Pew Mogel was silent for a minute; then he spoke.
“Joog I have built, piece by piece, during several years, from the bones, tissues and organs of a thousand red men and white apes who came voluntarily to me or whom I captured.
“Even his brain is the synthesis of the brains of ten thousand red men and white apes. Into Joog’s veins I have pumped a serum that makes all tissues self-repairing.
“My giant is practically indestructible. No bullet or cannon-shot made can stop him!”
Pew Mogel smiled and stroked his hairless chin.
“Think how powerful my ape soldiers will be,” he purred, “each one armed with the great strength of an ape. With their four arms they can hold twice as many weapons as ordinary men, and inside their skulls will function the cunning brains of human beings.
“With Joog and my army of white apes, I can go forth and become master of all Barsoom.” Pew Mogel paused and then added, “—provided I acquire more iron for even greater weapons than I already have.”
Now Pew Mogel had risen from his throne in his great excitement.
“I preferred to conquer peacefully by first acquiring the Helium iron works as payment for Dejah Thoris’s safe return. But the Jeddak and John Carter force me into other alternatives—
“However, I’ll give you one more chance to settle peacefully,” he said.
Pew Mogel’s hand moved toward the right arm of his throne, as he pulled a duplicate lever. A beautiful woman swung into view.
It was Dejah Thoris!
At the sight of his princess chained to the other pillar before him, John Carter grew very pale. He sprang forward to free her.
His earthly muscles could have easily covered the distance in one leap; but halfway there in his spring, Dejah Thoris and Tars Tarkas saw the earthman sprawl in mid-air as though he had struck full force against some invisible barrier. Half-stunned, he crumpled to the floor.
Dejah Thoris gave a little cry. Tars Tarkas strained at his bonds. Slowly, the earthman rose to his feet, shaking his body like some majestic animal. With his sword he reached down and felt the barrier that stood between him and the throne.
Pew Mogel laughed harshly.
“You are trapped, John Carter. The invisible glass partition that you struck is another invention of the great Ras Thavas that I acquired. It is invulnerable.
“From there, you may watch the torture of your princess, unless she sees fit to sign a note to her grandfather demanding the surrender of Helium to me.”
The earthman looked at his princess not ten feet from him. Dejah Thoris held her head proudly high, which was answer enough to Pew Mogel’s demands that she betray her people.
Pew Mogel saw, and angrily issued a command to the ape. The white brute rose and ambled over to Dejah Thoris. Grabbing her hair with one paw, he forced her head back until he could see her face. His hideous, grinning face was not two inches from hers.
“Demand Helium’s surrender,” hissed Pew Mogel, “and you shall have your freedom!”
“Never!” the word shot back at him.
Pew Mogel flung another command to the ape.
The creature planted his great, pendulous lips on those of the princess. Dejah Thoris went limp in his embrace, while Tars Tarkas surged vainly at the steel chains. The girl had fainted.
The earthman again hurled himself futilely against the barrier that he could not see.
“Fool,” yelled Pew Mogel, “I gave you your chance to retain your princess by turning over to me the Helium iron works; but you and the Jeddak thought you could thwart me and regain Dejah Thoris without paying me the price I asked for her safe return. For that mistake, you all die.”
Pew Mogel again reached over to the instrument board beside his throne. He began to turn several dials, and Carter heard a strange, droning noise that increased steadily in volume.
Suddenly the earthman turned and raced for the door through which he came.
But before he had covered fifteen feet, another barrier had closed down. Escape through the door was impossible.
There was a window over on the wall to his right. He leaped for it. He struck another glass barrier.
There was another window on the left side of the room. He had nearly reached it when he was met by another wall of invisible glass.
In a flash he became acutely conscious of his predicament. The walls were moving in upon him. He could see now that the glass barriers had moved out from cleverly concealed slits in the adjoining walls.
The two side barriers, however, were fastened to horizontal pistons in the ceiling. These pistons were moving together, bringing the glass walls toward each other, and would eventually crush the earth-man between them.
Upon John Carter’s finger was a jeweled ring. Set in the center of the ring was a large diamond.
Diamonds can cut glass!
Here was a new type of glass, but the chances were it was not as hard as the diamond on Carter’s finger!
The earthman clenched his fist, pressed the diamond ring against the barrier in front of him and quickly made a large circular scratch in the glass surface.
Then he crashed his body with all his strength against the area of glass enclosed by the scratch.
The section broke out neatly at the blow, and the earthman found himself face to face with Pew Mogel.
Dejah Thoris had regained consciousness, a set, intent expression on her beautiful face. A grim smile had settled over Tars Tarkas’s lips when he saw that his friend was no longer impeded by the invisible barriers.
Pew Mogel shrank back on his throne and gasped in a cracked voice.
“Seize him, Gore, seize him!” Little beads of sweat stood forth on his brow.
Gore, the white ape, released his hold on Dejah Thoris and, turning, saw the earthman advancing toward them. Gore snarled viciously, revealing jagged, mighty fangs. He crouched low, so that his four massive fists supported his weight on the floor. His little, beady, blood-shot eyes gleamed hatred, for Gore hated all men save Pew Mogel.
chapter VII
THE FLYING TERROR
AS GORE, the great white ape with a man’s brain crouched to meet John Carter, he was fully confident of overcoming his puny man opponent.
But to make assurance doubly sure, Gore drew the great blade at his side and rushed madly at his foe, hacking and cutting viciously.
The momentum of the brute’s attack forced Carter backward a few steps as he deftly warded off the mighty blows.
But the earthman saw his chance. Quickly, surely, his blade streaked. There was a sudden twist and Gore’s sword went hurtling across the room.
Gore, however, reacted with lightning speed. With his four huge hands he grasped the naked steel of the earthman’s sword.
Violently he jerked the blade from Carter’s grasp and, raising it overhead, snapped the strong steel in two as if it had been a splinter of wood.
Now, with a low growl, Gore closed in; and Carter crouched.
Suddenly the man leaped over the ape’s head; but again with uncanny speed the monster shot out a hairy hand and grasped the earthman’s ankle.
Gore held John Carter in his four hands, drawing the man closer and closer to the drooling jowls and gleaming fangs.
But with a surge of his mighty muscles, the earthman jerked free his arm and sent a terrific blow crashing full into Gore’s face.
The ape recoiled, dropping John Carter, and staggered back toward the huge window on the right wall by Pew Mogel’s throne.
Here the beast tottered; and the earthman, seeing his chance, once again leaped into the air, but this time flew feet foremost toward the ape.
At the moment of contact with the ape’s chest, Carter extended his legs violently; and so, as his feet struck Gore, this force was added to the hurtling momentum of his body.
With a bellowing cry, Gore hurtled out through the window and his screams ended only when he landed with a sickening crunch in the courtyard far below.
Dejah Thoris and Tars Tarkas,
chained to the pillars, had watched the short fight, fascinated by the earthman’s sure, quick actions.
But when Carter did not succumb instantly to Gore’s attack, Pew Mogel had grown frightened. He began jerking dials and switches; and then spoke swiftly into the little microphone beside him.
So now, as the earthman regained his feet and advanced slowly toward Pew Mogel, he did not see the black shadow that obscured the window behind him.
Only when Dejah Thoris screamed a warning did the earthman turn.
But he was too late!
A giant hand, fully three feet across, closed about his body. He was lifted from the floor and pulled out quickly through the window.
To Carter’s ears came the hopeless cry of his princess mingled with the cruel, hollow laugh of Pew Mogel.
Carter did not need the added assurance of his eyes to know that he was being held in the grasp of Pew Mogel’s synthetic giant. Joog’s fetid breath blasting across his face was ample evidence.
Joog held Carter several feet from his face and contracted his features in the semblance of a grin, exposing his two great rows of cracked, stained teeth the size of sharp boulders.
Hoarse, gurgling sounds emanated from Joog’s throat as he held the earthman before his face.
“I, Joog. I, Joog,” the monster finally managed. “I can kill! I can kill!”
Then he shook his victim until the man’s teeth rattled.
But quite suddenly the giant was quiet, listening; then Carter became aware of muffled words coming, apparently, from Joog’s ear.
Then John Carter realized that the command was coming from Pew Mogel, transmitted by short wave to a receiving device attached to one of Joog’s ears.
“To the arena,” repeated the voice. “Fasten him over the pit!”
The pit—what new form of devilish torture was this? Carter tried vaguely to ease the awful pressure that was crushing him.
But his arms were pinned to his sides by the giant’s grasp. All the man could do was breathe laboriously and hope that Joog’s great strides would soon bring them to his destination, whatever that might be.
The giant’s tremendous pace, stepping over tall, ancient edifices or across wide, spacious plazas in single, mighty strides, soon brought them to a large, crowded amphitheatre on the outskirts of the city.
The amphitheatre apparently was fashioned from a natural crater. Row upon row of circular tiers had been carved within the inner wall of the crater, forming a series of levels upon which sat thousands of white apes.
In the center of the arena was a circular pit about fifty feet across. The pit contained what appeared to be water whose level was about fifteen feet from the top of the pit.
Three iron-barred cages hung suspended over the center of the pit by means of three heavy ropes, one attached to the top of each cage and running up through a pulley in the scaffolding built overhead and down to the edge of the pit where it was anchored.
Joog climbed partly over the edge of the coliseum and deposited Carter on the brink of the pit. Five great apes held him there while another ape lowered one of the cages to ground level.
Then he reached out with a hooked pole and swung the cage over the edge. He unlocked the cage door with a large key.
The keeper of the key was a short, heavy-set ape with a bull neck and exceedingly cruel, close-set eyes.
This brute now came up to Carter; and although the captive was being held by five other apes, he grabbed him cruelly by the hair and jerked Carter into the cage, at the same time kicking him viciously.
The cage door was slammed immediately, its padlock bolted closed. Now Carter’s cage was pulled up over the pit and the rope end anchored to a davit at the edge.
It was not long before Joog returned with Dejah Thoris and Tars Tarkas. Their chains had been removed.
They were placed in the other two cages that hung over the pit next to that of John Carter.
“Oh, John Carter, my chieftain!” cried Dejah Thoris, when she saw him in the cage next to hers. “Thank Issus you are still alive!” The little princess was crying softly.
John Carter reached through the bars and took her hand in his. He tried to speak reassuring words to her; but he knew, as did Tars Tarkas, who sat grim-faced in the other cage beside his, that Pew Mogel had ordained their deaths—but in what manner they would die, Carter, as yet, was uncertain.
“John Carter,” spoke Tars Tarkas softly, “do you notice that all these thousands of apes gathered here in the arena apparently are paying no attention to us?”
“Yes, I noticed,” replied the earthman. “They are all looking into the sky toward the city.”
“Look,” whispered Dejah Thoris. “It’s the same thing upon which the ape rode when he captured me in the Helium Forest after shooting our thoat!”
There appeared in the sky, coming from the direction of the city, a great, lone bird upon whose back rode a single man.
The earthman’s keen eyes squinted for an instant. “The bird is a malagor. Pew Mogel is riding it.”
The bird and its rider circled directly overhead.
“Open the east gate,” Pew Mogel commanded, his voice ringing out through a loudspeaker somewhere in the arena. The gates were thrown open and there began pouring out into the arena wave after wave of malagors exactly like the bird Pew Mogel rode.
As the malagors came out, column after column of apes were waiting at the entrance to vault onto the birds’ backs. As each bird was mounted, it rose into the air by telepathic command to join a constantly growing formation circling high overhead.
The mounting of the birds must have taken nearly two hours, so great were the number of Pew Mogel’s apes and birds. Carter noticed that upon each ape’s back was strapped a rifle and each bird itself carried a varying assortment of military equipment, including ammunition supplies, small cannon; and a sub-machine gun was carried by each flight platoon.
At last all was ready and Pew Mogel descended down over the cages of his three captives.
“You see, now, Pew Mogel’s mighty army,” he cried, “with which he will first conquer Helium and then all Barsoom.” The man seemed very confident, for his crooked, misshapen body sat very straight upon his feathered mount.
“Before you are chewed to bits by the reptiles in the rising water below you,” he said, “you will have a few moments to consider the fate that awaits Helium within the next forty-eight hours. I should have preferred to conquer peacefully; but you interfered. For that, you die, slowly and horribly.”
Pew Mogel turned to the only ape that was left in the arena, the keeper of the key to the cages.
“Open the flood-gate!” was his single command before he rose up to lead his troops off toward the north.
Accompanying the weird, flying army in a sling carried by a hundred malagors rode Joog, the synthetic giant. A hollow, mirthless laugh peeled like thunder from the giant’s throat as he was borne away into the sky.
chapter VIII
THE REPTILE PIT
AS THE LAST BIRD in Pew Mogel’s fantastic army flapped out of sight behind the rim of the crater, John Carter turned to Tars Tarkas in the cage hanging beside him. He spoke softly, so that Dejah Thoris would not hear.
“Those creatures will make Helium a formidable enemy,” he said. “Kantos Kan’s splendid airfleet and infantry will be hard pressed against those thousands of apes equipped with human brains and modern armament, mounted upon fast birds of prey!”
“Kantos Kan and his airfleet are not even in Helium to protect the city,” announced Tars Tarkas grimly. “I heard Pew Mogel bragging that he had sent Kantos Kan a false message, supposedly from you, urging that all Helium’s fleet, as well as all ships of the searching party, be dispatched to your aid in the Great Toonolian Marshes.”
“The Toonolian Marshes!” Carter gasped. “They’re a thousand miles from Helium in the other direction.”
A little scream from Dejah Thoris brought the men’s attention to their own, immediat
e fate.
The ape beside the pit had pulled back a tall, metal lever. There was a gurgle of bubbles as air blasted up from the water in the pit below the three captives; and the water at the same time commenced to rise slowly.
The guard now unfastened the rope on each cage and lowered them so that the cage tops were a little below the surface of the ground inside the pit; then he refastened the ropes and stood for some time on the brink looking down at the helpless captives.
“The water rises slowly,” he sneered thickly; “and so I shall have time now for a little sleep.”
It was uncanny to hear words issuing from the mouth of the beast. They were barely articulate, for although the human brain in the ape’s skull directed the words, the muscles of the larynx in the creature’s throat were normally unequipped for the specialized task of human speech.
The guard lay down on the brink and stretched his massive, squat body.
“Your death cries will awaken me,” he mumbled pleasantly, “when the water begins to envelop your feet and the reptiles start clawing at you through the bars of your cages.” Whereupon, the ape rolled over and began snoring.
It was then that the three captives saw the slanting, evil eyes, the rows of flashing teeth, in a dozen hideous, reptilian faces staring greedily up at them from the rising waters below.
“Quite ingenious,” remarked Tars Tarkas, his stoic face giving no more evidence of fear than did that of the earthman. “When the water partly submerges us, the reptiles will reach in with their claws and begin tearing us to pieces—if there is any life left in us, the rising water will drown it out when it submerges the tops of our cages.”
“How horrible!” gasped Dejah Thoris.
John Carter’s eyes were fastened on the brink of the pit. From his cage he could just see one of the guard’s feet as the fellow lay asleep at the edge of the pit.
Cautioning the others to silence, Carter began swinging his body back and forth while he held fast to the bars of his cage. If he could just get his cage to swinging!—
* * *
The water had risen to about ten feet below their cages.
The Collected John Carter of Mars (Volume 3) Page 70
