CHAPTER III

THE HEADLESS HUMANS

Above the roof of the palace that housed the Jed of Gathol and his

entourage, the cruiser Vanator tore at her stout moorings. The groaning

tackle bespoke the mad fury of the gale, while the worried faces of

those members of the crew whose duties demanded their presence on the

straining craft gave corroborative evidence of the gravity of the

situation. Only stout lashings prevented these men from being swept

from the deck, while those upon the roof below were constantly

compelled to cling to rails and stanchions to save themselves from

being carried away by each new burst of meteoric fury. Upon the prow of

the Vanator was painted the device of Gathol, but no pennants were

displayed in the upper works since the storm had carried away several

in rapid succession, just as it seemed to the watching men that it must

carry away the ship itself. They could not believe that any tackle

could withstand for long this Titanic force. To each of the twelve

lashings clung a brawny warrior with drawn short-sword. Had but a

single mooring given to the power of the tempest eleven short-swords

would have cut the others; since, partially moored, the ship was

doomed, while free in the tempest it stood at least some slight chance

for life.

"By the blood of Issus, I believe they will hold!" screamed one warrior

to another.

"And if they do not hold may the spirits of our ancestors reward the

brave warriors upon the Vanator," replied another of those upon the

roof of the palace, "for it will not be long from the moment her cables

part before her crew dons the leather of the dead; but yet, Tanus, I

believe they will hold. Give thanks at least that we did not sail

before the tempest fell, since now each of us has a chance to live."

"Yes," replied Tanus, "I should hate to be abroad today upon the

stoutest ship that sails the Barsoomian sky."

It was then that Gahan the Jed appeared upon the roof. With him were

the balance of his own party and a dozen warriors of Helium. The young

chief turned to his followers.

"I sail at once upon the Vanator," he said, "in search of Tara of

Helium who is thought to have been carried away upon a one-man flier by

the storm. I do not need to explain to you the slender chances the

Vanator has to withstand the fury of the tempest, nor will I order you

to your deaths. Let those who wish remain behind without dishonor. The

others will follow me," and he leaped for the rope ladder that lashed

wildly in the gale.

The first man to follow him was Tanus and when the last reached the

deck of the cruiser there remained upon the palace roof only the twelve

warriors of Helium, who, with naked swords, had taken the posts of the

Gatholians at the moorings.

Not a single warrior who had remained aboard the Vanator would leave

her now.

"I expected no less," said Gahan, as with the help of those already on

the deck he and the others found secure lashings. The commander of the

Vanator shook his head. He loved his trim craft, the pride of her class

in the little navy of Gathol. It was of her he thought--not of himself.

He saw her lying torn and twisted upon the ochre vegetation of some

distant sea-bottom, to be presently overrun and looted by some savage,

green horde. He looked at Gahan.

"Are you ready, San Tothis?" asked the jed.

"All is ready."

"Then cut away!"

Word was passed across the deck and over the side to the Heliumetic

warriors below that at the third gun they were to cut away. Twelve keen

swords must strike simultaneously and with equal power, and each must

sever completely and instantly three strands of heavy cable that no

loose end fouling a block bring immediate disaster upon the Vanator.

Boom! The voice of the signal gun rolled down through the screaming

wind to the twelve warriors upon the roof. Boom! Twelve swords were

raised above twelve brawny shoulders. Boom! Twelve keen edges severed

twelve complaining moorings, clean and as one.

The Vanator, her propellors whirling, shot forward with the storm. The

tempest struck her in the stern as with a mailed fist and stood the

great ship upon her nose, and then it caught her and spun her as a

child's top spins; and upon the palace roof the twelve men looked on in

silent helplessness and prayed for the souls of the brave warriors who

were going to their death. And others saw, from Helium's lofty landing

stages and from a thousand hangars upon a thousand roofs; but only for

an instant did the preparations stop that would send other brave men

into the frightful maelstrom of that apparently hopeless search, for

such is the courage of the warriors of Barsoom.

But the Vanator did not fall to the ground, within sight of the city at

least, though as long as the watchers could see her never for an

instant did she rest upon an even keel. Sometimes she lay upon one side

or the other, or again she hurtled along keel up, or rolled over and

over, or stood upon her nose or her tail at the caprice of the great

force that carried her along. And the watchers saw that this great ship

was merely being blown away with the other bits of debris great and

small that filled the sky. Never in the memory of man or the annals of

recorded history had such a storm raged across the face of Barsoom.

And in another instant was the Vanator forgotten as the lofty, scarlet

tower that had marked Lesser Helium for ages crashed to ground,

carrying death and demolition upon the city beneath. Panic reigned. A

fire broke out in the ruins. The city's every force seemed crippled,

and it was then that The Warlord ordered the men that were about to set

forth in search of Tara of Helium to devote their energies to the

salvation of the city, for he too had witnessed the start of the

Vanator and realized the futility of wasting men who were needed sorely

if Lesser Helium was to be saved from utter destruction.

Shortly after noon of the second day the storm commenced to abate, and

before the sun went down, the little craft upon which Tara of Helium

had hovered between life and death these many hours drifted slowly

before a gentle breeze above a landscape of rolling hills that once had

been lofty mountains upon a Martian continent. The girl was exhausted

from loss of sleep, from lack of food and drink, and from the nervous

reaction consequent to the terrifying experiences through which she had

passed. In the near distance, just topping an intervening hill, she

caught a momentary glimpse of what appeared to be a dome-capped tower.

Quickly she dropped the flier until the hill shut it off from the view

of the possible occupants of the structure she had seen. The tower

meant to her the habitation of man, suggesting the presence of water

and, perhaps, of food. If the tower was the deserted relic of a bygone

age she would scarcely find food there, but there was still a chance

that there might be water. If it was inhabited, then must her approach

be cautious, for only enemies might be expected to abide in so far

distant a land. Tara of Helium knew that she must be far from the twin

cities of her grandfather's empire, but had she guessed within even a

thousand haads of the reality, she had been stunned by realization of

the utter hopelessness of her state.

Keeping the craft low, for the buoyancy tanks were still intact, the

girl skimmed the ground until the gently-moving wind had carried her to

the side of the last hill that intervened between her and the structure

she had thought a man-built tower. Here she brought the flier to the

ground among some stunted trees, and dragging it beneath one where it

might be somewhat hidden from craft passing above, she made it fast and

set forth to reconnoiter. Like most women of her class she was armed

only with a single slender blade, so that in such an emergency as now

confronted her she must depend almost solely upon her cleverness in

remaining undiscovered by enemies. With utmost caution she crept warily

toward the crest of the hill, taking advantage of every natural screen

that the landscape afforded to conceal her approach from possible

observers ahead, while momentarily she cast quick glances rearward lest

she be taken by surprise from that quarter.

She came at last to the summit, where, from the concealment of a low

bush, she could see what lay beyond. Beneath her spread a beautiful

valley surrounded by low hills. Dotting it were numerous circular

towers, dome-capped, and surrounding each tower was a stone wall

enclosing several acres of ground. The valley appeared to be in a high

state of cultivation. Upon the opposite side of the hill and just

beneath her was a tower and enclosure. It was the roof of the former

that had first attracted her attention. In all respects it seemed

identical in construction with those further out in the valley--a high,

plastered wall of massive construction surrounding a similarly

constructed tower, upon whose gray surface was painted in vivid colors

a strange device. The towers were about forty sofads in diameter,

approximately forty earth-feet, and sixty in height to the base of the

dome. To an Earth man they would have immediately suggested the silos

in which dairy farmers store ensilage for their herds; but closer

scrutiny, revealing an occasional embrasured opening together with the

strange construction of the domes, would have altered such a

conclusion. Tara of Helium saw that the domes seemed to be faced with

innumerable prisms of glass, those that were exposed to the declining

sun scintillating so gorgeously as to remind her suddenly of the

magnificent trappings of Gahan of Gathol. As she thought of the man she

shook her head angrily, and moved cautiously forward a foot or two that

she might get a less obstructed view of the nearer tower and its

enclosure.

As Tara of Helium looked down into the enclosure surrounding the

nearest tower, her brows contracted momentarily in frowning surprise,

and then her eyes went wide in an expression of incredulity tinged with

horror, for what she saw was a score or two of human bodies--naked and

headless. For a long moment she watched, breathless; unable to believe

the evidence of her own eyes--that these grewsome things moved and had

life! She saw them crawling about on hands and knees over and across

one another, searching about with their fingers. And she saw some of

them at troughs, for which the others seemed to be searching, and those

at the troughs were taking something from these receptacles and

apparently putting it in a hole where their necks should have been.

They were not far beneath her--she could see them distinctly and she

saw that there were the bodies of both men and women, and that they

were beautifully proportioned, and that their skin was similar to hers,

but of a slightly lighter red. At first she had thought that she was

looking upon a shambles and that the bodies, but recently decapitated,

were moving under the impulse of muscular reaction; but presently she

realized that this was their normal condition. The horror of them

fascinated her, so that she could scarce take her eyes from them. It

was evident from their groping hands that they were eyeless, and their

sluggish movements suggested a rudimentary nervous system and a

correspondingly minute brain. The girl wondered how they subsisted for

she could not, even by the wildest stretch of imagination, picture

these imperfect creatures as intelligent tillers of the soil. Yet that

the soil of the valley was tilled was evident and that these things had

food was equally so. But who tilled the soil? Who kept and fed these

unhappy things, and for what purpose? It was an enigma beyond her

powers of deduction.

The sight of food aroused again a consciousness of her own gnawing

hunger and the thirst that parched her throat. She could see both food

and water within the enclosure; but would she dare enter even should

she find means of ingress? She doubted it, since the very thought of

possible contact with these grewsome creatures sent a shudder through

her frame.

Then her eyes wandered again out across the valley until presently they

picked out what appeared to be a tiny stream winding its way through

the center of the farm lands--a strange sight upon Barsoom. Ah, if it

were but water! Then might she hope with a real hope, for the fields

would give her sustenance which she could gain by night, while by day

she hid among the surrounding hills, and sometime, yes, sometime she

knew, the searchers would come, for John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom,

would never cease to search for his daughter until every square haad of

the planet had been combed again and again. She knew him and she knew

the warriors of Helium and so she knew that could she but manage to

escape harm until they came, they would indeed come at last.

She would have to wait until dark before she dare venture into the

valley, and in the meantime she thought it well to search out a place

of safety nearby where she might be reasonably safe from savage beasts.

It was possible that the district was free from carnivora, but one

might never be sure in a strange land. As she was about to withdraw

behind the brow of the hill her attention was again attracted to the

enclosure below. Two figures had emerged from the tower. Their

beautiful bodies seemed identical with those of the headless creatures

among which they moved, but the newcomers were not headless. Upon their

shoulders were heads that seemed human, yet which the girl intuitively

sensed were not human. They were just a trifle too far away for her to

see them distinctly in the waning light of the dying day, but she knew

that they were too large, they were out of proportion to the perfectly

proportioned bodies, and they were oblate in form. She could see that

the men wore some manner of harness to which were slung the customary

long-sword and short-sword of the Barsoomian warrior, and that about

their short necks were massive leather collars cut to fit closely over

the shoulders and snugly to the lower part of the head. Their features

were scarce discernible, but there was a suggestion of grotesqueness

about them that carried to her a feeling of revulsion.

The two carried a long rope to which were fastened, at intervals of

about two sofads, what she later guessed were light manacles, for she

saw the warriors passing among the poor creatures in the enclosure and

about the right wrist of each they fastened one of the manacles. When

all had been thus fastened to the rope one of the warriors commenced to

pull and tug at the loose end as though attempting to drag the headless

company toward the tower, while the other went among them with a long,

light whip with which he flicked them upon the naked skin. Slowly,

dully, the creatures rose to their feet and between the tugging of the

warrior in front and the lashing of him behind the hopeless band was

finally herded within the tower. Tara of Helium shuddered as she turned

away. What manner of creatures were these?

Suddenly it was night. The Barsoomian day had ended, and then the brief

period of twilight that renders the transition from daylight to

darkness almost as abrupt as the switching off of an electric light,

and Tara of Helium had found no sanctuary. But perhaps there were no

beasts to fear, or rather to avoid--Tara of Helium liked not the word

fear. She would have been glad, however, had there been a cabin, even a

very tiny cabin, upon her small flier; but there was no cabin. The

interior of the hull was completely taken up by the buoyancy tanks. Ah,

she had it! How stupid of her not to have thought of it before! She

could moor the craft to the tree beneath which it rested and let it

rise the length of the rope. Lashed to the deck rings she would then be

safe from any roaming beast of prey that chanced along. In the morning

she could drop to the ground again before the craft was discovered.

As Tara of Helium crept over the brow of the hill down toward the

valley, her presence was hidden by the darkness of the night from the

sight of any chance observer who might be loitering by a window in the

nearby tower. Cluros, the farther moon, was just rising above the

horizon to commence his leisurely journey through the heavens. Eight

zodes later he would set--a trifle over nineteen and a half Earth

hours--and during that time Thuria, his vivacious mate, would have

circled the planet twice and be more than half way around on her third

trip. She had but just set. It would be more than three and a half

hours before she shot above the opposite horizon to hurtle, swift and

low, across the face of the dying planet. During this temporary absence

of the mad moon Tara of Helium hoped to find both food and water, and

gain again the safety of her flier's deck.

She groped her way through the darkness, giving the tower and its

enclosure as wide a berth as possible. Sometimes she stumbled, for in

the long shadows cast by the rising Cluros objects were grotesquely

distorted though the light from the moon was still not sufficient to be

of much assistance to her. Nor, as a matter of fact, did she want

light. She could find the stream in the dark, by the simple expedient

of going down hill until she walked into it and she had seen that

bearing trees and many crops grew throughout the valley, so that she

would pass food in plenty ere she reached the stream. If the moon

showed her the way more clearly and thus saved her from an occasional

fall, he would, too, show her more clearly to the strange denizens of

the towers, and that, of course, must not be. Could she have waited

until the following night conditions would have been better, since

Cluros would not appear in the heavens at all and so, during Thuria's

absence, utter darkness would reign; but the pangs of thirst and the

gnawing of hunger could be endured no longer with food and drink both

in sight, and so she had decided to risk discovery rather than suffer

longer.

Safely past the nearest tower, she moved as rapidly as she felt

consistent with safety, choosing her way wherever possible so that she

might take advantage of the shadows of the trees that grew at intervals

and at the same time discover those which bore fruit. In this latter

she met with almost immediate success, for the very third tree beneath

which she halted was heavy with ripe fruit. Never, thought Tara of

Helium, had aught so delicious impinged upon her palate, and yet it was

naught else than the almost tasteless usa, which is considered to be

palatable only after having been cooked and highly spiced. It grows

easily with little irrigation and the trees bear abundantly. The fruit,

which ranks high in food value, is one of the staple foods of the less

well-to-do, and because of its cheapness and nutritive value forms one

of the principal rations of both armies and navies upon Barsoom, a use

which has won for it a Martian sobriquet which, freely translated into

English, would be, The Fighting Potato. The girl was wise enough to eat

but sparingly, but she filled her pocket-pouch with the fruit before

she continued upon her way.

Two towers she passed before she came at last to the stream, and here

again was she temperate, drinking but little and that very slowly,

contenting herself with rinsing her mouth frequently and bathing her

face, her hands, and her feet; and even though the night was cold, as

Martian nights are, the sensation of refreshment more than compensated

for the physical discomfort of the low temperature. Replacing her

sandals she sought among the growing track near the stream for whatever

edible berries or tubers might be planted there, and found a couple of

varieties that could be eaten raw. With these she replaced some of the

usa in her pocket-pouch, not only to insure a variety but because she

found them more palatable. Occasionally she returned to the stream to

drink, but each time moderately. Always were her eyes and ears alert

for the first signs of danger, but she had neither seen nor heard aught

to disturb her. And presently the time approached when she felt she

must return to her flier lest she be caught in the revealing light of

low swinging Thuria. She dreaded leaving the water for she knew that

she must become very thirsty before she could hope to come again to the

stream. If she only had some little receptacle in which to carry water,

even a small amount would tide her over until the following night; but

she had nothing and so she must content herself as best she could with

the juices of the fruit and tubers she had gathered.

After a last drink at the stream, the longest and deepest she had

allowed herself, she rose to retrace her steps toward the hills; but

even as she did so she became suddenly tense with apprehension. What

was that? She could have sworn that she saw something move in the

shadows beneath a tree not far away. For a long minute the girl did not

move--she scarce breathed. Her eyes remained fixed upon the dense

shadows below the tree, her ears strained through the silence of the

night. A low moaning came down from the hills where her flier was

hidden. She knew it well--the weird note of the hunting banth. And the

great carnivore lay directly in her path. But he was not so close as

this other thing, hiding there in the shadows just a little way off.

What was it? It was the strain of uncertainty that weighed heaviest

upon her. Had she known the nature of the creature lurking there half

its menace would have vanished. She cast quickly about her in search of

some haven of refuge should the thing prove dangerous.

Again arose the moaning from the hills, but this time closer. Almost

immediately it was answered from the opposite side of the valley,

behind her, and then from the distance to the right of her, and twice

upon her left. Her eyes had found a tree, quite near. Slowly, and

without taking her eyes from the shadows of that other tree, she moved

toward the overhanging branches that might afford her sanctuary in the

event of need, and at her first move a low growl rose from the spot she

had been watching and she heard the sudden moving of a big body.

Simultaneously the creature shot into the moonlight in full charge upon

her, its tail erect, its tiny ears laid flat, its great mouth with its

multiple rows of sharp and powerful fangs already yawning for its prey,

its ten legs carrying it forward in great leaps, and now from the

beast's throat issued the frightful roar with which it seeks to

paralyze its prey. It was a banth--the great, maned lion of Barsoom.

Tara of Helium saw it coming and leaped for the tree toward which she

had been moving, and the banth realized her intention and redoubled his

speed. As his hideous roar awakened the echoes in the hills, so too it

awakened echoes in the valley; but these echoes came from the living

throats of others of his kind, until it seemed to the girl that Fate

had thrown her into the midst of a countless multitude of these savage

beasts.

Almost incredibly swift is the speed of a charging banth, and fortunate

it was that the girl had not been caught farther in the open. As it

was, her margin of safety was next to negligible, for as she swung

nimbly to the lower branches the creature in pursuit of her crashed

among the foliage almost upon her as it sprang upward to seize her. It

was only a combination of good fortune and agility that saved her. A

stout branch deflected the raking talons of the carnivore, but so close

was the call that a giant forearm brushed her flesh in the instant

before she scrambled to the higher branches.

Baffled, the banth gave vent to his rage and disappointment in a series

of frightful roars that caused the very ground to tremble, and to these

were added the roarings and the growlings and the moanings of his

fellows as they approached from every direction, in the hope of

wresting from him whatever of his kill they could take by craft or

prowess. And now he turned snarling upon them as they circled the tree,

while the girl, huddled in a crotch above them, looked down upon the

gaunt, yellow monsters padding on noiseless feet in a restless circle

about her. She wondered now at the strange freak of fate that had

permitted her to come down this far into the valley by night unharmed,

but even more she wondered how she was to return to the hills. She knew

that she would not dare venture it by night and she guessed, too, that

by day she might be confronted by even graver perils. To depend upon

this valley for sustenance she now saw to be beyond the pale of

possibility because of the banths that would keep her from food and

water by night, while the dwellers in the towers would doubtless make

it equally impossible for her to forage by day. There was but one

solution of her difficulty and that was to return to her flier and pray

that the wind would waft her to some less terrorful land; but when

might she return to the flier? The banths gave little evidence of

relinquishing hope of her, and even if they wandered out of sight would

she dare risk the attempt? She doubted it.

Hopeless indeed seemed her situation--hopeless it was.