Edgar Rice Burroughs - Mars Chronicles 06 - The Master Mind.pdf

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Burroughs, Edgar Rice - Mars Chronicles 06 - The Mastermind of Mars
HANDS UP!
THE PALACE OF MU TEL
PHUNDAHL
XAXA
THE GREAT TUR
BACK TO THAVAS
JOHN CARTER
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 he 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
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.
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 facade 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

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