Edgar Rice Burroughs - Mars Chronicles 09 - Synthetic Men o.pdf

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Burroughs, Edgar Rice - Mars Chronicles 09 - Synthetic Men of Mars
10 I Find Janai
11 War of the Seven Jeds
12 Warrior's Reward
13 John Carter Disappears
14 When the Monster Grows
15 I Find My Master
16 The Jeddak Speaks
17 Escape Us Never
18 Treason Island
19 Night Flight
20 The Mighty Jed of Goolie
21 Duel to the Death
22 Off for Phundahl
23 Captives of Amhor
24 Caged
25 Prince in a Zoo
26 The Bite of the Adder
27 Flight Into Jeopardy
28 The Great Fleet
29 Back Toward Morbus
30 The End of Two Worlds
31 Adventure's End
[About this etext]
Little is known of the Great Toonolian Marshes in other portions
of Barsoom, for this inhospitable region is peopled by fierce beasts
and terrifying reptiles, by remnants of savage aboriginal tribes long
isolated, and is guarded at either extremity by the unfriendly
kingdoms of Phundahl and Toonol which discourage intercourse
with other nations and are constantly warring upon one another.
Upon an island near Toonol, Ras Thavas, The Master Mind of
Mars, had labored in his laboratory for nearly a thousand years
until Vobis Kan, Jeddak of Toonol, turned against him and drove
him from his island home and later repulsed a force of Phundahlian
warriors led by Gor Hajus, the Assassin of Toonol, which had
sought to recapture the island and restore Ras Thavas to his
laboratory upon his promise to devote his skill and learning to the
amelioration of human suffering rather than to prostitute them to
the foul purposes of greed and sin.
Following the defeat of his little army, Ras Thavas had
disappeared and been all but forgotten as are the dead, among
which he was numbered by those who had known him; but there
were some who could never forget him. There was Valla Dia,
Princess of Duhor, whose brain he had transferred to the head of
the hideous old Xaxa, Jeddara of Phundahl, that Xaxa might
acquire the young and beautiful body of Valla Dia. There was Vad
Varo, her husband, one time assistant to Ras Thavas, who had
restored her brain to her own body – Vad Varo, who had been born
Ulysses Paxton in the United States of America and presumably
died in a shell hole in France; and there was John Carter, Prince of
Helium, Warlord of Mars, whose imagination had been intrigued by
the tales Vad Varo had told him of the marvelous skill of a world's
greatest scientist and surgeon.
John Carter had not forgotten Ras Thavas, and when an
emergency arose in which the skill of this greatest of surgeons was
the sole remaining hope, he determined to seek him out and find
so John Carter determined to go first to Duhor.
He selected from his fleet a small swift cruiser of a new type that
had attained a speed of four hundred miles an hour – over twice the
speed of the older types which he had first known and flown
through the thin air of Mars. He would have gone alone, but
Carthoris and Tara and Thuvia pleaded with him not to do so. At
last he gave in and consented to take one of the officers of his
personal troops, a young padwar named Vor Daj. To him we are
indebted for this remarkable tale of strange adventure upon the
planet Mars; to him and Jason Gridley whose discovery of the
Gridley Wave has made it possible for me to receive this story over
the special Gridley radio receiving set which Jason Gridley built out
here in Tarzana, and to Ulysses Paxton who translated it into
English and sent it across some forty million miles of space.
I shall give you the story as nearly as possible in the words of
Vor Daj as is compatible with clarity. Certain Martian words and
idioms which are untranslatable, measures of time and of distance
will be usually in my own words; and there are occasional
interpolations of my own that I have not bothered to assume
responsibility for, since their origin will be obvious to the reader. In
addition to these, there must undoubtedly have been some editing
on the part of Vad Varo.
So now to the strange tale as told by Vor Daj.
creature that must be tamed and trained as are the young of the
lower orders which have been domesticated by man. And so much
of that training is martial that it sometimes seems to me that I must
have stepped from the egg fully equipped with the harness and
weapons of a warrior. Let this, then, serve as my introduction. It is
enough that you know my name and that I am a fighting man
whose life is dedicated to the service of John Carter of Mars.
Naturally I felt highly honored when The Warlord chose me to
accompany him upon his search for Ras Thavas, even though the
assignment seemed of a prosaic nature of offering little more than
an opportunity to be with The Warlord and to serve him and the
incomparable Dejah Thoris, his princess. How little I foresaw what
was in store for me!
It was John Carter's intention to fly first to Duhor, which lies
some ten thousand five hundred haads, or about four thousand
earth miles, northwest of the Twin Cities of Helium, where he
expected to find Vad Varo, from whom he hoped to learn the
whereabouts of Ras Thavas, who, with the possible exception of Vad
Varo, was the only person in the world whose knowledge and skill
might rescue Dejah Thoris from the grave, upon the brink of which
she had lain for weeks, and restore her to health.
It was 8:25 (12:13 A.M. Earth Time) when our trim, swift flier
rose from the landing stage on the roof of The Warlord's palace.
Thuria and Cluros were speeding across a brilliant starlit sky
casting constantly changing double shadows across the terrain
beneath us that produced an illusion of myriad living things in
constant, restless movement or a surging liquid world, eddying and
boiling; quite different, John Carter told me, from a similar aspect
above Earth, whose single satellite moves at a stately, decorous
pace across the vault of heaven.
With our directional compass set for Duhor and our motor
functioning in silent perfection there were no navigational problems

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