CHAPTER III.

TREACHERY

The day following the coming of Vas Kor to the palace of the Prince of

Helium great excitement reigned throughout the twin cities, reaching

its climax in the palace of Carthoris. Word had come of the abduction

of Thuvia of Ptarth from her father’s court, and with it the veiled

hint that the Prince of Helium might be suspected of considerable

knowledge of the act and the whereabouts of the princess.

In the council chamber of John Carter, Warlord of Mars, was Tardos

Mors, Jeddak of Helium; Mors Kajak, his son, Jed of Lesser Helium;

Carthoris, and a score of the great nobles of the empire.

“There must be no war between Ptarth and Helium, my son,” said John

Carter. “That you are innocent of the charge that has been placed

against you by insinuation, we well know; but Thuvan Dihn must know it

well, too.

“There is but one who may convince him, and that one be you. You must

hasten at once to the court of Ptarth, and by your presence there as

well as by your words assure him that his suspicions are groundless.

Bear with you the authority of the Warlord of Barsoom, and of the

Jeddak of Helium to offer every resource of the allied powers to assist

Thuvan Dihn to recover his daughter and punish her abductors,

whomsoever they may be.

“Go! I know that I do not need to urge upon you the necessity for

haste.”

Carthoris left the council chamber, and hastened to his palace.

Here slaves were busy in a moment setting things to rights for the

departure of their master. Several worked about the swift flier that

would bear the Prince of Helium rapidly toward Ptarth.

At last all was done. But two armed slaves remained on guard. The

setting sun hung low above the horizon. In a moment darkness would

envelop all.

One of the guardsmen, a giant of a fellow across whose right cheek

there ran a thin scar from temple to mouth, approached his companion.

His gaze was directed beyond and above his comrade. When he had come

quite close he spoke.

“What strange craft is that?” he asked.

The other turned about quickly to gaze heavenward. Scarce was his back

turned toward the giant than the short-sword of the latter was plunged

beneath his left shoulder blade, straight through his heart.

Voiceless, the soldier sank in his tracks—stone dead. Quickly the

murderer dragged the corpse into the black shadows within the hangar.

Then he returned to the flier.

Drawing a cunningly wrought key from his pocket-pouch, he removed the

cover of the right-hand dial of the controlling destination compass.

For a moment he studied the construction of the mechanism beneath. Then

he returned the dial to its place, set the pointer, and removed it

again to note the resultant change in the position of the parts

affected by the act.

A smile crossed his lips. With a pair of cutters he snipped off the

projection which extended through the dial from the external

pointer—now the latter might be moved to any point upon the dial

without affecting the mechanism below. In other words, the eastern

hemisphere dial was useless.

Now he turned his attention to the western dial. This he set upon a

certain point. Afterward he removed the cover of this dial also, and

with keen tool cut the steel finger from the under side of the pointer.

As quickly as possible he replaced the second dial cover, and resumed

his place on guard. To all intents and purposes the compass was as

efficient as before; but, as a matter of fact, the moving of the

pointers upon the dials resulted now in no corresponding shift of the

mechanism beneath—and the device was set, immovably, upon a destination

of the slave’s own choosing.

Presently came Carthoris, accompanied by but a handful of his

gentlemen. He cast but a casual glance upon the single slave who stood

guard. The fellow’s thin, cruel lips, and the sword-cut that ran from

temple to mouth aroused the suggestion of an unpleasant memory within

him. He wondered where Saran Tal had found the man— then the matter

faded from his thoughts, and in another moment the Prince of Helium was

laughing and chatting with his companions, though below the surface his

heart was cold with dread, for what contingencies confronted Thuvia of

Ptarth he could not even guess.

First to his mind, naturally, had sprung the thought that Astok of

Dusar had stolen the fair Ptarthian; but almost simultaneously with the

report of the abduction had come news of the great fetes at Dusar in

honour of the return of the jeddak’s son to the court of his father.

It could not have been he, thought Carthoris, for on the very night

that Thuvia was taken Astok had been in Dusar, and yet—

He entered the flier, exchanging casual remarks with his companions as

he unlocked the mechanism of the compass and set the pointer upon the

capital city of Ptarth.

With a word of farewell he touched the button which controlled the

repulsive rays, and as the flier rose lightly into the air, the engine

purred in answer to the touch of his finger upon a second button, the

propellers whirred as his hand drew back the speed lever, and

Carthoris, Prince of Helium, was off into the gorgeous Martian night

beneath the hurtling moons and the million stars.

Scarce had the flier found its speed ere the man, wrapping his sleeping

silks and furs about him, stretched at full length upon the narrow deck

to sleep.

But sleep did not come at once at his bidding.

Instead, his thoughts ran riot in his brain, driving sleep away. He

recalled the words of Thuvia of Ptarth, words that had half assured him

that she loved him; for when he had asked her if she loved Kulan Tith,

she had answered only that she was promised to him.

Now he saw that her reply was open to more than a single construction.

It might, of course, mean that she did not love Kulan Tith; and so, by

inference, be taken to mean that she loved another.

But what assurance was there that the other was Carthoris of Helium?

The more he thought upon it the more positive he became that not only

was there no assurance in her words that she loved him, but none either

in any act of hers. No, the fact was, she did not love him. She loved

another. She had not been abducted—she had fled willingly with her

lover.

With such pleasant thoughts filling him alternately with despair and

rage, Carthoris at last dropped into the sleep of utter mental

exhaustion.

The breaking of the sudden dawn found him still asleep. His flier was

rushing swiftly above a barren, ochre plain—the world-old bottom of a

long-dead Martian sea.

In the distance rose low hills. Toward these the craft was headed. As

it approached them, a great promontory might have been seen from its

deck, stretching out into what had once been a mighty ocean, and

circling back once more to enclose the forgotten harbour of a forgotten

city, which still stretched back from its deserted quays, an imposing

pile of wondrous architecture of a long-dead past.

The countless dismal windows, vacant and forlorn, stared, sightless,

from their marble walls; the whole sad city taking on the semblance of

scattered mounds of dead men’s sun-bleached skulls—the casements having

the appearance of eyeless sockets, the portals, grinning jaws.

Closer came the flier, but now its speed was diminishing—yet this was

not Ptarth.

Above the central plaza it stopped, slowly settling Marsward. Within a

hundred yards of the ground it came to rest, floating gently in the

light air, and at the same instant an alarm sounded at the sleeper’s

ear.

Carthoris sprang to his feet. Below him he looked to see the teeming

metropolis of Ptarth. Beside him, already, there should have been an

air patrol.

He gazed about in bewildered astonishment. There indeed was a great

city, but it was not Ptarth. No multitudes surged through its broad

avenues. No signs of life broke the dead monotony of its deserted roof

tops. No gorgeous silks, no priceless furs lent life and colour to the

cold marble and the gleaming ersite.

No patrol boat lay ready with its familiar challenge. Silent and empty

lay the great city—empty and silent the surrounding air.

What had happened?

Carthoris examined the dial of his compass. The pointer was set upon

Ptarth. Could the creature of his genius have thus betrayed him? He

would not believe it.

Quickly he unlocked the cover, turning it back upon its hinge. A single

glance showed him the truth, or at least a part of it—the steel

projection that communicated the movement of the pointer upon the dial

to the heart of the mechanism beneath had been severed.

Who could have done the thing—and why?

Carthoris could not hazard even a faint guess. But the thing now was to

learn in what portion of the world he was, and then take up his

interrupted journey once more.

If it had been the purpose of some enemy to delay him, he had succeeded

well, thought Carthoris, as he unlocked the cover of the second dial,

the first having shown that its pointer had not been set at all.

Beneath the second dial he found the steel pin severed as in the other,

but the controlling mechanism had first been set for a point upon the

western hemisphere.

He had just time to judge his location roughly at some place south-west

of Helium, and at a considerable distance from the twin cities, when he

was startled by a woman’s scream beneath him.

Leaning over the side of the flier, he saw what appeared to be a red

woman being dragged across the plaza by a huge green warrior—one of

those fierce, cruel denizens of the dead sea-bottoms and deserted

cities of dying Mars.

Carthoris waited to see no more. Reaching for the control board, he

sent his craft racing plummet-like toward the ground.

The green man was hurrying his captive toward a huge thoat that browsed

upon the ochre vegetation of the once scarlet-gorgeous plaza. At the

same instant a dozen red warriors leaped from the entrance of a nearby

ersite palace, pursuing the abductor with naked swords and shouts of

rageful warning.

Once the woman turned her face upward toward the falling flier, and in

the single swift glance Carthoris saw that it was Thuvia of Ptarth!