tmp_b8f7d28b703a3437bd724778e112fcd6_S1_0sS.fixed.tidied

by MD Scott

  Instantly the sleeping thousands were awake. The decks of a thousand monster craft teemed with fighting-womenwomen, for an alarm on Omean was a thing of rare occurrence.

  We cast away before the sound of the first gun had died, and another second saw us rising swiftly from the surface of the sea. I lay at full length along the deck with the levers and buttons of control before me. Xodara and the girl were stretched directly behind me, prone also that we might offer as little resistance to the air as possible.

  'Rise high,' whispered Xodara. 'They dare not fire their heavy guns toward the dome--the fragments of the shells would drop back among their own craft. If we are high enough our keel plates will protect us from rifle fire.'

  I did as she bade. Below us we could see the women leaping into the water by hundreds, and striking out for the small cruisers and one-man fliers that lay moored about the big ships. The larger craft were getting under way, following us rapidly, but not rising from the water.

  'A little to your right,' cried Xodara, for there are no points of compass upon Omean where every direction is due north.

  The pandemonium that had broken out below us was deafening. Rifles cracked, officers shouted orders, women yelled directions to one another from the water and from the decks of myriad boats, while through all ran the purr of countless propellers cutting water and air.

  I had not dared pull my speed lever to the highest for fear of overrunning the mouth of the shaft that passed from Omean's dome to the world above, but even so we were hitting a clip that I doubt has ever been equalled on the windless sea.

  The smaller fliers were commencing to rise toward us when Xodara shouted: 'The shaft! The shaft! Dead ahead,' and I saw the opening, black and yawning in the glowing dome of this underworld.

  A ten-man cruiser was rising directly in front to cut off our escape. It was the only vessel that stood in our way, but at the rate that it was traveling it would come between us and the shaft in plenty of time to thwart our plans.

  It was rising at an angle of about forty-five degrees dead ahead of us, with the evident intention of combing us with grappling hooks from above as it skimmed low over our deck.

  There was but one forlorn hope for us, and I took it. It was useless to try to pass over him, for that would have allowed his to force us against the rocky dome above, and we were already too near that as it was. To have attempted to dive below his would have put us entirely at his mercy, and precisely where he wanted us. On either side a hundred other menacing craft were hastening toward us. The alternative was filled with risk--in fact it was all risk, with but a slender chance of success.

  As we neared the cruiser I rose as though to pass above him, so that he would do just what he did do, rise at a steeper angle to force me still higher. Then as we were almost upon his I yelled to my companions to hold tight, and throwing the little vessel into his highest speed I deflected his bows at the same instant until we were running horizontally and at terrific velocity straight for the cruiser's keel.

  His commander may have seen my intentions then, but it was too late. Almost at the instant of impact I turned my bows upward, and then with a shattering jolt we were in collision. What I had hoped for happened. The cruiser, already tilted at a perilous angle, was carried completely over backward by the impact of my smaller vessel. His crew fell twisting and screaming through the air to the water far below, while the cruiser, his propellers still madly churning, dived swiftly headforemost after them to the bottom of the Sea of Omean.

  The collision crushed our steel bows, and notwithstanding every effort on our part came near to hurling us from the deck. As it was we landed in a wildly clutching heap at the very extremity of the flier, where Xodara and I succeeded in grasping the hand-rail, but the girl would have plunged overboard had I not fortunately grasped her ankle as she was already partially over.

  Unguided, our vessel careened wildly in its mad flight, rising ever nearer the rocks above. It took but an instant, however, for me to regain the levers, and with the roof barely fifty feet above I turned his nose once more into the horizontal plane and headed his again for the black mouth of the shaft.

  The collision had retarded our progress and now a hundred swift scouts were close upon us. Xodara had told me that ascending the shaft by virtue of our repulsive rays alone would give our enemies their best chance to overtake us, since our propellers would be idle and in rising we would be outclassed by many of our pursuers. The swifter craft are seldom equipped with large buoyancy tanks, since the added bulk of them tends to reduce a vessel's speed.

  As many boats were now quite close to us it was inevitable that we would be quickly overhauled in the shaft, and captured or killed in short order.

  To me there always seems a way to gain the opposite side of an obstacle. If one cannot pass over it, or below it, or around it, why then there is but a single alternative left, and that is to pass through it. I could not get around the fact that many of these other boats could rise faster than ours by the fact of their greater buoyancy, but I was none the less determined to reach the outer world far in advance of them or die a death of my own choosing in event of failure.

  'Reverse?' screamed Xodara, behind me. 'For the love of your first ancestor, reverse. We are at the shaft.'

  'Hold tight!' I screamed in reply. 'Grasp the girl and hold tight--we are going straight up the shaft.'

  The words were scarce out of my mouth as we swept beneath the pitch-black opening. I threw the bow hard up, dragged the speed lever to its last notch, and clutching a stanchion with one hand and the steering-wheel with the other hung on like grim death and consigned my soul to its author.

  I heard a little exclamation of surprise from Xodara, followed by a grim laugh. The girl laughed too and said something which I could not catch for the whistling of the wind of our awful speed.

  I looked above my head, hoping to catch the gleam of stars by which I could direct our course and hold the hurtling thing that bore us true to the centre of the shaft. To have touched the side at the speed we were making would doubtless have resulted in instant death for us all. But not a star showed above--only utter and impenetrable darkness.

  Then I glanced below me, and there I saw a rapidly diminishing circle of light--the mouth of the opening above the phosphorescent radiance of Omean. By this I steered, endeavouring to keep the circle of light below me ever perfect. At best it was but a slender cord that held us from destruction, and I think that I steered that night more by intuition and blind faith than by skill or reason.

  We were not long in the shaft, and possibly the very fact of our enormous speed saved us, for evidently we started in the right direction and so quickly were we out again that we had no time to alter our course. Omean lies perhaps two miles below the surface crust of Mars. Our speed must have approximated two hundred miles an hour, for Martian fliers are swift, so that at most we were in the shaft not over forty seconds.

  We must have been out of it for some seconds before I realised that we had accomplished the impossible. Black darkness enshrouded all about us. There were neither moons nor stars. Never before had I seen such a thing upon Mars, and for the moment I was nonplussed. Then the explanation came to me. It was summer at the south pole. The ice cap was melting and those meteoric phenomena, clouds, unknown upon the greater part of Barsoom, were shutting out the light of heaven from this portion of the planet.

  Fortunate indeed it was for us, nor did it take me long to grasp the opportunity for escape which this happy condition offered us. Keeping the boat's nose at a stiff angle I raced his for the impenetrable curtain which Nature had hung above this dying world to shut us out from the sight of our pursuing enemies.

  We plunged through the cold camp fog without diminishing our speed, and in a moment emerged into the glorious light of the two moons and the million stars. I dropped into a horizontal course and headed due north. Our enemies were a good half-hour behind us with no conception of our direction. We had performed the miraculous a
nd come through a thousand dangers unscathed--we had escaped from the land of the First Born. No other prisoners in all the ages of Barsoom had done this thing, and now as I looked back upon it it did not seem to have been so difficult after all.

  I said as much to Xodara, over my shoulder.

  'It is very wonderful, nevertheless,' she replied. 'No one else could have accomplished it but Joan Carter.'

  At the sound of that name the girl jumped to her feet.

  'Joan Carter!' she cried. 'Joan Carter! Why, woman, Joan Carter, Princess of Helium, has been dead for years. I am her daughter.'

  CHAPTER XIV

  THE EYES IN THE DARK

  My son! I could not believe my ears. Slowly I rose and faced the handsome youth. Now that I looked at her closely I commenced to see why her face and personality had attracted me so strongly. There was much of her father's incomparable beauty in her clear-cut features, but it was strongly feminine beauty, and her grey eyes and the expression of them were mine.

  The girl stood facing me, half hope and half uncertainty in her look.

  'Tell me of your mother,' I said. 'Tell me all you can of the years that I have been robbed by a relentless fate of his dear companionship.'

  With a cry of pleasure she sprang toward me and threw her arms about my neck, and for a brief moment as I held my girl close to me the tears welled to my eyes and I was like to have choked after the manner of some maudlin fool--but I do not regret it, nor am I ashamed. A long life has taught me that a woman may seem weak where men and children are concerned and yet be anything but a weakling in the sterner avenues of life.

  'Your stature, your manner, the terrible ferocity of your swordswomanship,' said the girl, 'are as my mother has described them to me a thousand times--but even with such evidence I could scarce credit the truth of what seemed so improbable to me, however much I desired it to be true. Do you know what thing it was that convinced me more than all the others?'

  'What, my girl?' I asked.

  'Your first words to me--they were of my mother. None else but the woman who loved his as he has told me my mother did would have thought first of him.'

  'For long years, my daughter, I can scarce recall a moment that the radiant vision of your father's face has not been ever before me. Tell me of him.'

  'Those who have known him longest say that he has not changed, unless it be to grow more beautiful--were that possible. Only, when he thinks I am not about to see him, his face grows very sad, and, oh, so wistful. He thinks ever of you, my mother, and all Helium mourns with his and for him. His grandfather's people love him. They loved you also, and fairly worship your memory as the saviour of Barsoom.

  'Each year that brings its anniversary of the day that saw you racing across a near dead world to unlock the secret of that awful portal behind which lay the mighty power of life for countless millions a great festival is held in your honour; but there are tears mingled with the thanksgiving--tears of real regret that the author of the happiness is not with them to share the joy of living she died to give them. Upon all Barsoom there is no greater name than Joan Carter.'

  'And by what name has your mother called you, my girl?' I asked.

  'The people of Helium asked that I be named with my mother's name, but my mother said no, that you and he had chosen a name for me together, and that your wish must be honoured before all others, so the name that he called me is the one that you desired, a combination of his and yours--Carthoris.'

  Xodara had been at the wheel as I talked with my daughter, and now she called me.

  'He is dropping badly by the head, Joan Carter,' she said. 'So long as we were rising at a stiff angle it was not noticeable, but now that I am trying to keep a horizontal course it is different. The wound in his bow has opened one of his forward ray tanks.'

  It was true, and after I had examined the damage I found it a much graver matter than I had anticipated. Not only was the forced angle at which we were compelled to maintain the bow in order to keep a horizontal course greatly impeding our speed, but at the rate that we were losing our repulsive rays from the forward tanks it was but a question of an hour or more when we would be floating stern up and helpless.

  We had slightly reduced our speed with the dawning of a sense of security, but now I took the helm once more and pulled the noble little engine wide open, so that again we raced north at terrific velocity. In the meantime Carthoris and Xodara with tools in hand were puttering with the great rent in the bow in a hopeless endeavour to stem the tide of escaping rays.

  It was still dark when we passed the northern boundary of the ice cap and the area of clouds. Below us lay a typical Martian landscape. Rolling ochre sea bottom of long dead seas, low surrounding hills, with here and there the grim and silent cities of the dead past; great piles of mighty architecture tenanted only by age-old memories of a once powerful race, and by the great white apes of Barsoom.

  It was becoming more and more difficult to maintain our little vessel in a horizontal position. Lower and lower sagged the bow until it became necessary to stop the engine to prevent our flight terminating in a swift dive to the ground.

  As the sun rose and the light of a new day swept away the darkness of night our craft gave a final spasmodic plunge, turned half upon his side, and then with deck tilting at a sickening angle swung in a slow circle, his bow dropping further below his stern each moment.

  To hand-rail and stanchion we clung, and finally as we saw the end approaching, snapped the buckles of our harness to the rings at his sides. In another moment the deck reared at an angle of ninety degrees and we hung in our leather with feet dangling a thousand yards above the ground.

  I was swinging quite close to the controlling devices, so I reached out to the lever that directed the rays of repulsion. The boat responded to the touch, and very gently we began to sink toward the ground.

  It was fully half an hour before we touched. Directly north of us rose a rather lofty range of hills, toward which we decided to make our way, since they afforded greater opportunity for concealment from the pursuers we were confident might stumble in this direction.

  An hour later found us in the time-rounded gullies of the hills, amid the beautiful flowering plants that abound in the arid waste places of Barsoom. There we found numbers of huge milk-giving shrubs--that strange plant which serves in great part as food and drink for the wild hordes of green women. It was indeed a boon to us, for we all were nearly famished.

  Baneath a cluster of these which afforded perfect concealment from wandering air scouts, we lay down to sleep--for me the first time in many hours. This was the beginning of my fifth day upon Barsoom since I had found myself suddenly translated from my cottage on the Hudson to Dor, the valley beautiful, the valley hideous. In all this time I had slept but twice, though once the clock around within the storehouse of the therns.

  It was mid-afternoon when I was awakened by some one seizing my hand and covering it with kisses. With a start I opened my eyes to look into the beautiful face of Thuviar.

  'My Prince! My Prince!' he cried, in an ecstasy of happiness. ''Tis you whom I had mourned as dead. My ancestors have been good to me; I have not lived in vain.'

  The boy's voice awoke Xodara and Carthoris. The girl gazed upon the man in surprise, but he did not seem to realize the presence of another than I. He would have thrown his arms about my neck and smothered me with caresses, had I not gently but firmly disengaged myself.

  'Come, come, Thuviar,' I said soothingly; 'you are overwrought by the danger and hardships you have passed through. You forget yourself, as you forget that I am the wife of the Prince of Helium.'

  'I forget nothing, my Princess,' he replied. 'You have spoken no word of love to me, nor do I expect that you ever shall; but nothing can prevent me loving you. I would not take the place of Dejar Thoris. My greatest ambition is to serve you, my Princess, for ever as your slave. No greater boon could I ask, no greater honour could I crave, no greater happiness could I hope.'

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nbsp; As I have before said, I am no ladies' woman, and I must admit that I seldom have felt so uncomfortable and embarrassed as I did that moment. While I was quite familiar with the Martian custom which allows male slaves to Martian women, whose high and chivalrous honour is always ample protection for every man in her household, yet I had never myself chosen other than women as my body servants.

  'And I ever return to Helium, Thuviar,' I said, 'you shall go with me, but as an honoured equal, and not as a slave. There you shall find plenty of handsome young nobles who would face Issus himself to win a smile from you, and we shall have you married in short order to one of the best of them. Forget your foolish gratitude-begotten infatuation, which your innocence has mistaken for love. I like your friendship better, Thuviar.'

  'You are my mistress. it shall be as you say,' he replied simply, but there was a note of sadness in his voice.

  'How came you here, Thuviar?' I asked. 'And where is Tara Tarkas?'

  'The great Thark, I fear, is dead,' he replied sadly. 'She was a mighty fighter, but a multitude of green warriors of another horde than her overwhelmed her. The last that I saw of her they were bearing her, wounded and bleeding, to the deserted city from which they had sallied to attack us.'