In the council chamber3 of John Carter, Warlord of Mars, was Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium; Mors Kajak, his son, Jed of Lesser4 Helium; Carthoris, and a score of the great nobles of the empire.
"There must be no war between Ptarth and Helium, my son," said John Carter. "That you are innocent of the charge that has been placed against you by insinuation, we well know; but Thuvan Dihn must know it well, too.
"There is but one who may convince him, and that one be you. You must hasten at once to the court of Ptarth, and by your presence there as well as by your words assure him that his suspicions are groundless. Bear with you the authority of the Warlord of Barsoom, and of the Jeddak of Helium to offer every resource of the allied5 powers to assist Thuvan Dihn to recover his daughter and punish her abductors, whomsoever they may be.
"Go! I know that I do not need to urge upon you the necessity for haste."
Carthoris left the council chamber, and hastened to his palace.
Here slaves were busy in a moment setting things to rights for the departure of their master. Several worked about the swift flier that would bear the Prince of Helium rapidly toward Ptarth.
At last all was done. But two armed slaves remained on guard. The setting sun hung low above the horizon. In a moment darkness would envelop6 all.
One of the guardsmen, a giant of a fellow across whose right cheek there ran a thin scar from temple to mouth, approached his companion. His gaze was directed beyond and above his comrade. When he had come quite close he spoke7.
"What strange craft is that?" he asked.
The other turned about quickly to gaze heavenward. Scarce was his back turned toward the giant than the short-sword of the latter was plunged8 beneath his left shoulder blade, straight through his heart.
Voiceless, the soldier sank in his tracks—stone dead. Quickly the murderer dragged the corpse9 into the black shadows within the hangar. Then he returned to the flier.
Drawing a cunningly wrought10 key from his pocket-pouch, he removed the cover of the right-hand dial of the controlling destination compass. For a moment he studied the construction of the mechanism11 beneath. Then he returned the dial to its place, set the pointer, and removed it again to note the resultant change in the position of the parts affected12 by the act.
A smile crossed his lips. With a pair of cutters he snipped13 off the projection14 which extended through the dial from the external pointer—now the latter might be moved to any point upon the dial without affecting the mechanism below. In other words, the eastern hemisphere dial was useless.
Now he turned his attention to the western dial. This he set upon a certain point. Afterward15 he removed the cover of this dial also, and with keen tool cut the steel finger from the under side of the pointer.
As quickly as possible he replaced the second dial cover, and resumed his place on guard. To all intents and purposes the compass was as efficient as before; but, as a matter of fact, the moving of the pointers upon the dials resulted now in no corresponding shift of the mechanism beneath—and the device was set, immovably, upon a destination of the slave's own choosing.
Presently came Carthoris, accompanied by but a handful of his gentlemen. He cast but a casual glance upon the single slave who stood guard. The fellow's thin, cruel lips, and the sword-cut that ran from temple to mouth aroused the suggestion of an unpleasant memory within him. He wondered where Saran Tal had found the man— then the matter faded from his thoughts, and in another moment the Prince of Helium was laughing and chatting with his companions, though below the surface his heart was cold with dread16, for what contingencies17 confronted Thuvia of Ptarth he could not even guess.
First to his mind, naturally, had sprung the thought that Astok of Dusar had stolen the fair Ptarthian; but almost simultaneously18 with the report of the abduction had come news of the great fetes at Dusar in honour of the return of the jeddak's son to the court of his father.
It could not have been he, thought Carthoris, for on the very night that Thuvia was taken Astok had been in Dusar, and yet—
He entered the flier, exchanging casual remarks with his companions as he unlocked the mechanism of the compass and set the pointer upon the capital city of Ptarth.
With a word of farewell he touched the button which controlled the repulsive19 rays, and as the flier rose lightly into the air, the engine purred in answer to the touch of his finger upon a second button, the propellers20 whirred as his hand drew back the speed lever, and Carthoris, Prince of Helium, was off into the gorgeous Martian night beneath the hurtling moons and the million stars.
Scarce had the flier found its speed ere the man, wrapping his sleeping silks and furs about him, stretched at full length upon the narrow deck to sleep.
But sleep did not come at once at his bidding.
Instead, his thoughts ran riot in his brain, driving sleep away. He recalled the words of Thuvia of Ptarth, words that had half assured him that she loved him; for when he had asked her if she loved Kulan Tith, she had answered only that she was promised to him.
Now he saw that her reply was open to more than a single construction. It might, of course, mean that she did not love Kulan Tith; and so, by inference, be taken to mean that she loved another.
But what assurance was there that the other was Carthoris of Helium?
The more he thought upon it the more positive he became that not only was there no assurance in her words that she loved him, but none either in any act of hers. No, the fact was, she did not love him. She loved another. She had not been abducted—she had fled willingly with her lover.
With such pleasant thoughts filling him alternately with despair and rage, Carthoris at last dropped into the sleep of utter mental exhaustion21.
The breaking of the sudden dawn found him still asleep. His flier was rushing swiftly above a barren, ochre plain—the world-old bottom of a long-dead Martian sea.
In the distance rose low hills. Toward these the craft was headed. As it approached them, a great promontory22 might have been seen from its deck, stretching out into what had once been a mighty23 ocean, and circling back once more to enclose the forgotten harbour of a forgotten city, which still stretched back from its deserted24 quays25, an imposing26 pile of wondrous27 architecture of a long-dead past.
The countless28 dismal29 windows, vacant and forlorn, stared, sightless, from their marble walls; the whole sad city taking on the semblance30 of scattered31 mounds32 of dead men's sun-bleached skulls—the casements33 having the appearance of eyeless sockets34, the portals, grinning jaws35.
Closer came the flier, but now its speed was diminishing—yet this was not Ptarth.
Above the central plaza36 it stopped, slowly settling Marsward. Within a hundred yards of the ground it came to rest, floating gently in the light air, and at the same instant an alarm sounded at the sleeper's ear.
Carthoris sprang to his feet. Below him he looked to see the teeming37 metropolis38 of Ptarth. Beside him, already, there should have been an air patrol.
He gazed about in bewildered astonishment39. There indeed was a great city, but it was not Ptarth. No multitudes surged through its broad avenues. No signs of life broke the dead monotony of its deserted roof tops. No gorgeous silks, no priceless furs lent life and colour to the cold marble and the gleaming ersite.
No patrol boat lay ready with its familiar challenge. Silent and empty lay the great city—empty and silent the surrounding air.
What had happened?
Carthoris examined the dial of his compass. The pointer was set upon Ptarth. Could the creature of his genius have thus betrayed him? He would not believe it.
Quickly he unlocked the cover, turning it back upon its hinge. A single glance showed him the truth, or at least a part of it—the steel projection that communicated the movement of the pointer upon the dial to the heart of the mechanism beneath had been severed40.
Who could have done the thing—and why?
Carthoris could not hazard even a faint guess. But the thing now was to learn in what portion of the world he was, and then take up his interrupted journey once more.
If it had been the purpose of some enemy to delay him, he had succeeded well, thought Carthoris, as he unlocked the cover of the second, dial the first having shown that its pointer had not been set at all.
Beneath the second dial he found the steel pin severed as in the other, but the controlling mechanism had first been set for a point upon the western hemisphere.
He had just time to judge his location roughly at some place south-west of Helium, and at a considerable distance from the twin cities, when he was startled by a woman's scream beneath him.
Leaning over the side of the flier, he saw what appeared to be a red woman being dragged across the plaza by a huge green warrior—one of those fierce, cruel denizens41 of the dead sea-bottoms and deserted cities of dying Mars.
Carthoris waited to see no more. Reaching for the control board, he sent his craft racing42 plummet-like toward the ground.
The green man was hurrying his captive toward a huge thoat that browsed43 upon the ochre vegetation of the once scarlet-gorgeous plaza. At the same instant a dozen red warriors44 leaped from the entrance of a nearby ersite palace, pursuing the abductor with naked swords and shouts of rageful warning.
Once the woman turned her face upward toward the falling flier, and in the single swift glance Carthoris saw that it was Thuvia of Ptarth!
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1
reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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2
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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3
chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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envelop
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| vt.包，封，遮盖；包围 | |
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7
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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8
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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9
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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13
snipped
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| v.剪( snip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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14
projection
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| n.发射，计划，突出部分 | |
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15
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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17
contingencies
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| n.偶然发生的事故，意外事故( contingency的名词复数 )；以备万一 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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propellers
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| n.螺旋桨，推进器( propeller的名词复数 ) | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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promontory
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| n.海角；岬 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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25
quays
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| 码头( quay的名词复数 ) | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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28
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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32
mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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33
casements
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| n.窗扉( casement的名词复数 ) | |
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34
sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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35
jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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plaza
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| n.广场，市场 | |
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37
teeming
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| adj.丰富的v.充满( teem的现在分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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38
metropolis
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| n.首府；大城市 | |
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39
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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40
severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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41
denizens
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| n.居民，住户( denizen的名词复数 ) | |
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42
racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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43
browsed
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| v.吃草( browse的过去式和过去分词 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息 | |
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44
warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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