The gods of Mars
“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.”
“Then where?” she asked again.
“From the appearance of the craft I judge we are going down,” I
replied.
Phaidor shuddered. For such long ages have the waters of Barsoom’s seas
been a thing of tradition only that even this daughter of the therns,
born as she had been within sight of Mars’ only remaining sea, had the
same terror of deep water as is a common attribute of all Martians.
Presently the sensation of sinking became very apparent. We were going
down swiftly. Now we could hear the water rushing past the port-holes,
and in the dim light that filtered through them to the water beyond the
swirling eddies were plainly visible.
Phaidor grasped my arm.