A Princess of Mars (3 page)

To be held paralyzed, with one's back toward some horrible and
unknown danger from the very sound of which the ferocious Apache
warriors turn in wild stampede, as a flock of sheep would madly
flee from a pack of wolves, seems to me the last word in fearsome
predicaments for a man who had ever been used to fighting for his
life with all the energy of a powerful physique.

Several times I thought I heard faint sounds behind me as of
somebody moving cautiously, but eventually even these ceased, and I
was left to the contemplation of my position without interruption.
I could but vaguely conjecture the cause of my paralysis, and my
only hope lay in that it might pass off as suddenly as it had fallen
upon me.

Late in the afternoon my horse, which had been standing with
dragging rein before the cave, started slowly down the trail,
evidently in search of food and water, and I was left alone with
my mysterious unknown companion and the dead body of my friend,
which lay just within my range of vision upon the ledge where I
had placed it in the early morning.

From then until possibly midnight all was silence, the silence of
the dead; then, suddenly, the awful moan of the morning broke upon
my startled ears, and there came again from the black shadows the
sound of a moving thing, and a faint rustling as of dead leaves.
The shock to my already overstrained nervous system was terrible in
the extreme, and with a superhuman effort I strove to break my awful
bonds. It was an effort of the mind, of the will, of the nerves;
not muscular, for I could not move even so much as my little finger,
but none the less mighty for all that. And then something gave,
there was a momentary feeling of nausea, a sharp click as of the
snapping of a steel wire, and I stood with my back against the wall
of the cave facing my unknown foe.

And then the moonlight flooded the cave, and there before me lay my
own body as it had been lying all these hours, with the eyes staring
toward the open ledge and the hands resting limply upon the ground.
I looked first at my lifeless clay there upon the floor of the cave
and then down at myself in utter bewilderment; for there I lay
clothed, and yet here I stood but naked as at the minute of my
birth.

The transition had been so sudden and so unexpected that it left me
for a moment forgetful of aught else than my strange metamorphosis.
My first thought was, is this then death! Have I indeed passed over
forever into that other life! But I could not well believe this, as
I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs from the exertion of
my efforts to release myself from the anaesthesis which had held me.
My breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat stood out
from every pore of my body, and the ancient experiment of pinching
revealed the fact that I was anything other than a wraith.

Again was I suddenly recalled to my immediate surroundings by a
repetition of the weird moan from the depths of the cave. Naked and
unarmed as I was, I had no desire to face the unseen thing which
menaced me.

My revolvers were strapped to my lifeless body which, for some
unfathomable reason, I could not bring myself to touch. My carbine
was in its boot, strapped to my saddle, and as my horse had wandered
off I was left without means of defense. My only alternative seemed
to lie in flight and my decision was crystallized by a recurrence of
the rustling sound from the thing which now seemed, in the darkness
of the cave and to my distorted imagination, to be creeping
stealthily upon me.

Unable longer to resist the temptation to escape this horrible place
I leaped quickly through the opening into the starlight of a clear
Arizona night. The crisp, fresh mountain air outside the cave acted
as an immediate tonic and I felt new life and new courage coursing
through me. Pausing upon the brink of the ledge I upbraided myself
for what now seemed to me wholly unwarranted apprehension. I
reasoned with myself that I had lain helpless for many hours within
the cave, yet nothing had molested me, and my better judgment, when
permitted the direction of clear and logical reasoning, convinced me
that the noises I had heard must have resulted from purely natural
and harmless causes; probably the conformation of the cave was such
that a slight breeze had caused the sounds I heard.

I decided to investigate, but first I lifted my head to fill my
lungs with the pure, invigorating night air of the mountains. As I
did so I saw stretching far below me the beautiful vista of rocky
gorge, and level, cacti-studded flat, wrought by the moonlight into
a miracle of soft splendor and wondrous enchantment.

Few western wonders are more inspiring than the beauties of an
Arizona moonlit landscape; the silvered mountains in the distance,
the strange lights and shadows upon hog back and arroyo, and the
grotesque details of the stiff, yet beautiful cacti form a picture
at once enchanting and inspiring; as though one were catching for
the first time a glimpse of some dead and forgotten world, so
different is it from the aspect of any other spot upon our earth.

As I stood thus meditating, I turned my gaze from the landscape to
the heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting
canopy for the wonders of the earthly scene. My attention was
quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon.
As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination—it
was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had
always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at
it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable
void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a
particle of iron.

My longing was beyond the power of opposition; I closed my eyes,
stretched out my arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself
drawn with the suddenness of thought through the trackless immensity
of space. There was an instant of extreme cold and utter darkness.

I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that
I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my
wakefulness. I was not asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner
consciousness told me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your
conscious mind tells you that you are upon Earth. You do not
question the fact; neither did I.

I found myself lying prone upon a bed of yellowish, mosslike
vegetation which stretched around me in all directions for
interminable miles. I seemed to be lying in a deep, circular
basin, along the outer verge of which I could distinguish the
irregularities of low hills.

It was midday, the sun was shining full upon me and the heat of it
was rather intense upon my naked body, yet no greater than would
have been true under similar conditions on an Arizona desert. Here
and there were slight outcroppings of quartz-bearing rock which
glistened in the sunlight; and a little to my left, perhaps a
hundred yards, appeared a low, walled enclosure about four feet in
height. No water, and no other vegetation than the moss was in
evidence, and as I was somewhat thirsty I determined to do a little
exploring.

Springing to my feet I received my first Martian surprise, for
the effort, which on Earth would have brought me standing upright,
carried me into the Martian air to the height of about three yards.
I alighted softly upon the ground, however, without appreciable
shock or jar. Now commenced a series of evolutions which even then
seemed ludicrous in the extreme. I found that I must learn to walk
all over again, as the muscular exertion which carried me easily and
safely upon Earth played strange antics with me upon Mars.

Instead of progressing in a sane and dignified manner, my attempts
to walk resulted in a variety of hops which took me clear of the
ground a couple of feet at each step and landed me sprawling upon my
face or back at the end of each second or third hop. My muscles,
perfectly attuned and accustomed to the force of gravity on Earth,
played the mischief with me in attempting for the first time to cope
with the lesser gravitation and lower air pressure on Mars.

I was determined, however, to explore the low structure which was
the only evidence of habitation in sight, and so I hit upon the
unique plan of reverting to first principles in locomotion,
creeping. I did fairly well at this and in a few moments had
reached the low, encircling wall of the enclosure.

There appeared to be no doors or windows upon the side nearest me,
but as the wall was but about four feet high I cautiously gained my
feet and peered over the top upon the strangest sight it had ever
been given me to see.

The roof of the enclosure was of solid glass about four or five
inches in thickness, and beneath this were several hundred large
eggs, perfectly round and snowy white. The eggs were nearly uniform
in size being about two and one-half feet in diameter.

Five or six had already hatched and the grotesque caricatures which
sat blinking in the sunlight were enough to cause me to doubt my
sanity. They seemed mostly head, with little scrawny bodies, long
necks and six legs, or, as I afterward learned, two legs and two
arms, with an intermediary pair of limbs which could be used at will
either as arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of
their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner
that they could be directed either forward or back and also
independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to
look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the
necessity of turning the head.

The ears, which were slightly above the eyes and closer together,
were small, cup-shaped antennae, protruding not more than an inch on
these young specimens. Their noses were but longitudinal slits in
the center of their faces, midway between their mouths and ears.

There was no hair on their bodies, which were of a very light
yellowish-green color. In the adults, as I was to learn quite soon,
this color deepens to an olive green and is darker in the male than
in the female. Further, the heads of the adults are not so out of
proportion to their bodies as in the case of the young.

The iris of the eyes is blood red, as in Albinos, while the pupil
is dark. The eyeball itself is very white, as are the teeth.
These latter add a most ferocious appearance to an otherwise
fearsome and terrible countenance, as the lower tusks curve upward
to sharp points which end about where the eyes of earthly human
beings are located. The whiteness of the teeth is not that of
ivory, but of the snowiest and most gleaming of china. Against
the dark background of their olive skins their tusks stand out in
a most striking manner, making these weapons present a singularly
formidable appearance.

Most of these details I noted later, for I was given but little time
to speculate on the wonders of my new discovery. I had seen that
the eggs were in the process of hatching, and as I stood watching
the hideous little monsters break from their shells I failed to note
the approach of a score of full-grown Martians from behind me.

Coming, as they did, over the soft and soundless moss, which covers
practically the entire surface of Mars with the exception of the
frozen areas at the poles and the scattered cultivated districts,
they might have captured me easily, but their intentions were far
more sinister. It was the rattling of the accouterments of the
foremost warrior which warned me.

On such a little thing my life hung that I often marvel that I
escaped so easily. Had not the rifle of the leader of the party
swung from its fastenings beside his saddle in such a way as to
strike against the butt of his great metal-shod spear I should have
snuffed out without ever knowing that death was near me. But the
little sound caused me to turn, and there upon me, not ten feet
from my breast, was the point of that huge spear, a spear forty
feet long, tipped with gleaming metal, and held low at the side
of a mounted replica of the little devils I had been watching.

But how puny and harmless they now looked beside this huge and
terrific incarnation of hate, of vengeance and of death. The man
himself, for such I may call him, was fully fifteen feet in height
and, on Earth, would have weighed some four hundred pounds. He sat
his mount as we sit a horse, grasping the animal's barrel with his
lower limbs, while the hands of his two right arms held his immense
spear low at the side of his mount; his two left arms were
outstretched laterally to help preserve his balance, the thing he
rode having neither bridle or reins of any description for guidance.

And his mount! How can earthly words describe it! It towered ten
feet at the shoulder; had four legs on either side; a broad flat
tail, larger at the tip than at the root, and which it held straight
out behind while running; a gaping mouth which split its head from
its snout to its long, massive neck.

Like its master, it was entirely devoid of hair, but was of a dark
slate color and exceeding smooth and glossy. Its belly was white,
and its legs shaded from the slate of its shoulders and hips to a
vivid yellow at the feet. The feet themselves were heavily padded
and nailless, which fact had also contributed to the noiselessness
of their approach, and, in common with a multiplicity of legs, is a
characteristic feature of the fauna of Mars. The highest type of
man and one other animal, the only mammal existing on Mars, alone
have well-formed nails, and there are absolutely no hoofed animals
in existence there.

Behind this first charging demon trailed nineteen others, similar
in all respects, but, as I learned later, bearing individual
characteristics peculiar to themselves; precisely as no two of us
are identical although we are all cast in a similar mold. This
picture, or rather materialized nightmare, which I have described at
length, made but one terrible and swift impression on me as I turned
to meet it.