Edgar Rice Burroughs - Mars Chronicles 06 - The Master Mind

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HANDS UP!

THE PALACE OF MU TEL

PHUNDAHL

XAXA

THE GREAT TUR

BACK TO THAVAS

JOHN CARTER

rather than the figments of your imagination.

It is true that in those days of strenuous preparation there was little time for

dreaming, yet there were brief moments before sleep claimed me at night and these

were my dreams. Such dreams! Always of Mars, and during my waking hours at

night my eyes always sought out the Red Planet when he was above the horizon

and clung there seeking a solution of the seemingly unfathomable riddle he has

presented to the Earthman for ages.

Perhaps the thing became an obsession. I know it clung to me all during my

training camp days, and at night, on the deck of the transport, I would he on my

back gazing up into the red eye of the god of battle--my god--and wishing that, like

John Carter, I might be drawn across the great void to the haven of my desire.

And then came the hideous days and nights in the trenches--the rats, the

vermin, the mud--with an occasional glorious break in the monotony when we

were ordered over the top. I loved it then and I loved the bursting shells, the mad,

wild chaos of the thundering guns, but the rats and the vermin and the mud--God!

how I hated them. It sounds like boasting, I know, and I am sorry; but I wanted to

write you just the truth about myself. I think you will understand.

And it may account for much that happened afterwards.

There came at last to me what had come to so many others upon those bloody

fields. It came within the week that I had received my first promotion and my

captaincy, of which I was greatly proud, though humbly so; realizing as I did my

youth, the great responsibility that it placed upon me as well as the opportunities it

offered, not only in service to my country but, in a personal way, to the men of my

command. We had advanced a matter of two kilometers and with a small

detachment I was holding a very advanced position when I received orders to fall

back to the new line. That is the last that I remember until I regained consciousness

after dark. A shell must have burst among us. What became of my men I never

knew. It was cold and very dark when I awoke and at first, for an instant, I was

quite comfortable--before I was fully conscious, I imagine--and then I commenced

to feel pain. It grew until it seemed unbearable. It was in my legs. I reached down

to feel them, but my hand recoiled from what it found, and when I tried to move

my legs I discovered that I was dead from the waist down. Then the moon came

going maimed through life than I shrank from the thought of death.

Then my eyes suddenly focussed upon the bright red eye of Mars and there

surged through me a sudden wave of hope. I stretched out my arms towards Mars, I

did not seem to question or to doubt for an instant as I prayed to the god of my

vocation to reach forth and succour me. I knew that he would do it, my faith was

complete, and yet so great was the mental effort that I made to throw off the

hideous bonds of my mutilated flesh that I felt a momentary qualm of nausea and

then a sharp click as of the snapping of a steel wire, and suddenly I stood naked

upon two good legs looking down upon the bloody, distorted thing that had been I.

Just for an instant did I stand thus before I turned my eyes aloft again to my star of

destiny and with outstretched arms stand there in the cold of that French night--

waiting.

Suddenly I felt myself drawn with the speed of thought through the trackless

wastes of interplanetary space. There was an instant of extreme cold and utter

darkness, then--But the rest is in the manuscript that, with the aid of one greater

than either of us, I have found the means to transmit to you with this letter. You

and a few others of the chosen will believe in it--for the rest it matters not as yet.

The time will come--but why tell you what you already know?

My salutations and my congratulations--the latter on your good fortune in

having been chosen as the medium through which Earthmen shall become better

acquainted with the manners and customs of Barsoom, against the time that they

shall pass through space as easily as John Carter, and visit the scenes that he has

described to them through you, as have I.

Your sincere friend, ULYSSES PAXTON, Late Captain,---th Inf., U.S. Army.

though he had a head beyond all proportion to his body, which was, I am sure,

really not the case.

As he stared down upon me through enormous, many lensed spectacles I found

the opportunity to examine him as minutely in return. He was, perhaps, five feet

five in height, though doubtless he had been taller in youth, since he was somewhat

bent; he was naked except for some rather plain and well-worn leather harness

which supported his weapons and pocket pouches, and one great ornament a collar,

jewel studded, that he wore around his scraggy neck--such a collar as a dowager

empress of pork or real estate might barter her soul for, if she had one. His skin

was red, his scant locks grey. As he looked at me his puzzled expression increased

in intensity, he grasped his chin between the thumb and fingers of his left hand and

slowly raising his right hand he scratched his head most deliberately. Then he

spoke to me, but in a language I did not understand.

At his first words I sat up and shook my head. Then I looked about me. I was

seated upon a crimson sward within a high walled enclosure, at least two, and

possibly three, sides of which were formed by the outer walls of a structure that in

some respects resembled more closely a feudal castle of Europe than any familiar

form of architecture that comes to my mind. The facade presented to my view was

ornately carved and of most irregular design, the roof line being so broken as to

almost suggest a ruin, and yet the whole seemed harmonious and not without

beauty. Within the enclosure grew a number of trees and shrubs, all weirdly

strange and all, or almost all, profusely flowering. About them wound walks of

coloured pebbles among which scintillated what appeared to be rare and beautiful

gems, so lovely were the strange, unearthly rays that leaped and played in the

sunshine.

The old man spoke again, peremptorily this time, as though repeating a

command that had been ignored, but again I shook my head. Then he laid a hand

upon one of his two swords, but as he drew the weapon I leaped to my feet, with

such remarkable results that I cannot even now say which of us was the more

surprised. I must have sailed ten feet into the air and back about twenty feet from

where I had been sitting; then I was sure that I was upon Mars (not that I had for

one instant doubted it), for the effects of the lesser gravity, the colour of the sward

and the skin-hue of the red Martians I had seen described in the manuscripts of

he could not find them, his hands, seemingly afflicted by that strange perversity

that sometimes confounds our simplest acts, passing all about the lost object of

their search, yet never once coming in contact with it.

As I stood watching his futile efforts and considering the advisability of

restoring to him the means that would enable him more readily to find my heart

with his sword point, I became aware that another had entered the enclosure.

Looking towards the building I saw a large red-man running rapidly towards

the little old man of the spectacles. The newcomer was quite naked, he carried a

club in one hand, and there was upon his face such an expression as

unquestionably boded ill for the helpless husk of humanity grovelling, mole-like,

for its lost spectacles.

My first impulse was to remain neutral in an affair that it seemed could not

possibly concern me and of which I had no slightest knowledge upon which to base

a predilection towards either of the parties involved; but a second glance at the face

of the club-bearer aroused a question as to whether it might not concern me after

all.

There was that in the expression upon the man's face that betokened either an

inherent savageness of disposition or a maniacal cast of mind which might turn his

evidently murderous attentions upon me after he had dispatched his elderly victim,

while, in outward appearance at least, the latter was a sane and relatively harmless

individual. It is true that his move to draw his sword against me was not indicative

of a friendly disposition towards me, but at least, if there were any choice, he

seemed the lesser of two evils.

He was still groping for his spectacles and the naked man was almost upon him

as I reached the decision to cast my lot upon the side of the old man. I was twenty

feet away, naked and unarmed, but to cover the distance with my Earthly muscles

required but an instant, and a naked sword lay by the old man's side where he had

discarded it the better to search for his spectacles. So it was that I faced the attacker

at the instant that he came within striking distance of his victim, and the blow

which had been intended for another was aimed at me. I side-stepped it and then I

learned that the greater agility of my Earthly muscles had its disadvantages as well

as its advantages, for, indeed, I had to learn to walk at the very instant that I had to

learn to fight with a new weapon against a maniac armed with a bludgeon, or at

ground and when he aimed a blow at me, and I had dodged it, I touched him with

my point and brought blood along with a savage roar of pain. He went more

cautiously then, and taking advantage of the change I pressed him so that he fell

back. The effect upon me was magical, giving me new confidence, so that I set

upon him in good earnest, thrusting and cutting until I had him bleeding in a half-

dozen places, yet taking good care to avoid his mighty swings, any one of which

would have felled an ox.

In my attempts to elude him in the beginning of the duel we had crossed the

enclosure and were now fighting at a considerable distance from the point of our

first meeting. It now happened that I stood facing towards that point at the moment

that the old man regained his spectacles, which he quickly adjusted to his eyes.

Immediately he looked about until he discovered us, whereupon he commenced to

yell excitedly at us at the same time running in our direction and drawing his short-

sword as he ran. The red-man was pressing me hard, but I had gained almost

complete control of myself, and fearing that I was soon to have two antagonists

instead of one I set upon him with redoubled intensity. He missed me by the

fraction of an inch, the wind in the wake of his bludgeon fanning my scalp, but he

left an opening into which I stepped, running my sword fairly through his heart. At

least I thought that I had pierced his heart but I had forgotten what I had once read

in one of John Carter's manuscripts to the effect that all the Martian internal organs

are not disposed identically with those of Earthmen. However, the immediate

results were quite as satisfactory as though I had found his heart for the wound was

sufficiently grievous to place him hors de combat, and at that instant the old

gentleman arrived. He found me ready, but I had mistaken his intentions. He made

no unfriendly gestures with his weapon, but seemed to be trying to convince me

that he had no intention of harming me. He was very excited and apparently

tremendously annoyed that I could not understand him, and perplexed, too. He

hopped about screaming strange sentences at me that bore the tones of peremptory

commands, rabid invective and impotent rage. But the fact that he had returned his

sword to its scabbard had greater significance than all his jabbering, and when he

ceased to yell at me and commenced to talk in a sort of pantomime I realized that

he was making overtures of peace if not of friendship, so I lowered my point and

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摘要：

HANDSUP!THEPALACEOFMUTELPHUNDAHLXAXATHEGREATTURBACKTOTHAVASJOHNCARTERratherthanthefigmentsofyourimagination.Itistruethatinthosedaysofstrenuouspreparationtherewaslittletimefordreaming,yettherewerebriefmomentsbeforesleepclaimedmeatnightandtheseweremydreams.Suchdreams!AlwaysofMars,andduringmywakinghour...

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Edgar Rice Burroughs - Mars Chronicles 06 - The Master Mind

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