The Gods Of Mars (13 page)

“It will be an excellent lesson for this daughter of the therns,” he
added, “for she shall see the Temple of Issus, and Issus, perchance,
shall embrace her.”

Phaidor’s head went high.

“What blasphemy is this, dog of a pirate?” she cried. “Issus would
wipe out your entire breed an’ you ever came within sight of her
temple.”

“You have much to learn, thern,” replied Xodar, with an ugly smile,
“nor do I envy you the manner in which you will learn it.”

As we came on deck I saw to my surprise that the vessel was passing
over a great field of snow and ice. As far as the eye could reach in
any direction naught else was visible.

There could be but one solution to the mystery. We were above the
south polar ice cap. Only at the poles of Mars is there ice or snow
upon the planet. No sign of life appeared below us. Evidently we were
too far south even for the great fur-bearing animals which the Martians
so delight in hunting.

Xodar was at my side as I stood looking out over the ship’s rail.

“What course?” I asked him.

“A little west of south,” he replied. “You will see the Otz Valley
directly. We shall skirt it for a few hundred miles.”

“The Otz Valley!” I exclaimed; “but, man, is not there where lie the
domains of the therns from which I but just escaped?”

“Yes,” answered Xodar. “You crossed this ice field last night in the
long chase that you led us. The Otz Valley lies in a mighty depression
at the south pole. It is sunk thousands of feet below the level of the
surrounding country, like a great round bowl. A hundred miles from its
northern boundary rise the Otz Mountains which circle the inner Valley
of Dor, in the exact centre of which lies the Lost Sea of Korus. On
the shore of this sea stands the Golden Temple of Issus in the Land of
the First Born. It is there that we are bound.”

As I looked I commenced to realize why it was that in all the ages only
one had escaped from the Valley Dor. My only wonder was that even the
one had been successful. To cross this frozen, wind-swept waste of
bleak ice alone and on foot would be impossible.

“Only by air boat could the journey be made,” I finished aloud.

“It was thus that one did escape the therns in bygone times; but none
has ever escaped the First Born,” said Xodar, with a touch of pride in
his voice.

We had now reached the southernmost extremity of the great ice barrier.
It ended abruptly in a sheer wall thousands of feet high at the base of
which stretched a level valley, broken here and there by low rolling
hills and little clumps of forest, and with tiny rivers formed by the
melting of the ice barrier at its base.

Once we passed far above what seemed to be a deep canyon-like rift
stretching from the ice wall on the north across the valley as far as
the eye could reach. “That is the bed of the River Iss,” said Xodar.
“It runs far beneath the ice field, and below the level of the Valley
Otz, but its canyon is open here.”

Presently I descried what I took to be a village, and pointing it out
to Xodar asked him what it might be.

“It is a village of lost souls,” he answered, laughing. “This strip
between the ice barrier and the mountains is considered neutral ground.
Some turn off from their voluntary pilgrimage down the Iss, and,
scaling the awful walls of its canyon below us, stop in the valley.
Also a slave now and then escapes from the therns and makes his way
hither.

“They do not attempt to recapture such, since there is no escape from
this outer valley, and as a matter of fact they fear the patrolling
cruisers of the First Born too much to venture from their own domains.

“The poor creatures of this outer valley are not molested by us since
they have nothing that we desire, nor are they numerically strong
enough to give us an interesting fight—so we too leave them alone.

“There are several villages of them, but they have increased in numbers
but little in many years since they are always warring among
themselves.”

Now we swung a little north of west, leaving the valley of lost souls,
and shortly I discerned over our starboard bow what appeared to be a
black mountain rising from the desolate waste of ice. It was not high
and seemed to have a flat top.

Xodar had left us to attend to some duty on the vessel, and Phaidor and
I stood alone beside the rail. The girl had not once spoken since we
had been brought to the deck.

“Is what he has been telling me true?” I asked her.

“In part, yes,” she answered. “That about the outer valley is true,
but what he says of the location of the Temple of Issus in the centre
of his country is false. If it is not false—” she hesitated. “Oh it
cannot be true, it cannot be true. For if it were true then for
countless ages have my people gone to torture and ignominious death at
the hands of their cruel enemies, instead of to the beautiful Life
Eternal that we have been taught to believe Issus holds for us.”

“As the lesser Barsoomians of the outer world have been lured by you to
the terrible Valley Dor, so may it be that the therns themselves have
been lured by the First Born to an equally horrid fate,” I suggested.
“It would be a stern and awful retribution, Phaidor; but a just one.”

“I cannot believe it,” she said.

“We shall see,” I answered, and then we fell silent again for we were
rapidly approaching the black mountains, which in some indefinable way
seemed linked with the answer to our problem.

As we neared the dark, truncated cone the vessel’s speed was diminished
until we barely moved. Then we topped the crest of the mountain and
below us I saw yawning the mouth of a huge circular well, the bottom of
which was lost in inky blackness.

The diameter of this enormous pit was fully a thousand feet. The walls
were smooth and appeared to be composed of a black, basaltic rock.

For a moment the vessel hovered motionless directly above the centre of
the gaping void, then slowly she began to settle into the black chasm.
Lower and lower she sank until as darkness enveloped us her lights were
thrown on and in the dim halo of her own radiance the monster
battleship dropped on and on down into what seemed to me must be the
very bowels of Barsoom.

For quite half an hour we descended and then the shaft terminated
abruptly in the dome of a mighty subterranean world. Below us rose and
fell the billows of a buried sea. A phosphorescent radiance
illuminated the scene. Thousands of ships dotted the bosom of the
ocean. Little islands rose here and there to support the strange and
colourless vegetation of this strange world.

Slowly and with majestic grace the battleship dropped until she rested
on the water. Her great propellers had been drawn and housed during
our descent of the shaft and in their place had been run out the
smaller but more powerful water propellers. As these commenced to
revolve the ship took up its journey once more, riding the new element
as buoyantly and as safely as she had the air.

Phaidor and I were dumbfounded. Neither had either heard or dreamed
that such a world existed beneath the surface of Barsoom.

Nearly all the vessels we saw were war craft. There were a few
lighters and barges, but none of the great merchantmen such as ply the
upper air between the cities of the outer world.

“Here is the harbour of the navy of the First Born,” said a voice
behind us, and turning we saw Xodar watching us with an amused smile on
his lips.

“This sea,” he continued, “is larger than Korus. It receives the
waters of the lesser sea above it. To keep it from filling above a
certain level we have four great pumping stations that force the
oversupply back into the reservoirs far north from which the red men
draw the water which irrigates their farm lands.”

A new light burst on me with this explanation. The red men had always
considered it a miracle that caused great columns of water to spurt
from the solid rock of their reservoir sides to increase the supply of
the precious liquid which is so scarce in the outer world of Mars.

Never had their learned men been able to fathom the secret of the
source of this enormous volume of water. As ages passed they had
simply come to accept it as a matter of course and ceased to question
its origin.

We passed several islands on which were strangely shaped circular
buildings, apparently roofless, and pierced midway between the ground
and their tops with small, heavily barred windows. They bore the
earmarks of prisons, which were further accentuated by the armed guards
who squatted on low benches without, or patrolled the short beach lines.

Few of these islets contained over an acre of ground, but presently we
sighted a much larger one directly ahead. This proved to be our
destination, and the great ship was soon made fast against the steep
shore.

Xodar signalled us to follow him and with a half-dozen officers and men
we left the battleship and approached a large oval structure a couple
of hundred yards from the shore.

“You shall soon see Issus,” said Xodar to Phaidor. “The few prisoners
we take are presented to her. Occasionally she selects slaves from
among them to replenish the ranks of her handmaidens. None serves
Issus above a single year,” and there was a grim smile on the black’s
lips that lent a cruel and sinister meaning to his simple statement.

Phaidor, though loath to believe that Issus was allied to such as
these, had commenced to entertain doubts and fears. She clung very
closely to me, no longer the proud daughter of the Master of Life and
Death upon Barsoom, but a young and frightened girl in the power of
relentless enemies.

The building which we now entered was entirely roofless. In its centre
was a long tank of water, set below the level of the floor like the
swimming pool of a natatorium. Near one side of the pool floated an
odd-looking black object. Whether it were some strange monster of
these buried waters, or a queer raft, I could not at once perceive.

We were soon to know, however, for as we reached the edge of the pool
directly above the thing, Xodar cried out a few words in a strange
tongue. Immediately a hatch cover was raised from the surface of the
object, and a black seaman sprang from the bowels of the strange craft.

Xodar addressed the seaman.

“Transmit to your officer,” he said, “the commands of Dator Xodar. Say
to him that Dator Xodar, with officers and men, escorting two
prisoners, would be transported to the gardens of Issus beside the
Golden Temple.”

“Blessed be the shell of thy first ancestor, most noble Dator,” replied
the man. “It shall be done even as thou sayest,” and raising both
hands, palms backward, above his head after the manner of salute which
is common to all races of Barsoom, he disappeared once more into the
entrails of his ship.

A moment later an officer resplendent in the gorgeous trappings of his
rank appeared on deck and welcomed Xodar to the vessel, and in the
latter’s wake we filed aboard and below.

The cabin in which we found ourselves extended entirely across the
ship, having port-holes on either side below the water line. No sooner
were all below than a number of commands were given, in accordance with
which the hatch was closed and secured, and the vessel commenced to
vibrate to the rhythmic purr of its machinery.

“Where can we be going in such a tiny pool of water?” asked Phaidor.

“Not up,” I replied, “for I noticed particularly that while the
building is roofless it is covered with a strong metal grating.”

“Then where?” she asked again.

“From the appearance of the craft I judge we are going down,” I replied.

Phaidor shuddered. For such long ages have the waters of Barsoom’s
seas been a thing of tradition only that even this daughter of the
therns, born as she had been within sight of Mars’ only remaining sea,
had the same terror of deep water as is a common attribute of all
Martians.

Presently the sensation of sinking became very apparent. We were going
down swiftly. Now we could hear the water rushing past the port-holes,
and in the dim light that filtered through them to the water beyond the
swirling eddies were plainly visible.

Phaidor grasped my arm.

“Save me!” she whispered. “Save me and your every wish shall be
granted. Anything within the power of the Holy Therns to give will be
yours. Phaidor—” she stumbled a little here, and then in a very low
voice, “Phaidor already is yours.”

I felt very sorry for the poor child, and placed my hand over hers
where it rested on my arm. I presume my motive was misunderstood, for
with a swift glance about the apartment to assure herself that we were
alone, she threw both her arms about my neck and dragged my face down
to hers.

The confession of love which the girl’s fright had wrung from her
touched me deeply; but it humiliated me as well, since I felt that in
some thoughtless word or act I had given her reason to believe that I
reciprocated her affection.

Never have I been much of a ladies’ man, being more concerned with
fighting and kindred arts which have ever seemed to me more befitting a
man than mooning over a scented glove four sizes too small for him, or
kissing a dead flower that has begun to smell like a cabbage. So I was
quite at a loss as to what to do or say. A thousand times rather face
the wild hordes of the dead sea bottoms than meet the eyes of this
beautiful young girl and tell her the thing that I must tell her.

But there was nothing else to be done, and so I did it. Very clumsily
too, I fear.

Gently I unclasped her hands from about my neck, and still holding them
in mine I told her the story of my love for Dejah Thoris. That of all
the women of two worlds that I had known and admired during my long
life she alone had I loved.