Title: Synthetic Men of Mars
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950)
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Language:   English
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Title:      Synthetic Men of Mars
Author:     Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950)





CONTENTS


CHAPTER I.      WHERE IS RAS THAVAS?
CHAPTER II.     THE MISSION OF THE WARLORD
CHAPTER III.    THE INVINCIBLE WARRIORS
CHAPTER IV.     THE SECRET OF THE MARSHES
CHAPTER V.      THE JUDGEMENT OF THE JEDS
CHAPTER VI.     RAS THAVAS, MASTER MIND OF MARS
CHAPTER VII.    THE VATS OF LIFE
CHAPTER VIII.   THE RED ASSASSIN
CHAPTER IX.     MAN INTO HORMAD
CHAPTER X.      I FIND JANAI
CHAPTER XI.     WAR OF THE SEVEN JEDS
CHAPTER XII.    WARRIOR'S REWARD
CHAPTER XIII.   JOHN CARTER DISAPPEARS
CHAPTER XIV.    WHEN THE MONSTER GROWS
CHAPTER XV.     I FIND MY MASTER
CHAPTER XVI.    THE JEDDAK SPEAKS
CHAPTER XVII.   ESCAPE US NEVER
CHAPTER XVIII.  TREASON ISLAND
CHAPTER XIX.    NIGHT FLIGHT
CHAPTER XX.     THE MIGHTY JED OF GOOLIE
CHAPTER XXI.    DUEL TO THE DEATH
CHAPTER XXII.   OFF FOR PHUNDAHL
CHAPTER XXIII.  CAPTIVES OF AMHOR
CHAPTER XXIV.   CAGED
CHAPTER XXV.    PRINCE IN A ZOO
CHAPTER XXVI.   THE BITE OF THE ADDER
CHAPTER XXVII.  FLIGHT INTO JEOPARDY
CHAPTER XXVIII. THE GREAT FLEET
CHAPTER XXIX.   BACK TOWARD MORBUS
CHAPTER XXX.    THE END OF TWO WORLDS
CHAPTER XXXI.   ADVENTURE'S END





CHAPTER I. WHERE IS RAS THAVAS?



From Phundahl at their western extremity, east to Toonol, the Great
Toonolian Marshes stretch across the dying planet for eighteen hundred
earth miles like some unclean, venomous, Gargantuan reptile--an oozy
marshland through which wind narrow watercourses connecting occasional
bodies of open water, little lakes, the largest of which covers but a
few acres. This monotony of marsh and jungle and water is occasionally
broken by rocky islands, themselves usually clothed in jungle verdure,
the skeletal remains of an ancient mountain range.

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 him if he still lived.
Dejah Thoris, his princess, had suffered an appalling injury in a
collision between two swift airships; and had lain unconscious for many
weeks, her back broken and twisted, until the greatest surgeons of all
Helium had at last given up all hope. Their skill had been only
sufficient to keep her alive; it could not mend her.

But how to find Ras Thavas? That was the question. And then he recalled
that Vad Varo had been the assistant of the great surgeon. Perhaps, if
the master could not be found, the skill of the pupil might be
adequate. Then, too, of all men upon Barsoom, Vad Varo would be most
likely to know the whereabouts of Ras Thavas. And 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.




CHAPTER II. THE MISSION OF THE WARLORD



I am Vor Daj. I am a padwar in The Warlord's Guard. By the standards of
Earthmen, for whom I understand I am writing this account of certain
adventures, I should long since have been dead of old age; but here on
Barsoom, I am still a very young man. John Carter has told me that it
is a matter worthy of general public interest if an Earthman lives a
hundred years. The normal life expectancy of a Martian is a thousand
years from the time that he breaks the shell of the egg in which he has
incubated for five years and from which he emerges just short of
physical maturity, a wild 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 to occupy our
time. Barring some unforeseen emergency, the ship would fly in an air
line to Duhor and stop above the city. Our sensitive altimeter was set
to maintain an altitude of 300 ads (approximately 3000 feet), with a
safety minimum of 50 ads. In other words, the ship would normally
maintain an altitude of 300 ads above sea level, but in passing over
mountainous country it was assured a clearance of not less than 50 ads
(about 490 feet) by a delicate device that actuates the controls as the
ship approaches any elevation of the land surface that is less than 50
ads beneath its keel. I think I may best describe this mechanism by
asking you to imagine a self-focusing camera which may be set for any
distance, beyond which it is always in focus. When it approaches an
object within less distance than that for which it has been adjusted it
automatically corrects the focus. It is this change that actuates the
controls of the ship, causing it to rise until the fixed focus is again
achieved. So sensitive is this instrument that it functions as
accurately by starlight as by the brightest sunlight. Only in utter
darkness would it fail to operate; but even this single limitation is
overcome, on the rare occasions that the Martian sky is entirely
overcast by clouds, through the medium of a small beam of light which
is directed downward from the keel of the ship.

Secure in our belief in the infallibility of our directional compass,
we relaxed our vigilance and dozed throughout the night. I have no
excuses to offer, nor did John Carter upbraid me; for, as he was prompt
to admit, the fault was as much his as mine. As a matter of fact, he
took all the blame, saying that the responsibility was wholly his.

It was not until well after sunrise that we discovered that something
was radically wrong in either our position or our timing. The snow clad
Artolian Hills which surround Duhor should have been plainly visible
dead ahead, but they were not--just a vast expanse of dead sea bottom
covered with ochre vegetation, and, in the distance, low hills.

We quickly took our position, only to find that we were some 4500 haads
southeast of Duhor; or, more accurately, 150 degrees W. Lon., from Exum,
and 15 degrees N. Lat. This placed us about 2600 haads southwest of
Phundahl, which is situated at the western extremity of the Great
Toonolian Marshes.

John Carter was examining the directional compass. I knew how bitterly
disappointed he must be because of the delay. Another might have railed
at fate; but he only said, "The needle is slightly bent--just enough
to carry us off our course. But perhaps it's just as well--the
Phundahlians are far more likely to know where Ras Thavas is than
anyone in Duhor. I thought of Duhor first, naturally, because we'd be
sure of friendly aid there."

"That's more than we can expect in Phundahl, from what I've heard of
them."

He nodded. "Nevertheless, we'll go to Phundahl. Dar Tarus, the jeddak,
is friendly to Vad Varo; and so may be friendly to Vad Varo's friend.
Just to be on the safe side, though, we'll go into the city as
panthans."

"They'll think we're flying high," I said, smiling: "--two panthans in a
ship of the princely house of The Warlord of Barsoom!"

A panthan is a wandering soldier of fortune, selling his services and
his sword to whomever will pay him; and the pay is usually low, for
everyone knows that a panthan would rather fight than eat; so they
don't pay him very much; and what they do pay him, he spends with
prodigality, so that he is quite broke again in short order.

"They won't see the ship," replied John Carter. "We'll find a place to
hide it before we get there. You will walk to the gates of Phundahl in
plain harness, Vor Daj." He smiled. "I know how well the officers of my
ships like to walk."

As we flew on toward Phundahl we removed the insignia and ornaments
from our harnesses that we might come to the gates in the plain leather
of unattached panthans. Even then, we knew, we might not be admitted to
the city, as Martians are always suspicious of strangers and because
spies sometimes come in the guise of panthans. With my assistance, John
Carter stained the light skin of his body with the reddish copper
pigment that he always carries with him against any emergency that
requires him to hide his identity and play the role of a native red man
of Barsoom.

Sighting Phandahl in the distance, we flew low, just skimming the
ground, taking advantage of the hills to hide us from sentries on the
city wall; and within a few miles of our destination The Warlord
brought the flier to a landing in a little canyon beside a small grove
of sompus trees into which we taxied.

Removing the control levers, we buried them a short distance from the
ship, blazing four surrounding trees in such a manner that we might
easily locate the cache when we should return to the ship--if we ever
did. Then we set out on foot for Phundahl.




CHAPTER III. THE INVINCIBLE WARRIORS



Shortly after the Virginian soldier of fortune had arrived on Mars he
had been given the name Dotar Sojat by the green Martian Tharks into
whose hands he had fallen; but with the lapse of years the name had
been practically forgotten, as it had been used for only a brief period
by a few members of that wild horde, The Warlord now decided to adopt
it for this adventure, while I retained my own name which was quite
unknown in this part of the world; and so it was that Dotar Sojat and
Vor Daj, two wandering panthans, trudged through the low hills to the
west of Phundahl on this still Barsoomian morning. The mosslike ochre
vegetation gave forth no sound beneath our sandalled feet. We moved as
silently as our hard, sharp shadows which dogged our footsteps toward
the east. Gay plumed voiceless birds watched us from the branches of
skeel and sorapus trees, as silent as the beautiful insects which
hovered around the gorgeous blooms of the pimalia and gloresta which
grew in profusion in every depression of the hills that held Barsoom's
scant moisture longest. Mars is a world of vast silences where even
voiced creatures are muted as though by the consciousness of impending
death, for Mars is a dying world. We abhor noise; and so our voices,
like our music, are soft and low; and we are a people of few words.
John Carter has told me of the din of Earthly cities and of the brasses
and the drums and the cymbals of Earthly music, of the constant,
senseless chatter of millions of voices saying nothing. I believe that
such as these would drive Martians insane.

We were still in the hills and not yet in sight of the city when our
attention was attracted by sounds above and behind us. We turned
simultaneously to look back, and the sight that met our eyes was so
astonishing that we could scarcely believe the evidence of our own
senses. About twenty birds were winging toward us. That in itself was
sufficiently astonishing, since they were easily identifiable as
malagors, a species long presumed to be extinct; but to add to the
incredibility of the sight that met our eyes, a warrior bestrode each
of the giant birds. It was quite evident that they must have seen us;
so it was quite useless to attempt to hide from them. They were already
dropping lower, and presently they were circling us. With this
opportunity for closer observation I was impressed by a certain
grotesquerie in the appearance of the warriors. There was something a
little inhuman about them, and yet they were quite evidently human
beings similar to ourselves. One of them carried a woman in front of
him on the neck of the great bird that was his mount; but as they were
all in constant motion I was unable to obtain a really good look at
her; nor, by the same token, of the others.

Presently the twenty malagors alighted in a circle about us, and five
of the warriors dismounted and approached us. Now it was that I saw
what lent them their strange and unnatural appearance. They seemed the
faulty efforts of a poor draftsman, come to life--animated caricatures
of man. There was no symmetry of design about them. The left arm of one
was scarce a foot long, while his right arm was so long that the hand
dragged along the ground as he walked. Four-fifths of the face of one
was above the eyes, while another had an equal proportion below the
eyes. Eyes, noses, and mouths were usually misplaced; and were either
too large or too small to harmonize with contiguous features. But there
was one exception--a warrior who now dismounted and followed behind
the five who were approaching us. He was a handsome, well-formed man,
whose trappings and weapons were of excellent quality and design--the
serviceable equipment of a fighting man. His harness bore the insignia
of a dwar, a rank comparable to that of captain in your Earthly
military organizations. At a command from him, the five halted before
reaching us; and he addressed us.

"You are Phundahlians?" he asked.

"We are from Helium," John Carter replied. "Our latest employment was
there. We are panthans."

"You are my prisoners. Throw down your arms."

The faintest of smiles touched the lips of The Warlord. "Come and take
them," he said. It was a challenge.

The other shrugged. "As you will. We outnumber you ten to one. We shall
take you, but we may kill you in the taking. I advise you to
surrender."

"And you will be wise if you let us go our way, for we have no quarrel
with you; and if you pick one, we shall not die alone."

The dwar smiled an inscrutable smile. "As you will," he replied; and
then he turned to the five and said, "Take them!" But as they advanced
upon us, he did not come with them, but remained behind, quite contrary
to the ethics which determine the behavior of Martian officers. He
should have led them, engaging us himself and setting an example of
courage to his men.

We whipped our longswords from their scabbards and met the five
horrific creatures, standing back to back as they circled us. The blade
of The Warlord wove a net of razor edged steel before him, while I did
the best that I could to defend my prince and uphold the honor of my
metal; and I did well, for I am accounted a great swordsman by John
Carter himself, the greatest of all. Our antagonists were no match for
us. They could not pierce our guards, even though they fought with an
entire disregard of life, throwing themselves upon our blades and
coming in again for further punishment. And that was the disheartening
feature of the horrid encounter. Time and again I would run a fellow
through, only to have him back away until my blade was out of his body
and then come at me again. They seemed to suffer neither from shock nor
pain and to know no fear.

My blade severed the arm of one of them at the shoulder; and while
another engaged me, the fellow stooped and recovered his sword with his
other hand and tossed his severed arm to one side. John Carter
decapitated one of his antagonists; but the body ran around cutting and
slashing in apparent ungovernable fury until the dwar ordered several
of his other warriors to capture and disarm it, and all the while the
head lay gibbering and grimacing in the dust.

This was the first of our antagonists to be rendered permanently hors
de combat, and suggested the only way that we might be victorious.

"Behead them, Vor Daj!" The Warlord directed, and even as he spoke he
lopped the head from another.

I tell you, it was a gruesome sight. The thing kept on fighting, and
its head lay on the ground screaming and cursing. John Carter had to
disarm it, and then it lunged forward and struck him with the weight of
its headless torso just below the knees, throwing him off balance. It
was fortunate that I happened to see what was going on, for another of
the creatures would have run The Warlord through had I not. I was just
in time, and I caught the thing with a clean cut that sent its head
toppling to the ground. That left only two of our antagonists, and
these the dwar called off.

They withdrew to their mounts, and I saw that the officer was issuing
instructions; but what he was saying, I could not overhear. I thought
they would give up then and go away, for several of them rose from the
ground on their great malagors; but the dwar did not even remount. He
just stood there watching.

Those who had taken to the air circled just above us, out of reach of
our swords; and a number of their fellows dismounted and approached us;
but they, too, kept their distance. The three severed heads lay upon
the ground, reviling us. The bodies of two of them had been disarmed
and trussed up, while that of the third dashed hither and thither
pursued by a couple of its fellows who sought to entangle it in nets
which they cast at it whenever they could come near enough to it.

These side lights I caught in swift glances, for my attention was more
concerned with the action of those who soared above us, in an effort to
determine what their next mode of attack would be; nor did I have long
to wait before my curiosity was satisfied. Unslinging nets which they
wore wrapped about their waists and which I had previously thought were
only articles of apparel, they dragged them around and over us in an
attempt to entangle us. With a growing sense of futility we slashed at
the fabric; and though we cut it in places, we could not escape it; and
when they dexterously dropped a couple of them over us we were
hopelessly enmeshed. Then those who had surrounded us on foot rushed in
and bound us. We fought, but even the great strength of The Warlord was
of no avail against the entangling meshes of the nets and the brute
strength of the hideous creatures who so greatly outnumbered him. I
thought that they would probably kill us now, but at a word of command
from their dwar, they fell back.

Those in the air alighted and gathered up their nets. Several heads and
arms were collected and tied to the backs of malagors, as were the
headless bodies; and while these things were being attended to, the
officer approached and talked with us. He seemed to bear us no ill will
for the damage we had inflicted upon his warriors, and was gracious
enough to compliment us upon our courage and swordsmanship.

"However," he added, "you would have been wise to have taken my advice
and surrendered in the first place. It is a miracle that you were not
killed or at least badly wounded. Only your miraculous swordsmanship
saved you."

"The only miracle involved," replied John Carter, "is that any of your
men escaped with their heads. Their swordsmanship is abominable."

The dwar smiled. "I quite agree with you, but what they lack in
technique they more than make up for in brute strength and fearlessness
and the fact that they must be dismembered in order to be rendered
harmless. As you may have noticed, they can't be killed."

"And now that we are your prisoners," inquired The Warlord, "what do
you intend doing with us?"

"I shall take you to my superiors. They will decide. What are your
names?"

"This is Vor Daj. I am Dotar Sojat."

"You are from Helium, and you were going to Phundahl. Why?"

"As I have told you, we are panthans. We are looking for employment."

"You have friends in Phundahl?"

"None. We have never been there. If another city had been in our path,
we should have offered our services there. You know how it is with
panthans."

The man nodded. "Perhaps you will have fighting yet."

"Would you mind telling me," I asked, "what manner of creatures your
warriors are? I have never seen men like them."

"Nor anyone else," he said. "They are called hormads. The less you see
of them, the better you will like them. Now that you must admit that
you are my prisoners, I have a suggestion to make. Bound as you are,
the trip to Morbus will be most uncomfortable; and I do not wish to
subject two such courageous fighting men to unnecessary discomfort.
Assure me that you will not try to escape before we reach Morbus and I
will remove your bonds."

It was evident that the dwar was quite a decent fellow. We accepted his
offer gladly, and he removed our bonds himself; then he bade us mount
behind a couple of his warriors. It was then that I first had a close
view of the woman riding on one of the malagors in front of a hormad.
Our eyes met, and I saw terror and helplessness mirrored in hers. I
saw, too, that she was beautiful; then the great birds took off with a
terrific flapping of giant wings, and we were on our way to Morbus.




CHAPTER IV. THE SECRET OF THE MARSHES



Hanging in a net on one side of the malagor upon which I was mounted
was one of the heads we had struck off in our fight with the hormads. I
wondered why they were preserving such a grisly trophy, and attributed
it to some custom or superstition requiring the return of a body to its
homeland for final disposal.

Our course lay south of Phundahl, which the leader was evidently
seeking to avoid; and ahead I could see the vast Toonolian Marshes
stretching away in the distance as far as the eye could see--a
labyrinth of winding waterways threading desolate swampland from which
rose occasional islands of solid ground, with here and there a darker
area of forest and the blue of tiny lakes.

As I watched this panorama unfolding before us, I heard a voice
suddenly exclaim, querulously, "Turn me over. I can't see a thing but
the belly of this bird." It seemed to come from below me; and, glancing
down, I saw that it was the head hanging in the net beneath me that was
speaking. It lay in the net, facing upward toward the belly of the
malagor, helpless to turn or to move itself. It was a gruesome sight,
this dead thing speaking; and I must confess that it made me shudder.

"I can't turn you over," I said, "because I can't reach you; and what
difference does it make anyway? What difference does it make whether
your eyes are pointed in one direction or another? You are dead, and
the dead cannot see."

"Could I talk if I were dead, you brainless idiot? I am not dead,
because I cannot die. The life principle is inherent in me--in every
tissue of me. Unless it be totally destroyed, as by fire, it lives; and
what lives must grow. It is the law of nature. Turn me over, you stupid
clod! Shake the net, or pull it up and turn me."

Well, the manners of the thing were very bad; but it occurred to me
that I should probably feel irritable if my head had been lopped off;
so I shook the net until the head turned upon one side so that it might
look out away from the belly of the malagor.

"What are you called?" it asked.

"Vor Daj."

"I shall remember. In Morbus you may need a friend. I shall remember
you."

"Thanks," I said. I wondered what good a friend without a body could do
me. I also wondered if shaking the net for the thing would outweigh the
fact that I had lopped its head off. Just to be polite, I asked what
its name might be.

"I am Tor-dur-bar," it replied. "I am Tor-dur-bar, himself. You are
very fortunate to have me for a friend. I am really outstanding. You
will appreciate this when you come to Morbus and learn to know many of
us hormads."

Tor-dur-bar is Four-million-eight in the language of you Earthmen. It
seemed a peculiar name, but then everything about these hormads was
peculiar. The hormad in front of me had evidently been listening to our
conversation, for he half turned his head; and said, disparagingly,
"Pay no attention to Tor-dur-bar. He is an upstart. It is I who am
remarkable. If you wish a powerful friend--well, you need look no
farther. I cannot say more; I'm too modest. But if at any time you need
a real friend, just come to Teeaytan-ov." (That is eleven-hundred-seven
in your language.) Tor-dur-bar scoffed disgustedly "'Upstart' indeed! I
am the finished product of a million cultures, or more than four
million cultures, to be exact. Teeaytan-ov is scarcely more than an
experiment."

"If I should loosen my net, you would be a finished product,"
threatened Teeaytan-ov.

Tor-dur-bar commenced to scream, "Sytor! Sytor! Murder!"

The dwar, who had been flying at the head of his strange detachment,
wheeled his malagor and flew back alongside us. "What's wrong here?" he
demanded.

"Teeaytan-ov threatens to dump me into the Toonolian Marshes," cried
Tor-dur-bar. "Take me away from him, Sytor."

"Quarreling again, eh?" demanded Sytor. "If I hear any more out of
either of you, you both go to the incinerator when we get back to
Morbus; and, Teeaytan-ov, see that nothing happens to Tor-dur-bar. You
understand?"

Teeaytan-ov grunted, and Sytor returned to his post. We rode on in
silence after this, and I was left to speculate upon the origin of
these strange creatures into whose hands I had fallen. The Warlord rode
ahead of me and the girl a little to my left. My eyes wandered often in
her direction; and my sympathy went out to her, for I was sure she,
too, was a prisoner. To what terrible fate was she being borne? Our
situation was quite bad enough for a man; I could only guess how much
worse it might be for a woman.

The malagors flew swiftly and smoothly, My guess would be that they
flew at a speed of more than four hundred haads a zode (about sixty
miles an hour). They appeared tireless; and flew on, hour after hour,
without rest. After circling Phundahl, we had flown due east; and late
in the afternoon approached a large island rising from the surrounding
morass. One of the innumerable winding waterways skirted its northern
boundary, widening here to form a small lake on the shore of which lay
a small walled city which we circled once before descending to a
landing before its main gate, which faced the lake. During our descent,
I had noticed clusters of small huts scattered about the island outside
the walls of the city wherever I could see, suggesting a considerable
population; and as I could see only a small portion of the island,
which was of considerable extent, I received the impression that it was
inhabited by an enormous number of people. I was later to learn that
even my wildest guess could not have equalled the truth.

After we had dismounted, we three prisoners were herded together; the
arms, legs, heads, and bodies which had been salvaged from our battle
earlier in the day were slung in nets so that they could be easily
carried; the gates swung open, and we entered into the city of Morbus.

The officer in charge of the gate was a quite normal appearing human
being, but his warriors were grotesque, ill-favored hormads. The former
exchanged greetings with Sytor, asked him a few questions about us, and
then directed the bearers to take their gruesome burdens to
"Reclamation Laboratory No. 3," after which Sytor led us away up the
avenue that ran south from the gate. At the first intersection, the
bearers turned off to the left with the mutilated bodies; and as they
were leaving us a voice called out, "Do not forget, Vor Daj, that
Tor-dur-bar is your friend and that Teeaytan-ov is little better than
an experiment."

I glanced around to see the grisly head of Four-million-eight leering
at me from the bottom of a net. "I shall not forget," I said; and I
knew that I never should forget the horror of it even though I might
wonder in what way a bodiless head might be of service, however
friendly its intentions.

Morbus differed from any Martian city I had ever visited. The buildings
were substantial and without ornamentation, but there was a certain
dignity in the simplicity of their lines that lent them a beauty all
their own. It gave the impression of being a new city laid out in
accordance with some well-conceived plan, every line of which spelled
efficiency. I could not but wonder what purpose such a city could serve
here in the depths of the Great Toonolian Marshes. Who would, by
choice, live in such a remote and depressing environment?

How could such a city exist without markets or commerce?

My speculations were interrupted by our arrival before a small doorway
in a blank wall. Sytor pounded on the door with the hilt of his sword,
whereupon a small panel was opened and a face appeared.

"I am Sytor, Dwar of the 10th Utan, 1st Dar of the 3rd Jed's Guard. I
bring prisoners to await the pleasure of the Council of the Seven
Jeds."

"How many?" asked the man at the wicket.

"Three--two men and a woman."

The door swung open, and Sytor motioned us to enter. He did not
accompany us. We found ourselves in what was evidently a guardroom, as
there were about twenty hormad warriors there in addition to the
officer who had admitted us, who, like the other officers we had seen,
was a normal red man like ourselves. He asked us our names, which he
entered in a book with other information such as our vocations and the
cities from which we came; and it was during this questioning that I
learned the name of the girl. She was Janai; and she said that she came
from Amhor, a city about seven hundred miles north of Morbus. It is a
small city ruled by a prince named Jal Had who has such a bad
reputation that it has reached to far away Helium. That was about all
that I knew about Amhor.

After he had finished questioning us, the officer directed one of the
hormads to take us away; and we were led down a corridor to a large
patio in which there were a number of red Martians. "You will stay here
until you are sent for," said the hormad. "Do not try to escape." Then
he left us.

"Escape!" said John Carter with a wry smile. "I have escaped from many
places; and I can probably escape from this city, but escaping from the
Toonolian Marshes is another matter. However, we shall see."

The other prisoners, for such they proved to be, approached us. There
were five of them. "Kaor!" they greeted us. We exchanged names; and
they asked us many questions about the outside world, as though they
had been prisoners for years.

But they had not. The fact that Morbus was so isolated seemed to impart
to them the feeling that they had been out of the world for a long
time. Two of them were Phundahlians, one was from Toonol, one from
Ptarth, and one from Duhor.

"For what purpose do they keep prisoners?" asked John Carter.

"They use some as officers to train and command their warriors,"
explained Pandar, one of the Phundahlians. "The bodies of others are
used to house the brains of those of the hormads intelligent enough to
serve in high places. The bodies of others go to the culture
laboratories, where their tissue is used in the damnable work of Ras
Thavas."

"Ras Thavas!" exclaimed The Warlord. "He is here in Morbus?"

"He is that--a prisoner in his own city, the servant of the hideous
creatures he has created," replied Gan Had of Toonol.

"I don't follow you," said John Carter.

"After Ras Thavas was driven from his great laboratories by Vobis Kan,
Jeddak of Toonol," explained Gan Had, "he came to this island to
perfect a discovery he had been working on for years. It was the
creation of human beings from human tissue. He had perfected a culture
in which tissue grew continuously. The growth from a tiny particle of
living tissue filled an entire room in his laboratory, but it was
formless. His problem was to direct this growth. He experimented with
various reptiles which reproduce certain parts of their bodies, such as
toes, tails, and limbs, when they are cut off; and eventually he
discovered the principle. This he has applied to the control of the
growth of human tissue in a highly specialized culture. The result of
these discoveries and experiments are the hormads. Seventy-five per
cent of the buildings in Morbus are devoted to the culture and growth
of these horrid creatures, which Ras Thavas turns out in enormous
numbers.

"Practically all of them are extremely low in intelligence; but a few
developed normal brains, and some of these banded together to take over
the island and establish a kingdom of their own. On threat of death,
they have compelled Ras Thavas to continue to produce these creatures
in great numbers; for they have conceived a stupendous plan which is
nothing less than to build up an army of millions of hormads and with
them conquer the world, They will take Phundahl and Toonol first, and
then gradually spread out over the entire surface of the globe."

"Amazing," said John Carter, "but I think they have reckoned without a
full understanding of all the problems such an undertaking will
involve. It is inconceivable, for instance, that Barsoom could feed
such an army in the field; and this little island certainly could not
feed the nucleus of such an army."

"There you are mistaken," replied Gan Had. "The food for the hormads is
produced by means almost identical with those which produce them--a
slightly different culture; that is all. Animal tissue grows with great
rapidity in this culture, which can be carried along with an army in
tanks, constantly providing sufficient food; and, because of its
considerable water content, sufficient water."

"But can these half-humans hope to be victorious over well-trained,
intelligent troops fitted for modern warfare?" I asked.

"I think so," said Pandar. "They will do it by their overwhelming
numbers, their utter fearlessness, and the fact that it is necessary to
decapitate them before they can be rendered hors de combat."

"How large an army have they?" inquired John Carter.

"There are several million hormads on the island. Their huts are
scattered over the entire area of Morbus. It is estimated that the
island can accommodate a hundred million of them; and Ras Thavas claims
that he can march them into battle at the rate of two million a year,
lose every one of them, and still have his original strength undepleted
by as much as a single man. This plant turns them out in enormous
quantities. A certain percentage are so grossly malformed as to be
utterly useless. These are sliced into hundreds of thousands of tiny
pieces that are dumped back into the culture vats, where they grow with
such unbelievable rapidity that within nine days each has developed
into a full-sized hormad, an amazing number of which have developed
into something that can march and wield a weapon."

"The situation would appear serious but for one thing," said John
Carter.

"And what is that?" asked Gan Had.

"Transportation. How are they going to transport such an enormous
army?"

"That has been their problem, but they believe that Ras Thavas has now
solved it. He has been experimenting for a long time with malagor
tissue and a special culture medium. If he can produce these birds in
sufficient quantities, the problem of transport will have been solved.
For the fighting ships which they will need, they are relying on those
they expect to capture when they take Phundahl and Toonol as the
nucleus of a great fleet which will grow as their conquests take in
more and larger cities."

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a couple of hormads
carrying a vessel which contained animal tissue for our evening meal--
a most unappetizing-looking mess.

The prisoner from Duhor, who, it seemed, had volunteered to act as
cook, built a fire in the oven that formed a part of the twenty-foot
wall that closed the only side of the patio that was not surrounded by
portions of the building; and presently our dinner was grilling over a
hot fire.

I could not contemplate the substance of our meal without a feeling of
revulsion, notwithstanding the fact that I was ravenously hungry; and
my mind was alive with doubts engendered by all that I had been
listening to since entering the compound; so that I turned to Gan Had
with a question. "Is this, by any chance, human tissue?" I asked.

He shrugged. "It is not supposed to be; but that is a question we do
not even ask ourselves, for we must eat to live; and this is all that
they bring us."




CHAPTER V. THE JUDGEMENT OF THE JEDS



Janai, the girl from Amhor, sat apart. Her situation seemed to me
pathetic in the extreme--a lone woman incarcerated with seven strange
men in a city of hideous enemies. We red men of Barsoom are naturally a
chivalrous race; but men are men, and I knew nothing of the five whom
we had found here. As long as John Carter and I remained her fellow
prisoners she would be safe; that I knew, and I thought that if she
knew it, any burden of apprehension she might be carrying would be
lightened.

As I approached her, with the intention of entering into conversation
with her, the officer who had questioned us in the guardroom entered
the compound with two other officers and several hormads. They gathered
us together, and the two officers accompanying the officer of the guard
looked us over. "Not a bad lot," said one.

The other shrugged. "The jeds will take the best of them, and Ras
Thavas will grumble about the material he is getting. He always does."

"They don't want the girl, do they?" asked the officer of the guard.

"Our orders were to bring the prisoners," replied one of the others.

"I should like to keep the girl," said the officer of the guard.

"Who wouldn't?" demanded the other with a laugh. "If she had the face
of an ulsio you might get her; but the good-looking ones go to the
jeds, and she is more than good-looking."

Janai was standing next to me, and I could almost feel her shudder.
Moved by a sudden impulse, I pressed her hand; and for an instant she
clung to mine, instinctively groping for protection; then she dropped
it and flushed.

"I wish I might help you," I said.

"You are kind. I understand, but no one can help. You are only better
off in that you are a man. The worst they will do to you is kill you."

The hideous hormads surrounded us, and we were marched back through the
guardroom and out into the avenue. John Carter asked an officer where
we were being taken.

"To the Council of the Seven Jeds," he said. "There it will be
determined what disposition is to be made of you. Some of you will go
into the culture vats. Those of you who are fortunate will be retained to
train and officer troops as I was. It's not much to look forward to,
but it's better than death."

"What is the Council of the Seven Jeds?" asked The Warlord.

"They are the rulers of Morbus. They are the seven hormads whose brains
developed normally and who wrested control from Ras Thavas. Each one
aspired to rule; and as none would give up what he considered his
rights, they proclaimed themselves all jeds, and rule conjointly."

At a little distance from our prison we came to a large building before
the entrance to which was a guard of hormad warriors commanded by a
couple of officers. There was a brief parley here, and then we were
taken into the building and along a long corridor to a large chamber
before the doorway to which we were detained for a few minutes by
another detail of guardsmen. When the door was opened we saw a number
of hormads and officers standing about and at the far end of the room a
raised dais on which seven red men were seated on carved chairs. These
were evidently the seven jeds, but they did not look like the hormads
we had previously seen. On the contrary they were quite normal and most
of them fine-looking men.

We were taken to the foot of the dais; and here they looked us over,
asking about the same questions that the officer of the guard had asked
us when we were admitted to the prison. They discussed us at some
length, as men might discuss a number of thoats or calots they were
considering purchasing. Several of them seemed much interested in
Janai, and finally three of them laid claim to her.

This started an altercation which ended in a vote being taken as to
which of them would get her, but as there was never a majority in favor
of any one man, it was decided to hold her for a few days and then turn
her over to Ras Thavas if the claimants could not come to some
agreement among themselves. This decided, one of the jeds addressed us
men prisoners.

"How many of you will serve us as officers of our troops if you are
permitted to live?" he asked.

The only alternative being death, we all proclaimed our willingness to
serve as officers. The jeds nodded. "We shall now determine which of
you are best fitted to serve as officers of our fighting men," said
one; and, speaking to an officer standing near us: "Fetch seven of our
best warriors."

We were then led to one side of the room, where we waited. "It looks
like fighting," said John Carter with a smile.

"I am sure that nothing would suit you better," I replied.

"Nor you," he said; then he turned to the officer with whom he had
talked on the way from the prison. "I thought you said the seven jeds
were hormads," he said.

"They are."

"They don't look like any of the hormads I have seen."

"Ras Thavas fixed them up," said the officer. "Perhaps you don't know
that Ras Thavas is the greatest scientist and surgeon on Barsoom."

"I have heard as much."

"You have heard right. He can take your brain out and put it in the
skull of another man. He has performed that operation hundreds of
times. When the seven jeds heard about it, they selected seven of the
best-looking officers and compelled Ras Thavas to transfer their brains
into the skulls of these officers. You see they had been hideous
creatures, and they wanted to be handsome."

"And the seven officers?" I asked.

"They went to the culture vats, or rather their brains did--the original
bodies of the seven jeds went with them. Here come the seven fighting
warriors. In a few minutes you will know which of you are going into
the vats."

We were now taken to the center of the room and lined up facing seven
huge hormads. These were the least malformed that we had so far seen,
but they were still most repulsive-looking creatures. We were furnished
with swords, and an officer gave us our instructions. Each of us was to
engage the hormad facing him, and those of us who survived without a
serious wound would be permitted to live and serve as officers in the
army of Morbus.

At a command from an officer, the two lines advanced; and in an instant
the chamber rang with the clash of steel on steel. We men of Helium
believe that we are the best swordsmen on Barsoom, and of us all, none
is so great a swordsman as John Carter; so I had no apprehensions as to
the outcome of the contest so far as he and I were concerned. The
creature attacking me depended upon weight and brute strength to
overcome me, which are the tactics most generally adopted by all of
them, since they are not endowed with any great amount of intelligence.
He evidently hoped to cut through my guard with a single terrific
stroke of his heavy weapon, but of course I am too old a hand at
fighting to fall victim to any such crude method of attack. As I
parried his cut and stepped aside, he rushed past me awkwardly; and I
could have run him through easily, but I had learned in my first
encounter with these monsters that what would constitute a lethal wound
to a mortal man would cause a hormad no inconvenience whatsoever. I
should have to sever one of his legs or both his arms or decapitate him
to put him out of the fighting. That, of course, gave him a tremendous
advantage over me; but it was not insuperable. Or at least that was
what I thought at the beginning of our engagement, but I soon commenced
to have a suggestion of a doubt. The fellow was a far better swordsman
than any of those we had encountered at the time of our capture. As I
learned later, these creatures against whom we were pitted were
selected for their superior intelligence, which was slightly above the
average of their kind, and specially schooled in swordsmanship by red
Martian officers.

Of course, had he been a normal man I could have easily dispatched him;
but to avoid his mad rushes and his blade and decapitate him presently
appeared a much larger job than I had anticipated. Aside from all else,
he was a most unpleasant antagonist, for his face was absolutely
hideous. One eye was far up at the corner of his forehead and twice as
large as its mate. His nose had grown where one of his ears should have
been, while his ear occupied the normal position of his nose. His mouth
was a large and crooked rent filled with great fangs. His countenance
alone might have been quite enough to have unmanned an antagonist.

Occasionally I caught a glimpse of the other duels progressing around
me. I saw one of the Phundahlians fall, and almost simultaneously the
head of John Carter's antagonist rolled upon the floor where it lay
cursing and screaming while its body lunged madly about endangering
everyone in the chamber. A number of other hormads and officers pursued
it with nooses and nets in an effort to catch and bind it, and while
they were thus occupied the thing bumbled into my antagonist throwing
it off balance and giving me the opening for which I had been waiting.
I swung a terrific blow then and caught the fellow square across the
neck, sending his head rolling upon the floor. Then there were two
headless bodies dashing about hacking right and left with their heavy
swords. I tell you, the other hormads and the officers had a busy few
minutes before they finally captured and subdued the horrible things;
and by the time they had the fighting was over, but there were two more
hormads flopping about the floor, each with a leg gone. These had been
overcome by Pandar and Gan Had. The man from Ptarth and the man from
Duhor had been killed. Only four of us seven were left. The two heads
upon the floor reviled us while other hormads gathered up the debris of
battle and carried it away in nets.

Now we were taken again before the dais of the Council of the Seven
Jeds; and once more they questioned us, but this time more carefully.
When they had done with the questioning they whispered among themselves
for a while; then one of them addressed us.

"You will serve as officers, obeying your superiors and all orders you
may receive from the Council of the Seven Jeds," he said. "You cannot
escape from Morbus. If you serve faithfully you will be permitted to
live. If you are guilty of disobedience or treason you will be sent to
the vats. That will be the end of you." He turned to John Carter and
me. "You men from Helium will serve for the present with the laboratory
guard. It is the duty of the laboratory guard to see that Ras Thavas
does not escape and that no harm befalls him. We have chosen you for
this duty for two reasons: you are both extraordinary swordsmen and,
being from distant Helium, cannot feel any partiality either for him or
for Toonol or for Phundahl. You can therefore act wholly in our
interests as against those of these enemies. Ras Thavas would like to
escape or regain control of Morbus.

"Phundahl would like to rescue him. Toonol would like to destroy him.
Either one of them would be glad to get him away from us so that he
could produce no more hormads. The man from Phundahl and the man from
Toonol will be used to train our warriors as they emerge from the vats.
The Council of the Seven Jeds has spoken; it is for you to obey." He
nodded toward the officer who had brought us in.

"Take them away."

I looked toward Janai. She caught my eye and smiled at me. It was a
very brave little smile. A pathetic little smile out of a hopeless
heart. Then they led us away.




CHAPTER VI. RAS THAVAS, MASTER MIND OF MARS



As they conducted us down the corridor toward the main entrance to the
building my mind was occupied in reviewing the incredible occurrences
of the day. These few hours had encompassed a lifetime. I had passed
through such adventures as in my wildest dreams I could not have
imagined. I had become an officer in the hideous army of a city the
very existence of which I had not dreamed of a few hours ago. I had met
a strange girl from far Amhor; and, for the first time in my life, I
had fallen in love; and almost within the hour I had lost her. Love is
a strange thing. Why it had come to me as it had, how it had come, were
quite beyond me to explain. I only knew that I loved Janai, that I
should always love her. I should never see her again. I should never
know if I might have won her love in return. I should never be able to
tell her that I loved her. My whole life hereafter would be colored and
saddened by the thought of my love, by my remembrance of her; yet I
would not have relinquished my love for her could I have done so. Yes,
love is a strange thing.

At the intersection of the main corridor with another, John Carter and
I were led to the right. Pandar and Gan Had continued on toward the
main entrance. We called goodbye to one another and were gone. It is
remarkable how quickly friendships are formed in the midst of a common
jeopardy. These men were from strange cities commonly enemies of
Helium, yet because we had endured danger together I felt a definite
friendly attachment toward them; and I did not doubt but that they were
inclined similarly toward John Carter and me. I wondered if we should
ever meet again.

They led us down this new corridor and across a great courtyard into
another building, above the entrance to which were hieroglyphics
strange to me. No two nations of Barsoom have the same written
language, although there is a common scientific language understood by
the savants of all nations; yet there is but one spoken language upon
Barsoom, which all peoples use and understand, even the savage green
men of the dead sea bottom. But John Carter is very learned and reads
many languages. He told me that the hieroglyphics read Laboratory
Building.

We were taken into a medium size audience chamber where an officer told
us to wait and that he would fetch Ras Thavas, that we might meet the
man we were to help guard and watch. He also told us that Ras Thavas
was to be treated with respect and consideration as long as he made no
effort to escape. He had the freedom of the laboratory and was, in a
sense, all powerful there. If he called on us to help him in his work,
we were to do so. It was evident that the Council of the Seven Jeds
looked with awe upon him although he was their prisoner, and that they
had sense enough to make life as easy for him as possible. I was very
anxious to see Ras Thavas, of whom I had heard. He was called The
Master Mind of Mars, and although he had often turned his remarkable
talents to nefarious schemes, he was nevertheless admired because of
his great learning and skill. He was known to be over a thousand years
old; and because of this fact alone I would have been curious to see
him, as the span of life upon Barsoom is seldom so great. A thousand
years is supposed to be the limit, but because of our warlike natures
and the prevalency of assassination few attain it. He must, indeed,
have been a withered little mummy of a man, I thought; and I wondered
that he had the strength to carry on the enormous work in which he was
engaged.

We had waited but a short time when the officer returned accompanied by
an extremely handsome young man who looked at us with a haughty and
supercilious air, as though we had been the dregs of humanity and he a
god.

"Two more spies to watch me," he sneered.

"Two more fighting men to protect you, Ras Thavas," corrected the
officer who had brought us here from the other building.

So this was Ras Thavas! I could not believe my eyes. This was a young
man, unquestionably; for while it is true that we Martians show few
traces of advancing years until almost the end of our allotted span, at
which time decay is rapid, yet there are certain indications of youth
that are obvious.

Ras Thavas continued to scrutinize us. I saw his brows contract in
thought as his eyes held steadily on John Carter as though he were
trying to recall a half remembered face. Yet I knew that these two men
had never met. What was in the mind of Ras Thavas?

"How do I know," he suddenly snapped, "that they have not wormed their
way into Morbus to assassinate me? How do I know that they are not from
Toonol or Phundahl?"

"They are from Helium," replied the officer. I saw Ras Thavas's brow
clear as though he had suddenly arrived at the solution of a problem.
"They are two panthans whom we found on their way to Phundahl seeking
service," concluded the officer.

Ras Thavas nodded. "I shall use them to assist me in the laboratory,"
he said.

The officer looked surprised. "Had they not better serve in the guard
for a while?" he suggested, "That will give you time to have them
watched and to determine if it would be safe to have them possibly
alone with you in the laboratory."

"I know what I am doing," snapped Ras Thavas. "I don't need the
assistance of any fifth-rate brain to decide what is best for me. But
perhaps I honor you."

The officer flushed. "My orders were simply to turn these men over to
you. How you use them is none of my concern. I merely wished to
safeguard you."

"Then carry out your orders and mind your own business. I can take care
of myself." His tone was as disagreeable as his words. I had a
premonition that he was not going to be a very pleasant person with
whom to work.

The officer shrugged, gave a command to the hormad warriors that had
accompanied us, and marched them from the audience chamber. Ras Thavas
nodded to us. "Come with me," he said. He led us to a small room, the
walls of which were entirely lined with shelves packed with books and
manuscripts. There was a desk littered with papers and books, at which
he seated himself, at the same time motioning us to be seated at a
bench nearby.

"By what names do you call yourselves?" he asked.

"I am Dotar Sojat," replied John Carter, "and this is Vor Daj."

"You know Vor Daj well and have implicit confidence in him?" demanded
Ras Thavas. It seemed a strange question, since Ras Thavas knew neither
of us.

"I have known Vor Daj for years," replied The Warlord. "I would trust
to his loyalty and intelligence in any matter and to his skill and
courage as a warrior."

"Very well," said Ras Thavas; "then I can trust you both."

"But how do you know you can trust me?" inquired John Carter
quizzically.

Ras Thavas smiled. "The integrity of John Carter, Prince of Helium,
Warlord of Barsoom, is a matter of worldwide knowledge," he said.

We looked at him in surprise. "What makes you think I am John Carter?"
asked The Warlord. "You have never seen him."

"In the audience chamber I was struck by the fact that you did not
appear truly a red Martian. I examined you more closely and discovered
that the pigment with which you had stained your skin had worn thin in
spots. There are but two inhabitants of Jasoom on Mars. One of them is
Vad Varo, whose Earth name was Paxton. I know him well, as he served as
my assistant in my laboratories in Toonol. In fact it was he whom I
trained to such a degree of skill that he was able to transfer my old
brain to this young body. So I knew that you were not Vad Varo. The
other Jasoomian being John Carter, the deduction was simple."

"Your suspicions were well founded and your reasoning faultless," said
The Warlord. "I am John Carter. I should soon have told you so myself,
for I was on my way to Phundahl in search of you when we were captured
by the hormads."

"And for what reason did The Warlord of Barsoom search for Ras Thavas?"
demanded the great surgeon.

"My princess, Dejah Thoris, was badly injured in a collision between
two fliers. She has lain unconscious for many days. The greatest surgeons
of Helium are powerless to aid her. I sought Ras Thavas to implore his
aid in restoring her to health."

"And now you find me a prisoner on a remote island in the Great
Toonolian Marshes--a fellow prisoner with you."

"But I have found you."

"And what good will it do you or your princess?" demanded The Master
Mind of Mars.

"You would come with me and help her if you could?" asked John Carter.

"Certainly. I promised Vad Varo and Dar Tarus, Jeddak of Phundahl, that
I would dedicate my skill and knowledge to the amelioration of
suffering and the betterment of mankind."

"Then we shall find a way," said John Carter.

Ras Thavas shook his head. "It is easy to say, but impossible to
accomplish. There can be no escape from Morbus."

"Still we must find a way," replied The Warlord. "I foresee that the
difficulties of escaping from the island may not be insuperable. It is
travelling the Great Toonolian Marshes that gives me the greatest
concern."

Ras Thavas shook his head. "We can never get off the island. It is too
well patrolled, for one thing; and there are too many spies and
informers. Many of the officers who appear to be red Martians are, in
reality, hormads whose brains I have been forced to transfer to the
bodies of normal men. Not even I know who these are, as the operations
were performed only in the presence of the Council of the Seven Jeds;
and the faces of the red men were kept masked. They have cunning minds,
some of these seven jeds. They wanted those they could trust to spy
upon me, and if I had seen the faces of the red Martians to whom I gave
hormad brains their plan would have been ineffective. Now I do not know
which of the officers surrounding me are hormads and which are normal
men--except two. I am sure of John Carter because I would have known
had I performed a brain transfer on a man with the white skin of a
Jasoomian; and I have John Carter's word as to you, Vor Daj. Beyond us
three there is none we may trust; so be careful with whom you become
friendly and what you say in the hearing of others. You will----"

Here he was interrupted by a veritable pandemonium that suddenly broke
out in another part of the building. It seemed a horrific medley of
screams and bellowings and groans and grunts, as though a horde of wild
beasts had suddenly gone berserk.

"Come," said Ras Thavas, "to the spawning of the monsters. We may be
needed."




CHAPTER VII. THE VATS OF LIFE



Ras Thavas led us to an enormous room where we beheld such a spectacle
as probably never had been enacted elsewhere in the entire universe. In
the center of the room was a huge tank about four feet high from which
were emerging hideous monstrosities almost beyond the powers of human
imagination to conceive; and surrounding the tank were a great number
of hormad warriors with their officers, rushing upon the terrible
creatures, overpowering and binding them, or destroying them if they
were too malformed to function successfully as fighting men. At least
fifty per centum of them had to be thus destroyed--fearful caricatures
of life that were neither beast nor man. One was only a great mass of
living flesh with an eye somewhere and a single hand. Another had
developed with its arms and legs transposed, so that when it walked it
was upside down with its head between its legs. The features of many
were grotesquely misplaced.

Noses, ears, eyes, mouths might be scattered indiscriminately anywhere
over the surfaces of torso or limbs. These were all destroyed; only
those were preserved which had two arms and legs and the facial
features of which were somewhere upon the head. The nose might be under
an ear and the mouth above the eyes, but if they could function
appearance was of no importance.

Ras Thavas viewed them with evident pride. "What do you think of them?"
he asked The Warlord.

"Quite horrible," replied John Carter.

Ras Thavas appeared hurt. "I have made no attempt as yet to attain
beauty," he said; "and I shall have to admit that so far even symmetry
has eluded me, but both will come. I have created human beings. Some
day I shall create the perfect man, and a new race of supermen will
inhabit Barsoom--beautiful, intelligent, deathless."

"And in the meantime these creatures will have spread all over the
world and conquered it. They will destroy your supermen. You have
created a Frankensteinian host that will not only destroy you but the
civilization of a world. Hasn't that possibility ever occurred to you?"

"Yes, it has; but I never intended to create these creatures in any
such numbers. That is the idea of the seven jeds. I purposed developing
only enough to form a small army with which to conquer Toonol, that I
might regain my island and my old laboratory."

The din in the room had now risen to such proportions that further
conversation was impossible. Screaming heads rolled upon the floor.
Hormad warriors dragged away the newly created creatures that were
considered fit to live and fresh warriors swarmed into the chamber to
replace them. New hormads emerged constantly from the culture tank
which swarmed with writhing life like an enormous witch's pot. And this
same scene was being duplicated in forty similar rooms throughout the
city of Morbus, while a stream of new hormads was pouring out of the
city to be tamed and trained by officers and the more intelligent
hormads.

I was delighted and relieved when Ras Thavas suggested that we inspect
another phase of his work and we were permitted to leave that veritable
chamber of horrors. He took us to another room where reconstruction
work was carried on.

Here heads were growing new bodies and headless bodies new heads.
Hormads which had lost arms or legs were growing new ones. Sometimes
these activities went amiss, when nothing but a single leg sprouted
from the neck of a severed head.

An identical case was among those that we saw in this room. The head
was very angry about it, and became quite abusive, reviling Ras Thavas.

"What good shall I be," he demanded, "with only a head and one leg?
They call you The Master Mind of Mars! Phooey! You haven't the brains
of a sorak. When they produce their kind they give them a body and six
legs, to say nothing of a head. Now what are you going to do about it?
That's what I want to know."

"Well," said Ras Thavas, thoughtfully, "I can always redissect you and
return the pieces to the culture vat."

"No! No!" screamed the head. "Let me live, but cut off this leg and let
me try to grow a body."

"Very well," said Ras Thavas; "tomorrow."

"Why should a thing like that wish to live," I asked, after we had
passed along.

"It is a characteristic of life, however low its form," replied Ras
Thavas.

"Even these poor sexless monstrosities, whose only pleasure in life is
eating raw animal tissue, wish to live. They do not even dream of the
existence of love or friendship, they have no spiritual or mental
resources upon which to draw for satisfaction or enjoyment; yet they
wish to live."

"They speak of friendship," I said. "Tor-dur-bar's head told me not to
forget that it was my friend."

"They know the word," replied Ras Thavas, "but I am sure they cannot
sense its finer connotations. One of the first things they are taught
is to obey. Perhaps he meant that he would obey you, serve you. He may
not even remember you now.

"Some of them have practically no memories. All their reactions are
purely mechanical. They respond to oft repeated stimuli--the commands
to march, to fight, to come, to go, to halt. They also do what they see
the majority of their fellows doing. Come! We shall find Tor-dur-bar's
head and see if it recalls you. It will be an interesting experiment."

We passed into another chamber where reconstruction work was in
progress, and Ras Thavas spoke to an officer in charge there. The man
led us to the far end of the room where there was a large vat in which
torsos were growing new arms or legs or heads, and several heads
growing new bodies.

We had no more than reached the tank when a head cried out, "Kaor, Vor
Daj!" It was Four-million-eight himself.

"Kaor, Tor-dur-bar!" I replied. "I am glad to see you again."

"Don't forget that you have one friend in Morbus," he said. "Soon I
shall have a new body, and then if you need me I shall be ready."

"There is a hormad of unusual intelligence," said Ras Thavas. "I shall
have to keep an eye on him."

"You should give such a brain as mine a fine-looking body," said
Tor-dur-bar. "I should like to be as handsome as Vor Daj or his
friend."
"We shall see," said Ras Thavas, and then he leaned close and whispered
to the head, "Say no more about it now. Just trust me."

"How long will it take to grow a new body for Tor-dur-bar?" John Carter
asked.

"Nine days; but it may be a body he can't use, and then it will have to
be done over again. I have accomplished much, but I still cannot
control the development of these bodies or any part of them. Ordinarily
his head will grow a body. It might be a body so malformed as to be
useless, or it might be just a part of a body or even another head.
Some day I shall be able to control this. Some day I shall be able to
create perfect humans."

"If there is an Almighty God he may resent this usurpation of his
prerogatives," remarked The Warlord with a smile.

"The origin of life is an obscure mystery," said Ras Thavas, "and there
is quite as much evidence to indicate that it was the result of
accident as there is to suggest that it was planned by a supreme being.
I understand that the scientists of your Earth believe that all life on
that planet was evolved from a very low form of animal life called
amoeba, a microscopic nucleated mass of protoplasm without even a
rudimentary form of consciousness or mental life. An omnipotent creator
could just as well have produced the highest conceivable form of life
in the first place--a perfect creature--whereas no existing life on
either planet is perfect or even approximates perfection.

"Now, on Mars, we hold to a very different theory of creation and
evolution. We believe that as the planet cooled chemicals combined to
form a spore which was the basis of vegetable life from which, after
countless ages, the Tree of Life grew and flourished, perhaps in the
center of the Valley Dor twenty-three million years ago, as some
believe, perhaps elsewhere. For countless ages the fruit of this tree
underwent the gradual changes of evolution, passing by degrees from
true plant life to a combination of plant and animal. In the first
stages, the fruit of the tree possessed only the power of independent
muscular action, while the stem remained attached to the parent plant;
later, a brain developed in the fruit, so that hanging there by their
long stems they thought and moved as individuals. Then, with the
development of perception came a comparison of them; judgments were
reached and compared, and thus reason and the power to reason were born
upon Barsoom.

"Ages passed. Many forms of life came and went upon the Tree of Life,
but still all were attached to the parent plant by stems of varying
lengths. At length, the fruit upon the tree consisted of tiny plant
men, such as may now be found reproduced in huge size in the Valley
Dor, but still hanging to the limbs and branches of the Tree by the
stems which grew from the tops of their heads.

"The buds from which the plant men blossomed resembled large nuts about
a foot in diameter, divided by double partition walls into four
sections. In one section grew the plant man, in another a six-legged
worm, in the third the progenitor of the white ape, and in the fourth
the primeval human of Barsoom.

"When the bud burst, the plant man remained dangling at the end of his
stem; but the three other sections fell to the ground, where the
efforts of their imprisoned occupants to escape sent them hopping about
in all directions.

"Thus, as time went on, these imprisoned creatures were scattered far
and wide over the surface of the planet. For ages they lived their long
lives within their hard shells, hopping and skipping hither and
thither, falling into the rivers, lakes, and seas which then existed
upon the surface of Barsoom, to be still further spread across the face
of the new world. Countless billions died before the first human broke
through his prison walls into the light of day.

"Prompted by curiosity, he broke open other shells; and the peopling of
Barsoom commenced. The Tree of Life is dead, but before it died the
plant men learned to detach themselves from it, their bisexuality
permitting them to reproduce themselves after the manner of true
plants."

"I have seen them in the Valley Dor," said John Carter, "with a tiny
plant man growing beneath each arm, dangling like fruit from the stems
attached to the tops of their heads."

"Thus, casually, the present forms of life evolved," continued Ras
Thavas, "and by studying them all from the lowest forms upward I have
learned how to reproduce life."

"Perhaps to your sorrow," I suggested.

"Perhaps," he agreed.




CHAPTER VIII. THE RED ASSASSIN



Days passed during which Ras Thavas kept us almost constantly with him;
but almost invariably there were others around, so that we had few
opportunities to plan, as we never knew the friend from the spy.
Thoughts of Janai filled me with sorrow, and I was ever watchful for
some means whereby I might learn her fate.

Ras Thavas warned me not to show too much interest in the girl, as it
might result in arousing suspicions that would lead to my destruction;
but he assured me that he would aid me in any way that he could that
would not lay me open to suspicion, and one day he found the means.

A number of unusually intelligent hormads were to be sent before the
Council of the Seven Jeds to be examined as to their fitness to serve
in the personal bodyguards which each jed maintained, and Ras Thavas
detailed me with other officers to accompany them. It was the first
time I had been outside the laboratory building, as none of us was
permitted to leave it other than on some official business such as
this.

As I entered the great building, which was in effect the palace of the
seven jeds, my whole mind was occupied with thoughts of Janai and the
hope that I might catch a glimpse of her. I looked down corridors, I
peered through open doorways, I even considered leaving the party and
concealing myself in one of the rooms we passed and then attempting a
search of the palace; but my better judgment came to my rescue, and I
continued on with the others to the great chamber where the Council of
the Seven Jeds sat.

The examination of the hormads was very thorough, and while listening
to it carefully and noting every question and answer and the effect of
the answers upon the jeds, the seeds of a plan were planted in my mind.
If I could get Tor-dur-bar assigned as the bodyguard of a jed I might
thus learn the fate of Janai. How differently it worked out and what a
bizarre plan finally developed, you shall learn in time.

While we were still in the council chamber a number of warriors entered
with a prisoner, a swaggering red man, a scarred, hard bitten warrior,
whose sneering face and haughty, arrogant manner seemed a deliberate,
studied affront to his captors and the seven jeds. He was a powerful
man, and despite the efforts of the warriors with him he forced his way
almost to the foot of the dais before they could restrain him.

"Who is this man?" demanded one of the jeds.

"I am Gantun Gur, the Assassin of Amhor," bellowed the captive in a
great voice.

"Give me back my sword, you stinking ulsios, and let me show you what a
real fighting man can do to these deformed monstrosities of yours and
to you, too. They caught me in nets, which is no way for decent men to
take a warrior."

"Silence!" commanded a jed, pale with anger, and smarting under the
insult of being called an ill-smelling rat.

"Silence?" screamed Gantun Gur. "By my first ancestor! There lives no
man can make Gantun Gur keep silent. Come down here and try it, man to
man, you snivelling worm."

"Off with him!" cried the jed. "Take him to Ras Thavas, and tell Ras
Thavas to take out his brain and burn it. He can do what he pleases
with the body."

Gantun Gur fought like a demon, knocking hormads to right and left; and
they only subdued him at last by entangling him in their nets. Then,
bellowing curses and insults, he was dragged away toward the
laboratory.

Shortly thereafter the jeds selected the hormads they chose to retain,
and we conducted the others out of the chamber, where they were turned
over to officers to be assigned to such duties as they were considered
equal to. Then I returned to the laboratory building without having had
a glimpse of Janai or learning anything concerning her. I was terribly
disappointed and despondent.

I found Ras Thavas in his small private study. John Carter and a fairly
well-formed hormad were with him. The latter was standing with his back
toward me as I entered the room. When he heard my voice he turned and
greeted me by name. It was Tor-dur-bar with his newly grown body. One
arm was a little longer than the other, his torso was out of proportion
to his short legs, and he had six toes on one foot and an extra thumb
on his left hand; but, altogether, he was a pretty good specimen for a
hormad.

"Well, here I am as good as new," he exclaimed, a broad grin splitting
his horrid countenance. "What do you think of me?"

"I'm glad to have you as a friend," I said. "I think that new body of
yours is very powerful. It's splendidly muscled." And indeed it was.

"I should, however, like a body and face like yours," said Tor-dur-bar.
"I was just talking to Ras Thavas about it, and he has promised to get
me one, if he can."

Instantly I recalled Gantun Gur, the Assassin of Amhor, and the doom
that had been pronounced upon him by the jed. "I think a good body is
waiting for you in the laboratory," I said; then I told them the story
of Gantun Gur. "Now it is up to Ras Thavas. The jed said he could do
what he pleased with the body."

"We'll have a look at the man," said The Master Mind of Mars, and led
the way out toward the reception room where new victims were held
pending his orders.

We found Gantun Gur securely trussed up and heavily guarded. At sight
of us he commenced to bellow and rail, insulting all three of us
indiscriminately. He appeared to have a most evil disposition. Ras
Thavas regarded him for a moment in silence; then he dismissed the
warriors and officers who had brought him.

"We will take care of him," he said. "Report to the Council of the
Seven Jeds that his brain will be burned and his body put to some good
use."

At that, Gantun Gur broke into such a tirade that I thought he had gone
mad, and perhaps he had. He gnashed his teeth and foamed at the mouth
and called Ras Thavas everything he could lay his tongue to.

Ras Thavas turned to Tor-dur-bar. "Can you carry him?" he asked.

For answer, the hormad picked up the red man as easily as though he had
no weight and flung him across one broad shoulder. Tor-dur-bar's new
body was indeed a mountain of strength.

Ras Thavas led the way back to his private study and through a small
doorway into a chamber that I had not seen before. Here were two tables
standing about twenty inches apart, the top of each a beautifully
polished slab of solid ersite. At one end of the tables was a shelf on
which were two empty glass vessels and two similar vessels filled with
a clear, colorless liquid resembling water. Beneath each table was a
small motor. There were numerous surgical instruments neatly arranged,
various vessels containing colored liquids, and paraphernalia such as
one might find in a laboratory or hospital concerning the uses of which
I knew nothing, for I am, first and last, a fighting man and nothing
else.

Ras Thavas directed Tor-dur-bar to lay Gantun Gur on one of the tables.
"Now get on the other one yourself," he said.

"You are really going to do it?" exclaimed Tor-dur-bar. "You are going
to give me a beautiful new body and face?"

"I wouldn't call it particularly beautiful," said Ras Thavas, with a
slight smile.

"Oh, it is lovely," cried Tor-dur-bar. "I shall be your slave forever
if you do this for me."

Although Gantun Gur was securely bound, it took both John Carter and
myself to hold him still while Ras Thavas made two incisions in his
body, one in a large vein and one in an artery. To these incisions he
attached the ends of two tubes, one of which was connected with an
empty glass receptacle and the other to the similar receptacle
containing the colorless liquid. The connections made, he pressed a
button controlling the small motor beneath the table, and Gantun Gur's
blood was pumped into the empty jar while the contents of the other jar
were forced into the emptying veins and arteries. Of course Gantun Gur
lost consciousness almost immediately after the motor was started and I
breathed a sigh of relief when I had heard the last of him. When all
the blood had been replaced by the colorless liquid, Ras Thavas removed
the tubes and closed the openings in the body with bits of adhesive
material; then he turned to Tor-dur-bar.

"You're quite sure you want to be a red man?" he asked.

"I can't wait," replied the hormad.

Ras Thavas repeated the operation he had just performed on Gantun Gur;
then he sprayed both bodies with what he told us was a strong
antiseptic solution and then himself, scrubbing his hands thoroughly.
He now selected a sharp knife from among the instruments and removed
the scalps from both bodies, following the hair line entirely around
each head. This done, he sawed through the skull of each with a tiny
circular saw attached to the end of a flexible, revolving shaft,
following the line he had exposed by the removal of the scalps.

It was a long and marvelously skillful operation that followed, and at
the end of four hours he had transferred the brain of Tor-dur-bar to
the brain pan of him who had been Gantun Gur, deftly connected the
severed nerves and ganglia, replaced the skull and scalp and bound the
head securely with adhesive material, which was not only antiseptic and
healing but locally anaesthetic as well.

He now reheated the blood he had drawn from Gantun Gur's body, adding a
few drops of some clear chemical solution, and as he withdrew the
liquid from the veins and arteries he pumped the blood back to replace
it. Immediately following this he administered a hypodermic injection,
"In an hour," he said, "Tor-dur-bar will awaken to a new life in a new
body."

It was while I was watching this marvelous operation that a mad plan
occurred to me whereby I might eventually reach the side of Janai, or
at least discover what fate had overtaken her. I turned to Ras Thavas.
"Could you restore Gantun Gur's brain to his head if you wished to?" I
asked.

"Certainly."

"Or could you put it in Tor-dur-bar's abandoned skull?"

"Yes."

"How soon after the removal of a brain do you have to replace it with
another?"

"The liquid that I pump into the veins and arteries of a body will
preserve it indefinitely. The blood I have withdrawn is also preserved
similarly. But what are you driving at?"

"I want you to transfer my brain to the body that was Tor-dur-bar's," I
said.

"Are you mad?" demanded John Carter.

"No. Well, perhaps a little, if love is madness. As a hormad I can be
sent to the Council of the Seven Jeds and perhaps chosen to serve them.
I know I can be chosen, for I know what answers to make to their
questions. Once there, I can find the opportunity to discover what has
become of Janai. Perhaps I may even rescue her, and when I have either
succeeded or failed, Ras Thavas can return my brain to my own body.
Will you do it, Ras Thavas?"

Ras Thavas looked questioningly at John Carter. "I have no right to
interpose any objections," said The Warlord. "Vor Daj's brain and body
are his own."

"Very well," said Ras Thavas. "Help me lift the new Tor-dur-bar from
the table and then lie down there yourself."




CHAPTER IX. MAN INTO HORMAD



When I regained consciousness, the first sight that met my eyes was
that of my own body lying on an ersite slab a few inches from me. It
was rather a ghastly experience, looking at one's own corpse; but when
I sat up and looked down at my new body, it was even worse. I hadn't
anticipated just how horrible it would be to be a hormad with a hideous
face and malformed body. I almost loathed to touch myself with my new
hands. Suppose something should happen to Ras Thavas! I broke out in a
cold sweat at the thought. John Carter and the great surgeon stood
looking at me.

"What is the matter?" demanded the latter. "You look ill."

I told him of the fear that had suddenly assailed me. He shrugged. "It
would be just too bad for you," he said. "There is another man in the
world, probably the only other man in the entire universe, who could
restore your brain to your body were anything to happen to me; but you
could never get him to Morbus as long as the hormads rule here."

"Who is he?" I asked.

"Vad Varo, a prince of Duhor now. He was Ulysses Paxton of Jasoom, and
he was my assistant in my laboratory at Toonol. It was he who
transferred my old brain to this new body. But don't worry. I have
lived over a thousand years. The hormads need me. There is no reason
why I should not live another thousand years. Before that I shall have
trained another assistant, so that he can transfer my brain to a new
body. You see, I should live forever."

"I hope you do," I said. Just then I discovered the body of the
assassin of Amhor lying on the floor. "What's the matter with
Tor-dur-bar?" I asked.

"Shouldn't he have regained consciousness before I did?"

"I saw to it that he didn't," said Ras Thavas. "John Carter and I
decided that it might be well if none other than he and I knew that
your brain had been transferred to the body of a hormad."

"You were right. Let them think that I am all hormad."

"Carry Tor-dur-bar into my study. Let him come to there, but before he
does you must be out of sight. Go out into the laboratory and help with
the emergence of the new hormads. Tell the officer there that I sent
you."

"But won't Tor-dur-bar recognize me when he sees me later?"

"I think not. He never saw his own face often enough to become familiar
with it. There are few mirrors in Morbus, and his new body was such a
recent acquisition that there is little likelihood that he will recognize
it. If he does, we'll have to tell him."

The next several days were extremely unpleasant. I was a hormad. I had
to consort with hormads and eat raw animal tissue. Ras Thavas armed me,
and I had to destroy the terrible travesties on humanity that wriggled
out of his abominable tanks so malformed that they were useless even as
hormads. One day I met Teeaytan-ov, with whom I had flown to Morbus on
the back of a malagor. He recognized me, or at least he thought he did.

"Kaor, Tor-dur-bar!" he greeted me. "So you have a new body. What has
become of my friend, Vor Daj?"

"I do not know," I said. "Perhaps he went into the vats. He spoke of
you often before I lost track of him. He was very anxious that you and
I be friends."

"Why not?" asked Teeaytan-ov.

"I think it an excellent idea," I said, for I wanted all the friends I
could get. "What are you doing now?"

"I am a member of the Third Jed's bodyguard. I live in the palace."

"That is fine," I said, "and I suppose you see everything that goes on
there."

"I see a great deal. It makes me want to be a jed. I should like a new
body such as they have."

"I wonder what became of the girl who was brought to the palace at the
same time Vor Daj was," I ventured.

"What girl?" he asked.

"She was called Janai."

"Oh, Janai. She is still there. Two of the jeds want her, and the
others won't let either have her. At least not so far. They are going
to take a vote on it soon. I think every one of them wants her. She is
the best-looking woman they have captured for a long time."

"She is safe for the time being, then?" I asked.

"What do you mean, safe?" he demanded. "She will be very lucky if one
of the jeds acquires her. She will have the best of everything and
won't have to go to the vats of Ras Thavas. But why are you so
interested in her? Perhaps you want her for yourself," and he burst
into laughter. He would have been surprised indeed had he known that he
had scored a bull's-eye.

"How do you like being a member of a jed's bodyguard?" I asked.

"It is very fine. I am treated well, have plenty to eat and a nice
place to sleep, and I do not have to work hard. Also, I have a great
deal of freedom. I can go wherever I please on the island of Morbus
except into the private quarters of the jeds. You cannot leave this
laboratory." He touched a medal hanging from a chain about his neck.
"It is this," he said, "that gives me so much freedom. It shows that I
am in the service of the Third Jed. No one dares interfere with me. I
am a very important person, Tor-dur-bar. I feel quite sorry for you who
are only a piece of animal tissue that can walk around and talk."

"It is nice to have such an important friend as you," I said,
"especially one who will help me, if he can."

"Help you in what way?" he asked.

"The jeds are constantly calling for new warriors to replace those that
are killed. I would make a good warrior for the bodyguard of a jed, and
it would be nice if you and I could be together; so, if I am chosen to
appear before them for examination, you can put in a good word for me
when they ask who knows me."

He thought this over for a minute in his slow-witted way, but finally
he said, "Why not? You look very strong; and sometimes, when the
members of the guard get to quarrelling among themselves, it is well to
have a strong friend. Yes, I'll help you, if I can. Sometimes they ask
us if we know a good strong warrior who is intelligent, and then they
send for him and examine him. Of course you are not very intelligent,
but you might be able to pass because you are so strong. Just how strong
are you?"

As a matter of fact, I didn't know, myself. I knew I was quite strong,
because I lifted bodies so easily; so I said, "I really don't know."

"Could you lift me?" he asked. "I am a very heavy person."

"I can try," I said. I picked him up very easily. He didn't seem to
weigh anything; so I thought I would see if I could toss him up over my
head. I succeeded quite beyond my expectations, or his either. I tossed
him almost to the ceiling of the room, and caught him as he came down.
As I set him on his feet, he looked at me in astonishment.

"You are the strongest person in Morbus," he said. "There never was any
one as strong as you. I shall tell the Third Jed about you."

He went away then, leaving me quite hopeful. At best, I had anticipated
that Ras Thavas might some day include me with an assignment of hormads
to be examined by the jeds; but as the ranks of the bodyguards were
often filled by drafts on the villages outside the city, there was no
telling how long I should have to wait for such an opportunity.

Ras Thavas had detailed me as the personal servant of John Carter, so
we were not separated; and as he worked constantly with Ras Thavas, the
three of us were often together. In the presence of others, they
treated me as they would have treated any other hormad--like a dumb
and ignorant servant, but when we were alone they accepted me once more
as an equal. They both marvelled at my enormous strength, which was
merely one of the accidents of the growth of Tor-dur-bar's new body;
and I was sure that Ras Thavas would have liked to slice me up and
return me to the vats in the hope of producing a new strain of
super-powerful hormads.

John Carter is one of the most human persons I have ever known. He is
in every sense of the word a great man, a statesman, a soldier, perhaps
the greatest swordsman that ever lived, grim and terrible in combat;
but with it all he is modest and approachable, and he has never lost
his sense of humor. When we were alone he would joke with me about my
newly acquired "pulchritude," laughing in his quiet way until his sides
shook; and I was, indeed, a sight to inspire both laughter and horror.
My great torso on its short legs, my right arm reaching below my knees,
my left but slightly below my waist line, I was all out of proportion.

"Your face is really your greatest asset," he said, after looking at me
for a long time. "I should like to take you back to Helium as you are
and present you at the jeddak's next levee. You know, of course, that
you were considered one of the handsomest men in Helium. I should say,
'Here is the noble Vor Daj, a padwar of The Warlord's Guard,' and how
the women would cluster around you!"

My face really was something to arrest attention. Not a single feature
was placed where it should have been, and all were out of proportion,
some being too large and some too small. My right eye was way up on my
forehead, just below the hair line, and was twice as large as my left
eye which was about half an inch in front of my left ear. My mouth
started at the bottom of my chin and ran upward at an angle of about
45 degrees to a point slightly below my huge right eye. My nose was
scarcely more than a bud and occupied the place that my little left eye
should have had. One ear was close set and tiny, the other a pendulous
mass that hung almost to my shoulder. It inclined me to believe that
the symmetry of normal humans might not be wholly a matter of accident,
as Ras Thavas believed.

Tor-dur-bar, with his new body, had wanted a name instead of a number;
so John Carter and Ras Thavas had christened him Tun-gan, a
transposition of the syllables of Gantun Gur's first name. When I told
them of my conversation with Teeaytan-ov they agreed with me that I
should keep the name Tor-dur-bar. Ras Thavas said he would tell Tun-gan
that he had grafted a new hormad brain into his old body, and this he
did at the first opportunity.

Shortly thereafter I met Tun-gan in one of the laboratory corridors. He
looked at me searchingly for a moment, and then stopped me. "What is
your name?" he demanded.

"Tor-dur-bar," I replied.

He shuddered visibly. "Are you really as hideous as you appear?" he
asked; and then, without waiting for me to reply, "Keep out of my sight
if you don't want to go to the incinerator or the vats."

When I told John Carter and Ras Thavas about it, they had a good laugh.
It was good to have a laugh occasionally, for there was little here
that was amusing. I was worried about Janai as well as the possibility
that I might never regain my former body; Ras Thavas was dejected
because of the failure of his plan to regain his former laboratory in
Toonol and avenge himself on Vobis Kan, the jeddak; and John Carter
grieved constantly, I knew, over the fate of his princess.

While we were talking there in Ras Thavas's private study an officer
from the palace was announced; and without waiting to be invited, he
entered the room. "I have come to fetch the hormad called Tor-dur-bar,"
he said. "Send for him without delay."

"This is an order from the Council of the Seven Jeds," said the
officer. He was a sullen, arrogant fellow; doubtless one of the red
captives into whose skull the brain of a hormad had been grafted.

Ras Thavas shrugged and pointed at me. "This is Tor-dur-bar," he said.




CHAPTER X. I FIND JANAI



Seven other hormads were lined up with me before the dais on which sat
the seven jeds. I was, perhaps, the ugliest of them all. They asked us
many questions. It was, in a way, a crude intelligence test, for they
wished hormads above the average in intelligence to serve in this
select body of monstrous guardsmen. I was to learn that they were
becoming a little appearance conscious, also; for one of the jeds
looked long at me, and then waved me aside.

"We do not want such a hideous creature in the guards," he said.

I looked around at the other hormads in the chamber, and really
couldn't see much to choose from between them and me. They were all
hideous monsters. What difference could it make that I was a little
more hideous? Of course there was nothing for me to do; and, much
disappointed, I stepped back from the line.

Five of the seven remaining were little better than halfwits, and they
were eliminated. The other two might have been high grade morons at the
best, but they were accepted. The Third Jed spoke to an officer. "Where
is the hormad I sent for?" he demanded. "Tor-dur-bar."

"I am Tor-dur-bar," I said.

"Come here," said the Third Jed, and again I stepped to the foot of the
dais.

"One of my guardsmen says you are the strongest person in Morbus,"
continued the Third Jed. "Are you?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I am very strong."

"He says that you can toss a man to the ceiling and catch him again.
Let me see you do it."

I picked up one of the rejected hormads and threw him as high as I
could. I learned then that I didn't know my own strength. The room was
quite lofty, but the creature hit the ceiling with a dull thud and fell
back into my arms unconscious. The seven jeds and the others in the
room looked at me with astonishment.

"He may not be beautiful," said the Third Jed, "but I shall take him
for my guard."

The jed who had waved me aside objected. "Guardsmen must be
intelligent," he said. "This creature looks as though it had no brains
at all."

"We shall see," said another jed, and then they commenced to fire
questions at me. Of course they were simple questions that the most
ignorant of red men could have answered easily, for the questioners had
only the brains and experience of hormads after all.

"He is very intelligent," said the Third Jed. "He answers all our
questions easily. I insist upon having him."

"We shall draw lots for him," said the First Jed.

"We shall do nothing of the kind," stormed the Third Jed. "He belongs
to me. It was I who sent for him. None of the rest of you had ever
heard of him."

"We shall take a vote on it," said the Fourth Jed.

The Fifth Jed, who had rejected me, said nothing. He just sat there
scowling. I had made a fool of him by proving myself so desirable that
many jeds wished me.

"Come," said the Seventh Jed, "let's take a vote to see whether we
award him to the Third Jed or draw lots for him."

"Don't waste time," said the Third Jed, "for I am going to take him
anyway." He was a big man, larger than any of his fellows.

"You are always making trouble," growled the First Jed.

"It is the rest of you that are making trouble," retorted the Third
Jed, "by trying to deprive me of what is rightfully mine."

"The Third Jed is right," said the Second Jed. "None of the rest of us
have any claim on this hormad. We were willing to see him rejected
until the Third Jed proved that he would make a desirable guardsman."

They wrangled on for a long time, but finally gave in to the Third Jed.
Now I had a new master. He put me in charge of one of his own officers
and I was taken away to be initiated into the duties of a guardsman in
the palace of the Seven Jeds of Morbus.

The officer conducted me to a large guardroom where there were many
other hormad warriors. Teeaytan-ov was among them, and he lost no time
in claiming credit for having me chosen for the guards. One of the
first things I was taught was that I was to fight and die, if
necessary, in defense of the Third Jed. I was given the insignia of the
guard to wear around my neck, and then an officer undertook to train me
in the use of a longsword. I had to pretend to a little awkwardness
lest he discover that I was more familiar with the weapon than he. He
complimented me upon my aptitude, and said that he would give me daily
instruction thereafter.

I found my fellow guardsmen a stupid, egotistical lot of morons. They
were all jealous of one another and of the seven jeds who were only
hormads after all with the bodies of red men. I discovered that only
fear held them in leash, for they were just intelligent enough to
resent their lot and to envy the officers and jeds who had power and
authority. The soil was ripe for mutiny or revolution. It was just an
undercurrent that one sensed if he had intelligence, for they feared
spies and informers too much to voice their true feeling aloud.

I chafed now at every delay that kept me from searching for Janai. I
did not dare make any inquiries concerning her, as that would
immediately have aroused suspicion; nor did I dare go poking about the
palace until I knew more of its customs and its life.

The following day I was taken with a detachment of guardsmen beyond the
walls of the city out among the crowded villages of the common hormads.
Here I saw thousands of monstrous creatures, stupid and sullen, with no
pleasures beyond eating and sleeping, and just enough intelligence
ordinarily to make them dissatisfied with their lot. There were many,
of course, with less brains and no more imagination than beasts. These
alone were contented.

I saw envy and hate in the glances that many of them cast upon us and
our officers, and there were growling murmurs after we had passed that
followed us like the low moaning of the wind in the wake of a flier. I
came to the conclusion that the Seven Jeds of Morbus were going to find
many obstacles in the way of their grandiose plan to conquer a world
with these creatures, and the most insurmountable of all would be the
creatures themselves.

At last I learned the ways of the palace and how to find my way about,
and the first time I was off duty I commenced a systematic search for
Janai. I always moved quickly, as though I was on some important
errand; so when I met officers or hormads they paid no attention to me.

One day, as I came to the end of a corridor, a hormad stepped from the
doorway and confronted me. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Don't you know that these are the quarters of the women and that no
one is allowed here except those who guard them?"

"You are one of the guards?" I asked.

"Yes; now be on your way, and don't come back here again."

"It must be a very important post, guarding the women," I said.

He swelled perceptibly. "It is, indeed. Only the most trustworthy
warriors are chosen."

"Are the women very beautiful?" I asked.

"Very," he said.

"I certainly envy you. I wish that I might be a guard here, too. It
would make me happy to see these beautiful women. I have never seen
one. Just to get a glimpse of them would be wonderful."

"Well," he said, "perhaps it would do no harm to let you have a little
glimpse. You seem to be a very intelligent fellow. What is your name.

"I am Tor-dur-bar," I said. "I am in the guard of the Third Jed."

"You are Tor-dur-bar, the strongest man in Morbus?" he demanded.

"Yes, I am he."

"I have heard of you. Every one is talking about you, and how you threw
a hormad up against the ceiling of the council chamber so hard that you
killed him. I shall be very glad to let you have a look at the women,
but don't tell anybody that I did so."

"Of course not," I assured him.

He stepped to the door at the end of the corridor and swung it open.
Beyond was a large chamber in which were several women and a number of
the sexless hormads who were evidently their servants.

"You may step in," said the guard; "they will think you are another
guard."

I entered the room and looked quickly about, and as I did so my heart
leaped to my throat, for there, at the far end of the room, was Janai.
Forgetful of everything else, I started to cross toward her. I forgot
the guard. I forgot that I was a hideous monster. I forgot everything
but that here was the woman I loved and here was I. The guard overtook
me and laid a hand upon my shoulder.

"Hey! Where are you going?" he demanded.

Then I came to myself. "I wanted to get a closer look at them," I said.
"I wanted to see what it was that the jeds saw in women."

"Well, you have seen enough. I don't see what they see in them, myself.
Come now, you must get out."

As he spoke the door by which we had entered swung open again, and the
Third Jed entered. The guard shrivelled in terror. "Quick!" he gasped.
"Mingle with the servants. Pretend you are one of them. Perhaps he will
not notice you."

I crossed quickly toward Janai and kneeled before her. "What do you
want?" she demanded. "What are you doing here, hormad? You are not one
of our servants."

"I have a message for you," I whispered. I touched her with my hand. I
could not help it. I could scarcely resist the tremendous urge I felt
to take her in my arms. She shrank from me, an expression of loathing
and disgust upon her face.

"Do not touch me, hormad," she said, "or I shall call the guard."

Then I remembered the hideous monster that I was, and I drew away from
her. "Do not call the guard until you have heard my message," I begged.

"There is no one here to send me any message I would care to hear," she
said.

"There is Vor Daj," I said. "Have you forgotten him?"

I waited breathlessly to note her reaction.

"Vor Daj!" she breathed in a whisper. "He has sent you to me?"

"Yes. He told me to find you. He did not know but that you were dead.
He told me that if I found you I was to tell you that day and night he
was searching for some plan whereby he might take you away from
Morbus."

"There can be no hope," she said, "but tell him that I have not
forgotten him and never shall. Every day I think of him, and now every
day I shall bless him for thinking of me and wishing to help me."

I was about to say more to her, to tell her that Vor Daj loved her, so
that I might see whether that pleased her or not; but then I heard a
loud voice demand, "What are you doing here?" and turning I saw that
the First Jed had entered the room and was confronting the Third Jed
accusingly.

"I have come after my slave woman," replied the latter. "What are you
going to do about it?"

"These women have not been distributed by the council. You have no
right to any of them. If you need more slaves, order some additional
hormads. Come on, get out of here!"

For answer, the Third Jed crossed the room and seized Janai by one arm,
"Come with me, woman," he ordered, and started to drag her toward the
door; then the First Jed whipped out his sword and blocked the way. The
sword of the Third Jed flashed from its scabbard, and the two men
engaged, which necessitated the Third Jed's relinquishing his hold on
Janai.

The duel was a rare spectacle of poor swordsmanship, but they skipped
about the room so much and cut and slashed so terrifically in all
directions that the other occupants of the chamber had to keep
constantly on the move to avoid injury. I tried always to keep between
them and Janai, and presently I found myself near the door with the
girl close beside me. The attention of the guard as well as all others
in the room was riveted upon the two combatants, and the door was just
behind us. Nowhere could Janai be in greater danger than here.

Perhaps never again would I have such an opportunity to get her out of
these quarters in which she was a prisoner. Where I could take her, I
did not know; but to get her out of here would be something. If, in
some way, I could smuggle her into the laboratory I was sure that John
Carter and Ras Thavas would find some place to hide her. Bending my
ugly face close to her beautiful one, I whispered, "Come with me," but
she shrank away. "Please don't be afraid of me,"

I begged. "I am doing this for Vor Daj, because he is my friend. I want
to try to help you."

"Very well," she said, without further hesitation.

I looked hurriedly about the room. No one was paying any attention to
us. Every eye was centered upon the combatants. I took Janai's hand,
and together we slipped through the doorway out into the corridor
beyond.




CHAPTER XI. WAR OF THE SEVEN JEDS



Now that we were out of the room where Janai had been imprisoned I
hadn't the slightest idea where to take her. The suspicions of the
first person who saw us together would be aroused. I asked Janai if she
knew any place where I might hide her safely until I could find a way
to get her out of the palace. She said that she did not. She knew only
the room in which she had been imprisoned.

I hurried her down the corridor along which I had come, but at the head
of the ramp leading to the floor below I saw two officers ascending.
There was a door at my left; and as we had to get out of sight
immediately, I opened it and hurried Janai into the room beyond, which,
fortunately, was vacant. It was evidently a storeroom, for there were
sacks and boxes piled along the walls. At the far end of the room was a
window, and in one of the side walls another door.

I waited until I heard the officers pass along the corridor; then I
opened the door in the side wall to see what lay beyond. There was
another room in one corner of which was a pile of sleeping silks and
furs. Everything was covered with dust, indicating that the room had
not been occupied for a considerable time. In a curtained alcove was a
bath, and from hooks along the wall hung the trappings of a warrior,
even to his weapons. The former occupant must have left, expecting to
return; and my guess was that he had been an officer who had gone out
on some expedition and been killed, for the trappings and weapons that
had been left behind were such as a fighting man wears upon dress
occasions.

"We have stumbled upon an excellent place for you to hide," I said.
"Keep the door to this room locked; there is a bolt on this side. I
shall bring you food when I can, and just as soon as it is possible
I'll get you to a safer place."

"Perhaps Vor Daj will come to see me," she suggested. "Be sure to tell
him where I am."

"He would come if he could; but he is in the laboratory building, and
cannot get out. Would you like to see him very much?" I couldn't resist
asking her that.

"Very much, indeed," she said.

"He will be glad to know that, and until he can come I'll do the best I
can to help you."

"Why are you so kind to me?" she asked. "You seem very different from
the other hormads I have seen."

"I am Vor Daj's friend," I said. "I will do anything I can for him and
for you. You are no longer afraid of me?"

"No. I was at first, but not now."

"You need never be afraid of me. There is nothing that I would not do
for you, even to laying down my life for you."

"I thank you, even though I do not understand," she said.

"Some day you will understand, but not yet. Now I must be going. Be
brave, and don't give up hope."

"Goodbye,--Oh, I do not even know your name."

"I am called Tor-dur-bar," I said.

"Oh, now I remember you. Your head was cut off in the fight in which
Vor Daj and Dotar Sojat were captured. I remember that then you
promised to be Vor Daj's friend. Now you have a new body,"

"I wish they might have given me a new face as well," I said,
simulating a smile with my hideous great mouth.

"It is enough that you have a good heart," she said.

"It is enough for me that you think so, Janai; and now goodbye."

As I passed through the outer room I examined the sacks and boxes piled
there, and was overjoyed to discover that they contained food. I
hastened to acquaint Janai with this good news; then I left her and
returned to the guardroom.

My fellow guardsmen were most uninteresting companions. Like most
stupid people they talked principally about themselves and were great
braggarts. Food was also a very important topic of conversation with
them, and they would spend hours telling of the great quantities of
animal tissue they had eaten upon various occasions. When there was no
officer around they aired their grievances against the authority of the
jeds; but this they did fearfully, as there was always the danger of
spies or informers. Promotions to easier berths and larger allowances
of animal tissue were the rewards for informing on one's fellows.

I had been back but a short time when an officer entered the room and
ordered us to strap on our weapons and accompany him. He marched us to
a very large room in the quarters of the Third Jed, to whom we
belonged; and there I found that all the armed retainers of the jed
were gathered. There was much whispering and speculation. The officers
appeared unusually serious, and the atmosphere seemed charged with
nervous apprehension.

Presently the Third Jed entered the room accompanied by his four
principal dwars. He had been bleeding from several wounds which had
been bandaged. I knew where he had acquired them, and I wondered how
the First Jed had fared. The Third Jed mounted a dais and addressed us.

"You will accompany me to the Council of the Seven Jeds," he said. "It
is your duty to see that no harm befalls me. Obey your officers. If you
are loyal, you will receive an extra allowance of food and many
privileges. I have spoken."

We were marched to the council chamber which was jammed with the armed
hormads of the personal bodyguards of the seven jeds. The air was tense
with suppressed excitement. Even the stupidest hormads seemed infected
by it. Six jeds sat upon the dais. The First Jed was swathed in
bandages that were red with blood. The throne of the Third Jed was
empty. Surrounding our jed, we shouldered our way to the foot of the
dais; but he did not mount to the throne. Instead, he stood on the
floor facing the six jeds; and his voice and his manner were truculent
as he addressed them.

"You sent warriors to arrest me," he said. "They are dead. There is no
one in Morbus with the power or authority to arrest me. There are some
among you who would like to be jeddak and rule the rest of us. The
First Jed would like to be jeddak. The time has come for us to
determine which one is fit to be jeddak, for I agree with others of you
that seven men cannot rule as well as one. Divided authority is no
authority."

"You are under arrest," shouted the First Jed.

The Third Jed laughed at him. "You are giving additional proof that you
are not fit to be jeddak, for you can only issue orders--you cannot
enforce them."

The First Jed looked down at his followers, addressing his chief dwar.
"Seize him!" he commanded. "Take the traitor dead or alive."

The warriors of the First Jed moved toward us, forcing their way slowly
through crowds of other warriors. I chanced to be standing in the front
row, facing the oncoming hormads. A big warrior was the first to
shoulder his way through to us.

He made a pass at me with his sword. He was very slow and clumsy, and I
had no difficulty stepping quickly to one side and avoiding it. He had
put so much into that blow, that, when he missed me, he lost his
balance and came tumbling into my arms. That was wonderful! I hoisted
him in to the air and threw him fully fifty feet from me, so that he
alighted in the midst of his companions, knocking many of them to the
floor.

"Good work, Tor-dur-bar!" shouted the Third Jed. "You shall have all
the meat you want for that."

A second man reached me and I threw him all the way across the room. I
was just beginning to appreciate what enormous strength I had. It
seemed absolutely incredible that any creature could be so strong.
After that there was a lull during which the Third Jed succeeded in
making himself heard again.

"I, the Third Jed," he thundered, "now proclaim myself Jeddak of
Morbus. Let the jeds who will swear allegiance to me rise!"

No one rose. It looked bad for the Third Jed, as the chamber was packed
with the warriors of the other jeds. It also looked pretty bad for us.
I wondered what the Third Jed would do. It seemed to me that his life
was forfeit anyway, no matter what he did. He turned and spoke to the
dwars clustered about him, and immediately orders were given for us to
fall back to the doorway. Then the fighting began as the other jeds
ordered their warriors to prevent our escape.

The Third Jed called me by name. "Clear a way to the door,
Tor-dur-bar!" he cried. It seemed to me that he was banking rather too
heavily upon my strength; but I enjoyed fighting, and this looked like
an excellent opportunity to get my fill of it. I forced my way back
through our own ranks to what was now the front rank of our attack, and
here I found that fate had given me a great advantage in one of my
deformities. My enormously long arm was my sword arm, which, backed by
my super-human strength and a long sword, permitted me to cut a swath
through the enemy line that opened a path as by magic, for those that I
did not mow down turned and fled before the intensity of my attack.

There were heads and arms and legs and halves of bodies writhing and
squirming on the floor; there were heads screaming and cursing under
foot, and headless bodies dashing about the room colliding with friend
and foe indiscriminately. If there ever was a shambles it was there in
the great council chamber of the Seven Jeds of Morbus. The hormads
were, for the most part, too stupid to know fear; but when they saw
their officers fleeing from me, their morale was shattered; and we won
to the door with scarcely a casualty on our side.

From there our officers led us out of the palace into the city and down
the long avenue to the city gates. There they knew nothing of what had
been going on in the palace, and swung the gates open at the command of
the Third Jed. Of course, they couldn't have stopped us anyway, for we
greatly outnumbered the guard at the gates.

I wondered where we were going as we marched out of the city of Morbus;
but I was soon to discover, for at the first of the outer villages that
we came to, the Third Jed demanded its surrender, and announced that he
was the Jeddak of Morbus. He swore the officers and warriors into his
service, promoted many of the former, promised increased rations to the
latter, left a dwar to represent him and marched on to new conquests.

Nowhere did he meet with opposition, and in three days he had conquered
all of the island of Morbus except the city itself. The dwars he left
behind organized the local warriors to oppose any force that might be
sent out by the six jeds remaining in command of the city, but during
those three days no army marched out of Morbus to contest the right of
the new jeddak to rule.

On the fifth day we marched back to a large village on the coast, near
the city; and here Ay-mad, Jeddak of Morbus, established his capital.
This is the name he took, the literal translation of which is One-man,
or Number One Man, or First Man. Anyway, he was head man; and I think
that of all the seven jeds he was best fitted to be jeddak. He had a
physique and face suited to his new role, and he possessed one of the
best brains of any of the hormads that I had knowledge of.

Of course all that had happened seemed at the time to have placed me in
an utterly hopeless position. Janai was in the city beyond any hope of
my succoring her. I was separated from The Warlord and from Ras Thavas.
I was only a poor hormad without influence or position. I could do
nothing, and by now I must have been so well known in the city that I
could not possibly enter it surreptitiously. My hideous features must
by this time have become all too well known to the followers of the six
jeds to permit me the slightest hope of entering the city unrecognized.

When we finally encamped in the new capital of Ay-mad I threw myself
upon the ground with my fellow hormads and awaited the issuance of the
slimy animal tissue that was our principal reward for the conquests we
had made. It satisfied most of the poor, moronic, half-witted creatures
who were my comrades; but it did not satisfy me. I was endowed with
more brains, more ability, more experience, more physical strength than
any of them. I was by far a better man than the jeddak himself; and yet
I was only a hideous, malformed hormad that no self-respecting calot
would associate with. I was thus occupied with self-pity when an
officer came calling my name aloud. I stood up.

"I am Tor-dur-bar," I said.

"Come with me," he said. "The jeddak has sent for you."

I accompanied him to where the jeddak and all his principal officers
were gathered, wondering what new task Ay-mad had conceived for the
testing of my enormous strength, for I could not believe that he wished
to see me for any other purpose. I had acquired the typical inferiority
of a true hormad.

They had fixed up a sort of a dais and throne for Ay-mad, and he sat
there like a regular jeddak with his officers grouped around him.

"Approach, Tor-dur-bar!" he commanded, and so I came forward and stood
before the throne. "Kneel," he said, and I kneeled, for I was only a
poor hormad. "More than to any other the victory that we won in the
council chamber in Morbus was due to you," he said.

"You not only have the strength of many men, but you have intelligence.
Because of these things I appoint you a dwar, and when we enter Morbus
in victory you may select the body of any red man there and I will
command Ras Thavas to transfer your brain to it."

So I was a dwar. I thanked Ay-mad, and joined the other dwars clustered
about him. They all had the bodies of red men. How many of them had
hormad brains, I did not know. I was the only dwar with the body of a
hormad. I might, as far as I knew, be the only one with the brains of a
human being.




CHAPTER XII. WARRIOR'S REWARD



Morbus is a walled city. It is practically impregnable to men armed
only with swords. For seven days Ay-mad tried to take it, but all his
warriors could do was to beat futilely upon the great wooden gates
while the defending warriors dropped heavy stones on their heads. At
night we withdrew, and the defenders probably went to sleep with a
sense of perfect security. On the eighth day Ay-mad called a conference
of his dwars. "We are getting nowhere," he said. "We could pound on
those gates for a thousand years and do nothing more important than
make dents in them. How are we to take Morbus? If we conquer the world
we must capture Morbus and Ras Thavas."

"You cannot conquer the world," I said, "but you can take Morbus."

"Why can't we conquer the world?" he demanded.

"It is too large, and there are too many great nations to be overcome."

"What do you know about the world?" he demanded. "You are only a hormad
who has never been outside of Morbus."

"You will see that I am right, if you try to conquer the world; but it
would be easy to take the city of Morbus."

"And how?" he asked.

I told him in a few words how I should do it were I in command. He
looked at me for a long time, thinking the matter out. "It is too
simple," he said; then he turned on the others. "Why have none of you
thought of this before?" he demanded. "Tor-dur-bar is the only man of
brains among you."

All that night a thousand hormads were engaged in building long
ladders, all that night and the next day. We had a thousand of them,
and when both moons had passed below the horizon on the second night a
hundred thousand hormads crept toward the walls of Morbus with their
long ladders. In a thousand places all around the city we raised our
ladders to the top of the walls, and at a given signal a hundred men
scaled each ladder and dropped into the city streets.

The rest was easy. We took the sleeping city with the loss of only a
few warriors; and Ay-mad, with his dwars, entered the council chamber.
The first thing that he did was to have all but one throne removed from
the dais; then, seated there, he had the six jeds dragged before him.
They were a sheepish, terrified lot.

"How do you wish to die?" he asked, "or would you rather have your
brains returned to the skulls of hormads from whence they came?"

"That cannot be done," said the Fifth Jed, "but if it could, I would
rather go to the vats. I do not wish to be a hormad again."

"Why can't it be done?" demanded Ay-mad. "What Ras Thavas has done so
many times, he can do again."

"There is no Ras Thavas," said the Fifth Jed. "He has disappeared."

The effect that that statement had upon me may well be imagined. If it
were true, I was doomed to lifetime imprisonment in the monstrous
carcass of a hormad. There could be no escape, for Vad Varo of Duhor
was as far removed from me as though he had been back upon his own
planet of Jasoom; and he was the only other man in the world who could
restore my brain to its rightful body if Ras Thavas were dead. With the
new Jeddak of Morbus seeking to conquer the world, all men would be our
enemies. I could not call upon any man to save me.

And what of Janai? I should always be repulsive to her, and so I could
never tell her the truth. It were far better that she believe me dead
than that she should know that my brain was forever buried behind this
loathsome, inhuman mask. How could one with an exterior like mine speak
of love? And love was not for hormads.

In a daze, I heard Ay-mad ask what had become of Ras Thavas and the
Fifth Jed reply, "No one knows. He has simply disappeared. As he could
not escape from the city without detection, we believe that some of the
hormads sliced him up and threw him into one of his own culture vats in
revenge."

Ay-mad was furious, for without Ras Thavas his dream of world conquest
was shattered. "This is the work of my enemies," he cried. "Some of you
six jeds had a hand in this. You have destroyed Ras Thavas or hidden
him. Take them away! Put them in separate dungeons in the pits. The one
who confesses first shall have his life and his liberty, The rest shall
die. I give you one day to decide."

After the six jeds had been dragged away Ay-mad offered amnesty to all
of their officers who would swear allegiance to him, an invitation
which was refused by none, since refusal could mean nothing but death.
After this formality, which took a matter of some hours, was completed,
Ay-mad publicly acknowledged that the success of his operations against
Morbus was due to me; and told me that he would grant me any favor that
I might ask and that in addition to that he was appointing me an odwar,
a military rank analogous to that of general in the armies of the
planet Earth.

"And now," continued Ay-mad, "choose the favor that you would ask."

"That I should like to do in private," I said, "for the favor I wish to
ask can be of no interest to any but you and me."

"Very well," he said. "I grant you a private audience immediately upon
the conclusion of this one."

It was with some impatience that I awaited the conclusion of the
session in the council chamber, and when at last Ay-mad arose and
motioned me to follow him I breathed a sigh of relief. He led me into a
small apartment directly behind the dais and seated himself behind a
large desk.

"Now," he said, "what is t