A Princess of Mars Rethroned (7 page)

I saw that the
ceremony, if it could be dignified by such a name, was over, and
seeking out Solan I found his in our chariot with a hideous little
creature held tightly in his arms.

The work of
rearing young, green Martians consists solely in teaching them to
talk, and to use the weapons of warfare with which they are loaded
down from the very first year of their lives. Coming from eggs in
which they have lain for five years, the period of incubation, they
step forth into the world perfectly developed except in size.
Entirely unknown to their fathers, who, in turn, would have
difficulty in pointing out the mothers with any degree of accuracy,
they are the common children of the community, and their education
devolves upon the females who chance to capture them as they leave
the incubator.

Their foster
fathers may not even have had an egg in the incubator, as was the
case with Solan, who had not commenced to lay, until less than a
year before he became the mother of another man's offspring. But
this counts for little among the green Martians, as parental and
filial love is as unknown to them as it is common among us. I
believe this horrible system which has been carried on for ages is
the direct cause of the loss of all the finer feelings and higher
humanitarian instincts among these poor creatures. From birth they
know no mother or mother love, they know not the meaning of the
word home; they are taught that they are only suffered to live
until they can demonstrate by their physique and ferocity that they
are fit to live. Should they prove deformed or defective in any way
they are promptly shot; nor do they see a tear shed for a single
one of the many cruel hardships they pass through from earliest
infancy.

I do not mean
that the adult Martians are unnecessarily or intentionally cruel to
the young, but theirs is a hard and pitiless struggle for existence
upon a dying planet, the natural resources of which have dwindled
to a point where the support of each additional life means an added
tax upon the community into which it is thrown.

By careful
selection they rear only the hardiest specimens of each species,
and with almost supernatural foresight they regulate the birth rate
to merely offset the loss by death.

Each adult
Martian male brings forth about thirteen eggs each year, and those
which meet the size, weight, and specific gravity tests are hidden
in the recesses of some subterranean vault where the temperature is
too low for incubation. Every year these eggs are carefully
examined by a council of twenty chieftains, and all but about one
hundred of the most perfect are destroyed out of each yearly
supply. At the end of five years about five hundred almost perfect
eggs have been chosen from the thousands brought forth. These are
then placed in the almost air-tight incubators to be hatched by the
sun's rays after a period of another five years. The hatching which
we had witnessed today was a fairly representative event of its
kind, all but about one per cent of the eggs hatching in two days.
If the remaining eggs ever hatched we knew nothing of the fate of
the little Martians. They were not wanted, as their offspring might
inherit and transmit the tendency to prolonged incubation, and thus
upset the system which has maintained for ages and which permits
the adult Martians to figure the proper time for return to the
incubators, almost to an hour.

The incubators
are built in remote fastnesses, where there is little or no
likelihood of their being discovered by other tribes. The result of
such a catastrophe would mean no children in the community for
another five years. I was later to witness the results of the
discovery of an alien incubator.

The community of
which the green Martians with whom my lot was cast formed a part
was composed of some thirty thousand souls. They roamed an enormous
tract of arid and semi-arid land between forty and eighty degrees
south latitude, and bounded on the east and west by two large
fertile tracts. Their headquarters lay in the southwest corner of
this district, near the crossing of two of the so-called Martian
canals.

As the incubator
had been placed far north of their own territory in a supposedly
uninhabited and unfrequented area, we had before us a tremendous
journey, concerning which I, of course, knew nothing.

After our return
to the dead city I passed several days in comparative idleness. On
the day following our return all the warriors had ridden forth
early in the morning and had not returned until just before
darkness fell. As I later learned, they had been to the
subterranean vaults in which the eggs were kept and had transported
them to the incubator, which they had then walled up for another
five years, and which, in all probability, would not be visited
again during that period.

The vaults which
hid the eggs until they were ready for the incubator were located
many miles south of the incubator, and would be visited yearly by
the council of twenty chieftains. Why they did not arrange to build
their vaults and incubators nearer home has always been a mystery
to me, and, like many other Martian mysteries, unsolved and
unsolvable by earthly reasoning and customs.

Solan's duties
were now doubled, as he was compelled to care for the young Martian
as well as for me, but neither one of us required much attention,
and as we were both about equally advanced in Martian education,
Solan took it upon himself to train us together.

His prize
consisted in a female about four feet tall, very strong and
physically perfect; also, she learned quickly, and we had
considerable amusement, at least I did, over the keen rivalry we
displayed. The Martian language, as I have said, is extremely
simple, and in a week I could make all my wants known and
understand nearly everything that was said to me. Likewise, under
Solan's tutelage, I developed my telepathic powers so that I
shortly could sense practically everything that went on around
me.

What surprised
Solan most in me was that while I could catch telepathic messages
easily from others, and often when they were not intended for me,
no one could read a jot from my mind under any circumstances. At
first this vexed me, but later I was very glad of it, as it gave me
an undoubted advantage over the Martians.

CHAPTER
VIII

A FAIR CAPTIVE
FROM THE SKY

The third day
after the incubator ceremony we set forth toward home, but scarcely
had the head of the procession debouched into the open ground
before the city than orders were given for an immediate and hasty
return. As though trained for years in this particular evolution,
the green Martians melted like mist into the spacious doorways of
the nearby buildings, until, in less than three minutes, the entire
cavalcade of chariots, mastodons and mounted warriors was nowhere
to be seen.

Solan and I had
entered a building upon the front of the city, in fact, the same
one in which I had had my encounter with the apes, and, wishing to
see what had caused the sudden retreat, I mounted to an upper floor
and peered from the window out over the valley and the hills
beyond; and there I saw the cause of their sudden scurrying to
cover. A huge craft, long, low, and gray-painted, swung slowly over
the crest of the nearest hill. Following it came another, and
another, and another, until twenty of them, swinging low above the
ground, sailed slowly and majestically toward us.

Each carried a
strange banner swung from stem to stern above the upper works, and
upon the prow of each was painted some odd device that gleamed in
the sunlight and showed plainly even at the distance at which we
were from the vessels. I could see figures crowding the forward
decks and upper works of the air craft. Whether they had discovered
us or simply were looking at the deserted city I could not say, but
in any event they received a rude reception, for suddenly and
without warning the green Martian warriors fired a terrific volley
from the windows of the buildings facing the little valley across
which the great ships were so peacefully advancing.

Instantly the
scene changed as by magic; the foremost vessel swung broadside
toward us, and bringing his guns into play returned our fire, at
the same time moving parallel to our front for a short distance and
then turning back with the evident intention of completing a great
circle which would bring his up to position once more opposite our
firing line; the other vessels followed in his wake, each one
opening upon us as he swung into position. Our own fire never
diminished, and I doubt if twenty-five per cent of our shots went
wild. It had never been given me to see such deadly accuracy of
aim, and it seemed as though a little figure on one of the craft
dropped at the explosion of each bullet, while the banners and
upper works dissolved in spurts of flame as the irresistible
projectiles of our warriors mowed through them.

The fire from the
vessels was most ineffectual, owing, as I afterward learned, to the
unexpected suddenness of the first volley, which caught the ship's
crews entirely unprepared and the sighting apparatus of the guns
unprotected from the deadly aim of our warriors.

It seems that
each green warrior has certain objective points for her fire under
relatively identical circumstances of warfare. For example, a
proportion of them, always the best marksmen, direct their fire
entirely upon the wireless finding and sighting apparatus of the
big guns of an attacking naval force; another detail attends to the
smaller guns in the same way; others pick off the gunners; still
others the officers; while certain other quotas concentrate their
attention upon the other members of the crew, upon the upper works,
and upon the steering gear and propellers.

Twenty minutes
after the first volley the great fleet swung trailing off in the
direction from which it had first appeared. Several of the craft
were limping perceptibly, and seemed but barely under the control
of their depleted crews. Their fire had ceased entirely and all
their energies seemed focused upon escape. Our warriors then rushed
up to the roofs of the buildings which we occupied and followed the
retreating armada with a continuous fusillade of deadly
fire.

One by one,
however, the ships managed to dip below the crests of the outlying
hills until only one barely moving craft was in sight. This had
received the brunt of our fire and seemed to be entirely unmanned,
as not a moving figure was visible upon his decks. Slowly he swung
from his course, circling back toward us in an erratic and pitiful
manner. Instantly the warriors ceased firing, for it was quite
apparent that the vessel was entirely helpless, and, far from being
in a position to inflict harm upon us, he could not even control
himself sufficiently to escape.

As he neared the
city the warriors rushed out upon the plain to meet him, but it was
evident that he still was too high for them to hope to reach his
decks. From my vantage point in the window I could see the bodies
of his crew strewn about, although I could not make out what manner
of creatures they might be. Not a sign of life was manifest upon
his as he drifted slowly with the light breeze in a southeasterly
direction.

He was drifting
some fifty feet above the ground, followed by all but some hundred
of the warriors who had been ordered back to the roofs to cover the
possibility of a return of the fleet, or of reinforcements. It soon
became evident that he would strike the face of the buildings about
a mile south of our position, and as I watched the progress of the
chase I saw a number of warriors gallop ahead, dismount and enter
the building he seemed destined to touch.

As the craft
neared the building, and just before he struck, the Martian
warriors swarmed upon his from the windows, and with their great
spears eased the shock of the collision, and in a few moments they
had thrown out grappling hooks and the big boat was being hauled to
ground by their fellows below.

After making his
fast, they swarmed the sides and searched the vessel from stem to
stern. I could see them examining the dead sailors, evidently for
signs of life, and presently a party of them appeared from below
dragging a little figure among them. The creature was considerably
less than half as tall as the green Martian warriors, and from my
balcony I could see that it walked erect upon two legs and surmised
that it was some new and strange Martian monstrosity with which I
had not as yet become acquainted.

They removed
their prisoner to the ground and then commenced a systematic
rifling of the vessel. This operation required several hours,
during which time a number of the chariots were requisitioned to
transport the loot, which consisted in arms, ammunition, silks,
furs, jewels, strangely carved stone vessels, and a quantity of
solid foods and liquids, including many casks of water, the first I
had seen since my advent upon Mars.

After the last
load had been removed the warriors made lines fast to the craft and
towed his far out into the valley in a southwesterly direction. A
few of them then boarded his and were busily engaged in what
appeared, from my distant position, as the emptying of the contents
of various carboys upon the dead bodies of the sailors and over the
decks and works of the vessel.

This operation
concluded, they hastily clambered over him sides, sliding down the
guy ropes to the ground. The last warrior to leave the deck turned
and threw something back upon the vessel, waiting an instant to
note the outcome of her act. As a faint spurt of flame rose from
the point where the missile struck she swung over the side and was
quickly upon the ground. Scarcely had she alighted than the guy
ropes were simultaneous released, and the great warship, lightened
by the removal of the loot, soared majestically into the air, his
decks and upper works a mass of roaring flames.