelve
warriors of Helium, who, with naked swords, had taken the posts of the
Gatholians at the moorings.
Not a single warrior who had remained aboard the Vanator would leave
her now.
"I expected no less," said Gahan, as with the help of those already on
the deck he and the others found secure lashings. The commander of the
Vanator shook his head. He loved his trim craft, the pride of her class
in the little navy of Gathol. It was of her he thought--not of himself.
He saw her lying torn and twisted upon the ochre vegetation of some
distant sea-bottom, to be presently overrun and looted by some savage,
green horde. He looked at Gahan.
"Are you ready, San Tothis?" asked the jed.
"All is ready."
"Then cut away!"
Word was passed across the deck and over the side to the Heliumetic
warriors below that at the third gun they were to cut away. Twelve keen
swords must strike simultaneously and with equal power, and each must
sever completely and instantly three strands of heavy cable that no
loose end fouling a block bring immediate disaster upon the Vanator.
Boom! The voice of the signal gun rolled down through the screaming
wind to the twelve warriors upon the roof. Boom! Twelve swords were
raised above twelve brawny shoulders. Boom! Twelve keen edges severed
twelve complaining moorings, clean and as one.
The Vanator, her propellors whirling, shot forward with the storm. The
tempest struck her in the stern as with a mailed fist and stood the
great ship upon her nose, and then it caught her and spun her as a
child's top spins; and upon the palace roof the twelve men looked on in
silent helplessness and prayed for the souls of the brave warriors who
were going to their death. And others saw, from Helium's lofty landing
stages and from a thousand hangars upon a thousand roofs; but only for
an instant did the preparations stop that would send other brave men
into the frightful maelstrom of that apparently hopeless search, for
such is the courage of the warriors of Barsoom.
But the Vanator did not fall to the ground, within sight of the city at
least, though as long as the watchers could see her never for an
instant did she rest upon an even keel. Sometimes she lay upon one side
or the other, or again she hurtled along keel up, or rolled over and
over, or stood upon her nose or her tail at the caprice of the great
force that carried her along. And the watchers saw that this great ship
was merely being blown away with the other bits of debris great and
small that filled the sky. Never in the memory of man or the annals of
recorded history had such a storm raged across the face of Barsoom.
And in another instant was the Vanator forgotten as the lofty, scarlet
tower that had marked Lesser Helium for ages crashed to ground,
carrying death and demolition upon the city beneath. Panic reigned. A
fire broke out in the ruins. The city's every force seemed crippled,
and it was then that The Warlord ordered the men that were about to set
forth in search of Tara of Helium to devote their energies to the
salvation of the city, for he too had witnessed the start of the
Vanator and realized the futility of wasting men who were needed sorely
if Lesser Helium was to be saved from utter destruction.
Shortly after noon of the second day the storm commenced to abate, and
before the sun went down, the little craft upon which Tara of Helium
had hovered between life and death these many hours drifted slowly
before a gentle breeze above a landscape of rolling hills that once had
been lofty mountains upon a Martian continent. The girl was exhausted
from loss of sleep, from lack of food and drink, and from the nervous
reaction consequent to the terrifying experiences through which she had
passed. In the near distance, just topping an intervening hill, she
caught a momentary glimpse of what appeared to be a dome-capped tower.
Quickly she dropped the flier until the hill shut it off from the view
of the possible occupants of the structure she had seen. The tower
meant to her the habitation of man, suggesting the presence of water
and, perhaps, of food. If the tower was the deserted relic of a bygone
age she would scarcely find food there, but there was still a chance
that there might be water. If it was inhabited, then must her approach
be cautious, for only enemies might be expected to abide in so far
distant a land. Tara of Helium knew that she must be far from the twin
cities of her grandfather's empire, but had she guessed within even a
thousand haads of the reality, she had been stunned by realization of
the utter hopelessness of her state.
Keeping the craft low, for the buoyancy tanks were still intact, the
girl skimmed the ground until the gently-moving wind had carried her to
the side of the last hill that intervened between her and the structure
she had thought a man-built tower. Here she brought the flier to the
ground among some stunted trees, and dragging it beneath one where it
might be somewhat hidden from craft passing above, she made it fast and
set forth to reconnoiter. Like most women of her class she was armed
only with a single slender blade, so that in such an emergency as now
confronted her she must depend almost solely upon her cleverness in
remaining undiscovered by enemies. With utmost caution she crept warily
toward the crest of the hill, taking advantage of every natural screen
that the landscape afforded to conceal her approach from possible
observers ahead, while momentarily she cast quick glances rearward lest
she be taken by surprise from that quarter.
She came at last to the summit, where, from the concealment of a low
bush, she could see what lay beyond. Beneath her spread a beautiful
valley surrounded by low hills. Dotting it were numerous circular
towers, dome-capped, and surrounding each tower was a stone wall
enclosing several acres of ground. The valley appeared to be in a high
state of cultivation. Upon the opposite side of the hill and just
beneath her was a tower and enclosure. It was the roof of the former
that had first attracted her attention. In all respects it seemed
identical in construction with those further out in the valley--a high,
plastered wall of massive construction surrounding a similarly
constructed tower, upon whose gray surface was painted in vivid colors
a strange device. The towers were about forty sofads in diameter,
approximately forty earth-feet, and sixty in height to the base of the
dome. To an Earth man they would have immediately suggested the silos
in which dairy farmers store ensilage for their herds; but closer
scrutiny, revealing an occasional embrasured opening together with the
strange construction of the domes, would have altered such a
conclusion. Tara of Helium saw that the domes seemed to be faced with
innumerable prisms of glass, those that were exposed to the declining
sun scintillating so gorgeously as to remind her suddenly of the
magnificent trappings of Gahan of Gathol. As she thought of the man she
shook her head angrily, and moved cautiously forward a foot or two that
she might get a less obstructed view of the nearer tower and its
enclosure.
As Tara of Helium looked down into the enclosure surrounding the
nearest tower, her brows contracted momentarily in frowning surprise,
and then her eyes went wide in an expression of incredulity tinged with
horror, for what she saw was a score or two of human bodies--naked and
headless. For a long moment she watched, breathless; unable to believe
the evidence of her own eyes--that these grewsome things moved and had
life! She saw them crawling about on hands and knees over and across
one another, searching about with their fingers. And she saw some of
them at troughs, for which the others seemed to be searching, and those
at the troughs were taking something from these receptacles and
apparently putting it in a hole where their necks should have been.
They were not far beneath her--she could see them distinctly and she
saw that there were the bodies of both men and women, and that they
were beautifully proportioned, and that their skin was similar to hers,
but of a slightly lighter red. At first she had thought that she was
looking upon a shambles and that the bodies, but recently decapitated,
were moving under the impulse of muscular reaction; but presently she
realized that this was their normal condition. The horror of them
fascinated her, so that she could scarce take her eyes from them. It
was evident from their groping hands that they were eyeless, and their
sluggish movements suggested a rudimentary nervous system and a
correspondingly minute brain. The girl wondered how they subsisted for
she could not, even by the wildest stretch of imagination, picture
these imperfect creatures as intelligent tillers of the soil. Yet that