The gods of Mars
She looked at me narrowly. Then she puckered those divine brows of
hers, and shook her head. She could not comprehend.
Well, neither had my own Dejah Thoris been able to understand what to
her had seemed a foolish and dangerous policy toward enemies. Upon
Barsoom, quarter is neither asked nor given, and each dead man means so
much more of the waning resources of this dying planet to be divided
amongst those who survive.
But there seemed a subtle difference here between the manner in which
this girl contemplated the dispatching of an enemy and the
tender-hearted regret of my own princess for the stern necessity which
demanded it.
I think that Phaidor regretted the thrill that the spectacle would have
afforded her rather than the fact that my decision left another enemy
alive to threaten us.
The man had now regained full possession of his faculties, and was
regarding us intently from where he lay bound upon the deck. He was a
handsome fellow, clean limbed and powerful, with an intelligent face
and features of such exquisite chiselling that Adonis himself might
have envied him.
The vessel, unguided, had been moving slowly across the valley; but now
I thought it time to take the helm and direct her 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. Beneath 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 girl, Phaidor,
and the black pirate kept their eyes glued upon me. At length the girl
spoke.
“Unconsciousness comes quickly at this altitude,” she said quietly.
“Unless you are inviting death for us all you had best drop, and that
quickly.”
There was no fear in her 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 girl 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 his eyes, and a moment
later the girl also.
“It was a close call,” she said.
“It has taught me two things though,” I replied.
“What?”
“That even Phaidor, daughter of the Master of Life and Death, is
mortal,” I said smiling.
“There is immortality only in Issus,” she 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 he
heard her words. I did not then understand why he smiled. Later I was
to learn, and she, too, in a most horrible manner.
“If the other thing you have just learned,” she 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 he would have been but the frozen memory
of a man.”
Phaidor looked at the black in evident astonishment.
“If you are not of Thuria, then where?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned his eyes elsewhere, but did not
reply.
The girl stamped her little foot in a peremptory manner.
“The daughter of Matai Shang is not accustomed to having her queries
remain unanswered,” she 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 him.”
Again the black smiled that wicked, knowing smile.
“Xodar, 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 men 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?” he asked.
“I am a Prince of the House of Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium,” I
replied, “but I am not of Barsoom. I am of another world.”
Xodar looked at me intently for a few moments.
“I can well believe that you are not of Barsoom,” he 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?” He 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 he had looked for the bald pate of a thern.
“You are indeed of another world,” he said, a touch of awe in his
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 Xodar to
acknowledge your supremacy. A thing he could never do were you a
Barsoomian,” he added.
“You are travelling several laps ahead of me, my friend,” I
interrupted. “I glean that your name is Xodar, 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,” he explained, “are the race of black men
of which I am a Dator, or, as the lesser Barsoomians would say, Prince.
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 men, 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 men blossomed resembled large nuts about
a foot in diameter, divided by double partition walls into four
sections. In one section grew the plant man, in another a
sixteen-legged worm, in the third the progenitor of the white ape and
in the fourth the primaeval black man of Barsoom.
“When the bud burst the plant man remained dangling at the end of his
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 man broke through his
prison walls into the light of day. Prompted by curiosity, he broke
open other shells and the peopling of Barsoom commenced.
“The pure strain of the blood of this first black man 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 man has sprung every other form of animal life upon Barsoom.
“The therns,” and he smiled maliciously as he 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 men.
“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