“Carter!” Kantos Kan shouted, “throw yourself to the floor.”
With the speed of light, Carter dropped prone. A long blade whizzed over his head and buried itself to the hilt in the heart of the stranger.
“One of Pew Mogel’s spies,” John Carter muttered as he rose to his feet. “Thank you, Kantos Kan.”
Kantos Kan searched the body but found no clue to the man’s identity.
Back in the audience-chamber, the men set to work with fierce resolve.
They were bending over a huge map of Barsoom when Carter spoke.
“Cities for miles around Helium are now all friendly. They would have warned us of this Pew Mogel if they had known of him. He has probably taken over one of the deserted cities in the dead sea bottom east or west of Helium. It means thousands of miles to search; but we will go over each mile.”
Carter seated himself at a table and explained his plan.
“Tars Tarkas, go east and contact the chiefs of all your tribes. I’ll cover the west with air scouts. Kantos Kan will stay in Helium as contact man. Be ready night and day with the entire Helium air force. Whoever discovers Dejah Thoris first will notify Kantos Kan of his position. Naturally, we can only communicate to each other through Kantos Kan. The wave length will be constant and secret, 2000 kilocycles.”
Tardos Mors turned to the earthman.
“Every resource in my kingdom is at your command, John Carter.”
“We leave at once, your majesty; and if Dejah Thoris is alive on Barsoom, we shall find her,” replied John Carter.
chapter II
THE SEARCH
WITHIN THREE HOURS, John Carter was standing on the roof of the Royal Airdrome giving last-minute instructions to a fleet of twenty-four fast, one-man scouts.
“Cover all the territory in your district thoroughly. If you discover anything, don’t attempt to handle it by yourself. Notify Kantos Kan immediately.” Carter surveyed the grim faces before him and knew that they would obey him.
“Let’s go.” Carter jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the ships.
The men scattered and soon their planes were speeding away from Helium.
Carter stayed on the roof long enough to check with Kantos Kan. He adjusted the earphones around his head and then signalled on 2000 kilocycles. The dots and dashes of Kantos Kan’s reply began coming in immediately.
“Your signal comes in perfectly. Tars Tarkas is just leaving the city. The air fleet is mobilizing. The entire air force will stand by to come to your aid. Kantos Kan signing off.”
Night found Carter cruising about five hundred miles from Helium. He was very tired. The search of several ruined cities and canals had been fruitless. The buzzing of the microset aroused him again.
“Kantos Kan reporting. Tars Tarkas has organized a complete ground search east to south; other air scouts west to south report nothing. Will acquaint you with any news that might come in. Await orders. Will stand by. Signing off.”
“No orders. No news. Carter signing off.”
Wearily he let the ship drift. No need to look further until the moons came up. The earthman fell into a fitful sleep.
It was midnight when the speaker sounded, jerking Carter to wakefulness. Kantos Kan was signalling again, excitedly.
“Tars Tarkas has found Dejah Thoris. She is held in a deserted city on the banks of the dead sea at Korvas.” Kantos Kan gave the exact latitude and longitude of the spot.
“Further instructions from Tars Tarkas request the greatest secrecy in your movements. He will be at the main bridge leading into the City. Kantos Kan signing off. Come in, John Carter.”
John Carter signed off with Kantos Kan, urging him to stand by constantly to be ready with the Helium Air Fleet. Now he set his gyrocompass, a device that would automatically steer him to his destination.
Several hours later, the earthman flew over a low range of hills and saw below him an ancient city on the banks of the Dead Sea. He circled his plane and dropped to the bridge where he had been instructed to meet Tars Tarkas. Long, black shadows filled a dry gully below him.
Carter climbed out of his plane, keeping to the shadows, and made his way to the towering ruins of the city. It was so quiet that a lonely bat swooping from a tower sounded like a falling airship.
Where was Tars Tarkas? The green man should have appeared at the bridge.
At the entrance to the city, Carter stepped into the black shadow of a wall and waited. No sound broke the stillness of the quiet night. The city was like a tomb. Diemos and Phobos, the two fast-moving moons of Mars, whirled across the heavens.
Carter stopped breathing to listen. To his keen ears came the faint sound of steps—strange, shuffling steps dragging closer.
Something was coming along the wall. The earthman tensed, ready to spring away to his ship. Now he could hear other steps all around him. Inside the ruins something dragged against the fallen rocks.
Then a great, heavy body dropped on John Carter from the wall above. Hot, fetid breath burned his neck. Huge, shaggy arms smothered him in their fierce embrace.
The thing hurled him to the rough cobblestones. Huge hands clutched at his throat. Carter turned his head and saw above him the face of a great, white ape.
Three of the creature’s fellows were circling around Carter, striving to tie his feet with a piece of rope while the other choked him into insensibility with his four mighty hands.
Carter wriggled his feet under the belly of the ape with whom he was grappling. One mighty heave sent the creature into the air to fall, groaning and helpless, to the ground.
Like a cornered banth,* Carter was on his feet, crouched against the wall, awaiting the attacking trio, with drawn sword.
They were mighty beasts, fully eight feet tall with long, white hair covering their great bodies. Each was equipped with four muscular arms that ended in tremendous hands armed with sharp, hooked claws. They were baring their fangs and growling viciously as they came toward the earthman.
Carter crouched low; and as the beasts sprang in, his earthly muscles sent him leaping high into the air over their heads. The earthman’s heavy blade backed by all the power of his muscles, smacked down upon one ape’s head, splitting the skull wide open.
*A banth is the huge, eight-legged lion of Mars.—Ed.
Carter hit the ground and, turning, was ready when the two apes remaining flew at him again. There was a hideous, hair-raising shriek as this time the earthman’s sword sank deep into a savage heart.
As the monster sprawled to the ground, the earthman jerked free his sword.
Now the other beast turned and slunk away in fright, his eyes gleaming at Carter in the darkness as it fled down a long corridor in the adjacent building. The earthman could have sworn that he heard his own name coming from the ape’s throat and mingling with its sullen growl as it fled away.
The earthman had just seized his sword when he felt a rush of air above his head. There was a blur of motion as something came down toward him.
Now he felt himself clutched about the waist; then he was jerked fifty feet into the air. Struggling for breath, Carter clutched at the thing encircling his body. It was as horny as the skin of an arbok. It had hairs as large as tree roots bristling from the horny scales.
It was a giant hand!
chapter III
Joog, the Giant
John Carter found himself looking into a monstrous face.
From top of shaggy head to bottom of its hairy chin, the head measured fully fifteen feet.
A new monstrosity had come to life on Mars. Judging by the adjacent buildings, the creature must have been a hundred and thirty feet tall!
The giant raised Carter high over his head and shook him; then he threw back his face. Hideous, hollow laughter rumbled out of his pendulous lips revealing teeth like small mountain crags.
He was dressed in an ill-fitting, baggy tunic that came down in loose folds over his hips but which allowed his arms and legs to be free.
/> With his other hand he beat his mighty chest.
“I, Joog. I, Joog,” he kept repeating as he continued to laugh and shake his helpless victim. “I can kill! I can kill!”
Joog, the giant, commenced to walk. Carefully he stepped along the barren streets, sometimes going around a building that was too high to step over.
Finally he stopped before a partially ruined palace. The ravages of time had only dimmed its beauty. Huge masses of moss and vines trailed through the masonry, hiding the shattered battlements. With a sudden thrust, Joog, the giant, shoved John Carter through a high window in the palace tower.
When Carter felt the giant’s hold releasing upon him he relaxed completely. He hit the stone floor in a long roll, protecting his head with his arms. As he lay in the deep darkness of the place where he had fallen, the earthman listened while he regained his breath.
No sound came to his ears for some time; then he began to hear the heavy breathing of Joog outside his window. Once more Carter’s earthly muscles, reacting to the lesser gravity of Mars, sent him leaping twenty feet to the sill of the narrow window. Here he clung and looked once again into the hairy, hideous face of the giant.
“I, Joog. I, Joog,” he mumbled. “I can kill! I can kill!” The giant’s breath swept over Carter like a blast from a sulphur furnace. There would be no escape from that window!
Once more he dropped down into his cell. This time he commenced a slow circuit of the room, groping his way along the polished ersite slabs that formed the wall. The cobblestone floor was thick with debris. Once, Carter heard the sinister hiss of a Martian spider as he brushed its web.
How long he groped his way around the walls, there was no way of knowing. It seemed hours. Then, suddenly, the deathly silence was shattered by a woman’s scream coming from somewhere in the building.
John Carter could feel his skin grow cold. Could that have been the voice of Dejah Thoris?
Once again John Carter leaped toward the faint light that marked the window ledge. Cautiously, he looked down. Joog lay on his back on the flagstones below, breathing as though he were asleep, his great chest rising five feet with every breath.
Quietly he started to edge his way along a ledge that ran from the window and disappeared into the shadow of an adjoining tower. If he could make that shadow without awakening Joog!
He had almost gained his objective when Joog growled hoarsely.
He had opened one great eye. Now he reached up and, grabbing Carter by the leg, hurled him into the tower window again.
Wearily, the earthman crawled to the wall of his dark cell and there slumped down against it. That scream haunted his memory. He was tormented by the thought that Dejah Thoris might be in danger.
And where was Tars Tarkas? Pew Mogel must have captured him, too. Carter suddenly sprang to his feet.
One of the ersite slabs at his back had moved! He waited. Nothing came out. Cautiously, he approached the rock and shoved it with his foot. The slab moved slightly inward. Now Carter shoved the stone with all his tremendous strength. Inch by inch he moved it until finally there was room for him to squeeze his body through.
He was still in utter darkness, but his groping fingers revealed to him that he was in a corridor between two walls. Perhaps this was the way out of his prison!
Carefully he shoved the stone back into position, leaving no trace of his disappearance from the room. The corridor in which he found himself was so low that he was forced to crawl on hands and knees. The low corridor had the stench of age, as if it had been unused for a long time.
Gradually the tunnel sloped more and more downward. Many little side-passages branched off from the main tunnel. There was no light, no noise. Only a faint, pungent odor beginning to fill the air.
Now it was growing lighter. The earthman realized that he must be in the subterranean caverns of the palace. The dim light was caused by the phosphorescent radium glow that is used on all Mars for radiation.
The source of this faint light the earthman suddenly discovered. It was shining through a cleft in the wall ahead. Pushing aside another loose stone, John Carter crawled forth into a chamber. He drew in his breath sharply.
Facing him was a warrior with drawn sword, the point of which was almost touching the breast of the earthman!
John Carter leaped back with the speed of lightning, whipped out his own sword and struck at the other’s weapon.
The arm of the red man fell from his body to the floor where it dissolved into dust. The ancient sword clattered on the cobblestones.
Carter could see now that the warrior had been leaning against the wall, balanced there precariously for ages, his sword arm extending in front of him just as it had stiffened long ago in death. The loss of the arm overbalanced the torso which toppled to the floor and there dissolved into a heap of ash-like dust!
In an adjoining chamber there were a score of women, beautiful girls, chained together by collars of gold around their necks. They sat at a table where they had been eating, and the food was still before them. They had been the prisoners, the slaves of the rulers of the long-dead city. The dry, motionless air combined with some gaseous secretion from the walls and dungeons had preserved their beauty through the ages.
The earthman had traversed some little distance down a musty corridor when he became aware of something scraping behind him. Whirling into a side corridor he looked back. Gleaming eyes were coming toward him. They followed him as he backed into the tunnel.
Now again came the scraping, repeated this time farther ahead in the tunnel. Other eyes shone ahead of him.
John Carter ran forward, his sword-point extended. The eyes ahead retreated, but those in back of him started to close in.
It was very dark now, but far ahead the earthman could see a faint gleam of light filtering into the tunnel.
He ran toward the light. Fighting the things where he could see them would be a lot easier than stumbling around in a dark corridor.
Carter entered the room and in the dim light came face to face with the creature whose eyes he had seen ahead of him in the tunnel. It was a species of the huge three-legged Martian rat!
Its yellow fangs were bared hideously in a vicious snarl, as it backed slowly away from Carter to the far end of the small room.
Now behind him came the other rat, and together the two beasts started to close in upon the earthman.
Carter smiled grimly as he gripped his sword.
“I am the proverbial cornered rat now,” he muttered as he swung his blade at the nearest creature.
It ducked the blow and scurried toward him.
But the earthman’s sword was ready. The charging rat lunged full upon the waiting sword-point.
The momentum of the beast carried Carter back five feet; but he still retained a hold on his sword, the point of which had plunged through the animal’s single shoulder and pierced its wild heart.
When Carter had jerked free his sword and turned to meet his other antagonist an exclamation of dismay escaped his lips.
The room was half filled with rats!
The creatures had entered through another opening and had formed a circle around him, waiting to attack.
For half an hour, Carter battled furiously for his life in the lonely dungeon beneath the palace in the ancient city of Korvas.
The carcasses of the dead rats were piled high around him, but still they came and eventually they overpowered him by their very numbers.
John Carter went down by a terrific blow to his head from a snake-like tail.
He was half stunned, but he still clung tenaciously to his sword as he felt himself seized by the arms and dragged away into the darkness of an adjoining tunnel.
chapter IV
THE CITY OF RATS
JOHN CARTER RECOVERED fully when he was dragged through a pool of muddy water. He heard the rats greedily drinking, saw their green eyes gleaming in the darkness. The smell of freshly dug earth reached his nostrils and he realized that he was in
a burrow far under the subterranean vaults of the palace.
Several rats on either side of him had hold of his arms by their forepaws as they dragged him along. It was very uncomfortable, and he wondered how much longer the journey would last.
Nor had he long to wait. The strange company finally came out into a huge underground cavern. Light from the outside filtered down through various openings in the ceiling above, its rays reflecting on thousands of gleaming stalactites of red sand stone. Massive stalagmites, huge sedimentary formations of grotesque shape, rose up from the floor of the cavern.
Among these formations on the floor were numerous dome-shaped mud huts.
As Carter was dragged by, he stared at a hut that several rats were constructing. The framework was composed of white sticks of various shapes plastered with mud from an underground stream bed. The white sticks were very irregular in length and size. One of the rats stopped work to gnaw at a stick. It looked like a bone.
As he was dragged closer, he saw that the stick was a human thigh bone!
The mud huts were studded with bones and skulls, upon some of which were still dangling hideously the vestiges of hair and skin.
Carter noticed that the tops of all the skulls had been removed, neatly sliced off.
The earthman was dragged to a clearing in the center of the cavern. Here, upon a mound of skulls, sat a rat half again as large as the others.
The baleful, pink eyes of the creature glared at Carter as he was dragged up on top of the mound.
The beasts released their hold upon the earthman and descended to the bottom of the mound, leaving Carter alone with the large rat.
The long whiskers of the monster were constantly twitching as the thing sniffed at the man. It had lost one ear in some battle long ago and the other was bright with scar-tissue.
Its little pink eyes surveyed Carter for a long time while it fondly caressed its long, hairless tail with its one claw-like paw.
The Collected John Carter of Mars (Volume 3) Page 68
