[Cover Illustration]
BATTLE DAMAGE
Dar Tarus called in alarm, “We can’t alter our course—the ship
is useless!”
Almost at the same instant, one of my bullets found and
extinguished the enemy searchlight. Our craft was out of
control, running swiftly toward a collision with the Toonolian
flyer.
I asked Dar Tarus if our ship was beyond repair. His reply was
that it would take hours—in which time the whole Toonolian air
patrol would be upon us.
“Then we must have another ship!” I said. I pointed at the enemy
craft. “We shall not have to look far.”
Dar Tarus shrugged. “Why not? It would be a glorious fight . . .
and a worthy death!”
Edgar Rice Burroughs
MARS NOVELS
A PRINCESS OF MARS (#1)
THE GODS OF MARS (#2)
THE WARLORD OF MARS (#3)
THUVIA, MAID OF MARS (#4)
THE CHESSMEN OF MARS (#5)
THE MASTER MIND OF MARS (#6)
A FIGHTING MAN OF MARS (#7)
SWORDS OF MARS (#8)
SYNTHETIC MEN OF MARS (#9)
LLANA OF GATHOL (#10)
JOHN CARTER OF MARS (#11)
THE
MASTER MIND
OF MARS
Edgar Rice Burroughs
_The Master Mind of Mars_ was first published in _Amazing
Stories Annual_ magazine, Volume I, number 1 on July 15, 1927.
Copyright © 1927 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.
ISBN 0-345-33424-8
C O N T E N T S
CHAPTER PAGE
A Letter 7
I The House of the Dead 10
II Preferment 20
III Valla Dia 28
IV The Compact 42
V Danger 53
VI Suspicions 61
VII Escape 72
VIII Hands Up! 81
IX The Palace of Mu Tel 92
X Phundahl 106
XI Xaxa 116
XII The Great Tur 129
XIII Back to Thavas 140
XIV John Carter 150
A LETTER
HELIUM, June 8th, 1925
MY DEAR MR. BURROUGHS:
It was in the Fall of nineteen seventeen at an officers’ training camp
that I first became acquainted with John Carter, War Lord of Barsoom,
through the pages of your novel “A Princess of Mars.” The story made a
profound impression upon me and while my better judgment assured me that
it was but a highly imaginative piece of fiction, a suggestion of the
verity of it pervaded my inner consciousness to such an extent that I
found myself dreaming of Mars and John Carter, of Dejah Thoris, of Tars
Tarkas and of Woola as if they had been entities of my own experience
rather than the figments of your imagination.
It is true that in those days of strenuous preparation there was little
time for dreaming, yet there were brief moments before sleep claimed me
at night and these were my dreams. Such dreams! Always of Mars, and
during my waking hours at night my eyes always sought out the Red Planet
when he was above the horizon and clung there seeking a solution of the
seemingly unfathomable riddle he has presented to the Earthman for ages.
Perhaps the thing became an obsession. I know it clung to me all during
my training camp days, and at night, on the deck of the transport, I
would lie on my back gazing up into the red eye of the god of battle—my
god—and wishing that, like John Carter, I might be drawn across the
great void to the haven of my desire.
And then came the hideous days and nights in the trenches—the rats, the
vermin, the mud—with an occasional glorious break in the monotony when
we were ordered over the top. I loved it then and I loved the bursting
shells, the mad, wild chaos of the thundering guns, but the rats and the
vermin and the mud—God! how I hated them. It sounds like boasting, I
know, and I am sorry; but I wanted to write you just the truth about
myself. I think you will understand. And it may account for much that
happened afterwards.
There came at last to me what had come to so many others upon those
bloody fields. It came within the week that I had received my first
promotion and my captaincy, of which I was greatly proud, though humbly
so; realizing as I did my youth, the great responsibility that it placed
upon me as well as the opportunities it offered, not only in service to
my country but, in a personal way, to the men of my command. We had
advanced a matter of two kilometers and with a small detachment I was
holding a very advanced position when I received orders to fall back to
the new line. That is the last that I remember until I regained
consciousness after dark. A shell must have burst among us. What became
of my men I never knew. It was cold and very dark when I awoke and at
first, for an instant, I was quite comfortable—before I was fully
conscious, I imagine—and then I commenced to feel pain. It grew until
it seemed unbearable. It was in my legs. I reached down to feel them,
but my hand recoiled from what it found, and when I tried to move my
legs I discovered that I was dead from the waist down. Then the moon
came out from behind a cloud and I saw that I lay within a shell hole
and that I was not alone—the dead were all about me.
It was a long time before I found the moral courage and the physical
strength to draw myself up upon one elbow that I might view the havoc
that had been done me. One look was enough, I sank back in an agony of
mental and physical anguish—my legs had been blown away from midway
between the hips and knees. For some reason I was not bleeding
excessively, yet I know that I had lost a great deal of blood and that I
was gradually losing enough to put me out of my misery in a short time
if I were not soon found; and as I lay there on my back, tortured with
pain, I prayed that they would not come in time, for I shrank more from
the thought of going maimed through life than I shrank from the thought
of death. Then my eyes suddenly focussed upon the bright red eye of Mars
and there surged through me a sudden wave of hope. I stretched out my
arms towards Mars, I did not seem to question or to doubt for an instant
as I prayed to the god of my vocation to reach forth and succour me. I
knew that he would do it, my faith was complete, and yet so great was
the mental effort that I made to throw off the hideous bonds of my
mutilated flesh that I felt a momentary qualm of nausea and then a sharp
click as of the snapping of a steel wire, and suddenly I stood naked
upon two good legs looking down upon the bloody, distorted thing that
had been I. Just for an instant did I stand thus before I turned my eyes
aloft again to my star of destiny and with outstretched arms stand there
in the cold of that French night—waiting.
Suddenly I felt myself drawn with the speed of thought through the
trackless wastes of interplanetary space. There was an instant of
extreme cold and utter darkness, then——
But the rest is in the manuscript that, with the aid of one greater than
either of us, I have found the means to transmit to you with this
letter. You and a few others of the chosen will believe in it—for the
rest it matters not as yet. The time will come—but why tell you what
you already know?
My salutations and my congratulations—the latter on your good fortune
in having been chosen as the medium through which Earthmen shall become
better acquainted with the manners and customs of Barsoom, against the
time that they shall pass through space as easily as John Carter, and
visit the scenes that he has described to them through you, as have I.
Your sincere friend,
ULYSSES PAXTON,
_Late Captain, ——th Inf., U.S. Army_.
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD
I must have closed my eyes involuntarily during the transition for when
I opened them I was lying flat on my back gazing up into a brilliant,
sun-lit sky, while standing a few feet from me and looking down upon me
with the most mystified expression was as strange a looking individual
as my eyes ever had rested upon. He appeared to be quite an old man, for
he was wrinkled and withered beyond description. His limbs were
emaciated; his ribs showed distinctly beneath his shrunken hide; his
cranium was large and well developed, which, in conjunction with his
wasted limbs and torso, lent him the appearance of top heaviness, as
though he had a head beyond all proportion to his body, which was, I am
sure, really not the case.
As he stared down upon me through enormous, many lensed spectacles I
found the opportunity to examine him as minutely in return. He was,
perhaps, five feet five in height, though doubtless he had been taller
in youth, since he was somewhat bent; he was naked except for some
rather plain and well-worn leather harness which supported his weapons
and pocket pouches, and one great ornament, a collar, jewel studded,
that he wore around his scraggy neck—such a collar as a dowager empress
of pork or real estate might barter her soul for, if she had one. His
skin was red, his scant locks grey. As he looked at me his puzzled
expression increased in intensity, he grasped his chin between the thumb
and fingers of his left hand and slowly raising his right hand he
scratched his head most deliberately. Then he spoke to me, but in a
language I did not understand.
At his first words I sat up and shook my head. Then I looked about me. I
was seated upon a crimson sward within a high walled enclosure, at least
two, and possibly three, sides of which were formed by the outer walls
of a structure that in some respects resembled more closely a feudal
castle of Europe than any familiar form of architecture that comes to my
mind. The façade presented to my view was ornately carved and of most
irregular design, the roof line being so broken as to almost suggest a
ruin, and yet the whole seemed harmonious and not without beauty. Within
the enclosure grew a number of trees and shrubs, all weirdly strange and
all, or almost all, profusely flowering. About them wound walks of
coloured pebbles among which scintillated what appeared to be rare and
beautiful gems, so lovely were the strange, unearthly rays that leaped
and played in the sunshine.
The old man spoke again, peremptorily this time, as though repeating a
command that had been ignored, but again I shook my head. Then he laid a
hand upon one of his two swords, but as he drew the weapon I leaped to
my feet, with such remarkable results that I cannot even now say which
of us was the more surprised. I must have sailed ten feet into the air
and back about twenty feet from where I had been sitting; then I was
sure that I was upon Mars (not that I had for one instant doubted it),
for the effects of the lesser gravity, the colour of the sward and the
skin-hue of the red Martians I had seen described in the manuscripts of
John Carter, those marvellous and as yet unappreciated contributions to
the scientific literature of a world. There could be no doubt of it, I
stood upon the soil of the Red Planet, I had come to the world of my
dreams—to Barsoom.
So startled was the old man by my agility that he jumped a bit himself,
though doubtless involuntarily, but, however, with certain results. His
spectacles tumbled from his nose to the sward, and then it was that I
discovered that the pitiful old wretch was practically blind when
deprived of these artificial aids to vision, for he got to his knees and
commenced to grope frantically for the lost glasses, as though his very
life depended upon finding them in the instant. Possibly he thought that
I might take advantage of his helplessness and slay him. Though the
spectacles were enormous and lay within a couple of feet of him he could
not find them, his hands, seemingly afflicted by that strange perversity
that sometimes confounds our simplest acts, passing all about the lost
object of their search, yet never once coming in contact with it.
As I stood watching his futile efforts and considering the advisability
of restoring to him the means that would enable him more readily to find
my heart with his sword point, I became aware that another had entered
the enclosure. Looking towards the building I saw a large red-man
running rapidly towards the little old man of the spectacles. The
newcomer was quite naked, he carried a club in one hand, and there was
upon his face such an expression as unquestionably boded ill for the
helpless husk of humanity grovelling, mole-like, for its lost
spectacles.
My first impulse was to remain neutral in an affair that it seemed could
not possibly concern me and of which I had no slightest knowledge upon
which to base a predilection towards either of the parties involved; but
a second glance at the face of the club-bearer aroused a question as to
whether it might not concern me after all. There was that in the
expression upon the man’s face that betokened either an inherent
savageness of disposition or a maniacal cast of mind which might turn
his evidently murderous attentions upon me after he had dispatched his
elderly victim, while, in outward appearance at least, the latter was a
sane and relatively harmless individual. It is true that his move to
draw his sword against me was not indicative of a friendly disposition
towards me, but at least, if there were any choice, he seemed the lesser
of two evils.
He was still groping for his spectacles and the naked man was almost
upon him as I reached the decision to cast my lot upon the side of the
old man. I was twenty feet away, naked and unarmed, but to cover the
distance with my Earthly muscles required but an instant, and a naked
sword lay by the old man’s side where he had discarded it the better to
search for his spectacles. So it was that I faced the attacker at the
instant that he came within striking distance of his victim, and the
blow which had been intended for another was aimed at me. I sidestepped
it and then I learned that the greater agility of my Earthly muscles had
its disadvantages as well as its advantages, for, indeed, I had to learn
to walk at the very instant that I had to learn to fight with a new
weapon against a maniac armed with a bludgeon, or at least, so I assumed
him to be and I think that it is not strange that I should have done so,
what with his frightful show of rage and the terrible expression upon
his face.
As I stumbled about endeavouring to accustom myself to the new
conditions, I found that instead of offering any serious opposition to
my antagonist I was hard put to it to escape death at his hands, so
often did I stumble and fall sprawling upon the scarlet sward; so that
the duel from its inception became but a series of efforts, upon his
part to reach and crush me with his great club, and upon mine to dodge
and elude him. It was mortifying but it is the truth. However, this did
not last indefinitely, for soon I learned, and quickly too under the
exigencies of the situation, to command my muscles, and then I stood my
ground and when he aimed a blow at me, and I had dodged it, I touched
him with my point and brought blood along with a savage roar of pain. He
went more cautiously then, and taking advantage of the change I pressed
him so that he fell back. The effect upon me was magical, giving me new
confidence, so that I set upon him in good earnest, thrusting and
cutting until I had him bleeding in a half-dozen places, yet taking good
care to avoid his mighty swings, any one of which would have felled an
ox.
In my attempts to elude him in the beginning of the duel we had crossed
the enclosure and were now fighting at a considerable distance from the
point of our first meeting. It now happened that I stood facing towards
that point at the moment that the old man regained his spectacles, which
he quickly adjusted to his eyes. Immediately he looked about until he
discovered us, whereupon he commenced to yell excitedly at us at the
same time running in our direction and drawing his short-sword as he
ran. The red-man was pressing me hard, but I had gained almost complete
control of myself, and fearing that I was soon to have two antagonists
instead of one I set upon him with redoubled intensity. He missed me by
the fraction of an inch, the wind in the wake of his bludgeon fanning my
scalp, but he left an opening into which I stepped, running my sword
fairly through his heart. At least I thought that I had pierced his
heart, but I had forgotten what I had once read in one of John Carter’s
manuscripts to the effect that all the Martian internal organs are not
disposed identically with those of Earthmen. However, the immediate
results were quite as satisfactory as though I had found his heart, for
the wound was sufficiently grievous to place him _hors de combat_, and
at that instant the old gentleman arrived. He found me ready, but I had
mistaken his intentions. He made no unfriendly gestures with his weapon,
but seemed to be trying to convince me that he had no intention of
harming me. He was very excited and apparently tremendously annoyed that
I could not understand him, and perplexed, too. He hopped about
screaming strange sentences at me that bore the tones of peremptory
commands, rabid invective and impotent rage. But the fact that he had
returned his sword to its scabbard had greater significance than all his
jabbering, and when he ceased to yell at me and commenced to talk in a
sort of pantomime I realized that he was making overtures of peace if
not of friendship, so I lowered my point and bowed. It was all that I
could think of to assure him that I had no immediate intention of
spitting him.
He seemed satisfied and at once turned his attention to the fallen man.
He examined his pulse and listened to his heart, then, nodding his head,
he arose and taking a whistle from one of his pocket pouches sounded a
single loud blast. There emerged immediately from one of the surrounding
buildings a score of naked red-men who came running towards us. None was
armed. To these he issued a few curt orders, whereupon they gathered the
fallen one in their arms and bore him off. Then the old man started
towards the building, motioning me to accompany him. There seemed
nothing else for me to do but obey. Wherever I might be upon Mars, the
chances were a million to one that I would be among enemies; and so I
was as well off here as elsewhere and must depend upon my own
resourcefulness, skill and agility to make my way upon the Red Planet.
The old man led me into a small chamber from which opened numerous
doors, through one of which they were just bearing my late antagonist.
We followed into a large, brilliantly lighted chamber wherein there
burst upon my astounded vision the most gruesome scene that I ever had
beheld. Rows upon rows of tables arranged in parallel lines filled the
room and with few exceptions each table bore a similar grisly burden, a
partially dismembered or otherwise mutilated human corpse. Above each
table was a shelf bearing containers of various sizes and shapes, while
from the bottom of the shelf depended numerous surgical instruments,
suggesting that my entrance upon Barsoom was to be through a gigantic
medical college.
At a word from the old man, those who bore the Barsoomian I had wounded
laid him upon an empty table and left the apartment. Whereupon my host,
if so I may call him, for certainly he was not as yet my captor,
motioned me forward. While he conversed in ordinary tones, he made two
incisions in the body of my late antagonist; one, I imagine, in a large
vein and one in an artery, to which he deftly attached the ends of two
tubes, one of which was connected with an empty glass receptacle and the
other with a similar receptacle filled with a colourless, transparent
liquid resembling clear water. The connections made, the old gentleman
pressed a button controlling a small motor, whereupon the victim’s blood
was pumped into the empty jar while the contents of the other was forced
into the emptying veins and arteries.
The tones and gestures of the old man as he addressed me during this
operation convinced me that he was explaining in detail the method and
purpose of what was transpiring, but as I understood no word of all he
said I was as much in the dark when he had completed his discourse as I
was before he started it, though what I had seen made it appear
reasonable to believe that I was witnessing an ordinary Barsoomian
embalming. Having removed the tubes the old man closed the openings he
had made by covering them with bits of what appeared to be heavy
adhesive tape and then motioned me to follow him. We went from room to
room, in each of which were the same gruesome exhibits. At many of the
bodies the old man paused to make a brief examination or to refer to
what appeared to be a record of the case, that hung upon a hook at the
head of each of the tables.
From the last of the chambers we visited upon the first floor my host
led me up an inclined runway to the second floor where there were rooms
similar to those below, but here the tables bore whole rather than
mutilated bodies, all of which were patched in various places with
adhesive tape. As we were passing among the bodies in one of these rooms
a Barsoomian girl, whom I took to be a servant or slave, entered and
addressed the old man, whereupon he signed me to follow him and together
we descended another runway to the first floor of another building.
Here, in a large, gorgeously decorated and sumptuously furnished
apartment an elderly red-woman awaited us. She appeared to be quite old
and her face was terribly disfigured as by some injury. Her trappings
were magnificent and she was attended by a score of women and armed
warriors, suggesting that she was a person of some consequence, but the
little old man treated her quite brusquely, as I could see, quite to the
horror of her attendants.
Their conversation was lengthy and at the conclusion of it, at the
direction of the woman, one of her male escort advanced and opening a
pocket pouch at his side withdrew a handful of what appeared to me to be
Martian coins. A quantity of these he counted out and handed to the
little old man, who then beckoned the woman to follow him, a gesture
which included me. Several of her women and guard started to accompany
us, but these the old man waved back peremptorily; whereupon there
ensued a heated discussion between the woman and one of her warriors on
one side and the old man on the other, which terminated in his
proffering the return of the woman’s money with a disgusted air. This
seemed to settle the argument, for she refused the coins, spoke briefly
to her people and accompanied the old man and myself alone.
He led the way to the second floor and to a chamber which I had not
previously visited. It closely resembled the others except that all the
bodies therein were of young women, many of them of great beauty.
Following closely at the heels of the old man the woman inspected the
gruesome exhibit with painstaking care. Thrice she passed slowly among
the tables examining their ghastly burdens. Each time she paused longest
before a certain one which bore the figure of the most beautiful
creature I had ever looked upon; then she returned the fourth time to it
and stood looking long and earnestly into the dead face. For awhile she
stood there talking with the old man, apparently asking innumerable
questions, to which he returned quick, brusque replies, then she
indicated the body with a gesture and nodded assent to the withered
keeper of this ghastly exhibit.
Immediately the old fellow sounded a blast upon his whistle, summoning a
number of servants to whom he issued brief instructions, after which he
led us to another chamber, a smaller one in which were several empty
tables similar to those upon which the corpses lay in adjoining rooms.
Two female slaves or attendants were in this room and at a word from
their master they removed the trappings from the old woman, unloosed her
hair and helped her to one of the tables. Here she was thoroughly
sprayed with what I presume was an antiseptic solution of some nature,
carefully dried and removed to another table, at a distance of about
twenty inches from which stood a second parallel table.
Now the door of the chamber swung open and two attendants appeared
bearing the body of the beautiful girl we had seen in the adjoining
room. This they deposited upon the table the old woman had just quitted
and as she had been sprayed so was the corpse, after which it was
transferred to the table beside that on which she lay. The little old
man now made two incisions in the body of the old woman, just as he had
in the body of the red-man who had fallen to my sword; her blood was
drawn from her veins and the clear liquid pumped into them, life left
her and she lay upon the polished ersite slab that formed the table top,
as much a corpse as the poor, beautiful, dead creature at her side.
The little old man, who had removed the harness down to his waist and
been thoroughly sprayed, now selected a sharp knife from among the
instruments above the table and removed the old woman’s scalp, following
the hair line entirely around her head. In a similar manner he then
removed the scalp from the corpse of the young woman, after which, by
means of a tiny circular saw attached to the end of a flexible,
revolving shaft he sawed through the skull of each, following the line
exposed by the removal of the scalps. This and the balance of the
marvellous operation was so skilfully performed as to baffle
description. Suffice it to say that at the end of four hours he had
transferred the brain of each woman to the brain pan of the other,
deftly connected the severed nerves and ganglia, replaced the skulls and
scalps and bound both heads securely with his peculiar adhesive tape,
which was not only antiseptic and healing but anaesthetic, locally, as
well.
He now reheated the blood that he had withdrawn from the body of the old
woman, adding a few drops of some clear chemical solution, withdrew the
liquid from the veins of the beautiful corpse, replacing it with the
blood of the old woman and simultaneously administering a hypodermic
injection.
During the entire operation he had not spoken a word. Now he issued a
few instructions in his curt manner to his assistants, motioned me to
follow him, and left the room. He led me to a distant part of the
building or series of buildings that composed the whole, ushered me into
a luxurious apartment, opened the door to a Barsoomian bath and left me
in the hands of trained servants. Refreshed and rested I left the bath
after an hour of relaxation to find harness and trappings awaiting me in
the adjoining chamber. Though plain, they were of good material, but
there were no weapons with them.
Naturally I had been thinking much upon the strange things I had
witnessed since my advent upon Mars, but what puzzled me most lay in the
seemingly inexplicable act of the old woman in paying my host what was
evidently a considerable sum to murder her and transfer to the inside of
her skull the brain of a corpse. Was it the outcome of some horrible
religious fanaticism, or was there an explanation that my Earthly mind
could not grasp?
I had reached no decision in the matter when I was summoned to follow a
slave to another and nearby apartment where I found my host awaiting me
before a table loaded with delicious foods, to which, it is needless to
say, I did ample justice after my long fast and longer weeks of rough
army fare.
During the meal my host attempted to converse with me, but, naturally,
the effort was fruitless of results. He waxed quite excited at times and
upon three distinct occasions laid his hand upon one of his swords when
I failed to comprehend what he was saying to me, an action which
resulted in a growing conviction upon my part that he was partially
demented; but he evinced sufficient self-control in each instance to
avert a catastrophe for one of us.
The meal over he sat for a long time in deep meditation, then a sudden
resolution seemed to possess him. He turned suddenly upon me with a
faint suggestion of a smile and dove headlong into what was to prove an
intensive course of instruction in the Barsoomian language. It was long
after dark before he permitted me to retire for the night, conducting me
himself to a large apartment, the same in which I had found my new
harness, where he pointed out a pile of rich sleeping silks and furs,
bid me a Barsoomian good night and left me, locking the door after him
upon the outside, and leaving me to guess whether I were more guest or
prisoner.