Burroughs, Edgar Rice - Mars 02 - The Gods Of Mars

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Gods Of Mars, The
[pg/etext93/gmars11.txt]
THE GODS OF MARS was first published in ALL-STORY MAGAZINE
as a five-part serial, January through May 1913.
THE GODS OF MARS
Edgar Rice Burroughs
FOREWORD
TWELVE years had passed since I had laid the body of my
great-uncle, Captain John Carter, of Virginia, away from
the sight of men in that strange mausoleum in the old
cemetery at Richmond.
Often had I pondered on the odd instructions he had left me
governing the construction of his mighty tomb, and especially
those parts which directed that he be laid in an OPEN casket
and that the ponderous mechanism which controlled the bolts
of the vault’s huge door be accessible ONLY FROM THE INSIDE.
Twelve years had passed since I had read the remarkable
manuscript of this remarkable man; this man who remembered
no childhood and who could not even offer a vague guess as
to his age; who was always young and yet who had dandled my
grandfather’s great-grandfather upon his knee; this man who
had spent ten years upon the planet Mars; who had fought for
the green men of Barsoom and fought against them; who had
fought for and against the red men and who had won the ever
beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, for his wife, and
for nearly ten years had been a prince of the house of Tardos
Mors, Jeddak of Helium.
Twelve years had passed since his body had been found upon
the bluff before his cottage overlooking the Hudson, and oft-
times during these long years I had wondered if John Carter
were really dead, or if he again roamed the dead sea bottoms
of that dying planet; if he had returned to Barsoom to find that
he had opened the frowning portals of the mighty atmosphere plant in
time to save the countless millions who were dying of asphyxiation
on that far-gone day that had seen him hurtled ruthlessly through
forty-eight million miles of space back to Earth once more.
I had wondered if he had found his black-haired Princess and the
slender son he had dreamed was with her in the royal gardens of
Tardos Mors, awaiting his return.
Or, had he found that he had been too late, and thus gone back to a
living death upon a dead world? Or was he really dead after all,
never to return either to his mother Earth or his beloved Mars?
Thus was I lost in useless speculation one sultry August
evening when old Ben, my body servant, handed me a telegram.
Tearing it open I read:
’Meet me to-morrow hotel Raleigh Richmond.
’JOHN CARTER’
1
Early the next morning I took the first train for Richmond
and within two hours was being ushered into the room occupied
by John Carter.
As I entered he rose to greet me, his old-time cordial
smile of welcome lighting his handsome face. Apparently he
had not aged a minute, but was still the straight, clean-limbed
fighting-man of thirty. His keen grey eyes were undimmed, and
the only lines upon his face were the lines of iron character and
determination that always had been there since first I remembered him,
nearly thirty-five years before.
’Well, nephew,’ he greeted me, ’do you feel as though you
were seeing a ghost, or suffering from the effects of too many
of Uncle Ben’s juleps?’
’Juleps, I reckon,’ I replied, ’for I certainly feel mighty good;
but maybe it’s just the sight of you again that affects me. You
have been back to Mars? Tell me. And Dejah Thoris? You
found her well and awaiting you?’
’Yes, I have been to Barsoom again, and--but it’s a long
story, too long to tell in the limited time I have before I must
return. I have learned the secret, nephew, and I may traverse
the trackless void at my will, coming and going between the
countless planets as I list; but my heart is always in Barsoom,
and while it is there in the keeping of my Martian Princess, I
doubt that I shall ever again leave the dying world that is my life.
’I have come now because my affection for you prompted me
to see you once more before you pass over for ever into that
other life that I shall never know, and which though I have
died thrice and shall die again to-night, as you know death, I
am as unable to fathom as are you.
’Even the wise and mysterious therns of Barsoom, that
ancient cult which for countless ages has been credited with
holding the secret of life and death in their impregnable
fastnesses upon the hither slopes of the Mountains of Otz, are as
ignorant as we. I have proved it, though I near lost my life in
the doing of it; but you shall read it all in the notes I have been
making during the last three months that I have been back upon Earth.’
He patted a swelling portfolio that lay on the table at his elbow.
’I know that you are interested and that you believe, and I
know that the world, too, is interested, though they will not
believe for many years; yes, for many ages, since they cannot
understand. Earth men have not yet progressed to a point where
they can comprehend the things that I have written in those notes.
’Give them what you wish of it, what you think will not
harm them, but do not feel aggrieved if they laugh at you.’
That night I walked down to the cemetery with him. At the
door of his vault he turned and pressed my hand.
’Good-bye, nephew,’ he said. ’I may never see you again,
2
for I doubt that I can ever bring myself to leave my wife and
boy while they live, and the span of life upon Barsoom is often
more than a thousand years.’
He entered the vault. The great door swung slowly to. The
ponderous bolts grated into place. The lock clicked. I have
never seen Captain John Carter, of Virginia, since.
But here is the story of his return to Mars on that other occasion,
as I have gleaned it from the great mass of notes which he left
for me upon the table of his room in the hotel at Richmond.
There is much which I have left out; much which I have not
dared to tell; but you will find the story of his second search
for Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, even more remarkable
than was his first manuscript which I gave to an unbelieving
world a short time since and through which we followed the
fighting Virginian across dead sea bottoms under the moons of Mars.
E. R. B.
CONTENTS
Contents
I. The Plant Men
II. A Forest Battle
III. The Chamber of Mystery
IV. Thuvia
V. Corridors of Peril
VI. The Black Pirates of Barsoom
VII. A Fair Goddess
VIII. The Depths of Omean
IX. Issus, Goddess of Life Eternal
X. The Prison Isle of Shador
XI. When Hell Broke Loose
XII. Doomed to Die
XIII. A Break for Liberty
XIV. The Eyes in the Dark
XV. Flight and Pursuit
XVI. Under Arrest
XVII. The Death Sentence
3
XVIII. Sola’s Story
XIX. Black Despair
XX. The Air Battle
XXI. Through Flood and Flame
XXII. Victory and Defeat
THE GODS OF MARS
CHAPTER I
THE PLANT MEN
As I stood upon the bluff before my cottage on that clear
cold night in the early part of March, 1886, the noble Hudson
flowing like the grey and silent spectre of a dead river
below me, I felt again the strange, compelling influence of
the mighty god of war, my beloved Mars, which for ten long
and lonesome years I had implored with outstretched arms
to carry me back to my lost love.
Not since that other March night in 1866, when I had
stood without that Arizona cave in which my still and lifeless
body lay wrapped in the similitude of earthly death had I felt
the irresistible attraction of the god of my profession.
With arms outstretched toward the red eye of the great
star I stood praying for a return of that strange power which
twice had drawn me through the immensity of space, praying
as I had prayed on a thousand nights before during the long
ten years that I had waited and hoped.
Suddenly a qualm of nausea swept over me, my senses
swam, my knees gave beneath me and I pitched headlong
to the ground upon the very verge of the dizzy bluff.
Instantly my brain cleared and there swept back across
the threshold of my memory the vivid picture of the horrors
of that ghostly Arizona cave; again, as on that far-gone night,
my muscles refused to respond to my will and again, as
though even here upon the banks of the placid Hudson, I
could hear the awful moans and rustling of the fearsome
thing which had lurked and threatened me from the dark
recesses of the cave, I made the same mighty and superhuman
effort to break the bonds of the strange anaesthesia which
held me, and again came the sharp click as of the sudden
parting of a taut wire, and I stood naked and free beside
the staring, lifeless thing that had so recently pulsed with
the warm, red life-blood of John Carter.
With scarcely a parting glance I turned my eyes again toward
Mars, lifted my hands toward his lurid rays, and waited.
Nor did I have long to wait; for scarce had I turned ere I
shot with the rapidity of thought into the awful void before
me. There was the same instant of unthinkable cold and utter
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darkness that I had experienced twenty years before, and
then I opened my eyes in another world, beneath the burning
rays of a hot sun, which beat through a tiny opening in the
dome of the mighty forest in which I lay.
The scene that met my eyes was so un-Martian that my
heart sprang to my throat as the sudden fear swept through
me that I had been aimlessly tossed upon some strange planet
by a cruel fate.
Why not? What guide had I through the trackless waste of
interplanetary space? What assurance that I might not as
well be hurtled to some far-distant star of another
solar system, as to Mars?
I lay upon a close-cropped sward of red grasslike vegetation,
and about me stretched a grove of strange and beautiful trees,
covered with huge and gorgeous blossoms and filled with brilliant,
voiceless birds. I call them birds since they were winged, but
mortal eye ne’er rested on such odd, unearthly shapes.
The vegetation was similar to that which covers the lawns
of the red Martians of the great waterways, but the trees
and birds were unlike anything that I had ever seen upon
Mars, and then through the further trees I could see that
most un-Martian of all sights--an open sea, its blue waters
shimmering beneath the brazen sun.
As I rose to investigate further I experienced the same
ridiculous catastrophe that had met my first attempt to walk
under Martian conditions. The lesser attraction of this smaller
planet and the reduced air pressure of its greatly rarefied
atmosphere, afforded so little resistance to my earthly muscles
that the ordinary exertion of the mere act of rising sent
me several feet into the air and precipitated me upon my
face in the soft and brilliant grass of this strange world.
This experience, however, gave me some slightly increased
assurance that, after all, I might indeed be in some, to me,
unknown corner of Mars, and this was very possible since
during my ten years’ residence upon the planet I had
explored but a comparatively tiny area of its vast expanse.
I arose again, laughing at my forgetfulness, and soon had
mastered once more the art of attuning my earthly sinews
to these changed conditions.
As I walked slowly down the imperceptible slope toward
the sea I could not help but note the park-like appearance of
the sward and trees. The grass was as close-cropped and
carpet-like as some old English lawn and the trees themselves
showed evidence of careful pruning to a uniform height of
about fifteen feet from the ground, so that as one turned his
glance in any direction the forest had the appearance at a
little distance of a vast, high-ceiled chamber.
All these evidences of careful and systematic cultivation
convinced me that I had been fortunate enough to make my
entry into Mars on this second occasion through the domain
5
of a civilized people and that when I should find them I
would be accorded the courtesy and protection that my rank
as a Prince of the house of Tardos Mors entitled me to.
The trees of the forest attracted my deep admiration as I
proceeded toward the sea. Their great stems, some of them
fully a hundred feet in diameter, attested their prodigious
height, which I could only guess at, since at no point could
I penetrate their dense foliage above me to more than sixty
or eighty feet.
As far aloft as I could see the stems and branches and
twigs were as smooth and as highly polished as the newest of
American-made pianos. The wood of some of the trees was
as black as ebony, while their nearest neighbours might
perhaps gleam in the subdued light of the forest as clear
and white as the finest china, or, again, they were azure,
scarlet, yellow, or deepest purple.
And in the same way was the foliage as gay and variegated
as the stems, while the blooms that clustered thick upon
them may not be described in any earthly tongue, and indeed
might challenge the language of the gods.
As I neared the confines of the forest I beheld before me
and between the grove and the open sea, a broad expanse
of meadow land, and as I was about to emerge from the
shadows of the trees a sight met my eyes that banished
all romantic and poetic reflection upon the beauties of
the strange landscape.
To my left the sea extended as far as the eye could reach,
before me only a vague, dim line indicated its further shore,
while at my right a mighty river, broad, placid, and majestic,
flowed between scarlet banks to empty into the quiet sea before me.
At a little distance up the river rose mighty perpendicular bluffs,
from the very base of which the great river seemed to rise.
But it was not these inspiring and magnificent evidences of
Nature’s grandeur that took my immediate attention from the
beauties of the forest. It was the sight of a score of figures
moving slowly about the meadow near the bank of the mighty river.
Odd, grotesque shapes they were; unlike anything that I had
ever seen upon Mars, and yet, at a distance, most manlike
in appearance. The larger specimens appeared to be about
ten or twelve feet in height when they stood erect, and
to be proportioned as to torso and lower extremities
precisely as is earthly man.
Their arms, however, were very short, and from where I stood
seemed as though fashioned much after the manner of an
elephant’s trunk, in that they moved in sinuous and snakelike
undulations, as though entirely without bony structure, or if
there were bones it seemed that they must be vertebral in nature.
As I watched them from behind the stem of a huge tree,
one of the creatures moved slowly in my direction, engaged
6
in the occupation that seemed to be the principal business of
each of them, and which consisted in running their oddly
shaped hands over the surface of the sward, for what purpose
I could not determine.
As he approached quite close to me I obtained an excellent
view of him, and though I was later to become better
acquainted with his kind, I may say that that single cursory
examination of this awful travesty on Nature would have
proved quite sufficient to my desires had I been a free agent.
The fastest flier of the Heliumetic Navy could not quickly
enough have carried me far from this hideous creature.
Its hairless body was a strange and ghoulish blue, except
for a broad band of white which encircled its protruding,
single eye: an eye that was all dead white--pupil, iris,
and ball.
Its nose was a ragged, inflamed, circular hole in the centre
of its blank face; a hole that resembled more closely nothing
that I could think of other than a fresh bullet wound which
has not yet commenced to bleed.
Below this repulsive orifice the face was quite blank to
the chin, for the thing had no mouth that I could discover.
The head, with the exception of the face, was covered by a tangled
mass of jet-black hair some eight or ten inches in length. Each
hair was about the bigness of a large angleworm, and as the thing
moved the muscles of its scalp this awful head-covering seemed
to writhe and wriggle and crawl about the fearsome face as though
indeed each separate hair was endowed with independent life.
The body and the legs were as symmetrically human as Nature
could have fashioned them, and the feet, too, were human
in shape, but of monstrous proportions. From heel to toe
they were fully three feet long, and very flat and very broad.
As it came quite close to me I discovered that its strange
movements, running its odd hands over the surface of the
turf, were the result of its peculiar method of feeding, which
consists in cropping off the tender vegetation with its
razorlike talons and sucking it up from its two mouths, which
lie one in the palm of each hand, through its arm-like throats.
In addition to the features which I have already described,
the beast was equipped with a massive tail about six feet in
length, quite round where it joined the body, but tapering to
a flat, thin blade toward the end, which trailed at right
angles to the ground.
By far the most remarkable feature of this most remarkable
creature, however, were the two tiny replicas of it, each
about six inches in length, which dangled, one on either side,
from its armpits. They were suspended by a small stem which
seemed to grow from the exact tops of their heads to where
it connected them with the body of the adult.
Whether they were the young, or merely portions of a
7
composite creature, I did not know.
As I had been scrutinizing this weird monstrosity the
balance of the herd had fed quite close to me and I now saw
that while many had the smaller specimens dangling from
them, not all were thus equipped, and I further noted that
the little ones varied in size from what appeared to be but
tiny unopened buds an inch in diameter through various
stages of development to the full-fledged and perfectly
formed creature of ten to twelve inches in length.
Feeding with the herd were many of the little fellows not
much larger than those which remained attached to their
parents, and from the young of that size the herd graded up
to the immense adults.
Fearsome-looking as they were, I did not know whether to
fear them or not, for they did not seem to be particularly
well equipped for fighting, and I was on the point of stepping
from my hiding-place and revealing myself to them to
note the effect upon them of the sight of a man when my
rash resolve was, fortunately for me, nipped in the bud by
a strange shrieking wail, which seemed to come from the
direction of the bluffs at my right.
Naked and unarmed, as I was, my end would have been
both speedy and horrible at the hands of these cruel creatures
had I had time to put my resolve into execution, but at the
moment of the shriek each member of the herd turned in the
direction from which the sound seemed to come, and at
the same instant every particular snake-like hair upon their
heads rose stiffly perpendicular as if each had been a sentient
organism looking or listening for the source or meaning of the
wail. And indeed the latter proved to be the truth, for this
strange growth upon the craniums of the plant men of Barsoom
represents the thousand ears of these hideous creatures,
the last remnant of the strange race which sprang from the
original Tree of Life.
Instantly every eye turned toward one member of the
herd, a large fellow who evidently was the leader. A strange
purring sound issued from the mouth in the palm of one of
his hands, and at the same time he started rapidly toward the
bluff, followed by the entire herd.
Their speed and method of locomotion were both remarkable,
springing as they did in great leaps of twenty or thirty
feet, much after the manner of a kangaroo.
They were rapidly disappearing when it occurred to me
to follow them, and so, hurling caution to the winds, I sprang
across the meadow in their wake with leaps and bounds even
more prodigious than their own, for the muscles of an
athletic Earth man produce remarkable results when pitted
against the lesser gravity and air pressure of Mars.
Their way led directly towards the apparent source of the
river at the base of the cliffs, and as I neared this point I
found the meadow dotted with huge boulders that the ravages
8
of time had evidently dislodged from the towering crags above.
For this reason I came quite close to the cause of the
disturbance before the scene broke upon my horrified gaze.
As I topped a great boulder I saw the herd of plant men
surrounding a little group of perhaps five or six green men
and women of Barsoom.
That I was indeed upon Mars I now had no doubt, for
here were members of the wild hordes that people the dead
sea bottoms and deserted cities of that dying planet.
Here were the great males towering in all the majesty of
their imposing height; here were the gleaming white tusks
protruding from their massive lower jaws to a point near the
centre of their foreheads, the laterally placed, protruding
eyes with which they could look forward or backward, or to
either side without turning their heads, here the strange
antennae-like ears rising from the tops of their foreheads;
and the additional pair of arms extending from midway between
the shoulders and the hips.
Even without the glossy green hide and the metal ornaments
which denoted the tribes to which they belonged, I would
have known them on the instant for what they were,
for where else in all the universe is their like duplicated?
There were two men and four females in the party and
their ornaments denoted them as members of different
hordes, a fact which tended to puzzle me infinitely, since
the various hordes of green men of Barsoom are eternally at
deadly war with one another, and never, except on that single
historic instance when the great Tars Tarkas of Thark gathered
a hundred and fifty thousand green warriors from several
hordes to march upon the doomed city of Zodanga to rescue
Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, from the clutches of
Than Kosis, had I seen green Martians of different hordes
associated in other than mortal combat.
But now they stood back to back, facing, in wide-eyed amazement,
the very evidently hostile demonstrations of a common enemy.
Both men and women were armed with long-swords and
daggers, but no firearms were in evidence, else it had been
short shrift for the gruesome plant men of Barsoom.
Presently the leader of the plant men charged the little
party, and his method of attack was as remarkable as it was
effective, and by its very strangeness was the more potent,
since in the science of the green warriors there was no
defence for this singular manner of attack, the like of which
it soon was evident to me they were as unfamiliar with as
they were with the monstrosities which confronted them.
The plant man charged to within a dozen feet of the party
and then, with a bound, rose as though to pass directly above
their heads. His powerful tail was raised high to one side, and
as he passed close above them he brought it down in one terrific
sweep that crushed a green warrior’s skull as though it had been
9
an eggshell.
The balance of the frightful herd was now circling rapidly
and with bewildering speed about the little knot of victims.
Their prodigious bounds and the shrill, screeching purr of
their uncanny mouths were well calculated to confuse and
terrorize their prey, so that as two of them leaped
simultaneously from either side, the mighty sweep of
those awful tails met with no resistance and two more
green Martians went down to an ignoble death.
There were now but one warrior and two females left,
and it seemed that it could be but a matter of seconds
ere these, also, lay dead upon the scarlet sward.
But as two more of the plant men charged, the warrior,
who was now prepared by the experiences of the past few
minutes, swung his mighty long-sword aloft and met the
hurtling bulk with a clean cut that clove one of the
plant men from chin to groin.
The other, however, dealt a single blow with his cruel tail
that laid both of the females crushed corpses upon the ground.
As the green warrior saw the last of his companions go
down and at the same time perceived that the entire herd
was charging him in a body, he rushed boldly to meet them,
swinging his long-sword in the terrific manner that I had so
often seen the men of his kind wield it in their ferocious and
almost continual warfare among their own race.
Cutting and hewing to right and left, he laid an open path
straight through the advancing plant men, and then commenced
a mad race for the forest, in the shelter of which
he evidently hoped that he might find a haven of refuge.
He had turned for that portion of the forest which abutted
on the cliffs, and thus the mad race was taking the entire
party farther and farther from the boulder where I lay concealed.
As I had watched the noble fight which the great warrior
had put up against such enormous odds my heart had swelled
in admiration for him, and acting as I am wont to do, more
upon impulse than after mature deliberation, I instantly
sprang from my sheltering rock and bounded quickly toward
the bodies of the dead green Martians, a well-defined plan
of action already formed.
Half a dozen great leaps brought me to the spot, and another
instant saw me again in my stride in quick pursuit of the
hideous monsters that were rapidly gaining on the fleeing
warrior, but this time I grasped a mighty long-sword in my
hand and in my heart was the old blood lust of the fighting
man, and a red mist swam before my eyes and I felt my lips
respond to my heart in the old smile that has ever marked
me in the midst of the joy of battle.
Swift as I was I was none too soon, for the green warrior
had been overtaken ere he had made half the distance to the
10
摘要：

GodsOfMars,The[pg/etext93/gmars11.txt]THEGODSOFMARSwasfirstpublishedinALL-STORYMAGAZINEasafive-partserial,JanuarythroughMay1913.THEGODSOFMARSEdgarRiceBurroughsFOREWORDTWELVEyearshadpassedsinceIhadlaidthebodyofmygreat-uncle,CaptainJohnCarter,ofVirginia,awayfromthesightofmeninthatstrangemausoleuminthe...

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