Thuvia, maid of Mars
Thuvia of Ptarth strolled in the gardens of her father’s palace, as was
her nightly custom before retiring. Her silks and furs were drawn about
her, for the air of Mars is chill after the sun has taken his quick
plunge beneath the planet’s western verge.
The girl’s thoughts wandered from her impending nuptials, that would
make her empress of Kaol, to the person of the trim young Heliumite who
had laid his heart at her feet the preceding day.
Whether it was pity or regret that saddened her expression as she gazed
toward the southern heavens where she had watched the lights of his
flier disappear the previous night, it would be difficult to say.
So, too, is it impossible to conjecture just what her emotions may have
been as she discerned the lights of a flier speeding rapidly out of the
distance from that very direction, as though impelled toward her garden
by the very intensity of the princess’ thoughts.
She saw it circle lower above the palace until she was positive that it
but hovered in preparation for a landing.
Presently the powerful rays of its searchlight shot downward from the
bow. They fell upon the landing stage for a brief instant, revealing
the figures of the Ptarthian guard, picking into brilliant points of
fire the gems upon their gorgeous harnesses.
Then the blazing eye swept onward across the burnished domes and
graceful minarets, down into court and park and garden to pause at last
upon the ersite bench and the girl standing there beside it, her face
upturned full toward the flier.
For but an instant the searchlight halted upon Thuvia of Ptarth, then
it was extinguished as suddenly as it had come to life. The flier
passed on above her to disappear beyond a grove of lofty skeel trees
that grew within the palace grounds.
The girl stood for some time as it had left her, except that her head
was bent and her eyes downcast in thought.
Who but Carthoris could it have been? She tried to feel anger that he
should have returned thus, spying upon her; but she found it difficult
to be angry with the young prince of Helium.
What mad caprice could have induced him so to transgress the etiquette
of nations? For lesser things great powers had gone to war.
The princess in her was shocked and angered—but what of the girl!
And the guard—what of them? Evidently they, too, had been so much
surprised by the unprecedented action of the stranger that they had not
even challenged; but that they had no thought to let the thing go
unnoticed was quickly evidenced by the skirring of motors upon the
landing stage and the quick shooting airward of a long-lined patrol
boat.
Thuvia watched it dart swiftly eastward. So, too, did other eyes watch.
Within the dense shadows of the skeel grove, in a wide avenue beneath
o’erspreading foliage, a flier hung a dozen feet above the ground. From
its deck keen eyes watched the far-fanning searchlight of the patrol
boat. No light shone from the enshadowed craft. Upon its deck was the
silence of the tomb. Its crew of a half-dozen red warriors watched the
lights of the patrol boat diminishing in the distance.
“The intellects of our ancestors are with us to-night,” said one in a
low tone.
“No plan ever carried better,” returned another. “They did precisely as
the prince foretold.”
He who had first spoken turned toward the man who squatted before the
control board.
“Now!” he whispered. There was no other order given. Every man upon the
craft had evidently been well schooled in each detail of that night’s
work. Silently the dark hull crept beneath the cathedral arches of the
dark and silent grove.
Thuvia of Ptarth, gazing toward the east, saw the blacker blot against
the blackness of the trees as the craft topped the buttressed garden
wall. She saw the dim bulk incline gently downward toward the scarlet
sward of the garden.
She knew that men came not thus with honourable intent. Yet she did not
cry aloud to alarm the near-by guardsmen, nor did she flee to the
safety of the palace.
Why?
I can see her shrug her shapely shoulders in reply as she voices the
age-old, universal answer of the woman: Because!
Scarce had the flier touched the ground when four men leaped from its
deck. They ran forward toward the girl.
Still she made no sign of alarm, standing as though hypnotized. Or
could it have been as one who awaited a welcome visitor?
Not until they were quite close to her did she move. Then the nearer
moon, rising above the surrounding foliage, touched their faces,
lighting all with the brilliancy of her silver rays.
Thuvia of Ptarth saw only strangers—warriors in the harness of Dusar.
Now she took fright, but too late!
Before she could voice but a single cry, rough hands seized her. A
heavy silken scarf was wound about her head. She was lifted in strong
arms and borne to the deck of the flier. There was the sudden whirl of
propellers, the rushing of air against her body, and, from far beneath
the shouting and the challenge from the guard.
Racing toward the south another flier sped toward Helium. In its cabin
a tall red man bent over the soft sole of an upturned sandal. With
delicate instruments he measured the faint imprint of a small object
which appeared there. Upon a pad beside him was the outline of a key,
and here he noted the results of his measurements.
A smile played upon his lips as he completed his task and turned to one
who waited at the opposite side of the table.
“The man is a genius,” he remarked.
“Only a genius could have evolved such a lock as this is designed to
spring. Here, take the sketch, Larok, and give all thine own genius
full and unfettered freedom in reproducing it in metal.”
The warrior-artificer bowed. “Man builds naught,” he said, “that man
may not destroy.” Then he left the cabin with the sketch.
As dawn broke upon the lofty towers which mark the twin cities of
Helium—the scarlet tower of one and the yellow tower of its sister—a
flier floated lazily out of the north.
Upon its bow was emblazoned the signia of a lesser noble of a far city
of the empire of Helium. Its leisurely approach and the evident
confidence with which it moved across the city aroused no suspicion in
the minds of the sleepy guard. Their round of duty nearly done, they
had little thought beyond the coming of those who were to relieve them.
Peace reigned throughout Helium. Stagnant, emasculating peace. Helium
had no enemies. There was naught to fear.
Without haste the nearest air patrol swung sluggishly about and
approached the stranger. At easy speaking distance the officer upon her
deck hailed the incoming craft.
The cheery “Kaor!” and the plausible explanation that the owner had
come from distant parts for a few days of pleasure in gay Helium
sufficed. The air-patrol boat sheered off, passing again upon its way.
The stranger continued toward a public landing stage, where she dropped
into the ways and came to rest.
At about the same time a warrior entered her cabin.
“It is done, Vas Kor,” he said, handing a small metal key to the tall
noble who had just risen from his sleeping silks and furs.
“Good!” exclaimed the latter. “You must have worked upon it all during
the night, Larok.”
The warrior nodded.
“Now fetch me the Heliumetic metal you wrought some days since,”
commanded Vas Kor.
This done, the warrior assisted his master to replace the handsome
jewelled metal of his harness with the plainer ornaments of an ordinary
fighting man of Helium, and with the insignia of the same house that
appeared upon the bow of the flier.
Vas Kor breakfasted on board. Then he emerged upon the aerial dock,
entered an elevator, and was borne quickly to the street below, where
he was soon engulfed by the early morning throng of workers hastening
to their daily duties.
Among them his warrior trappings were no more remarkable than is a pair
of trousers upon Broadway. All Martian men are warriors, save those
physically unable to bear arms. The tradesman and his clerk clank with
their martial trappings as they pursue their vocations. The schoolboy,
coming into the world, as he does, almost adult from the snowy shell
that has encompassed his development for five long years, knows so
little of life without a sword at his hip that he would feel the same
discomfiture at going abroad unarmed that an Earth boy would experience
in walking the streets knicker-bockerless.
Vas Kor’s destination lay in Greater Helium, which lies some
seventy-five miles across the level plain from Lesser Helium. He had
landed at the latter city because the air patrol is less suspicious and
alert than that above the larger metropolis where lies the palace of
the jeddak.
As he moved with the throng in the parklike canyon of the thoroughfare
the life of an awakening Martian city was in evidence about him.
Houses, raised high upon their slender metal columns for the night were
dropping gently toward the ground. Among the flowers upon the scarlet
sward which lies about the buildings children were already playing, and
comely women laughing and chatting with their neighbours as they culled
gorgeous blossoms for the vases within doors.
The pleasant “kaor” of the Barsoomian greeting fell continually upon
the ears of the stranger as friends and neighbours took up the duties
of a new day.
The district in which he had landed was residential—a district of
merchants of the more prosperous sort. Everywhere were evidences of
luxury and wealth. Slaves appeared upon every housetop with gorgeous
silks and costly furs, laying them in the sun for airing.
Jewel-encrusted women lolled even thus early upon the carven balconies
before their sleeping apartments. Later in the day they would repair to
the roofs when the slaves had arranged couches and pitched silken
canopies to shade them from the sun.
Strains of inspiring music broke pleasantly from open windows, for the
Martians have solved the problem of attuning the nerves pleasantly to
the sudden transition from sleep to waking that proves so difficult a
thing for most Earth folk.
Above him raced the long, light passenger fliers, plying, each in its
proper plane, between the numerous landing stages for internal
passenger traffic. Landing stages that tower high into the heavens are
for the great international passenger liners. Freighters have other
landing stages at various lower levels, to within a couple of hundred
feet of the ground; nor dare any flier rise or drop from one plane to
another except in certain restricted districts where horizontal traffic
is forbidden.
Along the close-cropped sward which paves the avenue ground fliers were
moving in continuous lines in opposite directions. For the greater part
they skimmed along the surface of the sward, soaring gracefully into
the air at times to pass over a slower-going driver ahead, or at
intersections, where the north and south traffic has the right of way
and the east and west must rise above it.
From private hangars upon many a roof top fliers were darting into the
line of traffic. Gay farewells and parting admonitions mingled with the
whirring of motors and the subdued noises of the city.
Yet with all the swift movement and the countless thousands rushing
hither and thither, the predominant suggestion was that of luxurious
ease and soft noiselessness.
Martians dislike harsh, discordant clamour. The only loud noises they
can abide are the martial sounds of war, the clash of arms, the
collision of two mighty dreadnoughts of the air. To them there is no
sweeter music than this.
At the intersection of two broad avenues Vas Kor descended from the
street level to one of the great pneumatic stations of the city. Here
he paid before a little wicket the fare to his destination with a
couple of the dull, oval coins of Helium.