Under the Moons of Mars

by John Joseph Adams

“You have to come!” he laughed, clapping me on the back hard enough to kill a Thark. “Satisfy your curiosity, man!”

  I muttered something about not having any damned curiosity, but not too loud. Like I said, I never wanted to push Carter too far.

  We left that night in a three-man flyer, Kantos Kan naturally leapin’ at the opportunity to stick his nose in somewhere dangerous. He laughed at me as I found it difficult to sit on what passed for a seat in them Martian flyers, but it wasn’t because of the buttock wound. (That had healed up right nicely.) I just was a little awkward what with my three radium pistols, sword, knife, water bottle, and haversack, all of it worn over a fur robe ’cause I felt the cold. Carter and Kan, as per usual, were wearing outfits that would have got them arrested just about anywhere civilized, just a few leather straps, a pouch over the unmentionables, and some bits of metal stuck on here and there that Carter told me in his case meant much the same as Grant’s three stars.

  The valley where they’d found me was quite some distance away. I forget how far in Martian haads or karads, but it was nine hundred miles, give or take, about six hours’ flight. Shame we ain’t got those flyers here on Earth, cause they beat the railroad hollow for speed, and you don’t get covered in soot, neither.

  We arrived soon after the Martian dawn, and sure enough, Carter knew almost exactly where to go. Kantos Kan dropped the flyer down where Carter pointed, and then the three of us took no more than ten minutes looking about before we found that circular hatch.

  As before, there weren’t no way of opening the thing, but this didn’t put Carter off. He knelt down by it, and just thought at it for a while, while I fidgeted about nearby and Kantos Kan went back and leant on his flier.

  Even knowin’ what I did about Carter being able to read Martian minds and all, I was still taken aback more than a bit when that trapdoor started to turn about, making a noise like a railroad engine straining for grip on a greasy rail. Then the whole dang thing rose up out of the ground, turning as it came, till there was a cylinder some ten foot high and six feet in diameter sticking up out of the dust.

  Carter rapped on the side of it with his knuckle, and a door slid open. There was a whitish-kind of Martian standing there, dressed up in the kind of driving outfit folks wear here nowadays, with the long leather coat and the goggles and all. I guess I was staring like a fool, while Carter had stepped a little to the side—he always was in the right place—so when the Martian suddenly raised up this bellows thing and blew a cloud of green gas it went straight at me, and afore I knew it, I’d sucked it into my chest.

  I don’t know what was in that gas, but as soon as I breathed it down, I was stuck fast where I was, unable to move a muscle. I watched Carter lean in and stick the goggle-wearing Martian with his sword, then haul him out by his coat and throw him a good dozen yards away to die in the dust. Then he came back to me, and I saw his mouth moving, but I couldn’t hear any words, and my eyes were already closing, being as I was unexpectedly come over weary.

  I think he was saying summat along the lines of “Why did you stand there, idiot?” which fair sums up our dialogue, then and later. I reckon he thought I was willfully stupid, which was why he was always having to push me out of the way, or rescue me and all. Not that he ever complained when it was Dejah Thoris who needed rescuin’, which happened a damn sight more to her than anyone might expect. I guess I was never much of a hero, but at least I weren’t kidnapping-prone like Miss Dejah Thoris.

  She never liked me, neither. Maybe because of the time I was checking over Carter’s accounts and couldn’t make them balance, though I never said a thing about it being kind of peculiar that her new jeweled doo-dah cost the same as the missing money.

  That was much later, anyhow. After I sucked that gas and was knocked out or put to sleep, the next time I opened my eyes I was no longer on Mars! I was back in my own body, sitting in the canyon mouth, with my back against the wall. There was a kind of lean-to built over my head, and dry-stone walls up to near my waist, and sitting alongside of me in a rocking chair was my partner, Nine-Tenths Noah.

  “You awake, then?” he said pausing in his rockin’ to take a gulp of what had to be water, on account of I couldn’t smell it.

  “Reckon I am,” I said, wonderingly. “How long has it been?”

  “Five months and a week,” replied Noah.

  I slowly stood up, marveling that all my muscles and faculties worked as they should. I flexed my fingers, and right then noticed that I was no longer holding the Indian painting or whatever it was.

  Noah saw me looking at my empty hand.

  “Real bad medicine,” he said. “I throwed it back in that there cave it come from, where it should have stayed.”

  I looked at him properly, taking in his unusually bright eyes and pink skin. Forcible laying off the whiskey had done him good service it seemed, but I was kind of puzzled how come he was still alive.

  “What you been eatin’ while I was out of my head, Noah?”

  “Mules,” he replied. “You up to walkin’?”

  “Yep,” I replied. I felt fine, and mighty relieved to be back where I belonged. For good, or so I thought at the time, little knowing that I’d be back on Mars within the year, once again running along behind John Carter, and wishing I wasn’t.

  “We gotta go spend some gold,” said Noah. “Where you been, anyhow? I seed you was spirit-walking.”

  “Mars,” I said. “It ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Mars,” mused Noah, an odd, faraway expression passing across his face. “They got any gold up there?”

  Anyhows, that’s how I first met up with the all high-and-mighty John Carter of Mars, even if he don’t care to recollect it himself, what with him being Warlord and Jeddak of Jeddaks and all that stuff. Or maybe he was still cantankerous about the South losing the War and all. He always did get all maudlin when he was back on Earth, whining about missing Dejah Thoris, and reminiscin’ something horrid about what went wrong at Chancellorsville and suchlike.

  I tried to tell my old general, Phil Sheridan, that the folks in Washington ought to keep an eye on Mars, because there was a Johnny Reb up there itching to start over if he could figure a ways of getting his army alongside of Earth. But then I disappeared back to Barsoom myself, and by the time I returned, Phil was dead.

  I guess if J. C. does decide to attack the United States, I’ll probably be there with him, dang it. I don’t know how it’s worked out like this, but I just can’t get rid of the fellow, at least not permanent-like.

  Or maybe it’s that he can’t rid of me?

  Whereas A Princess of Mars concerns the adventures of an Earthman on Mars, our next tale inverts the formula and presents the adventures of Barsoomians on Earth. The Superstition Mountains are a real mountain range in southern Arizona, and some Apaches believe that a hidden cave there leads down into another world. Many of the characters in this story are real historical figures. Cochise was a chief of the Chiricahua Apache who led a decade-long guerilla campaign against the U.S. Army and white settlers encroaching on Apache lands. In one famous incident, Cochise was lured to the tent of Lieutenant George Bascom, who mistakenly believed that Cochise was responsible for a recent raid. When Bascom attempted to arrest Cochise, the Apache drew a knife and cut his way free. Cochise’s only white friend, a U.S. Army scout named Tom Jeffords, eventually brokered a peace agreement between Cochise and General Oliver O. Howard, called “The Christian General” because he tried to base all policy decisions on scripture. (He later founded Howard University to promote higher education for freed slaves.) Cochise, Jeffords, and Howard appear as characters in the 1950 film Broken Arrow, notable as the first major Western of its era to present a sympathetic view of American Indians.

  THE GHOST THAT HAUNTS THE SUPERSTITION MOUNTAINS

  BY CHRIS CLAREMONT

  CHAPTER 11

  The days are warmer here in Arizona than their counterparts on Barsoom, but the nights there, on the pl
anet that we of Earth call Mars, are much colder. I have always found it surprising how little the people of my adopted homeworld wear to protect themselves from the elements. I suspect that nature has cast the Red Martian race of somewhat firmer stuff than we.

  I must confess I feel strange to be clad once more in the attire of my native planet, to be astride a horse instead of an eight-legged thoat. In the great scheme of things, very little time has passed since I first made the journey out across the heavens—and yet, now that I have returned, it is this place where I was born that seems alien to me. Heart and soul, I have embraced my adopted world as my home, as I have the Princess whom I love.

  But fate—no doubt with a laugh of outright glee—has cast me along a different road.

  And not alone, either. Beside me on the trail rides my wife, though her mount carries but the riding blanket of the Apache, plus a sheath for her long gun, whereas mine is laden down with saddle and gear and a Henry rifle.

  On Barsoom, Dejah Thoris rides naked—as do all her people, male and female, young and old—her sole adornments being decorative jewelry of breathtaking beauty, and, of course, weapons. Here, such a presentation would guarantee to cause trouble, and so she has dressed herself in a leather riding skirt and knee-high soft-skinned boots of the Apache style. She wears a blouse common to Chiricahua women and over that a leather horse jacket more akin to what a frontiersman might favor. At first glance, aside from her own Henry repeater in its rifle scabbard, she seems to ride without weapons. She is, of course, a dead shot. Beyond that, scattered about her person, are an assortment of knives in sheathes that are mostly hidden to the easy eye. She prefers blades to pistols, she says they provide more variety of practical use—asking with a smile if anyone’s ever tried carving up a piece of wood, or the day’s meal, with a pistol barrel? Whoever looks on her as easy prey will find themselves with a very nasty surprise.

  Her clothes are as well worn as mine, though she finds the wearing of them almost barbaric. Among her people, the body—indeed, life itself—is a gift to be celebrated, and to them that cannot be done by hiding it away. More importantly, the clothes my people wear here on Earth she sees as a significant detriment in a fight, an encumbrance that no proper warrior can afford—especially given the adversaries he, or she, is likely to face on Barsoom.

  But, as she herself is the first to admit—as we have both discovered during our travels and adventures across the face of her ancient world—different people have different customs. When one is a visitor, it’s always best to show those people, and their ways, an appropriate measure of respect.

  “There were times,” she notes quietly, and with a smile, as she reins in her animal and dismounts with practiced ease, “these past months, when I thought we’d never see these mountains again.”

  “The Superstitions are well-named,” I concede, following suit and taking the reins from my Princess to secure our mounts to a convenient tree. “No one—among both my people and the Apaches—has properly explored them; there are just too many stories of travelers disappearing or falling prey to hideous monsters.”

  “Like a monstrous tall, green-skinned, four-armed Thark,” she suggests. I respond with a nod, but truthfully my mind is suddenly wandering elsewhere.

  “Make a wrong turn, and find yourself on Barsoom,” she suggests idly. She is teasing—a little—but I take her words seriously.

  “I did,” is my reply. “Alternately,” I continue as she nods, conceding the point, “an apt or a banth might find themselves transported here.” The one is an arctic predator, the other Mars’s equivalent of a terrestrial lion. Both are formidable hunters but the banth is truly fearsome in battle. “The question is, how quickly and how well a beast, a predator, of Barsoom might adapt to the environment here?”

  “I did,” says my beloved, simply and factually, tossing my words back at me.

  “As did I,” echoes a new voice, from farther up the deeply shadowed slope and as well better than a dozen feet above our heads.

  Before us, striding into the starlight’s clear view comes Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark—and my very best friend. By any stretch, he is an imposing—if not outright terrifying—creature, standing double the height of a tall man.

  His physique is similar to ours, in a general sense; he walks on two extremely powerful legs that have adapted well to the heavier gravity of this larger world. But from his torso reach a double pair of arms. His skull encloses a brain as sharp and gifted as our own, his face holds a pair of eyes. His nose is flat; it does not protrude like its human counterpart, or those of my beloved’s people. And while his mouth bears a full stock of teeth, what dominates the lower jaw are a pair of upward-curving fangs, reaching to his forehead, bespeaking an ancestry so fierce that I don’t care to think about what his race must have looked like back when it began.

  He stands downwind of us and stays mostly in the shadows, amongst the trees, his emerald skin blending quite nicely with the local foliage. Our mounts sense that something is there but they also sense no threat and so remain quite calm.

  “From what I’ve been hearing in town,” I note, striding upslope to join him, “you’ve been creating a rather impressive legend for yourself up here, my friend. They’re calling you the Ghost that haunts the Superstition Mountains.”

  “Not just among the settlers,” agrees my Princess. “There are tales being told among the Chiricahua, as well.”

  “Perhaps, at night,” concedes the Thark, “when I look up at the sky and toward my home, I let my emotions get the better of me.”

  “Not—singing,” I cannot hide my horror. Few things sound as primal and as terrifying as a Green Martian crooning to himself. It is something common only to the males; thankfully, the females of their species are gifted with more taste. Yet even as we exchange our small bits of humor, my mind races along a different trail.

  Dejah Thoris senses this and asks me, “What?”

  “A thought,” is my reply as I recall all that I’ve learned of her world and her people. At the same time, I stroll back and forth across the mouth of the cavern, wishing I had one of the artificial lights utilized by her people. Its beam would illuminate the cavern before us as brightly as the midday sun. Part of my mind reassures me that this is simply a cavern, nothing whatever to fear. And yet, another part, that I respect more because it’s served me well in battle and adventures both, cautions that not all here is as it seems.

  I shake my head, very much aware of my gun-hand perching itself close beside the Colt pistol on my belt. My left hand has already released the lanyard slung over the hammer to keep the weapon from falling free of the holster. “We make fun of what’s happened here with Tars Tarkas,” I tell her, “but I heard similar stories when I first came to Tucson, before I got transported to Barsoom. And among the Chiricahua, these tales of ghosts and monsters go back as far as those people can remember.”

  “So?”

  “Your kind live a thousand years,” I say, trying not to think of that primal difference between us: If I lived longer than any man known, I would still pass from the world before my beloved had breathed even a decent fraction of her allotted span. “Suppose, in ages past, another of your people crossed from Barsoom to Earth—and perhaps become the source of all these legends?”

  “That is a thought, John Carter—but if so, then where is he? Or she? In our time here, we’ve seen no evidence of another like us.”

  “True,” I concede with a shrug. “It was just a thought.” Yet even as I say this, I realize that my pistol still hangs untethered in its holster, ready to be quickly drawn if needed. Whatever I may tell myself, that the night around us is quiet and peaceful, my body has a mind of its own—and that mind is very much on edge. My conscious thoughts may not yet be aware of it, but instinct is telling me to be careful here. Something is—not right.

  I turn toward Tars Tarkas to ask, “Is the cave still clear?” It is a matter of no small concern, given the difference in our size.

>   “It is now as when we arrived, my friend,” he assures me but there’s a tenor to his voice that catches my attention.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I’m thinking, much like you, that this all seems so easy, we just walk through this entrance to the cave and—somehow emerge back home on Barsoom.”

  “It happened in reverse to bring us here,” notes Dejah Thoris.

  “And our lives have been chaos ever since.” This is from me, as I recall our wild adventures, as Earth’s greater gravity and air pressure brought down both my companions, very nearly stripping them of their lives over those first terrible nights. I could do nothing really for Tars Tarkas, I had to leave him in a desperate attempt to save my wife, trusting that his significantly more formidable physique would sustain him. Dejah Thoris’s survival came about thanks to the intervention of Cochise, leader of the Chiricahua, and his blood brother Tom Jeffords, who manages the Pony Express riders coming in and out of Tucson.

  Now, at long last, we have a chance to return home.

  “If, as you surmise,” notes our green comrade, “another of Barsoom made the transition to Earth in time past, why did he never return?”

  “Simple misadventure,” suggests Dejah Thoris. “Remember what almost happened to me?” I’d rather not, thank you, but I could not help but recall a frantic chase through mountains and desert after she’d been taken by a band of rogue French cavalry who’d crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico, only to fall into the hands of equally villainous Apaches. More than once, she’d faced death, and far worse.

  “I don’t know what will happen, my friend,” I tell Tars Tarkas, gesturing toward the mouth of the cave, “but our work here is done. With the arrival of General Howard, there’s a decent chance for a lasting peace between the Chiricahua and the settlers. And in truth there’s no guarantee that whatever power brought us here will act in reverse. It could be exactly as you say: We walk in here, we walk out back home. Or not. I’m afraid there’s but one way to find out for sure.” To my own surprise, I have no doubt of what will happen: Whatever mysterious force brought us here will be considerate enough to return us safely to Barsoom.