Books: Thuvia, Maid of Mars
E >>
Edgar Rice Burroughs >> Thuvia, Maid of Mars
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11
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.
Beyond the gatekeeper he came to a slowly moving line of what to
Earthly eyes would have appeared to be conical-nosed, eight-foot
projectiles for some giant gun. In slow procession the things
moved in single file along a grooved track. A half dozen attendants
assisted passengers to enter, or directed these carriers to their
proper destination.
Vas Kor approached one that was empty. Upon its nose was a dial
and a pointer. He set the pointer for a certain station in Greater
Helium, raised the arched lid of the thing, stepped in and lay down
upon the upholstered bottom. An attendant closed the lid, which
locked with a little click, and the carrier continued its slow way.
Presently it switched itself automatically to another track, to
enter, a moment later, one of the series of dark-mouthed tubes.
The instant that its entire length was within the black aperture
it sprang forward with the speed of a rifle ball. There was an
instant of whizzing--a soft, though sudden, stop, and slowly the
carrier emerged upon another platform, another attendant raised
the lid and Vas Kor stepped out at the station beneath the centre
of Greater Helium, seventy-five miles from the point at which he
had embarked.
Here he sought the street level, stepping immediately into a waiting
ground flier. He spoke no word to the slave sitting in the driver's
seat. It was evident that he had been expected, and that the fellow
had received his instructions before his coming.
Scarcely had Vas Kor taken his seat when the flier went quickly
into the fast-moving procession, turning presently from the broad
and crowded avenue into a less congested street. Presently it left
the thronged district behind to enter a section of small shops,
where it stopped before the entrance to one which bore the sign of
a dealer in foreign silks.
Vas Kor entered the low-ceiling room. A man at the far end
motioned him toward an inner apartment, giving no further sign of
recognition until he had passed in after the caller and closed the
door.
Then he faced his visitor, saluting deferentially.
"Most noble--" he commenced, but Vas Kor silenced him with a gesture.
"No formalities," he said. "We must forget that I am aught other
than your slave. If all has been as carefully carried out as it
has been planned, we have no time to waste. Instead we should be
upon our way to the slave market. Are you ready?"
The merchant nodded, and, turning to a great chest, produced
the unemblazoned trappings of a slave. These Vas Kor immediately
donned. Then the two passed from the shop through a rear door,
traversed a winding alley to an avenue beyond, where they entered
a flier which awaited them.
Five minutes later the merchant was leading his slave to the public
market, where a great concourse of people filled the great open
space in the centre of which stood the slave block.
The crowds were enormous to-day, for Carthoris, Prince of Helium,
was to be the principal bidder.
One by one the masters mounted the rostrum beside the slave block
upon which stood their chattels. Briefly and clearly each recounted
the virtues of his particular offering.
When all were done, the major-domo of the Prince of Helium recalled
to the block such as had favourably impressed him. For such he
had made a fair offer.
There was little haggling as to price, and none at all when Vas
Kor was placed upon the block. His merchant-master accepted the
first offer that was made for him, and thus a Dusarian noble entered
the household of Carthoris.
CHAPTER III
TREACHERY
The day following the coming of Vas Kor to the palace of the Prince
of Helium great excitement reigned throughout the twin cities,
reaching its climax in the palace of Carthoris. Word had come of
the abduction of Thuvia of Ptarth from her father's court, and with
it the veiled hint that the Prince of Helium might be suspected
of considerable knowledge of the act and the whereabouts of the
princess.
In the council chamber of John Carter, Warlord of Mars, was Tardos
Mors, Jeddak of Helium; Mors Kajak, his son, Jed of Lesser Helium;
Carthoris, and a score of the great nobles of the empire.
"There must be no war between Ptarth and Helium, my son," said John
Carter. "That you are innocent of the charge that has been placed
against you by insinuation, we well know; but Thuvan Dihn must know
it well, too.
"There is but one who may convince him, and that one be you. You
must hasten at once to the court of Ptarth, and by your presence
there as well as by your words assure him that his suspicions are
groundless. Bear with you the authority of the Warlord of Barsoom,
and of the Jeddak of Helium to offer every resource of the allied
powers to assist Thuvan Dihn to recover his daughter and punish
her abductors, whomsoever they may be.
"Go! I know that I do not need to urge upon you the necessity for
haste."
Carthoris left the council chamber, and hastened to his palace.
Here slaves were busy in a moment setting things to rights for the
departure of their master. Several worked about the swift flier
that would bear the Prince of Helium rapidly toward Ptarth.
At last all was done. But two armed slaves remained on guard.
The setting sun hung low above the horizon. In a moment darkness
would envelop all.
One of the guardsmen, a giant of a fellow across whose right cheek
there ran a thin scar from temple to mouth, approached his companion.
His gaze was directed beyond and above his comrade. When he had
come quite close he spoke.
"What strange craft is that?" he asked.
The other turned about quickly to gaze heavenward. Scarce was his
back turned toward the giant than the short-sword of the latter
was plunged beneath his left shoulder blade, straight through his
heart.
Voiceless, the soldier sank in his tracks--stone dead. Quickly
the murderer dragged the corpse into the black shadows within the
hangar. Then he returned to the flier.
Drawing a cunningly wrought key from his pocket-pouch, he removed
the cover of the right-hand dial of the controlling destination
compass. For a moment he studied the construction of the mechanism
beneath. Then he returned the dial to its place, set the pointer,
and removed it again to note the resultant change in the position
of the parts affected by the act.
A smile crossed his lips. With a pair of cutters he snipped off
the projection which extended through the dial from the external
pointer--now the latter might be moved to any point upon the dial
without affecting the mechanism below. In other words, the eastern
hemisphere dial was useless.
Now he turned his attention to the western dial. This he set upon
a certain point. Afterward he removed the cover of this dial also,
and with keen tool cut the steel finger from the under side of the
pointer.
As quickly as possible he replaced the second dial cover, and resumed
his place on guard. To all intents and purposes the compass was
as efficient as before; but, as a matter of fact, the moving of the
pointers upon the dials resulted now in no corresponding shift of
the mechanism beneath--and the device was set, immovably, upon a
destination of the slave's own choosing.
Presently came Carthoris, accompanied by but a handful of his
gentlemen. He cast but a casual glance upon the single slave who
stood guard. The fellow's thin, cruel lips, and the sword-cut that
ran from temple to mouth aroused the suggestion of an unpleasant
memory within him. He wondered where Saran Tal had found the man--
then the matter faded from his thoughts, and in another moment the
Prince of Helium was laughing and chatting with his companions,
though below the surface his heart was cold with dread, for what
contingencies confronted Thuvia of Ptarth he could not even guess.
First to his mind, naturally, had sprung the thought that Astok
of Dusar had stolen the fair Ptarthian; but almost simultaneously
with the report of the abduction had come news of the great fetes
at Dusar in honour of the return of the jeddak's son to the court
of his father.
It could not have been he, thought Carthoris, for on the very night
that Thuvia was taken Astok had been in Dusar, and yet--
He entered the flier, exchanging casual remarks with his companions
as he unlocked the mechanism of the compass and set the pointer
upon the capital city of Ptarth.
With a word of farewell he touched the button which controlled the
repulsive rays, and as the flier rose lightly into the air, the
engine purred in answer to the touch of his finger upon a second
button, the propellers whirred as his hand drew back the speed
lever, and Carthoris, Prince of Helium, was off into the gorgeous
Martian night beneath the hurtling moons and the million stars.
Scarce had the flier found its speed ere the man, wrapping his
sleeping silks and furs about him, stretched at full length upon
the narrow deck to sleep.
But sleep did not come at once at his bidding.
Instead, his thoughts ran riot in his brain, driving sleep away.
He recalled the words of Thuvia of Ptarth, words that had half
assured him that she loved him; for when he had asked her if she
loved Kulan Tith, she had answered only that she was promised to
him.
Now he saw that her reply was open to more than a single construction.
It might, of course, mean that she did not love Kulan Tith; and
so, by inference, be taken to mean that she loved another.
But what assurance was there that the other was Carthoris of Helium?
The more he thought upon it the more positive he became that not
only was there no assurance in her words that she loved him, but
none either in any act of hers. No, the fact was, she did not love
him. She loved another. She had not been abducted--she had fled
willingly with her lover.
With such pleasant thoughts filling him alternately with despair
and rage, Carthoris at last dropped into the sleep of utter mental
exhaustion.
The breaking of the sudden dawn found him still asleep. His flier
was rushing swiftly above a barren, ochre plain--the world-old
bottom of a long-dead Martian sea.
In the distance rose low hills. Toward these the craft was headed.
As it approached them, a great promontory might have been seen from
its deck, stretching out into what had once been a mighty ocean,
and circling back once more to enclose the forgotten harbour of a
forgotten city, which still stretched back from its deserted quays,
an imposing pile of wondrous architecture of a long-dead past.
The countless dismal windows, vacant and forlorn, stared, sightless,
from their marble walls; the whole sad city taking on the semblance
of scattered mounds of dead men's sun-bleached skulls--the casements
having the appearance of eyeless sockets, the portals, grinning
jaws.
Closer came the flier, but now its speed was diminishing--yet this
was not Ptarth.
Above the central plaza it stopped, slowly settling Marsward.
Within a hundred yards of the ground it came to rest, floating
gently in the light air, and at the same instant an alarm sounded
at the sleeper's ear.
Carthoris sprang to his feet. Below him he looked to see the
teeming metropolis of Ptarth. Beside him, already, there should
have been an air patrol.
He gazed about in bewildered astonishment. There indeed was a
great city, but it was not Ptarth. No multitudes surged through
its broad avenues. No signs of life broke the dead monotony of
its deserted roof tops. No gorgeous silks, no priceless furs lent
life and colour to the cold marble and the gleaming ersite.
No patrol boat lay ready with its familiar challenge. Silent and
empty lay the great city--empty and silent the surrounding air.
What had happened?
Carthoris examined the dial of his compass. The pointer was set
upon Ptarth. Could the creature of his genius have thus betrayed
him? He would not believe it.
Quickly he unlocked the cover, turning it back upon its hinge. A
single glance showed him the truth, or at least a part of it--the
steel projection that communicated the movement of the pointer upon
the dial to the heart of the mechanism beneath had been severed.
Who could have done the thing--and why?
Carthoris could not hazard even a faint guess. But the thing now
was to learn in what portion of the world he was, and then take up
his interrupted journey once more.
If it had been the purpose of some enemy to delay him, he had
succeeded well, thought Carthoris, as he unlocked the cover of the
second dial the first having shown that its pointer had not been
set at all.
Beneath the second dial he found the steel pin severed as in the
other, but the controlling mechanism had first been set for a point
upon the western hemisphere.
He had just time to judge his location roughly at some place
south-west of Helium, and at a considerable distance from the twin
cities, when he was startled by a woman's scream beneath him.
Leaning over the side of the flier, he saw what appeared to be a red
woman being dragged across the plaza by a huge green warrior--one
of those fierce, cruel denizens of the dead sea-bottoms and deserted
cities of dying Mars.
Carthoris waited to see no more. Reaching for the control board,
he sent his craft racing plummet-like toward the ground.
The green man was hurrying his captive toward a huge thoat that
browsed upon the ochre vegetation of the once scarlet-gorgeous
plaza. At the same instant a dozen red warriors leaped from the
entrance of a nearby ersite palace, pursuing the abductor with
naked swords and shouts of rageful warning.
Once the woman turned her face upward toward the falling flier,
and in the single swift glance Carthoris saw that it was Thuvia of
Ptarth!
CHAPTER IV
A GREEN MAN'S CAPTIVE
When the light of day broke upon the little craft to whose deck
the Princess of Ptarth had been snatched from her father's garden,
Thuvia saw that the night had wrought a change in her abductors.
No longer did their trappings gleam with the metal of Dusar, but
instead there was emblazoned there the insignia of the Prince of
Helium.
The girl felt renewed hope, for she could not believe that in the
heart of Carthoris could lie intent to harm her.
She spoke to the warrior squatting before the control board.
"Last night you wore the trappings of a Dusarian," she said. "Now
your metal is that of Helium. What means it?"
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11