The Gods of Mars Revoked (12 page)

The woman had now
regained full possession of her faculties, and was regarding us
intently from where she lay bound upon the deck. She was a handsome
fellow, clean limbed and powerful, with an intelligent face and
features of such exquisite chiselling that Adonis herself might
have envied her.

The vessel,
unguided, had been moving slowly across the valley; but now I
thought it time to take the helm and direct his 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.
Baneath 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 boy, Phaidor, and the
black pirate kept their eyes glued upon me. At length the boy
spoke.

'Unconsciousness
comes quickly at this altitude,' he said quietly. 'Unless you are
inviting death for us all you had best drop, and that
quickly.'

There was no fear
in his 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
boy 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 her eyes, and a moment later the
boy also.

'It was a close
call,' he said.

'It has taught me
two things though,' I replied.

'What?'

'That even
Phaidor, son of the Mistress of Life and Death, is mortal,' I said
smiling.

'There is
immortality only in Issus,' he 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 she heard
his words. I did not then understand why she smiled. Later I was to
learn, and he, too, in a most horrible manner.

'If the other
thing you have just learned,' he 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 she would have been but the frozen memory of
a woman.'

Phaidor looked at
the black in evident astonishment.

'If you are not
of Thuria, then where?' he asked.

She shrugged her
shoulders and turned her eyes elsewhere, but did not
reply.

The boy stamped
his little foot in a peremptory manner.

'The son of
Matain Shang is not accustomed to having his queries remain
unanswered,' he 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 her.'

Again the black
smiled that wicked, knowing smile.

'Xodara, 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 women 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?' she asked.

'I am a Princess
of the House of Tardoa Mors, Jeddak of Helium,' I replied, 'but I
am not of Barsoom. I am of another world.'

Xodara looked at
me intently for a few moments.

'I can well
believe that you are not of Barsoom,' she 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?' She 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 she had looked for the bald pate of a
thern.

'You are indeed
of another world,' she said, a touch of awe in her 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 Xodara to acknowledge
your supremacy. A thing she could never do were you a Barsoomian,'
she added.

'You are
travelling several laps ahead of me, my friend,' I interrupted. 'I
glean that your name is Xodara, 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,' she explained, 'are the race of black women of which I
am a Dator, or, as the lesser Barsoomians would say, Princess. 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 women, 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 women blossomed resembled large nuts about a foot
in diameter, divided by double partition walls into four sections.
In one section grew the plant woman, in another a sixteen-legged
worm, in the third the progenitor of the white ape and in the
fourth the primaeval black woman of Barsoom.

'When the bud
burst the plant woman remained dangling at the end of her 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 woman broke through her prison
walls into the light of day. Prompted by curiosity, she broke open
other shells and the peopling of Barsoom commenced.

'The pure strain
of the blood of this first black woman 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
woman has sprung every other form of animal life upon
Barsoom.

'The therns,' and
she smiled maliciously as she 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 women.

'The Tree of Life
is dead, but before it died the plant women 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 woman 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 woman 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 her eye beyond me for the barest fraction of a
second that explained her motive for thus dragging out my interest
in her truly absorbing story.

She lay a little
forward of where I stood at the levers, and thus she faced the
stern of the vessel as she addressed me. It was at the end of her
description of the plant women that I caught her 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

Now I realized
why the black pirate had kept me engrossed with her strange tale.
For miles she had sensed the approach of succour, and but for that
single tell-tale glance the battleship would have been directly
above us in another moment, and the boarding party which was
doubtless even now swinging in their harness from the ship's keel,
would have swarmed our deck, placing my rising hope of escape in
sudden and total eclipse.

I was too old a
hand in aerial warfare to be at a loss now for the right manoeuvre.
Simultaneously I reversed the engines and dropped the little vessel
a sheer hundred feet.

Above my head I
could see the dangling forms of the boarding party as the
battleship raced over us. Then I rose at a sharp angle, throwing my
speed lever to its last notch.

Like a bolt from
a crossbow my splendid craft shot its steel prow straight at the
whirring propellers of the giant above us. If I could but touch
them the huge bulk would be disabled for hours and escape once more
possible.

At the same
instant the sun shot above the horizon, disclosing a hundred grim,
black faces peering over the stern of the battleship upon
us.

At sight of us a
shout of rage went up from a hundred throats. Orders were shouted,
but it was too late to save the giant propellers, and with a crash
we rammed them.

Instantly with
the shock of impact I reversed my engine, but my prow was wedged in
the hole it had made in the battleship's stern. Only a second I
hung there before tearing away, but that second was amply long to
swarm my deck with black devils.

There was no
fight. In the first place there was no room to fight. We were
simply submerged by numbers. Then as swords menaced me a command
from Xodara stayed the hands of her fellows.