Edgar Rice Burroughs - Venus 4 - Escape on Venus

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2024-12-03 0 0 660.67KB 175 页 5.9玖币
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Volume Four, Venus Series
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
To
Brigadier General KENALL J. FIELDER
FOREWARD
VENUS at its nearest approach to Earth, is still a little matter of twenty-six million
miles away--barely a sleeper jump in the vast reaches of infinite space. Hidden from our
sight by its cloak of enveloping clouds, during all time its surface has been seen by but a
single Earth man--Carson of Venus.
This is the fourth story of the adventures of Carson of Venus on the Shepherd's Star, as
narrated by him telepathically to Edgar Rice Burroughs at Lanikai on the island of Oahu.
It is a story complete in itself. It is not necessary even to read this foreword, unless you
happen to be curious to learn how Carson navigated interplanetary space and something
of the strange lands he has visited, the vast, deserted oceans he has navigated, the savage
beasts he has encountered, the friends and enemies he has made, and the girl whom he
won over apparently insuperable obstacles.
When Carson of Venus took off from Guadalupe island off the west coast of Mexico
in his giant rocket ship his intended destination was Mars. For more than a year his
calculations had been checked and rechecked by some of the ablest scientists and
astronomers in America, and the exact moment of his departure had been determined,
together with the position and inclination of the mile long track along which the rocket
ship would make its take-off. The resistance of the Earth's atmosphere had been nicely
calculated, as well as the Earth's pull and that of the other planets and the Sun. The speed
of the rocket ship in our atmosphere and beyond had been as accurately determined as
was scientifically possible; but one factor had been overlooked. Incomprehensible as it
may appear, no one had taken into consideration the pull of the Moon!
Shortly after the take-off, Carson realized that he was already off his course; and for
some time it appeared likely that he would score a direct hit upon our satellite. Only the
terrific velocity of the rocket ship and the pull of a great star saved him from this; and he
passed over the Moon by the narrowest of margins, scarcely five thousand feet above her
loftiest mountains.
After that, for a long month, he realized that he was in the grip of the Sun's attraction
and that he was doomed. He had long since given up hope, when Venus loomed far ahead
and to his right. He realized that he was going to cross her orbit and that there was a
chance that she might claim him rather than the Sun. Yet he was still doomed, for had not
Science definitely proved that Venus was without oxygen and incapable of supporting
such forms of life as exist upon Earth?
Soon Venus seized him, and the rocket ship dove at terrific speed toward the billowing
clouds of her envelope. Following the same procedure that he had purposed using in
making a landing on Mars, he loosed batteries of parachutes which partially checked the
speed of the ship; then, adjusting his oxygen tank and mask, he bailed out.
Landing among the branches of giant trees that raised their heads five thousand feet
above the surface of the planet, he encountered almost immediately the first of a long
series of adventures which have filled his life almost continuously since his advent upon
Amtor, as Venus is known to its inhabitants; for he was pursued and attacked by hideous
arboreal carnivores before he reached the tree city of Kooaad and became the guest-
prisoner of Mintep, the king.
It was here that he saw and loved Duare, the king's daughter, whose person was sacred
and upon whose face no man other than royalty might look and live.
He was captured by enemies of Mintep and put upon a ship that was to carry him into
slavery in a far country. He headed a mutiny and became a pirate. He rescued Duare from
abductors, but she still spurned his love. Again and again he befriended, protected her,
and saved her life; but always she remained the sacrosanct daughter of a king.
He was captured by the Thorists, but he escaped the Room of the Seven Doors in the
seaport of Kapdor. He fought with tharbans and hairy savages. He sought Duare in
Kormor, the city of the dead, where reanimated corpses lived their sad, gruesome lives.
He won renown in Havatoo, the perfect city; and here he built the first aeroplane that
had ever sailed the Amtorian skies. In it he escaped with Duare after a miscarriage of
justice had doomed her to death.
They came then to the country called Korvan, where Mephis, the mad dictator, ruled.
Here Duare's father was a prisoner condemned to death. After the overthrow of Mephis,
Duare, believing Carson dead, flew back to her own country, taking her father with her.
There she was condemned to death because she had mated with a lesser mortal.
Carson of Venus followed in a small sailing boat, was captured by pirates, but finally
reached Kooaad, the tree city which is the capital of Mintep's kingdom. By a ruse, he
succeeded in rescuing Duare; and flew away with her in the only airship on Venus.
What further adventures befell them, Carson of Venus will tell in his own words
through Edgar Rice Burroughs who is at Lanikai on the island of Oahu.
THE EDITOR
Contents
FOREWARD
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
Chapter LIII
Chapter LIV
Chapter LV
Chapter I
IF YOU will look at any good map of Venus you will see that the land mass called
Anlap lies northwest of the island of Vepaja, from which Duare and I had just escaped.
On Anlap lies Korva, the friendly country toward which I pointed the nose of our plane.
Of course there is no good map of Venus, at least none that I ever have seen; because
the scientists of the southern hemisphere of the planet, the hemisphere to which Chance
carried my rocket ship, have an erroneous conception of the shape of their world. They
believe that Amtor, as they call it, is shaped like a saucer and floats upon a sea of molten
rock. This seems quite evident to them, for how else might the spewing of lava from the
craters of volcanoes be explained?
They also believe that Karbol (Cold Country) lies at the periphery of their saucer;
whereas it is, as a matter of fact, the Antarctic region surrounding the south pole of
Venus. You may readily perceive how this distorts their conception of actual conditions
and is reflected in maps, which are, to say the least, weird. Where actually the parallels of
longitude converge toward the pole, their conception would be that they converged
toward the Equator, or the center of their saucer, and that they were farthest apart at the
periphery of the saucer.
It is all very confusing to one who wishes to go places on the surface of Amtor and
must depend upon an Amtorian map, and it seems quite silly; but then one must bear in
mind the fact that these people have never seen the heavens; because of the cloud
envelopes which enshroud the planet. They have never seen the Sun, nor the planets, nor
all the other countless suns which star the skies by night. How then might they know
anything of astronomy or even guess that they lived upon a globe rather than in a saucer?
If you think that they are stupid, just bear in mind that man inhabited the Earth for
countless ages before it occurred to anyone that the Earth was a globe; and that within
recent historic times men were subjected to the inquisition, broken on the rack, drawn and
quartered, burned at the stake for holding to any such iniquitous theory. Even today there
is a religious sect in Illinois which maintains that the Earth is flat. And all this in the face
of the fact that we have been able to see and study the Heavens every clear night since
our earliest ancestor hung by his tail in some primordial forest. What sort of astronomical
theories do you suppose we would hold if we had never seen the Moon, the Sun, nor any
of the Planets and myriad stars and could not know that they existed?
However erroneous the theory upon which the cartographers evolved their maps, mine
were not entirely useless; though they required considerable mental mathematical
gymnastics to translate them into usable information, even without the aid of the theory
of the relativity of distance, expounded by the great Amtorian scientist, Klufar, some
three thousand years ago, which demonstrates that the actual and the apparent
measurements of distance can be reconciled by multiplying each by the square root of
minus one!
So, having a compass, I flew a little north of west with reasonable assurance that I
should eventually raise Anlap and Korva. But how could I foresee that a catastrophic
meterological phenomenon was soon to threaten us with immediate extinction and
literally hurl us into a series of situations as potentially lethal as that from which we had
fled on Vepaja?
Duare had been very quiet since we had taken off. I could understand why, and I could
sympathize with her. Her own people, whom she loved, and her father, whom she
worshipped not only as her father but as her jong, had condemned her to death because
she had mated with the man she loved. They all deplored the stern law of the dynasty as
much as she, but it was an inexorable commandment that not even the jong himself might
evade.
I knew what she was thinking; and I laid my hand on hers, comfortingly. "They will be
relieved when morning comes and they discover that you have escaped--they will be
relieved and happy."
"I know it," she said.
"Then do not be sad, dear."
"I love my people; I love my country; but I may never return to them. That is why I
am sad, but I cannot be sad for long; because I have you, and I love you more than I love
my people or my country--may my ancestors forgive me it."
I pressed her hand. We were silent again for a long time. The Eastern horizon was
lighting faintly. A new day was breaking on Venus. I thought of my friends on Earth, and
wondered what they were doing and if they ever thought of me. Thirty million miles is a
great distance, but thought travels it instantaneously. I like to think that in the next life
vision and thought will travel hand in hand.
"What are you thinking?" asked Duare.
I told her.
"You must be very lonely sometimes, so far from your own world and your friends,"
she said.
"Quite the contrary," I assured her. "I have you; and I have many good friends in
Korva, and an assured position there."
"You will have an assured position in that Heaven of yours of which you have told
me, if Mephis ever gets hold of you," she said.
"I forgot. You do not know all that transpired in Korva," I said.
"You have told me nothing. After all, we haven't been together for very long--"
"And just being together seemed enough, didn't it?" I interrupted.
"Yes, but tell me now."
"Well, Mephis is dead; and Taman is now jong of Korva." I told her the whole story in
detail and of how Taman, having no son, adopted me in gratitude for my having saved the
life of his only daughter, the Princess Nna.
"So now you are Tanjong of Korva," she said, "and if Taman dies you will be jong.
You have done well, Earthman."
"I am going to do even better," I said.
"Yes! What?"
I drew her to me and kissed her. "That," I said. "I have kissed the sacrosanct daughter
of an Amtorian jong."
"But you have done that a thousand times. Are all Earthmen as silly?"
"They all would be if they could."
Duare had put her melancholy from her; and we joked and laughed, as we flew on
over the vast Amtorian sea toward Korva. Sometimes Duare was at the controls, for by
摘要：

VolumeFour,VenusSeriesbyEdgarRiceBurroughsToBrigadierGeneralKENALLJ.FIELDERFOREWARDVENUSatitsnearestapproachtoEarth,isstillalittlematteroftwenty-sixmillionmilesaway--barelyasleeperjumpinthevastreachesofinfinitespace.Hiddenfromoursightbyitscloakofenvelopingclouds,duringalltimeitssurfacehasbeenseenbyb...

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